Hello, everybody, Welcome to our Friday show with Ryan and Emily. Just as a reminder for premium subscribers, this entire Friday show is available, but for those of you who are watching free on YouTube, if you want to watch the entire thing, you can go ahead and sign up at Breakingpoints dot com. If not, no worries at all, Just know that there is more content there behind the paywall. Just do us a favor if you can, like, subscribe
and share this video and or this podcast. And so with that, let's kick it over to Ryan and Emily.
Good morning, Thank you so much for joining us on another exciting Friday show.
Ryan, how you doing, I'm doing well? How about yourself?
Good? Have a good Friday to everyone. We're missing Crystal and Sager today. They'll be with us in spirit, for sure. They helped come up with a lot of the things we're going to talk about today, so at least they will be with us through the elements that they have chosen.
Yes, exactly, We're just we're at we're at their mercy here today.
Yes, now, Ryan, I know that you have an update on one of our favorite guests, Drop site writer Abu Baker.
Yes, if the people might have noticed this on social media. They have, and they should go go check out Abu Baker's feed, you know, after a long and agonizing decision and also then process, you know, he has left Gaza. Uh, he'll he'll have more to say about, you know, where he's going, what he's what he's doing next. I could
say that Jeremy is with him now. Uh. This the story of of you know, get of getting out is one that is you know, harrowing, and that I think he'll, you know, he'll he'll want to tell it himself, So
I don't want to take anything away from that. Uh. People should also remember this is his first time ever leaving Gaza, so, you know, setting aside the unbearable, unthinkable experience that he's had over the past eighteen months, to leave Gaza for the first time in your life, in your twenties and to see the world with those eyes for the first time must be just an unimaginable perspective and it will be I think a fascinating one because he'll he'll be seeing the world, you know, through through
that perspective, and which would I think will help us, you know, see that world in kind of a new way. If it was an agonizing decision that no human beings should be forced to make to either, you know, stay with your family, stay with your people, stay committed to what you're doing and quite plausibly die of malnutrition, or leave your family, leave your people, and and pursue the fight from elsewhere. Like it's it's a choice that I can't even imagine what it must be like to have
had to wrestle with that. I'm thankful that he's that he's safe right now.
Yeah, we're excited, I think to be able to hear more from him about how harrowing exactly that journey was. Brian looks like my camera just DROs again. There it is, okay, So we have a lot to get through because the case of Kilmar Abreo Garcia continued to be there were developments throughout the day yesterday in the case of Kilmar
Aberdo Garcia, but also ran. There's a drop site, a drop site scoop that we're actually going to start with about deportations and people having trouble with their ability to remain in the United States. We'll get in all of that.
We're going to talk about some market updates. Elizabeth Warren actually did battle on CNBC yesterday, So we have some cool clips from that and more from Bernie and Aosi's war on the Democratic Party or the Democratic Parties war on Bernie and aoc H. And we'll be joined by the author of the squad for that block. That's of course, Ryan Grim. All right, Yeah, I can put this drop side element up on the screen. This is a scoop that you guys got yesterday.
I would I would call this a I would call this a Huffington Post level scoop in the sense that it wasn't ours. A terrific reporter Jackieano's for The Florida Phoenix has been has been tracking this story. But what we used to do it so effectively at the Huffington Post, in which we still do at which we still do with our social media feed, is we'll we'll try to elevate things that that the rest of the national media
is missing and the Beadia had missed this. The story is why and it had I guess it has a good ending at this point. He was one Carlos Lopez Gomez, who was at the center of it, was eventually freed late late yesterday, But effectively, what happened. Florida passed a law that says that if you bring an unauthorized alien into the state of Florida, you know, that is a state crime, on top of it being a federal crime
in a matter for ice. And so this guy, Lopez Gomez was driving from Georgia, or he was in a passenger seat coming from Georgia to Florida. They got pulled over and he didn't speak English, and so they arrest him and hold him. It turns out he was born in Georgia. When he was one, he moved to southern Mexico and basically grew up there, and he grew up speaking a Mayan language. You should tell I think it's called People can correct me on that. It's a very
common language in Guatemala and southern Mexico. And obviously it has been spoken on this continent for I guess probably thousands of years at this point, which is, let's underscore the irony here of you know you're here speak English. It's like, well, England is a is an island that's many thousands of miles away from here. This is a language that's been spoken here for thousands of years. Setting that aside, the cops are like confused by this situation.
At best, they arrest him. He gets his he gets his day in court, and his mother shows up with his birth certificate and his Social Security card, which, Okay, Florida, Florida cops made a mistake. Let let the guy go. The Florida prosecutor insists on holding him and says that there is also a an ICE order that he be held because now you know, Florida is cooperating with ICE on all of these matters. And the judge in the case, you know, she holds up the birth certificate, she's holds
it in the lights. I see the watermark. This is an authentic birth certificate. There's an authentic Sold Security card. This is an American citizen. But I'm a state judge. The prosecutor and ier insisting that this man continued to be held and so I have no authority to release him. It was only then after there was a huge outcry and this incident kind of took on viral velocity that that they that they announced that they were going to
be releasing him. Now, what if they had decided in that time to ship him to El Salvador, m Like, you know, and then they could say, well, we made a mistake. It turns out that he is a citizen. This was an authentic birth certificate. That's our bad. We made a mistake. We acknowledged that we made a mistake. But who are we to tell Boo Kelly you know, what to do with people that are in his custody.
