Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds and Larry David Rose, Bill Maher's meeting with Trump as my dinner with Adolf.
We have such a great show for you today.
The New Republic's Mike Tamaski tries to make sense of where Trump's lawlessness is headed. Then we'll talk to the author of the Strength in Numbers newsletter, g Elliott Morris, about what polls can tell us about Trump's agenda.
But first the news.
So, Molly, there's a million reports out that Pete Haiksith is going to have to resign. I'm always skeptical of those in US, are you? But we do have the first Republican calling for him to resign, and it's the guy with the most Republican name of all time, Don Bacon.
So Bacon has done this before. Bacon is sort of the Jeff Flake twenty twenty five. He calls Hegseth an amateur person, which for a weekend television hosts, that's not very nice. He stood up for things before. Now I want to just remind you that he is in Nebraska.
He comes from Nebraska's second congressional district. Whenever you see a Republican standing up for something, and this is not always true, but it is often true, you should look at their district and find out if it's a red district or a purple district.
A helpful thing is right on Wikipedia usually says their CPI, which a lot of people don't know, is the Cook Political Index, and I'll tell you how far it leans left or right.
So Nebraska's second congressional district, which is where he comes from, it's an R plus three, so it is not a very Republican district. So Marjorie Taylor Green is in an R plus nineteen and Don Bacon is in an R plus three, and the difference between an R plus three and an R plus nineteen is Don Bacon says things like Donald Trump should be king. Marjorie Taylor Green says things like Donald Trump should be God king because there's
seventeen percent more Republicans in her district. That is why I say to you, always be suspicious of Republicans who stand.
Up, but not even that.
I mean Bacon has done that, and I think it's good, and I think standing up to Trump is always good, and.
There's a dearth of courage right now in America.
But that said, just always be a little cynical because these people are cowards. That said, I do think we're going to see more standing up to Trump as his poll numbers creator and as they crash the economy. So I think it's very likely that you'll see more quote unquote bravery and well it is good and we do like it, and it may be the difference between authoritarianism and continuing as are you know, not perfect democracy. I do think it's worth remembering like public sentiment has changed.
The people have different incentives, structures. They are not just doing this out of the goodness of their heart. That said, Bacon did say that he does not think texting sensitive or plans is something the Secretary of Defense should be doing. By the way, this man manages three million people. This is a humongous agency filled with a lot of important stuff that they're doing. Also, Elon wants to fire a huge swath of them because of Doge.
Yeah.
In other bleak News, sixty Minutes, despite its weakening relevance, has long been one of the better journalists that out what our country has had and a long time producer is leaving because they feel the tide turning.
On that So sixty Minutes has done some really really important journalism, especially right now. And this producer is a guy called Bill Owens. And every time someone does something like this, there are not a lot of great jobs in television journalisms. There are not a lot of jobs in journalism period. So the fact that this guy is leaving probably one of the best jobs in television. But he's been there for a long time, and he's a
serious journalist. In fact, what he tells The New York Times is so having defended this show and what we stand for from every angle over time, with everything I could, I'm stepping aside so the show can move forward, he wrote in the memo, which was obtained by The Times. Sixty Minutes has faced mounting pressure in recent months from both President Trump, who sued CBS for ten billion dollars.
You'll ten billion dollars to get you know what, CBS doesn't have ten billion dollars to give to Donald Trump.
Some real Austin Powers stuff right there.
Accused the program of unlawful.
And illegal behavior. And this is because I don't know why he's mad at them.
About this. Is this because of the Harris interview where they he felt that it was.
Edited in a way that made her look better than I mean, it's just this is this thing with Trump. He's an Autocrat, and you know, not all of this makes sense or any of this, not even any of this makes sense. So this guy, bill Owens is really a hero to do this, to give up one of these really best jobs in media because you don't feel that CBS is doing what's right or that that's a big deal. And we really do applaud him in a world filled with cowards and a world filled with Paul Weiss's.
Don't be a Paul Weiss, be a Mark Elias, be a Bill Owens, like, do the right thing, even if the short term looks bad. We got to stick up for what's right here some mind.
