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It is a newsy Friday. This is not really easing out of the workweek. We've also got to discuss the ramifications of the fast moving and very destructive wildfires in Hawaii that the latest count here on the Bloomberg terminal. According to officials in Hawaii, they have confirmed at least fifty five deaths, and the police chief locally has said
it's likely there are another one thousand people unaccounted for. Still, of course, big news yesterday the request for forty billion dollars in aid from the President to Congress, including twelve billion dollars for FEMA, that was needed even before the Hawaiian wildfires and all of that destruction. We are joined now by Brock Long. He is currently executive chairman of Haggarty Consulting, and of course he's the former administrator of
FEMA under the Trump administration. Thank you so much for joining us. I have to sort of delineate what happens when and from what agency Brock, what is the initial response at this stage of a disaster, uh, so early on from FEMA in particular, what does FEMA do on the ground at a time like this.
Well, as I've always said, disaster response and the type of situation as a partnership between not only the local and state level of government and in conjunction with FEMA. But you know, an event like this, a devastating wildfire on a tropical island thousands of miles from the mainland, is also going to take neighbor helping neighbor in this situation,
you know, initially FEMA. You know, when I was in office back in twenty eighteen, I actually did a lot of work to increase logistical capabilities of the federal government's logistical capabilities to respond to the devastating disasters in Hawaii, particularly around how you do life sustaining missions, uh for
big events. Unfortunately, with the Lahaina fires and the fires that are still going on, these are what we call load to no notice disasters, which you know, it takes time for the federal government to be able to mobilize. But hopefully you know, we've already seen FEMA with the great ability to be able to get incident management teams on you know, on Maui. Uh, they're continuing to send
I know Dan Criswell, administrator. Dan Chriswell, who I spoke had contact with this morning, is headed to the island today. It's my understanding she will be on on site today. So again it's a lot of working parts, particularly because of the distance from the mainland. But then also when a wildfire pushes through a community like Lehina and burns everything up, a lot of the infrastructure is just totally gone. So you know, the wildfires are incredibly devastating and it
doesn't leave you much to work with. So this is going to be a very long disaster recovery process, painful one for the citizens of Hawaii.
And can you tell us a little more as you mentioned the challenges of responding to a disaster very far from the contiguous states. What resources are they short on? If any, how does that all work. It's one thing to respond to severe wildfires maybe in the southwestern States, but Hawaii, what are the particular challenges there?
Well, the challenge nationwide, whether it's Hawaii or Puerto Rico or the United States mainland. You know, the goal should be of any community to build a baseline capability that's pretty strong, right, And when the local capability to respond to disasters is strong and the state ability to respond to disasters is strong, then the federal government should be able to support the gaps. But in this situation, everything
in the municipality of Lahaina has wiped out. You know, obviously they need all the help that they can get from the state federal government. And Hawaii's done a good job again of being able to pack supplies and teams to be able to come over from other islands very quickly.
And in this case, other municipalities within Maui's will be sending mutual aid, you know, most likely to Lahina to or accepting citizens that have been displaced into their communities to help with sheltering and temporary housing, those types of things. And you know what it looks like for FEMA in the community is it's very tough to set the expectations at this point. Because a wildfire wipes out all the infrastructure, there is nothing left. There is nothing really to go
back to. And if you look at the infrastructure on Lahina that's been impacted, the ports are gone, the commons, the communications are down, the power is off, the water systems are not working, and you know you're still in search mode, search and rescue mode. You're trying to do life sustainment missions. But the long term recovery of this, you know, there's going to be a lot of debris that they have to remove, a lot of hazards, materials
that they have to remove. They've got to figure out how to put back basic infrastructure before life can begin again in that area.
And very brit in maybe thirty seconds. What there was a request for another twelve billion dollars for FEMA, and I know the Disaster Relief Fund is set to run out of money before September thirtieth. What does this do what we're seeing in Hawaii to the negotiation on further funding for FEMA.
Well, I don't think right now. You know, the emergency funding that FEMA has it should not impact the disaster response at all, and I think Congress will wake up and do the right thing to you know, always keep the Disaster Relief Fund fully funded. You know, we do have to have an honest discussion in the future about disastro mitigation and attacking things on the forefront.
Rather than the back End brock Long, former FEMA administrator at Haggarty Consulting. Thanks so much for your insights, a lot of news to discuss.
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We've got so much news to talk about today the former president's legal challenges. Former President Donald Trump his attorneys were in court and were joined now by Zoe Tillman at Bloomberg Legal to discuss this order from a federal judge in Washington who said she will place some limits on what the former president can discuss regarding his case and the accusations that he tried to obstruct the twenty twenty election. Zoe, thank you so much for joining us.