There is no gap in the legal life that applies to a Brigo Garcia that they're applying to a Brigo Garcia that would have that wouldn't apply to this, uh, this American citizen here. So hopefully this is the end
of the the end of it for Lopez Gomez. But you know, it's only April, and they're already, you know, detain you know, they already had detained an American citizen, and it'd be one thing was a mistake, and okay, sorry about this once they saw his birth certificate and sold security card from his mother, and and they still insist it's one thing is that judge is powerless. The
prosecutor was not powerless. Ice was not powerless. They insisted on pushing through the evidence in front of their face that he was an American citizen, and insisted on continuing to detain him. The I guess the only upside is that public pressure still means something like that. That's that's a hopeful sign. But I don't know what what did you see this circulating on the right or did this happen too quickly to No, I didn't.
See its circulating all. No, I didn't see its circulating on the right at all. But before we get into actually, I think this is a good segue into the clip of Tim Burchett that we wanted to play, because before we get into Abrigo Garcia and the dangers when you start at treating American citizens, uh, in this way, I want to roll this interview from Tim Burchett is a
Republican congressman. Probably have seen him on CNN and he does that all the time, But this time he's on News Nation, uh, talking about whether or not American citizens, as the President has floated, should go to places like Seacott in Al Salvador. So let me pull this up right now.
And some are wondering, though, if it's a slippery slip, what's your reaction to President Trump suggesting that homegrown criminals could be sent to El Salvador next American citizens?
They're criminals. They broke our laws. They need to suffer our punishment. But I don't want Donald Trump teaching my daughter's Sunday school class. But Dad got my like him in the White House because he understands the rule of law. I feel like in America is sick of this stuff.
Okay, So, Ryan, I Burchett basically said they're criminals, they should follow our laws. And I mean, did he listen to the question, Like I don't. That's what I was just going to say.
But either way, it's you know, if you think questions that should Americans be sent to a dungeon in a foreign country, you would listen to the question.
Well, yeah, but he I, Yeah, exactly. He did the sort of thing that Republican congressmen often do when asked about Donald Trump, which is just sort of deflect and move on to your sort of general talking point. I don't want him teaching my daughter's Sunday school class, but you know, he's right for the American people, And I just it's so the reason I wanted to talk about
this clip in that context. To your point, Ryan, an American citizen gets sent to El Salvador and lawyers can't get in touch, and it's up to the Calae to bring people unless we want to do like a military invasion of El Salvador. I mean, it's just the things that they're playing with here are so they're just so disturbing. And one of the other reasons I want to talk about this is the the some people on the rights bul fetish is so weird, and I think.
That Palestinian.
This is Trump's favorite insult. Yeah, but it's not. I mean, it's not inexplicable, and it's not everyone, but it is so weird. Like, we can take care we have our own law enforcement. Do we not believe that we're, you know, on the right. Do we not believe that we're the greatest country in the world. Do we need to be outsourcing our law enforcement to El Salvador? Give me a break.
Yeah. To me, it reflects a real contempt, within a signal constrain of the right for the American values, in American capacity to handle our own problems. I think I think you're right, like and you even see it reflected slightly in jd Vance's fighting with z and everybody else on Twitter over the last few days, where he keeps throwing his hands up and saying what do you want us to do? You know, Biden let in millions of people illegally, what what do you want us to do?
It's like, well, if you don't like the laws that are on the books, then take the campaign pledges that you made while you ran for office, take them to Congress and write new laws like you already the Democrats already show like and then you hear push, oh the Democrats won't vote for it. Well, then you get rid of the filibuster. If you want, you have, you have the votes. Also, Democrats have shown they're they're willing to
be utterly spineless and give you whatever you want. On the question of immigration, you know the Lake and Riley Act I don't allows h immigration authority is to go back and deport anybody who has been charged with a crime. Charged, accused, that's it, just charged there there. You don't even have need to have due process. That's just process. All you have to do is write up a charge and Democrats
rubber stamp that for you. So you're telling me what the this weak little opposition party that Republicans can't find a way to use America's system of government to create the kind of process that they believe is a just way to respond to what they see as the injustice of Bind's immigration policy. Like if you don't, if you don't even think that you have the capacity to do that as a governing majority, and you have to outsource it to this tinpot dictator in El Salvador, don't you
have some sense of shame? Like don't you have any self respet act? Like I find it.
A little bit emasculating, to be honest, these Republican congressman to go to the prison and pose with like bou Kelly's prisoners.
It's just awful, it isn't it's it's really embarrassing. Yeah, don't you do you have no dignity that this is like this is your king? Yeah, it's really looks he looks good in sunglasses, Like, but is that your bar He.
Looks like he's like a theater kid when he's putting his sunglasses on.
I was trying to be generous to him, but you're.
But in all seriousness, let's get into some of this book Cala abrego Garcia stuff. Because also it's just like the Trump administration is pejoratively referring to Zelenski as a dictator. I actually I think there's some meat on those bones. You can make that argument pretty well. But Kelly walks around calling himself a dictator, right, it's a cool dictator.
Don't they call itself a cool dictator?
Well, it's coolest dictator. Yeah.