Now we turn to the Handmaid's Tale like portion of our news unbelievable. The White House is presently a sessex apollo, such as baby bonuses, menstrual cycle classes, and some other questionable ideas to try to boost the birth rate.
So here's the problem.
For the economy to survive, we've got to keep having children, otherwise we're going to become Japan. But the problem is, I mean, we're probably going to become Japan anyway because of stiflation, but we won't have the cute outfits or any of the cool food. Will just be US with Japanese. But no, the problem here with this is that so Trump administration doesn't want immigrants. They hate immigration, they don't want immigration. But the problem is the only way for
our economy to survive is to get immigrants. So instead of just welcoming immigrants and making a path to citizenship, which is what you would do if you were not completely insane, they're going to try to make the white people have babies.
Right.
This is natalism, This is the whole idea is to get more white babies. And the problem is America is wildly expect and nobody has seen their way of life go, right. We all feel we have less than our parents, right, So how they're going to do this They have no idea because nobody wants have kids. So because the really we need old white guys to decide to get women to have babies. So here are some of their ideas.
And I think that it's worth remembering that a lot of this stuff has been tried in Hungary by Victor orbon who Donald Trump wants to be. Most importantly, none of its work there still can't get people to have kids. And also Hungary is just disaster on every level. But here's where we're going, Donald Trump's. Here are some of Donald Trump's best ideas, and maybe not Donald Trump, maybe one of his creepy friends. Five thousand dollars baby bonuses
to every woman after she delivers. That will cover about half of the tariffs for the first year.
What else? They have?
Menstrual psycho classes, because that is not creepy at all.
There are calls on the government.
To fund programs that educate women on their menstrual cycles. You're cutting headstart, okay, You're cutting free breakfast, You're cutting child's care, you're cutting early whatever medicine for kids. You're cutting food stamps, you're cutting snap, You're cutting all of these things. But you're going to start menstrual classes.
Does anyone see how insane these are? These are insane ideas.
But I'm excited to know that Vance and Musk are policy experts and advocates of boosting the birth rate have been meeting with White House AIDS. That's creepy people like Steven Miller, and they are boosting the birth rate. These are written proposals. I mean, this is their best mind sitting there trying, and they can just watch The Handmaid's Tail. They don't even need to spend so much time thinking. Just watch The Handmaid's Tale.
All I'm gonna say is they don't bring us their best.
They do not bring a service. By the way, I think Elon himself should be able to pretty much do it.
He gets rejected a lot. I mean, you saw what happened with him in Tiffany Fong on Twitter.
I mean, come on, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. Doesn't she know the birthrate needs her?
Okay, So, speaking of other bleak Handmaid's Tale like news, you know who I don't want having my health.
Records speak for yourself.
The guy who picks up road kill that testified that he had a braid wor RFK Juniors watching a disease registry to track autistic people, and he's going to use private medical records to make it happen.
Oh, come on, it's too easy to remember that RFK Junior is planning to tell us. He's probably going to tell us the vaccines cause autism in the fall September yeh time, Yeah, September again, an autism registry. I just want to go back to this for a minute. RFK has a worm in his brain. It's dead. The worm is no longer eating his brain, but his brain is not fully recovered. No, some things the guy does are not terrible, like food coloring and organic food.
We're going to talk about a really bad one in the moment of fuckery today.
Right, this feels like Germany nineteen thirty three, like registry tracking. By the way, I just want to point out, like RFK is going to do this. He's ended all of these different programs like tracking all sorts of health stuff. Right, They're not tracking certain diseases like they're going to end all that tracking, but they are going to track people who have autism. So just explain to me how this makes any sense.
No, don't, you can't.
I was good to say it not to do with that. But what I will explain to you, which I'm sure you already know, is that Trump is now saying about his deportations that the reason they're going to start evading new processes, they cannot everyone a trial.
Yeah, I love it so much. Yeah, you can't give everyone a trial.
Yeah you can.