I understand the former president is not supposed to discuss sensitive detail on this case. Can you walk us through what counts as sensitive?
That's right.
You know, typically in a criminal case, the government will ask for what's known as a protective order, and this is a pretty standard part of cases. It just means, you know, the parties and the lawyers can't take a lot of the evidence ahead of trial and share it with the public, you know, make sure that witnesses aren't placed in jeopardy, and sort of the integrity of the trial is maintained. And the fight here had been over, you know, how much of the evidence in this case
would be covered by those kinds of restrictions. And Trump and his lawyers had already agreed, for instance, that information about you know, secret grand jury proceedings, you know, things that were obviously sensitive quote unquote, that was not an issue, but they did want to have the government, you know, clearly state what it believed was sensitive in for instance, witness interviews, and then everything else could potentially be discussed on air, on the campaign trail wherever by the former
president and his attorneys. So you know, it wasn't any specific category of evidence that's specified in court, but it's more sort of broad strokes whether or not, you know, all of it is considered off limits, or whether you know, he has some leeway to talk about what he's getting from the government.
Well, and of course Zoe Trump on True Social for example, had said that a protective order would violate his right to free speech, which is the same indication we've gotten from his defense attorneys that they're going to argue in this actual case when it goes to trial, is that the president, the former president, had a right to say
the things he was saying, et cetera. It's noteworthy to me that Judge Chudkin in this hearing said that while the former president does have a First Amendment right to free speech, that right is quote not absolute, and I just wonder if that also has implications ultimately for his wider defense.
You know, it's not unexpected that a judge would say, in the context of a criminal case case, you know, whatever else is happening out in the world, my job is to protect the integrity of these proceedings. And that's really what we heard from her today is she said, whatever the implications are in the political realm for you, for anyone else, you know, she has to make sure that witnesses are secure, she has to make sure that
a jury can be seated in the case. And so, you know, she said that she was mindful of the First Amendment implications and did have to take those into consideration. That was sort of pushing back on the government a bit, but ultimately, you know, her job is not to worry about you know, what it means for Trump's campaign is what she said.
To them, Zoe, I'm curious, can they hold the former president to this or what happens if he decides he doesn't want to cooperate and he just starts posting everything on truth social.
Sure, so separate from this protective order. As a condition of being allowed to remain free ahead of trial, he already had to agree that he wouldn't do anything that would jeopardize witness security or you know, the the integrity of the case. And that the judge noted that was even broader than any restrictions that she would place on
what evidence he could or could not talk about. You know, what we've seen in other high profile cases is judges starting out with you know, warnings, sort of informal admonitions to parties to say, listen, you know, I'm not going to tell you can't say X, Y and Z right now, but if it's crossing a line, I may have to call you back. And that's what she's done here. So in the future if she feels that he is well for us to be violates the protective order, that is
a clear problem in the government. Can you ask for additional restrictions. But if the judge, you know, sees things happening out in public, and if the government brings them to her attention, she can bring him back in and potentially say I'm considering a more restrictive limit on what we can talk about, and then they would argue over that.
And of course, Zoe, this is just as it pertains to this particular case, this particular indictment of which there's already been three for the former president, and now next week we're expecting there could be a fourth in Fulton County, Georgia, in District Attorney Fannie Willis also potentially could bring charges in relation to overturning the twenty twenty election result in that state. What should we be looking for, what should we be expecting next week?
You know, we are are you know, waiting to see how many people will be charged in Georgia, whether it will just be the former president, if it will be you know, local and state officials and actors who signed off, for instance, on the false certification saying that Trump had won the state, Whether it'll involve any of his allies in efforts to overturn the twenty twenty election, people like Rudy Giuliani, you know. And then we're looking to see how,
if there is an indictment, how it's crafted. Is it going to be a sprawling racketeering case. Is it going to be a more limited set of charges under state law. There are really a lot of open questions right now about what that could look like.
Zoe.
While we've got you are our legal reporter here on the phone with us, I have to ask you your takeaway on the importance of the announcement that David Weiss will be a special counsel investigating Hunter Biden. What do you see as the practical difference and the impact of that designation as a special counsel?