Nobody, by the way, who's cool has ever called themselves cool. Just let's let's be clear about that before we go to abrio Garcia. Let's just put it real quickly. This uh, this like lunatic thing that's going on in uh, not just Pennsylvania, but you've got all these American citizens who are reporting and and you've got their immigration attorneys vouching
for the fact that these are all authentic. Get they're just like ICE is now spamming people telling them to get out of the country, including a bunch of American citizens. This one here, Lisa Anderson, born in Pennsylvania, you know, said that she's never had any interaction with immigration ever, and she got an email telling her like this doctor
like telling her get out of the country. It would be it would be ironic if ICE is profiling doctors, like assuming that if you're a doctor, you weren't born here in this country, like what what would that say about ICE's confidence American born people here like, oh, oh you're a doctor, you're probably an immigrant. I think if that's the situation where ICE has found itself, I think we have a a lot bigger problems than the number of people that Biden led into the country.
So Chris van Holland, Maryland Democrat senator obviously had a hell of a day yesterday. Let's get into some of that. So first he had been denied access into Seacott. So that's the maximum security massive prison that according to a Wall Street Journal report, I think that just came out yesterday,
Bukellay is planning to expand basically double in size. The sourcing was basically Christy Nome to the Wall Street Journal story saying that bu Kelly is planning and really because already one in fifty seven Salvadorian citizens is locked up. It sounds like, and this is the dots that the Wall Street Journal connected, that's going to be deportations, deportees from the United States. That's sort of the plan.
So growth industry.
Yeah, so if we are working with El Salvador to do that, so many more questions to be asked. We'll see how that develops. But Chris van Holland tried to get in yesterday because that's where Abrallo Garcia is being held, and that did not go well for him. So then we got we received actually this picture. Let me share this one Kilmar Abrago Garcia. This is a tweet from Boucel miraculously risen from the quote death camps end quote torture now sipping Margarita's with Senator Van Holland in the
tropical paradise of Al Salvador. Ryan reaction to this.
I mean, on the one hand, I think this is like Chris van and we live in a cynical age. But I think Chris van Holland deserves, you know, some serious credit, whether you agree with them or disagree with them. Like he he saw what he believed to be an injustice that was being carried out against his constituent. And if you don't think that a resident counts as a constituent, you can count his wife, who is this constituent. And he went down to El Salvador to try to write
that injustice. Van Holland has an interesting backstory, like the kind of what you would call deep state connected. Both his mother and father worked in either the State Department or the CIA. Van Holland himself was actually born in Pakistan while while his uh while his while his parents
were like stationed over there. He was a Senate Foreign Relations staffer before becoming a senator, and he and Peter Galbraith kind of famously snuck into northern Iraq after Saddam Hussein's nineteen ninety one kind of attack on the Curve.
If people know the history of this, it was this kind of almost genocidal attack on an uprising in northern Iraq where he used where he used weapons of mass destruction against them, and Van Hollen snuck into northern Iraq through Syria, through Turkey, I mean, and secreted it out an enormous trunch of evidence to like validate the claims that were being made that Saddam Hussein had done this and had used these chemical weapons against the Kurds who
people kept calling his own people. He gassed his own people. Courage did not like it if you would call call him Saddam Hussein's people. So this is a guy who has worked within the system, and he's part of the system, but he's always been willing to take risks as well. And so I think the fact that the fact that he pressured Bukelli not just to meet him, but to get him out of the prison certainly undermines Bukelli's Trump's claim that you can't do that. What bo County and
Trump were leaning on was too bad. This is a this is a prison for terrorists, and you know, you go in and you come out in a box like that's it, there's no way out, and you know you still have JD Vance online saying, look, the guy deserves to be deported, continuing to allie the issue, which is should he be held for life in a in a prison notorious for its like unspeakable conditions, which is a different question than should somebody be deported from one country
to another? What did you? What did you make of? It feels like the right is almost kind of enjoying this, like that they think they're winning this.
Well.
I mean, so, Chris van Holland, I think there's I think what he did was legitimately personally brave, like physically brave, but I think he is not walking the fine line between treating a Brigo Garcia as a victim and a martyr. And I think a Brego Garcia is a victim of a bad poula see by the Trump administration. I think the right is significantly downplaying how grave of a quote unquote mistake it was to just say, whoops, sorry, he had.
This withholding literally like whoopsie, oh he said.
That about the Venezuelan plane that was about he may have been a break up. Garcia actually may have been on the plane.
Probably on that plane yet because it was part of that deportation.
Yeah, yeah, he may have been on that plane. And yeah. The so anyway, all that is to say that is I mean, it is not just a minor error. That is a significant error. He had the withholding order. He was you know, in a legal process with our country and was just sent somewhere. Court said that he could not be sent to The Trump administration did nothing to rectify it and basically laughed the entire way. That was a huge mistake. I think Van Hollens is creeping into
significantly creating creeping into martyr territory. I think politically, I'll get to the substance in a second. I think politically it looked pretty I think the White House got them when they brought the mother of the woman who was the girl who was killed in Maryland to the White House press briefing. I think that was really a brutal look for Chris ben Holland. Yeah, I think you disagree.
Yeah, right. And so the hit was that there was a murder victim in Maryland and Van Holland had not, like called the mother. I had bad news about Maryland, that a lot of people get murdered in Maryland, and yeah, good if every senator called every every parent of every murder victim. The strong implication from the White House there was that kill mar Albrigo Garcia had killed.