That's how we do it here. He said this during one of his truths. These truths we hold from his truth social America can't give everyone a trial. It's actually the bedrock of our constitution. He's very unhappy. He wants to ship hundreds of Venezuelan men to Seecott, the scary torture prison in Al Salvador. Funny, you know last week we had some Republicans go to Seacott to mug for the cameras in front of all the men in the shaved heads and the white pajamas, a little bit like
Abu Grave right when we saw soldiers do that. Not another dark moment in American history. You know, It's funny because it's like, here we are Trump World trying to enact this Alien Enemies Act, which was every time it's been enacted, it's been during war, but it's also been sort of the darkest moments, Like nobody is like we need to go back to turning the Japanese, like that was one of our darkest moments, and that's where we
are here more of the darkest moments. So not not surprising, but you know here we are.
Yeah.
I can't think of anything more American than our proud tradition of making people wait two years for trials, to the point that when we see somebody finally stayd trial for something, we all go I thought they were dead.
Yeah, that's what we do here.
Mike Tamaski is the editor of The New Republic and the author of The Middle Out The Rise of Progressive Economics. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Mike Tamaski.
It's my favorite thing. Molly Jong Fast.
We know each other forever. You taught me how to write opinion.
Let's talk about the moment we find ourselves in not great, not great great.
Yeah, it gets weirder every week. This week's weirdness again with the fact that the Pope sized up jd Vance and decided it was time to go check out.
I'm so bad, oh, the poor Pope.
Yeah, absolutely no. He was one of the great popes of my lifetime, which extended back much farther than I care to admit, includes briefly, although I wasn't sentient and wasn't aware of him, But it includes briefly John the twenty third who, from our point of view is the best, because you know, he was the liberal and he opened things up in the English mass of this and that. But then Pape Bendict never went as far as we
would have hoped. But he did a lot of things and planted a lot of seeds that I hope will sprout in the future. Anyway, let's stop so.
We know he was a good pope because Marjorie Taylor Green tweeted after he died today there were major shifts in global leaderships. Evil is being defeated by the hand of God.
I did see that tweet. I didn't quite realize that this was what she was referring to.
But of course I too did not realize that was what she was referring to. But later I realized that she was in fact referring to the death of the pope. Imagine if a Democrat did that. Imagine if a Democrat was like even just was like, I never liked him anyway.
I mean, yeah, it's insanity, and it's reached an intolerable point. So what else do we have. We have a defense secretary who's obviously way it over his head. It's not as if we didn't know. Now, it's not as if we didn't know. When he was nominated, there were dozens hundreds of people who said, is he kidding? When Trump was talking last year about his beautiful tariffs, the most beautiful world word in the dictionary, there were dozens or
hundreds of people saying, he's out of his mind. He's going to tank the markets, he's going to cause a global trade war, he's going to ruin the economy, and he just genuinely doesn't know what he's talking about when he says having an individual trade deficit with any particular country in the world is a horrible thing.
You know.
Another aspect of that that is under discussed, in my view, is that he has said many times he wants to go back to like it was in the eighteen hundreds, when we didn't have an internal revenue service. The government just lived off tariff income. That is an insane thought. I could go into the numbers very well. Then, of course there's the jailing of innocent people. And Khalil, his son was born this week.
Did you cactually miss the birth of his son.
Yeah, because he's in a detention facility, but they moved him to New Jersey.
Yeah, but he's a permanent resident.
If I'm not mistaken, he's married to a citizen who's married to a citizen another citizen, and whose only supposed crime is having political opinion that this administration doesn't agree with.
It's sick, and it's getting sicker. I think the good news here, if there is good news, and you know, you and I we talk about this all the time because we are friends and we tuk on the phone, is that my prior is that I'm a little bit optimistic, which is my worst quality and has proven me has proven to be my achilles heel again and again and again. But we're going to be a little optimistic here. It does feel as if this is still the gang that
can't shoot straight. Like they may have had some help with the Heritage Foundation, with Project twenty twenty five, they may have had some more intellectual fortitude, or at least the appearance of, but ultimately, at the end of the day, this crew is still pretty incompetent.
Yeah, and thank goodness for that, although you know, I also read that like they've executed x out of the total y number of ideas in Project twenty twenty five. And for a gang that can't shoot straight, that's only been in office ninety days. It was a surprisingly high percentage.
Yeah, I want to talk about that today because I saw an academic writing about this.
This morning, and I thought this was important.