Sure? So, practically, what it means is that David Weiss is no longer subject to the normal chain of command that would have him answering to political appointees at the Justice Department. This is a step that's normally done in situations where the Attorney General has to be concerned about, you know, perceptions, perception or reality of political influence in
an investigation that just has political implications. So we had a special counsel for Trump after Trump announced he was running against Biden for the White House in twenty twenty four, a special council to investigate President Biden, you know, Mark Garland's boss. The reason for that is, you know, it's
I think clear. And now we've had Republicans really probing the Hunter Biden case and demanding there be more steps to insulate whatever happens to Hunter Biden from his father's administration. And you know, this appointment seems to be responding to that, or at least taking it into account and trying to head off accusations of bias or influence in whatever ends up happening with Hunter Biden in or out of court.
Well, that'll be really important to follow. And thank you so much Zoe Tillman, Bloomberg Legal reporter, for joining us on the variety of legal cases we've got to follow regarding president and sons and former presidents.
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Well, you've heard the response so far from congressional Republicans to this announcement by Attorney General Merrick Garland that he's naming David Weiss as special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, and it's not a friendly response from Republicans on Capitol Hill. I'll read you part of the statement from Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who said that this quote cannot be used to obstruct
congressional investigations or whitewash the Biden family corruption. He also notes that Weiss was the one who negotiated the plea deal that fell apart last month, asking how can he be trusted as a special counsel? So some negative feelings in response to today's announcement on a special council to investigate Hunter Biden. I'm Jack Fitzpatrick here from Bloomberg Government, filling in for Joe Matthew with our politics panel, our
Bloomberg Politics contributors Jeanie she and Zano and Rick Davis. Jeanie, let's start with you. Should we be surprised at all that Republicans are all seemingly against this? There's another comment from James Comer. The Oversight Share is very negative about this, and what does that mean? It seems like they're much more interested in their own congressional investigations.
They are, and the statement you just read from Kevin McCarthy, you know, they are repeating these talking points. You know, whitewashing is a term they're using. A sweetheart deal is another one, and so I think that they are going to continue to make this case. They do feel that Merrick Garland, by taking this step, something that some people may think they would welcome, is actually an attempt to rob them of their power to investigate, which is not true.
They can still investigate, but also is an attempt to say this is independent of the White House, We've got this under control and move on. And of course Republicans don't want to do that. So they are going to keep driving this home and they are not going to be happy with Weiss, who they see or they thought gave the Hunter Biden or was willing to give Hunter Biden this sweetheart deal after five years of investigation, Rick, what.
Do you make of the emphasis from Speaker McCarthy from James Commer on the Oversight Committee of prioritizing their own congressional investigations. I'm wondering in particular, if this is sort of an impeachment or bust campaign by Republicans.
Yeah, obviously Comer wants to sort of have this all result in an impeachment inquiry, the direct line going to Biden himself, the president, and this muddy's that water, right, This takes it out out of some of his hands. It will freeze up potentially in his mind. Some witnesses who you know, will have jeopardy if it if they don't get some kind of immunity, and of course they can't do that in Congress. So yeah, I mean, it
definitely muddies the water for a clean cut investigation. But I really actually think it has more to do with just the pr nature this whole thing. I'm not sure that, you know, the investigators in the House have actually found anything, and they've been at it for some time, and there's a real dispute as to whether or not any of
this has anything to do with Joe Biden. And so the question is does this take away from their sort of megaphone right, their ability to demagogue this politically is going to be harmed by this, And I think That's what we're really seeing a reaction to, is that it's just going to take some of the attention away from this and people will check the box and say, Okay, we'll wait and see what Justice Department comes up with.
It's a good point, Rick, and it makes me wonder about the timing. If you were are entirely looking at this as a way to cut the legs out from under President Biden politically, I don't know if you would make announcements about this in August of twenty twenty three, maybe you'd want it to be a little later. Now we don't know when this report will come out. We know that there will eventually be a report from the
Special Council. Genie, what are your expectations for the timing and especially what that timing means for how this does or doesn't get politicized.
You know it's going to be politicized either way. I don't have a good estimate on what the timing of something like that will be, but we are in the heart of election season, particularly as we get to Labor Day. I don't suspect we'll see anything before that, and so it is going to muddy the waters for both the Biden administration. It's going to be in a what aboutism that the Trump campaign will be able to use. House Republicans are going to come back September twelfth. It's going
to be all Hunter Biden all the time. And so it is going to be an ongoing issue. If the the report somehow clears the president and again there's been no evidence connecting him heretofore to date, it's still going to be an attempt by Republicans in the House in particular to try to connect him to what they see as a problematic activities by Hunter Biden. And I think they are problematic. And Elizabeth Warren was one of the most recent Senators to make that case, and she is right.
What Hunter Biden has done, what we've seen family members like Jared Kushner do, it is incredibly problematic. And if it is legal, that's something that Congress can address to try to make sure we have better ethics and government.