This No, no, no, no, I think.
What's it like, what exactly is the the.
Mom point the mom was saying, you are exerting all of this effort to bring home this man who was in the country, who crossed through the country illegally and was deportable, not deportable to El Salvador, but was deportable, and you didn't devote enough attention to the problem that led to my daughter's death. That was the contention. I think that is. I think that hits home with a lot of people. That's just the politics of it, the
substance of it. Yeah, I think Van Holland is treating him more as a martyr than a victim, and I think he is a victim. But because your victim doesn't mean you have to be sort of treated as someone who's like a martyr in and of itself. Now, that said, the Trump administration's position on this is absolutely insane and was also not good for the Trump administration. So it's not like the everyone's a It's not like there are any I don't think there are any real winners here at the end of the day.
And I think it is it is. It is always difficult in politics to stand up for a principle if if your case is not you know, absolutely perfect.
Yeah, we have Jesse Waters talking about this. Did you see this clip, Brian.
No, let's I did see this. You want to roll this and then we can talk about it.
Yeah, because you were just getting into this argument that he starts making. Here, here we go, Jesse. You have to have a victim that is pure.
You can't have a Floyd, you can't have a Smolette, you can't have a Garcia.
Your example, a victimhood.
Has to be a sympathetic victim, not someone who beats his wife.
And traffics humans. And so his wife did get successfully get a temporary abrego. Garcia's wife did successfully get a temporary restraining order with really awful allegations of violence towards her. But right to the point that you were making, when our courts are violated, it's unsympathetic victims that you sort of bring out the principles among lawmakers, elected officials and the political class.
Right right and for for Jess by the way, on the on the on the domestic violence. So his wife has since come out and said that she had previously been in a in a in a violent relationship and that she got into a fight with Kilmar that did not turn violent at all, and in order to and because of the trauma that she'd been through before, she kind of made up some of that stuff so that she could get have a restraining order like ready to go in case she needed it. Like that's what she's
that's what she says. Now. Uh. The irony of Jesse Waters now being a believe all women like me too supporter, like he has finally found he has finally found allegations against a man that he is like immediately willing to accept shut just Wow, how what what a coincidence that he's become this like me too, champion. But yeah, you're right, like when you're standing up for a principal, you have to stand up for it, like no, no, no matter what, and even even if even if the person isn't perfect.
But on the other hand, it doesn't you know, doesn't does seem like he's like that bad a guy according to his wife, like she kind of she she shouldn't have she should not have done that, like you should not make up allegations. Now maybe now she's saying that now. Either way, none of it means that the Trump administration should be allowed to ignore a court order and send
somebody illegally to a terror dungeon, a torture dungeon. And that's what that's what somehow keeps getting missed in this conversation, like hell, okay, look, jd Vance, nobody would there would be some people complaining. But if you just depour him to El Salvador and you violated the court order about yeah that he can't go to L Salvador, but he were living with his parents in l Salvador, and you know he was at some risk because of the gang.
But then on the other hand, you know, bu Kelly has probably crushed a lot of the gang that was intimidating him in the past. If that was the situation, it wouldn't be an international story. It would be it would be the Trump administration ignoring a court order, which would be bad and which should be pushed back on,
and the courts should take that up as well. But it would not be captivating the imaginations of the world if he weren't in a dungeon, the likes of which are just like impossible to contemplate sleeping you know, fluorescent lights twenty four hours a day on a metal you sleep on a metal sheet with no mattress, you just
fed beans and rice to eat by hand. Uh, presumably there's just you know, violence at all hours, because you know, it's a decent number of violent people in there already and now they're all absolutely losing their minds in this situation, just absolutely horrifying, and in a place that nobody's expected to leave alive. If that's where he was sent and that keeps getting lost.
Well, and you know, again, if the Trump administration had deported him with like actual in compliance with that withholding order, or they had gotten the holding order removed, and Bukell accepted his own citizen and did what he wanted to do to his own citizen. It's totally different than us making a mistake and then allowing him to fester in the prison because they're like, oh, he can't get right.
But at the same time, like the Bush administration used to rendition, you know, before it started torturing people on its own, it would take people and send them to Egypt, and oftentimes there's evidence that CIA officials would go along with them and would be part of these or observing these interrogations. So they would take people and they'd send them to torture chambers in Egypt or Syria actually where they would be then tortured on behalf of the United States.
Those are called extraordinary renditions. Was the term that Chaining came up with for them. It was it was decided that, no, you can't do that, Like that's insane, Like if if you're doing that, that that's not a get out of the constitution free card, like we still are against cruel in humane punishment. Like we're like, that's that's that's unconstitutional, and there's no work around that says, oh, well, we're
going to outsource it. So if we knew so, if we were going to send him to El Salvador knew that bu Kelly was going to torture him as a result, then we could not do that. What we could do is you could deport him to Mexico.
Yeah, oh yeah, they absolutely could have done that.
All you have to do is call Mexico and ask. But the problem now Jadie Vass's point is that's annoying. I don't want to have to do that.
No, I mean he has a So that then results in US and if you're Mexico, you're not the American court system. You don't know whether people who are being
deported actually are gang members or aren't gang members. And so then you have the United States saying, hey, we'd like to dump some of these suspected gang members into Mexico because they were in our country illegally, they were deportable, they didn't have citizenship, and we are now trying to do quote unquote mass deportations because the Biden administration let a net, according to New York Times, eight million people into the country over the course of three four years.