Executive orders are Trump World's favorite tool because they're really ultimately like he does them that are not legal, right, They're not thought out the way Democrats used to do.
The more Republicans even.
Like, you know, a lot of these are like I'm targeting Mark Elias for the Steel dossier and his lack of respect for how.
Great I am.
And they fall apart in court. And there's a reason they fall apart in court, because they're not legal, right.
We have to hope they continue to fall apart in court, especially the one court that matters more than all the other courts. And we'll see what they have to say. You know, I think it's now obviously it's incumbent upon the Supreme Court to say something more forceful about returning Kilmar Abrado Garcia to the United States and getting him out of El Salvador, the one where he wasn't supposed to be sent. Yeah, what are there hundred and ninety five countries in the world they could have sent him
to Lesotho. They could have sent him to Sri Lanka. They had any and they have a lot of people. This hasn't quite gotten through to a lot of people. But they can bring him back and then immediately that same day begin legal deportation procedures against him if they wish to do that. But they don't wish to do that. They're keeping him in the one place where they were told they can't keep him. So yeah, I hope the
courts follow through. But then if the courts follow through and Trump says, you know, okay, enforce it, then where are we Look.
The Supreme Court went nine to zero on the due process, and again I think the reason why the wording was so vague, at least what I've read, is that it was probably that Roberts was trying to get the two Fox News hosts to sign on, because when it was more specific, it was seven two. But even seven to two is humongous for this court. I mean, there's a court that overturned Road. This is a court that said
Trump was a king a year ago. So you'll have to wonder if Roberts sort of understands how precarious this moment is.
Well I think he does. I think he understands it. The question is whether he has the courage to act on that understanding. But I share your optimism to this extent, Molly More and more people are standing up. What Harvard is doing is very admirable because they didn't just say no to Trump. Now they've turned around and turned the tables on him and said we're suing you. And that's going out of their way and kind of asking for trouble in a good and admirable way. That should embolden people.
The schools of the Big ten, I hope make this commitment of theirs. More firm does NATO Alliance affairs. I hope more law firms stand up, and you know, I think I do think. And finally, just to say what Rachel Maddow was showing every night for the first ten minutes of her show, all these demonstrations across the country over time, that's all going to matter.
So let's just for a minute talk about Trump's Warren because I think it's important. This is straight out of the Hungary playbook, right, This is you go after because Hungary had these fine academic institutions. We saw orbon target academia it worked. He won, quote unquote, which means destroyed the academic institutions. Congratulations, and you no longer matter and
the academics just move somewhere else. But this is a page from that, right, because as you and I both know, this is not this is not and in fact, this letter and I want to talk about this. So the letter that they sent, the task on Anti Semitism sent that had three different of these arts of the Trump government signed it.
Right, major letter.
Had all of these things that would basically put the university into receivership. We will supervise all your teaching, we will supervise all your admissions, we will supervise I mean, it was just like a you will know longer be Harvard, you will be Hillsdale. We're going to make Charlie Kirk your dean of admissions. That was basically what they were saying. What Harvard did right away was publish the letter and say there's no way we can fucking do this, and
there's no way we will do this. The next day you had just donations, endless donations coming in, and then you had a groundswell of public support for Harvard. Contrast that with Columbia which acquiesced and now Trump wants more.
Yeah, it's the age old lesson people like this. You give them a little bit and they just keep taking more. But the bottom line question and all these kinds of things, Molly to me is always this, just like, how are you going to be judged by history? House? History going to see you. I think it's pretty clear History's going to judge Harvard very favorably when all this is over, and hope, hopefully we return to being a more or less normal democracy. Brad Karp, the head of SCAD and Arps,
is not going to be judged so favorably. That's where people have to take their stands. And then you know it's going to include journalists someday too.
You and me, baby, we're going to be this Selena Zito, No, I'm just kidding. When you look at this idea, right that history, it's partially that it's the right thing to do, but also even if you look at the law firms for example, so all of these law firms, right, they're scared about losing corporate clients. This is a money game. The corporate law firms. These guys make ten fifteen million
dollars a year. I mean, this is like the really you know, these guys make a ton of money and they were worried about losing clients.
This again goes back to these executive worders.