Well, I guess we are at the point where everything is at least a little politicized through the lens of twenty twenty four. It's not twenty twenty four yet, but it almost feels like it, and there are candidates in Iowa at the Iowa State Fair. We've got a clip from the former Vice president Mike Pence, who's on the trail talking about entitlements, about Social Security and Medicare. I'm curious how smart it is for any strategy for a
Republican to bring this up. Let's play Mike Pence's comments on those programs.
Look, social Security and medicare a promise we've made to the American people, Right, We're gonna keep that promise. You'll hear the demagogues again, you know, saying that Republicans are gonna cut benefits to Grahama.
It's common.
So I haven't heard anybody specifically propose cutting benefits to your grandmother, although there are some proposals to raise the age of eligibility. I am very curious after the age of Donald Trump, moving the party away from looking at the solvency of those programs. Rick, do you see any kind of special or smart approach from somebody like Mike Pence who's trying to I guess, acknowledge those even though it's a dicey topic.
Yeah, it is a dicey topic. It's not something that other Republicans are anxious to weigh in on. You really wonder in the pulling data whether or not people are worried about this. I just recall in two thousand and eight, people were frantic about the fact that Social Security was going under and they were going to, you know, lose their benefits because of the financial problems associated with it. In campaigns, including the McCain campaign, we're talking about social
security reform as a positive. This is clearly something that Vice President Pence thinks will differentiate him from the field, including Donald Trump, who has said, you know, very directly that you know he's not going to touch social Security. So I think it's more a political ploy right now. But the problem is you start then saying what you're going to do about it, and you start dividing the country.
Right.
Certainly a different approach from Pence compared to Trump on social Security and Medicare. There'll be an interesting angle for the rest of this cycle.
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Plenty of China news and analysis to discuss today. I'm Jack Fitzpatrick from Bloomberg Government, sitting in for Joe Matthew here co hosting with Kaylee Lines and Kaylee I am struck by the back and forth what appears to be a careful approach yesterday towards China with a seemingly sort of scaled back executive order on investment issues, but also some kind of glib comments about China's economy referring to it as a ticking time bomb by President Biden, sort
of shooting from the hip recently. And we are joined now by David Weston, host of Wall Street Week, who I understand also spoke to Deborah Lair at the Paulson Institute. David, how do you make sense of the back and forth between hot and cold with regard to the president's stance on China.
Well, it's great to be with you. You know, as one I heard once that fauxpa in Washington is when you speak the truth by accident, and you have to wonder about comments like this. You have to bear in mind, of course, he was appearing before fundraisers, right. He was trying to raise money out there in Utah, and I wonder whether it's positioning him for the election. We did talk to Debora Lair, who spent a lot of time
in China with Hank Paulson. She's the vice chair of his foundation as well as working at Edelbin Global Advisory, and I asked her, among other things, about what she made of these comments and what it said, very specifically about where the respective parties may well be on China coming up to the next election. This is what she said.
China has always been a focus in election campaigns, and it will be again this year in a very heated way. I'm sure both sides are looking to see how tough
they can be when it comes to China. What we hope is, in the context of looking at being tough on China, we remain laser focused on what we need to be doing to ensure that the United States remains competitive, and that we're doing things that don't isolate our companies but instead ensure that they remain competitive, because after all, our economic security is what underpins our national security.
Yeah, that's Deborah Lairs of the Edelman global advisory and the thing that actually when I heard about this first thing this morning, Jack and Kaylee, I thought about and you won't remember this, I barely do. When John Kennedy was running for Presidents Nixon, he came out early to make sure he was to the right of Nixon on Russia,
on the Soviet Union. And I wonder whether this was actually President Biden making sure he was to the right if I can use that expression of whoever runs for the Republicans on China.
Yeah, I'm very curious, especially David, because you mentioned earlier he did make these comments on the Chinese economy at a fundraiser where you often, I guess, get less scripted comments. But I'm curious if we can chalk this up to sort of a Joe Biden accidental gaff kind of thing, or is this a natural outgrowth of a political pressure that is multiple administrations deep? I mean, do we have a clear answer on the motivations there in your view?
Well, certainly I can't get him inside the president's mind at all, and I don't know that he ever wanted this to come out in this way, But I think at the very least what it does indicate is his state of mind in where he wants to communicate to the people who are giving him money. Where he is on China, and that is, I'm going to be really tough on China. That's the wayt least I read it. He doesn't want the Republicans to come in and say you're soft on China.
Well, it's so interesting to me, David that words are words. Obviously action is action, and maybe he's being a little less careful with some of the specific wording than the administration is being very intentional with the specific action, like this executive order, which was quite narrow in scope. High fence for small yards is what they're calling it. And maybe that's a good thing for me. I wonder how Wall Street should be looking at this very careful strategy when it comes to China.