If you say to Mexico, we have to you know, maybe just you know, five hundred thousand over the course of the next four years. We don't know for sure. That is genuinely a really difficult thing to do. And this is where the Trump administration is going to hit an absolute brick wall. And I think they've already realized that they've hit the brick wall, because now I say this as somebody who thinks that there is a significant
problem here. And I don't know what mass deportation means because it doesn't have a number, but there are a lot of people in this country who I don't think some of them are decent and hard working and don't deserve to live in the shadows without an answer on their citizenship for years and years. I don't think that's
good for anybody. And so now they're in this situation where it's like, well, you have all of these people from Venezuela, Marco Rubio, we like, like Venezuelan's fleeing communism. That's like your whole thing, Cubans, What are you going to do with people who are like in these situations. You can't send them to Venezuela, you can't send them back to Cuba. So what are you going to do?
And I think you're breaking up for a second. But you know, I interviewed the Venezuelan Foreign minister a little a while ago and under the Biden administration, and he had said, he basically suggested that look, if we if we can normalize relationship, normanize relations with the United States again, you lift these sanctions, you know, get back to a normal way of doing business, we can take we can
take a ton of these Venezuelans back into Venezuela. The same would be true of Cuba, the same would be true of Haiti. Like we've destroyed these countries, created this mass exodus, and now we're like, oh gee, there's nothing we can do with these people.
The Venezuela point isn't a bad argument for Trump's perspective, because you know, he loves being the historic deal breaker or the deal maker, not breaker deal maker, and this idea of like a generational thaw in the relationship with Venezuela in order to accept I mean tons of Venezuelan migrants that he surely wants to sweep up and quote mass deportations. I don't know, He's not boxed in like
a president Marco Rubio would be. But he certainly has Marco Rubio as the Secretary of Date and people who see the issue like Rubio does surrounding him. And that's the very traditional Cold War conservative perspective on total that Ronald Reagan actually violated, to criticism for a lot of people of total non cooperation and like non contact basically with these types of countries. And so if Trump breaks that in order to get his his migrants supported, that'll be interesting.
I don't see it happening, But I would love to be wrong if my favorite thing is to be wrong in a good direction. So let's let's see a last thing I.
Was gonna say. I've told people in who I know who work on some of these issues that it might not be an idea, a bad idea to talk to Trump about Cuba.
Yeah, I mean come on, yeah, Or I mean they're just trying to create a failed state. That's the current the current policies. Let's create a failed state and see what happens.
He wants to do ai era in Gaza. Let me tell you Donald Trump what you could do with Havana.
Yes, he can get his mob buddies over there. We can get the band back together. Last thing before we move on this, there's a new poll out that shows that the American people, like by a very very wide margin, are just not supportive of this idea that we should be deporting students on behalf of Israel, on behalf of like you know, for the before simply expressing support for Palestine by a wide margin, fifty four to twenty three percent opposed deporting Greeden card holders, fifty two to twenty
six opposed deporting student visa holders. That's as a two to one margin with you know, you've got a quota of the people in the middle saying we're not sure. So it's you know, there aren't a lot of issues in the US that are two to one, but this is. But this is one him and we do.
Have one thing lastly as well, which is just that Donald Trump was asked about compliance with the courts yesterday and his pressor with Georgia Maloney. So let's go ahead and take a listen.
Will you take steps to return Kilmarregio Garcia the United States.
And prettim in front of a judge. Well, I'm not involved in it. I'm going to respond by saying he'll have to speak to the lawyers the DOJ. I've heard many things about him, and we'll have to find out what the truth is.
So Ryan, the reason I thought that was useful, just as we're closing out the segment is I was scrolling through Bukelly's Twitter just now and he's retweeting things saying that he confirmed that Abregio Garcia is staying in El Salvador. People may have seen the Bukelly tweet saying he now
has the privilege of staying in Al Salvador. And on top of that, Bukelly was tweeting things about how he's been trolling Democrats, and so it's like, you just like Trump is now like excusing himself from the conversation, and just you know what is the Taylor Swift line, I'd very much like to be excluded from this this narrative or this conversation. That's what he's he's doing. A couple of days ago, he was sitting in the exact same spot, very much wanting to be included in the conversation.
Yeah, Trump famously respects the independence of the Department of Justice, and so he's not gonna get involved in the those affairs.
Well, let's go to another significant quote from that press conference. As we move over to the markets. This is Donald Trump. A lot of news yesterday on the Fed front, so much to break down. Let's start with Trump being asked about Jerome Powell. He had a lot to say about Jerome Powell in this press conference yesterday where he was sitting beside Italian Prime Minister Georgia Maloney. So here's Trump on.
Not fast enough.
He says he didn't ask him to.
Oh he'll live. If I to, he'll be out of there. But don't I don't think he's I don't think he I don't think he's doing the job. He's too late, always too late, a little slow, and I'm not.
Happy with him.
I let him know it.
And oh, if I want him out, he'll be out of their real fast believe me.
You a question, yeah, question, all right, Ryan reaction.