None of these are you know, they say they're binding, they're fucking bullshit. It's all made up, right, You take Trump World to court and they lose. The law firms that said no way actually have been winning in court. So the idea here that any of this is, you know, it's all boogeymen.
But the ones who made the deal, like scan now.
Trump wants more because of course, and so I'm sure you read this or you saw him muse about how perhaps the pro bone of work that these law firms might do could be to help coal companies.
I miss that, but I'm sure you know that's just for starters.
But coal companies. Like, you're a young associate. You went to Harvard, then you went to Yale law school. You kill yourself working and working and working twenty hour days, and now you are going to represent a coal baron.
Right, because they can't afford legal counsel after all.
Also, yeah, exact, isn't that crazy?
It's total craziness. We don't know what to be outraged at, because at eight in the morning, it's one thing, and by tenth thirty in the morning, it's another thing. At bout one o'clock in the afternoon, it's another thing. But we're outraged by all of them. And they're all authoritarian, they're all un American, and some of them are just well, they're not all. Some of them are just as you said,
ignorance and stupidity and incompetence. So one I wrote about in my column this week was Vladimir Putin calling for a ceasefire and easter ceasefire and then breaking it right again, yeah, again, and then asking, well, you know, after what Marco Rubio said last Friday, what kind of thing do you expect Vladimir Putin to do? Of course, he's going to do whatever he wants. After the Secretary of State of the United States of America said, we're just going to check
out on this unless we get something within days. It's not our problem. It's not our war. That's what he said. It's not our war. So you're sitting in the kremline and you just you high five the guy next to you. And now I take it back to Trump saying many many times on the campaign trail. I will solve that on my first day, in my first twenty four hours. As I wrote a lot of times, when people say use a phrase like day one, everybody understands they don't
mean it literally. But he did mean this letter he said on the first day, in the first twenty four hours, and he said it over and over again. Who was idiot enough to believe that?
I don't know.
But again, I wonder if you could speak to little Marco's incredible weakness here.
He has his job. You've seen other Secretaries of State.
I'm thinking of Rex Tillerson, right, who have done this job and seemed weak, but not quite weak the same way. Why does Marco seem just so weak?
I would say, because of what we know from his background. Okay, so he was running against Trump. He was originally appalled by Trump, and then he went through this short period before he dropped out of the race where he was an insult comic toward Trump. You know, he was like the Don Rickles of the Republican field of twenty sixteen for about a week and a half. And he cracks some very funny jokes. I must say, at Trump's expense, but then all that was gone and he became a sycophant,
and he's been a ridiculous sycophant ever since. So of course he's been a sycophant. So I mean when Trump named him, I remember thinking to myself, Okay, that's actually a plausible choice for secretary of State for three reasons. One Rubio has been a sycophant for seven years. Number two, Rubio will pass unanimously because he's a senator and he's not, you know, a child bolister. And number three, he's a perfect choice because Rubio is a nothing. You know, Trump
will be the real secretary of State. And I think that wasn't you know, that wasn't a particularly insightful reaction on my part. I'm sure it was your reaction. It was the reaction of hundreds of people. Those three things.
Yeah.
The other thing that Trump is doing this time, which he didn't do last time, which I'm wondering if you can speak to if you think it's going to work. Trump is this time not firing people, because last time he fired everyone and I think he thought that it whatever, it gave him less gravitas. So he's like knock, going to fire Hagsatz, despite the fact that heg sas is pretty fast and loose with a lot of that did the information that he probably shouldn't be fast and loose with.
What do you think the play there is?
I see, I'm firing he Sith. I mean based on what you said yesterday at the Easter Egg thing, but also just based on what we know about him. I mean, that's not their play. Their play is to turn everything around and make everything about the liberal media and the leftists. As Hexath said also at the Easter Egg hunt, nothing's their fault. Everything's the fault of the left wing media. And so you know that's that's really all they have
to say. And that's that, and that Fox and Newsmax and Sinclair and the rest of them ate that, and that becomes the gospel. So if that's what you believe, then why on earth would you fire Hexith? You didn't do anything wrong because it's all the fault of the media.
Right, So true, Mike TAMASKI, will you.
Please come back anytime?
My dear.