Well, I think that's a great point, Kaylee. I'm sure investors want to look at what he's doing much more than what he's saying. At the same time, this was again going back to John Kennedy. You remember he got really to the right of Nixon on Soviet Union, and then what did he do once he got in office. He did the Bay of Pigs, And the question is is it possible for a candidate to some extent to pay themselves in a corner on policy, so they have to be tough once they get re elected, and it
really affects policy in that respect. I mean, some people might suggest that happened with Saudi Arabia with candidate Joe Biden. When he got an office, he had taken such a strong position in Saudi Arabia, he almost had no choice.
Yeah, I'm curious the degree to which the politics drive the policy and maybe policy mistakes. I spoke earlier with Tom Orlick, Bloomberg chief economist, who made a case in a piece this morning that there seems to be, I guess, a false idea that there's this binary choice between China either collapsing or taking over the world, that a lot
of the political rhetoric is almost cartoonishly binary. David, I mean, is this a case in which the politics have led policy makers to oversimplify the issues there?
Well, we all do.
I'm going to say, I think we in the media sometimes overslimplified too. So I'm not going to point too many fingers at people. I'm sure that you're right, Jack, but I also want to take a half step back.
China has its own struggles right now, without regard to the United States, whatever our position is, whatever our policies is, they're facing President She is facing a lot of challenges that we went over with debrel air, and he's got a long way to go to really get his economy going again, and it's not clear exactly how quickly or
effectively he can do that. I think that may be in some ways the larger issue for investors, because obviously a China that isn't growing is not good for the global economy.
Yeah, and so China's economy obviously is a very sensitive issue for Beijing. Speaking of sensitive issues, some like the economy of China, President Biden speaks on other sensitive issues he is more reluctant to do so. One of those, David being his son. I know, I feel like every Friday you come on sound On and we ask you to put on your lawyer hat. I'd like to do so again. Just given the news of today a special counsel being appointed in the investigation into his son Hunter Biden.
This is actually just the US attorney in Delaware who already was investigating him now being given this designation as an attorney. How consequential is this. Jack was asking one of our legal reporters about this earlier, but do you think it's going to be enough to be satisfactory for some of the critics of the Justice Department in this matter?
Well, you should tell you with the legal reporters, say, because I want to get crosswise of our legal reporters. But I was watching Merrek Garland, with whom I clerk you know for a couple of years. I've known him quite well in the past as he made that announcement, and I thought two things right away. One is this is really proof positive what he and to be Frank President Biden been saying, which is he is independent of the White House. This can't be something that the White
House was urging or wanted or wanted to tolerate. But he was proving he is independent of the White House. And now the special Counsel Jack Smith is gonna be even more independent because he's really out from under to a large degree Merrick Garland himself, and I am afraid for the President because it will not be fun for him. I think this means it's not going away anytime soon. The one thing we have experienced with special counsels is once you appoint him, they keep.
Going right, even if it's not a massive expansion of the investigation. This is not a scaling back of the investigation. David Weston, thank you so much for joining us, host of Wall Street Week. Great insights on China policy, Merrit Garland being very careful. You know who hasn't been careful lately is Paul Krugman with his predictions of the Alien war and the inflation that apparently will come out. We're going to wrap up with some weird stuff on that,
but for now, I'm Jack Fitzpatrick. This is Bloomberg here with Kaylee Lines.
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So the Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman was on the latest episode of the odd Locks podcast. Of course, you can download that anywhere you get your podcasts, and he seemed very confident in his prediction of what economically would happen if there is an alien invasion. We bring you the freshest analysis here. Let's play Kruman's comments.
And I'm contested alien invasion. I guess it kind of depends on how they run the occupation. But the actual wars are always inflationary. I can't think of one that wasn't.
Kayley is quite confident that if they, if they arrive, we are going to war with the aliens.
I have so much to say about this. This is a Nobel laureate, so we should take his words seriously. But I guess my question is what kind of aliens are we talking about? Why would we have to go to war with them? What if we could be friends?
I have to disagree with him. I think we'd be friends. We'd establish trade. Whatever brought them all the way here. They must have a lot of minerals or electricity generations generation, and I think it would be disinflationary. I think we'd have a big supply boost. It could be copper or lightweight metal. Whatever happens, I want a full debate with Paul Krugman about the inflationary or disinflationary effects.
I would buy a ticket.
Yes, I'll go on for a full hour on that topic. Thanks for listening to the Sound On podcast.
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