Yeah. So the markets are, you know, sending a signal that if if Trump, you know, forcibly removes the the Chairman of the FED, that they would they would they would lose that much more confidence in the American economy. Like the U the U. S economy is the envy of the world, and it is the kind of place where people, you know, try to find safety and sanctuary because it is understood to be stable and to follow the rule of law, because it is very it is
hard around the world to find. Like the Chinese Stock Exchange, for instance, would be doing a lot better relative to Chinese economic capacity if there was more faith from international investors that the investments were safe and that rule of
law was followed. So if you know, he's already you know, taken a huge hammer to the idea of the stability of the American economy, if he goes and you know, throws out the FED chair in order to kind of prop up his terriff policy, what that would do is it would be another signal to Wall Street, which is currently kind of somewhere in the stage of denial or anger about the tariff policy. Like wall Street is still
desperately hoping that this guy can't be serious. He's like in ninety days, he's please tell us he's not coming back and trying this again. And if he pushes out the FED chair, that would be a signal that, oh no, no, this guy is deadly serious and he thinks that if he can just get control of the monetary flow, he can If he can mess with that spigot, then he's got then then his tariff policy is going to have some real staying power.
Right And you're echoing Treasury Secretary Scott Bessett. This is what's on the screen right here. This was a Politico story. Besstont has been privately underscoring that acting Powell would feed instability in the market, sources say, and Trump is also aware of the stakes. That means that though Trump is
mad again at Powell, his job looks safer. Now, sorry to interrupt, I just you had Scott Bessntt sitting there very stiffly in the press conference as Donald Trump was making those comments, and Bessett seems to be having a lot of his own perspectives taken very very seriously. That's a lot of the reporting that Trump is leaning on bess heavily right now, both Besson and Latink. Maybe it's like a good and bad angel on the shoulder type dynamic.
But this is the argument that you were just making, is apparently the argument his Treasury secretary is making to him.
Yeah. Uh, if if I agree with the Trump's Treasury secretary, then it should make.
He's got a great Treasury secretary.
Yes, so let's you know, he also defended his I can pull this up here, also defended his tariff policy to maloney, let mean, let's get this answer you plan to use forward.
No tariffs are making us rich.
We were.
Losing a lot of money under Biden, trillions of dollars trillions on trade, and now that's that whole tide has turned making a lot of money.
We're taking in a lot of money.
Don't forget. We're taking in twenty five percent on cars, twenty five percent on steel, twenty five percent on the aluminum ten baseline.
And so the first estimates came came in well under what what Trump was expecting, right, Apparently five hundred million dollars has been collected through the tariff policy so far, which is, you know, it's just just a complete pittance. Uh, it's just kind of like laughable in the face of the amount of money that has moved and changed hands. And we're talking about trillions of dollars. As he joked, you know, Charles Schwab made two point five billion through
some shady insider trading in one day. So the entire American people have just gotten a fifth of that sounds like we're sounds like now we're really getting ripped off.
Well, and in this grand cost benefit analysis, we're starting to get some examples of people posting. Actually, this is one man who posted an example of what the tariffs actually looked like. So he says, I got hit with my first This is Aaron Rubin, my first twenty percent terrifyed of China ship before that jump to one forty five percent. I included the bill from CBP below. It's
called the cn slash HKEO twenty percent duty. The product isn't worth selling with one hundred and forty five percent tariffs. So despite selling over one million of this SKU and my tiny e comm business and customers being fairly happy, I will be discontinuing this product. And there's another example. This is Ryan Peterson. Two of our American customers, devastated by the tariff, gave up and sold themselves to saw themselves to their Chinese factories in the last week, and
he posted I believe an entire thread of examples. Yeah, thousands and the millions of American small businesses, including many iconic brands, would go bankrupt this year if the tariff policies on China don't change. He says. The manufacturers in Vietnam and elsewhere can't be bothered with small batch production
jobs typical of small businesses. Why it just keeps going down the line, basically explaining, he says, when they die, it may actually be the final victory for the Chinese manufacturers. They scoop up brands that took decades to build through the blood, sweat and tears. Are some of the most creative and entrepreneurial people in the world. American brand builders are second to none worldwide.
Right. Yeah, the deal that we had stitched out with China so far is that we had the IP we came up with these ideas. We've got the executives working the nice, coashy jobs, and we want to reduce our costs and you know, brust our unions, and so we're going to ship the production over to China. And what Trump is going to do is not going to bring the manufacturing back to the United States. What's going to happen is that the Chinese company that makes the thing
was always a threat. Like That's the the similarity throughout history is the kind of guards that organize themselves around an emperor or a president or a dictator, like those guards are always the biggest risk of actually taking power because they're like, wait a minute, like why are we protecting this princeling? We could actually just we're the ones
with the weapons. Let's just take power. The parallels in China, you had all these manufacturers who are like these executives over in Los Angeles are not that smart, Like, okay, they came up with the name for this, this this handbag, but we're the ones that make it, and we all we have to figure out how to do is just sell it to people around the world. The deal was always that you're not going to do that. We've got
this arrangement that works for everybody. I mean, it doesn't work for the American workers necessarily, but this is.
The arrangement were the Chinese workers or you.
Know, gradually, you know, and because of some equitable distribution, some more equitable distribution works better for them. You know, they had the fastest you know, reduction and poverty in world history as a result of some of this. But now they're saying, you know what, okay, fine, you are you you are putting your own companies out of business. So therefore, we're just going to do that last leg
of it. And while this thing was making let's say it was one hundred million dollar revenue, you were getting eighty million, we were getting twenty million. We like the idea of us getting you know, ninety million, and you getting ten as our kind of distribution network at the very end of the chain that we will own from beginning to end. So yeah, we like this. We'll keep all the money, and the result will be a collapse in standard of living in the United States.