G Elliott Morris is the author of these Strength in Numbers some stuff Welcome too fast polity ex Sally Morris. Thanks Wally This is very exciting for me because I had wanted to have you on for a million years when you were at five point thirty eight and you were.
At a network, and network can be persnickety.
So I'm very delighted to get to have you on because I think there's just a lot to learn from data.
Yeah, I mean, I think, especially in this moment in politics, it's really good to ink ourselves two of the facts. I mean, this seems to be a problem that's getting even worse as the media fractures, and you have one party in power that is really in favor of that fracturing, seeming egging on some of the factlessness. So I think it's a good time for independent people to strike out and devote publications two facts. If I can be oral, self congratulatory here.
And partisan too, a little bit partisan, and we like it here because I'm on the opinion side.
So you have a bunch of things I want to talk to you about.
The first thing I think we should talk about is Trump's popularity, because I do think there's this authoritarian push that the administration is doing. You could say it's dismantling the administrative state. You could say it's authoritarianism. I say
it's authoritarianism, they say it's dismantling the administrative state. But whatever it is, I want you to talk about just sort of how popular he was when he came into office and sort of where he's gone since then, because it's almost one hundred days.
Yeah, I mean, whether or not it's authoritarianism or remaking the administrative state, it's kind of like calling a blackbird a grackle. That's the same thing. They're using the power of the state to their goals. To your question, that does seem to be having an effect on Donald Trump's popularity, on his approval rating in particular, but also his approval rating on handling certain issues. So on my stub stack at Strengthen Numbers, I have an average of Trump's approuval polls.
It's sort of the intellectual follow of the average we had at five point thirty eight before it was shut down, and it has Donald Trump's net approval rating today at minus six. Okay, that's the difference between his approval rating at forty five percent and his disapproval rating at fifty one percent. So we find a majority of the country disapproves of the job he's doing today. And when he started, you know, his approval rating was at fifty and his
disapproval rating was at forty. So this is a pretty big inversion of where he started as presidency.
I want you to sort of track how this went. He was as popular as he'd ever been, won the popular vote.
What were the sort of.
Things that you can point to that change the trajectory.
This is a hard problem to solve in social science because there's two things going on. One is just there's like a general trend down in your approval rating as time goes on. So you know Trump, twenty seventeen, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, all of those approval ratings just fell gradually
as the presidency kicked off. The political scientists would say, this is because the party in power moves policy away from the average voter just by virtue of being the party in power, and you marginalize a small number of people with every policy change, and that just adds up. It certainly seems to be part of the explanation Trump's his net approval rating falling, you know, seventeen points is about how much it fell in twenty seventeen as well over this amount of time in his first term. But
that's not to say that events don't matter. It's just that they kind of pile up on each other over time.
Right, But there are certain For example, in Biden world, the Afghanistan withdrawal, say what you will about it, liked it, didn't like it. Most people didn't like it. I think pretty true, but it did not pull well. So and it really was a moment where his numbers started to just create. So I wonder, like it seems to me from what I understand, the tariffs are huge. That was a huge moment in Trump administration.
Yeah, so on April second, Best Liberation Day, the day his tariffs go into due effect, he's at a minus two approval rating, and now now he's at minus six minus seven, And that's where most of the change in his apprewer rating has happened since April second. So you kind of have to use the other data to make the argument that these things are being noticed by people. But I think you have a strong argument there as well. It's the lead story on every news outlet, at least
until last week. People say terrorists arey, you know, they don't like them by twenty points or nineteen points. So that's a compelling argument to me. I think that's probably the biggest political misstep for the administration so far.
Yeah.
So the tariffs, and this gets to something you wrote about just recently on your Strength a numbers substaff. Should Democrats focus on immigration or the economy? So Gavin Newsom said this thing about how the tariffs were more detrimental than the disappearing people and that Democrats should focus on that.
What what is the data say?
Yeah, well, if you look at the answer to the question do you approve of the job the president is doing on X? Where X is like immigration, economy, trader, what have you, then you get about a four point approplarating for the president. So four percentage point more people
say he approves than disapprove, you know. So you might see that numbers say like, oh, what he's doing is popular, But what's actually happening is this question is too broad to really capture the nuances of public opinion on immigration. That's my argument at least. So if you then ask people, you know, not do you approve of the job the president is doing on immigration, but do you think the president should obey federal court rulings even if he disagrees
with them. For example, which is what's happening in the Abrego Garcia case. Eighty two percent of people say the president should obey the court ruling. If you ask, you should Trump keep deporting people just by the court order? Stop it? You know? Most Americans about sixty percent say he should stop. If you and sorry to list things, but if you ask people you know, should should the US government deport undocumented immigrants who have lived here for
more than ten years? Than by thirty seven points people say no, don't do that. So my whole sort of project here at this immigration polling is just to get people to acknowledge that there's nuances, that there's some types of immigration policies that people like and don't like, and that the broad question do you approve of whatever the executive is doing is not super helpful.
Yeah, exactly.
So let's just go another sort of minute on this, which is, and I think you're right when you write about this. You talk about the idea that in fact, parties can hold two things in their head, right, that you can focus on this sort of norms crushing of deporting people who have not faced through process, and then
also the importance of not crashing the economy. So Trump's people seem and I think this is something I really want to dig into because today is yet another day that ends and why and so the markets are down and the bond anxiety gold is up. I mean, all the indicators that they that people are not happy with what the government is doing on the economy. Explain to me how it breaks down on Poland, because it's interesting and important.
I think.
Yeah, so maybe some relevant numbers here. About seventy percent of Americans say they don't like Trump's tariff policies.
Seems pretty high.
Yeah, that's like a pretty negative signal with the incumbent White House.
Since you're a data die, can you just explain to us how hard it is to get seventy percent of Americans to agree on anything.
Seventy percent disapproval is pretty high. That's about the percent of people who said Joe Biden was doing poorly out inflation with seventy percent. And I think, and we acknowledge in hindsight that inflation was pretty bad in twenty twenty two. So it's it's getting to the point where it's like, oh, this is this is nearly an obvious and obvious truth, you know, something you can see with your eyes inside of with data.
Yeah, the MAGA crew still has his back talk us through those numbers and sort of what they're thinking is.
I mean, I think the White House is thinking here is that if they and shore up manufacturing in the long term, then that would be politically popular. If they can stick it to China, then those sort of victories are popular. But those are long term plays and in the short term you are like draining people's For one case, people are losing their jobs in manufacturing because businesses can't afford tariffs, and that is definitely showing up in the numbers.
So by an eighteen point margin. For example, in the latest polling, people say they disapprove of Trump's trade and economic policy.
Right, which is amazing for a Republican, Right.
I mean, the Republicans had the advantage on this question for the last fifteen years, so he's really you know, one way of looking at this as Trump is sort of blowing probably the best asset Republicans had so the last five elections on his sponge that tariffs would work out right, completely uneminenced.
Yeah, this is something I think about a lot. What's the number of die hard magos. What's the number where you crash the economy and they're still like, my guy is great, he knows what he's doing.
That's a great question. I think it's probably twenty five, maybe thirty percent. And the reason they say that number that that's the number of people who say you should deport immigrants who have been here for like two decades
and have legal status. That is the number of people who say they support Trump's tariffs, who approve extending tax cuts, even if it means cutting Medicare, Like about thirty percent is what you get as the yes to all of the most extreme Trump policies let's call them extreme, the
most trumpy policies. So I think it's probably about twenty five or thirty percent, But that would depend on the scale of the economic crisis, like great Depression level might be worst session level, Like I guess it depends on how many people are still paying for Fox News and X subscriptions. You know, there's a media influence going on here too.
What percentage of America do you think is the group that went with Trump but has regrets.
Well, if you ask people straight up, it's like five percent. If you ask people, Hey, who do you know, do you regret your vote? In twenty twenty four, low single digits of people say that they regret it, But that's a really hard thing to poll, Like people don't like to admit they were wrong. And if yeah, if you ask Kamala Harris supporters, do they regret their vote, it's
also low single digits. So you know, these things can equal allow they can cancel each other out and have small effects on electro performance even if you're you know, even if there's some regret on either side.
We talk a lot about sort of the middle of the country, like the ideological middle of the country, and I'm curious there's an added to the seventy percent of the country is the middle. They're all sort of ideologically much more centris. Do you think that number's right?