Right. I don't know if you saw these charts that Derek Thompson put up. These are from I think these are from the Philadelphia are This one that's on the screen right now is from the New York FED, a survey from the New York FED. The one that was just on the screen is from Philly FED. But this is current in future general activity indexes, and you see a decline that is starting on a trajectory that almost looks similar. It looks like it's going to a similar
trajectory to twenty twenty and COVID ERA. If we go back to this Philly FED survey, you see differences in general business conditions, new orders, and shipments between March and April, and again, Ran, I think the way that I'm looking at this is it is a long term cost benefit analysis that is guaranteed to have short term pain. There is a possibility that there are long term gains, but long the biggest question is whether those long term gains, if they come outweigh the short term and then of
course the long term losses. And so the White House has lists of you know, deals it has with countries or new businesses that have agreed to a new deals with businesses that have agreed to invest more in the country. But I mean in the last couple of weeks, those are so far outweigh by the negatives in my estimation.
Yeah, right, The long term gains will go to the companies and the countries that can take advantage of this moment, and those at this point are Chinese companies and China. Like it boggles my mind that Trump somehow thinks that all of these companies that he is deliberately driving out of business and into bankruptcy will somehow take advantage of his tariff policy and rebuild the American manufacturing capacity. Like that's like he's wiping out the people who would do
the thing he wants them to do. The ultimate irony, of course, is that if you look at the manufacturing like numbers under the Biden administration, they were skyrocketing and it was through bipartisan industrial policy. Let's keep Trump's tariffs in very targeted areas and let's subsidize domestic manufacturing in the United States. Like that's it. Like that, That's what
you do if you wanted to do this. Trump instead is like fighting against the subsidies, call you know, and then driving these companies that are driving this boom out of business. So how he thinks that they'll somehow come around and lead a long term turnaround is at least beyond my capacity to think.
Should we roll these clips of Elizabeth Warren doing battle on CNBC? I knew you would be excited about these, So here is the first one there. She seemed to be on for quite a long time. Right, Oh, I'm sorry, This is a CNBC poll that's actually worth looking at before we even roll into this. I knew CNBC pool that found Trump's job approval forty four fifty one. He's down twelve points on the economy, done sixteen on tariffs, and down twenty three points on inflation and cost of living.
So even by CNBC's metrics, that's where this is for Trump. Here we go with Elizabeth Warren.
But evidence are you pointing to that this is a corrupt policy?
Well, he right out in front announces a terror policy, says there's going to be no exceptions that policy, and then he says I talked to Tim Cook.
Oh really should be talking to Well. Then he follows it up.
I sing, and all of a sudden, great deal available for Tim Cook. Tim Cook, who by the way, put a million that's.
Great deal available for Americans who have to buy iPhone.
No, it is a great deal for one company. But how many of the competitors now get hurt? In fact, I like to know what else goes on in this deal? Is it that Tim Cook and his interest at protection? But any of his competitors, I don't know. They get a higher interest rate? What happens to them?
All the corruption?
And on what evidence ares rolling?
The next clip here as.
A reminder, So Congress gives the FED the authority. Can the president terminate not that he said he's going to do this, but can he terminate Powell's chairmanship? Earlier than his end in term. No, under no circumstance. No, that's not a concern for him.
Does it. Well?
I thought we were talking about legally, Bryan, But this is a president who has shown himself willing to violate laws every police he goes, including willing to violate the Constitution of the United States. So that obviously puts things a little more in play than we ever would have guessed. But I really want to make a pitch here for a second about the importance of Powell staying in his job.
And it's unusual coming from him. It's very critical of him.
I have tangled with him on a regular basis about both regulations and interest rates. But understand this, if Chairman Pell can be fired by the President of the United States,
it will crash the markets in the United States. The infrastructure that keeps this stock market strong and therefore a big part of our economy strong and therefore a big part of the world economy strong, is the idea that the big pieces move independent of the politics, that somebody is making his there her best decisions economically and independently.
If we understand that if the New York Stock Exchange, if interest rates in the United states are subject to a president who just wants to waive his magic wand this doesn't distinguish us then from any other two bit dictatorship around the world.
Ryan go off, Queen Well, I mean, she's right on that point, but I also kind of understand a populist argument for why the FED actually should be democratically controlled, Like this is this is the people's reserve, this is
the people's monetary policy. Now, I think that there needs to be a democratic system applied to it, so it's not because if you just allow the president without any input from Congress, then he's going to just play games with the economy in the you know, leading into every election, and that that makes a mockery of democracy because like, if the goal is to have the feder be controlled by the will of the public, but the will of
the public is manipulated by the president's control of monetary policy, then then you don't actually have that right.
You're substituting Jerome Powell for Trump, who's at least democratically elected but still has what Elizabeth Warren is saying, the
underlying principle he's using. He's invoked emergency powers for these terror for example, which is actually again in principle, sort of getst the argument that she's making about the whims of a principle being able to dictate these like significant market changes, which is historically why investments in the United States were different than investments a lot of other places.
Right, Yeah, we do we like being a global economic superpower or not? Like do we like?
Uh?