What percentage of other country did you say you think was centrist?
What we've sort of heard is that seventy percent of the country is sort of the is more centrist.
I don't know, I'll just as some nuance here. So like usually people don't have moderate opinions on a bunch of different issues, and you call them moderates. That's really rare. Most people don't pay attention to politics, and they feel very intensely about a couple of issues, and then they pick countervailing opinions on a bunch of stuff. So they'll have a liberal, really liberal position on one thing, and I'll maybe trade in a really conservative position on the
other thing, maybe immigration, let's say. And then we call those people moderates just because of the way that polsters and academics have combined all of those opinions together. But most people don't pay attention to politics enough to like be centrist. They're just kind of living their lives, and you can activate them on the left or the right,
depending on what issues are most important to them. So one way to answer your question is, like, on immigration, maybe the country is more right leaning than the audience takes. But on economics, like what people want is stability, predictability.
They want a president who's like committed mostly to fed independence, so the monetary policy is and politicized, and that like, you know, people also have this baseline expectation that politicians will react to data that shows they did something wrong. And I guess if you call that said all that stuff's centrist, I think it's at least rational, or that's how people should be behaving. Then definitely a lot more interests than the ones that are in the whitehounch So I guess.
So interesting and also just you know, it's sort of not how I think about things, which I think is important. So I'm curious when you look at these protests, what do you see in the data on the protests?
Yeah, the way that I analyze this is like what historical midterm cycles does this one look like? And the protests, like the number of people that are out protesting in the street, And that matters if it's like twenty million versus two, of course, but the real important thing is like are their protests at all? Are their mass protests? And then do those protests align with like popular positions from the opposition party that would indicate an opposition party
doing well in the next election. Is the media responding to these protests, covering them, putting footage of people out there? It's like, yes, well then well then a lot of people are going to see the coverage of these protests. So this is sort of the data driven journalism in terms of like checking boxes empirically to try to match things up historically, rather than the data driven journalism that's like, oh, look, fifty million people turned out, Like I don't know how
many people turned out the last weekend. That doesn't really matter because all the conditions for Democrats capturing the momentum from the protests are there.
So interesting. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Elliott. I hope it'll come back.
Okay, thank you, this is great.
Moment. Jesse Cannon, Samali.
The FDA under rfk's rule, it's suspending milk quality tests amid workforce cuts, which seems bad.
I want to explain this to everyone here. Okay, they are cutting the workforce so that they can give very wealthy people a tax cut. There is no reason that this needs to happen. There is no like, all of this is like, well, we can't do this. We can't give very wealthy people a tax cut unless we cut what the government does for people. So let's cut workforce cuts. When it comes to food safety, because you know, again like this is the whole Trump thing. You don't understand
why you have regulations until things go horribly wrong. So like that train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, you don't have those regulations until you have the train derail in East Palestine. Ohio, and everyone gets sick from the you know, the all the chemicals. That's what this is, right. So now they're not going to inspect milk quality. And here's what's going to happen. People are going to get sent for milk. This is why we have these quality inspectors.
This is why we have regulation. Is because there was a reason. Like Donald Trump loves to talk about tariffs and how there was a time before the internal revenue system.
I swear to God, like my man has he has like very few ideas and they are so stuck in his brain with like sticky tacky whatever. So he's like, yeah, there was a time when America is really great. You know during that time, like people would eat bad fish and die. This is the goal, right, It's like, you know, you drank that milk and it made you so sick. That's where we're going to folks, and you hear you
heard it here first. And when that milk makes you sick, remember who told you this is all going to happen. And visit me in Seacott.
I often think of discussions you and I have that a lot of people say, oh, this is all to benefit the rich, and this is one of those ones where it's like, no, this is just stupid.
This is all to benefit the rich.
I say, this is someone who was you know, who had a lot of advantages.
Well, but this is also will affect the rich and is also just the stupid one that affects everybody.
Yeah, well, I guess Elon has a food taster. If you don't have a food taster, this is going to be very annoying and perhaps you might die.
Welcome to Trump's America. You probably won't die, but you might get a release it.
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