You know what? What what all this really shows is that if we want to keep our position as an economic superpower, we have to confront massive wealth and income inequality because it is making us crazy like that, the it is is driving us like economically insane, and we're going to then commit economic suicide, which is what we're doing now if we don't, if we don't turn if we don't turn this around, and that that will put a dent in inequality in the sense that it will
take you know, some of these billionaire's wealth from like, you know, five hundred billion down to three hundred billion. But that doesn't change their lives and it doesn't make anybody, any of us, feel any better.
So, in the interest of sharing what we mentioned earlier, the White Houses, the sort of deals that they're pointing to here, I just pulled up a press release that they sent. I think this was from last week, but you could see they have all of these bullet points. JSW Steel announced will be adding jobs that it's Ohio Steel plant. BMW is considering adding shifts to boot production
at South Carolina plant. And I did click through some of these last week when I got it, and some of them predated Liberation Day, so take that for what it is. But Mark announced it will invest eight billion in the US for the next several years after opening a new billion dollar in North Carolina manufacturing. There are some of these example. There are all of these examples, some of which are Paris Bagatt and that's the one hundred and sixty billion dollars investment, some of which are
bigger than others. But I think, Grian, this is where I'm coming from. In the sort of long term cost benefit analys like thirty thousand foot vantage point, you'll look at all of these and you can put side by side this a list of that's just as long of things that have like negative consequences post Liberation Day. And so it's just to act as though this is definitively I think definitively like good. I think the evidence points that it's I don't want to say it's definitively like
over it's ruined, this isn't do any good. But so far I think it seems pretty clear that the bad through the uncertainty, is outweighing the good.
Right And the question is, well, two questions, like how many of these announcements are real and how many of them are just trying to get on Trump's good side to get exemptions from the future tariff policy, which is the problem with having just one guy control all the tariff policy. And the other is how many of these announcements that are real were impossible otherwise, Like we're We're a very big, powerful country with a huge market and
a lot of incentives to offer people. If we wanted those companies to do what they're doing invest in our country like that, You know that that was happening, that it was moving in that direction, and we could keep doing it, and we and we and we should have like there there is an industrial policy that uses targeted tariffs and subsidies and and other economic incentives to move
in that direction. Just go ahead and do it. Doesn't mean you have to bankrupt hundreds of thousands of small businesses along the way.
Uh it's I mean, so now that we're what is this the third week of Liberation Day, what is your assessment right of just this last week? Right?
I mean, the he still seems committed to this like incorrect understanding of of how he's going to like turn this thing around. Like he he does not seem seem to understand that China holds the cards and that the US does have the capacity to commit economic suicide. And he's walking us off that cliff.
He's well, he obviously maintains he's walking us off.
To the golden era.
I was gonna say what he used that what looks like a cliff is actually a stairway to heaven.
Yeah, well it might be.
It might be that, well, well maybe it'll listen. I'm I'm not like as convinced that nothing, nothing good at all will come of this, But I think as time wears on, there's no industrial policy that's being coupled with us, no significant industrial policy that's being coupled with this. There
is no certainty on the horizon. It is just indefinite uncertainty, not just a week of uncertainty that's used as leverage just to cure really obviously good deals, and we still over the course of this week not gotten evidence of significantly good deals. If seventy seventy five countries are calling the White House up, and I'm sure some of them are because we do have China has cards, we obviously have cards too, because we have a massive market of consumers,
a huge consumer market. So there's you know, there's a lot to be negotiated. But I just I mean, obviously Maloney was here this week. I don't know how much progress was made, and the EU does want to cut a deal with us, but I've just haven't seen a lot of emergent evidence in this last week that those deals are really significant and being cut.
Right. That's the other thing is that these deals could be cut without trying to blow up the world like he. I see all of his defenders talking as if the only way for the United States to get like Maloney on the phone is to first blow up the world, like again, have some self respect. The United States of America, the most powerful country history of the world. You want to trade deal with EU, you can do a trade deal with the EU. You don't have to throw his
appertantrum to get that to get those calls. Like I see all his defenders saying all his phone is ringing off the hill. He's the president of the United States. He can get anybody on the phone he wants. He didn't need to do this. He has significantly weakened his own negotiating position.
I think there's an argument just to.
Get Maloney on the phone or in the Oval office.
I think there's an argument that if the uncertainty had been that dramatic for a week, that is actually significant leverage. That signals you are, like, this is Donald Trump not messing around, and he's completely serious about doing what everyone thinks is crazy. He doesn't think it's crazy. And if he maintains it for a week, maybe he maintains it for two weeks, then you know, you signal to people
it's always like foreign policy, like he is not. This is not him just throwing out different range ideas like taking Canada. It's not him like joking around about the fifty first state. This is completely serious. But now we're just lingering into this ninety day pause period of uncertainty
on the reciprocal tariffs. And it's the water is so completely muddy, and so if you keep this up long enough that uncertainty means people are going to choose to invest elsewhere, and it doesn't become its value as leverage is overtaken by the cost of people needing certainty and choosing where they can get certainty.
Yeah, And I just don't I just don't think that repeatedly, like banging yourself over the head with a hammer, is a way of showing that you're serious. Yeah, that shows you're a crazy person that is eventually going to knock yourself out.
Well, I think you could show your crazy person, yeah, like briefly and then you have to return from the events to actually.
Get to see those just two hammer blows.
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