Chuck’s Commentary - SCOTUS Smacks Down Trump’s Tariffs…Now What? + Trump’s Approval Is Cratering

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the check podcast. If you are waking up in the Assella Corridor, I hope you don't have a foot of snow outside those of us on the southern end of the Slate Corridor or breathing a sigh of relief those of you in New York that might be another story. But for those of us that make content, it means you have more time bundled up in your house or you have to get out put the AirPods in. So I hope I can be a useful distraction while you're shoveling, sweeping,

whatever you may be doing this morning. Look, it's a packed episode. As you know. I did a quick sort of emergency response as we got the big tariff ruling, and this is just such a monumental moment in the Trump presidency. It's very well, we look back, this is the beginning of the end. We may look back and

say Liberation Day was sort of when it all actually was starting to come to an end. I'll get to that point in a minute, but let me give you a rundown of everything we're going to do. I'm going to unpacked all things tariff, because look, an important moment, the democracy, the guard rails, separations, like all of the features of this republic blossomed a bit. So that's that.

And then you have a president responding as if he is now his goal is to destroy his own party in the midterms and do whatever it takes to help the Democrats, because his initial response on this is politically catastrophic. But hey, by the time you're listening to this, we also could be launching a new over of the ron because, oh, guess what, before the tariff ruling, we still have the largest build up in the Middle East of military assets since the start of the Iraq War. What's going on?

What are we up to? Congress still is not being told. Is this about the nuclear program? Is this about negotiation? Is this about regiem change? The president who loves not to explain his rationales, is I think underestimating how precarious of a position he might be in here. But we'll see, and who knows. Maybe he's going to I mean, my goodness, the State of the Union on Tuesday? Is he going to announce that the missiles are dropping as he begins to State of the Union. Does he want to step

on his own State of the Union? Is that his goal? Does he want to announce something? Does he want does he not want the specific does he have not maybe he doesn't have much to say beyond or does he rant and rave about the tariffs and complain about that?

Does he ask Congress for some help on this? So we are in an incredibly precarious moment of his presidency, though to say it's the most precarious is sort of how do you pick right we kind of live in a constant state of turmoil and instability ever since he came down that escalator. So we are in one of those moments, massive economic instability. Small business is still trying

to figure out what comes now. But we got some important institutional pushback on Trump's attempts to usurp power from Congress. So again, I'm gonna get to all that. Let me give you, like I said, a quick rundown, I'm going to break down. We got seven of the nine Supreme Court justices felt like they had to express their own view as to why they came to the decision. They

came seven of the nine. The only two justices not to write their own separate either concurrence or dissent, Samuel Alito and Sonya Soda mayor everybody else had something to say, with the Neil Gorsuch concurring opinion being the most fascinating of all of them. But we're going to get into that. There's a brand new and ABC News poll out that shows incredibly bad news for the President and Republicans. But guess what doesn't show much good news for the Democrats.

I will get to that in a moment. I spent part of my weekend at the Principal's First Conference at the Gaylord Hotel in suburban Maryland outside of DC. They've built. This is their six six year gathering. It was an impressive event it gave. I had a ton of in moderator panel with Pat McCrory, Bill Crystal, and another member

of the Principal's First organization. And because it really is a gathering of center rights sort of ex Republicans lost Independence, a lot of military veterans and even a few active duty people I met there who feel politically lost but are alarmed by what's happened in this current moment inside the Republican Party. So it was an interesting conversation and I've I was moderating some interesting tension. Let's just say Pat McCrory and Bill Crystal, well they both have an

agreement about Trump. They weren't unnecessarily on the same page of what comes next and how to do this? And I think that this is this is the debate that many non you know, sort of independence and anti Trump Republicans are having is do you try to save the Republican Party? Do you try to start something new? Do you try to get behind an independent or do you make common cause with the Democrats temporarily? That debate is

a very lively discussion inside this group. I found it to be shall we say, intellectual nourishing might be a way to put it. Meanwhile, Team USA, right, how do I I want to get to that? That's very exciting, and I'm going to over I'm going to overanalyze the period of time. We haven't won the Olympic hockey goal

since nineteen eighty. What's interesting is that in many ways America in nineteen eighty, that in that February, January, February and March period, that first quarter of the year nineteen eighty, we were in a meles We were isolated, We felt

isolated from the world. We had Iran, had our hostages, We were a divided politically in a sort of beginning of a political depression. Sounds familiar, doesn't right? Oh, by the way, we had an unpopular president and we have an unpopular president. We have all of this. So and that Olympic gold sort of was the beginning of you know, and we ended up on a good sort of twenty year run, you know, with a few ups and downs, but a nice twenty year run arguably starting with that

Olympic gold all the way until nine to eleven. When you think about america role in the world, all of those things, end of the Cold War, et cetera, et cetera. So you know, maybe maybe this is a good omen. I choose to believe it is a good open on that front. So with that, let's unpack what the Supreme Court just did, because after you know, our guardrails are back.

They're bruised, but as we found out Friday, they still exist in this constitutional republic, and frankly, the results not surprising. You know, I got started with this relaunch of the Check podcast. It was in April, about a week before so called liberation debt. And if you want to go back to those earlier episodes to fact check me on this, I could tell you. I said, look, these are not going to be seen as constitutional. These will not survive

a court challenge. The only question is is whether this ends up costing all of us more money. Right, it's already cost consumers money. Now there's going to be people looking for their refunds. And the irony is that the president is now going to accelerate our debt and deficit

in ways that we already knew. He didn't really care about the national debt or the deficit. Again, this is a guy who's always borrowed other people's money, used it for himself, declared bankruptcy, and walked away. Right. He's done it many, many times, so of course he's going to do it with the US government. He doesn't care about those things. He just doesn't sort of see it. And

he certainly has. If he took basic macro and microeconomics in college, he clearly didn't absorb anything with what he learned. I mean, this has been an economic disaster for the country. It has been a terrible for global leadership. And again we I think may look back that this is in sort of you know, I'm reminded of George W. Bush right after he went his second term and he pursues an unpopular policy of privatizing social security just you know,

blew up in a faith. Then he wanted to do immigration that wasn't popular inside his own party, and eventually he had approval rating somewhere in the mid ti thirties, and you had a Democratic streep in that midterm of his second term, and then the biggest Democratic essentially the biggest Democratic victory in a presidential race, with the the Democratic tennant getting over fifty percent for the first time

since Jimmy Carter and then before that LBJ. So that's what this sort of And you know in the moment, you didn't quite know when Bush was just never was had hit unrecoverable status really until the election itself. So you know, I'm not going to declare Trump dead. He's going to be president for another two and a half years. He can make a lot of trouble. How he responds to this moment will tell us whether his political demise

will get accelerated or not. And I would say the first seventy two hours his response tells me he wants you know, he he plans on going down with the ship here, and he may burn his party down with it.

So look, there was a reason why I was pretty confident that these tariffs were never going to be seen as legal, because tariffs are taxes, and taxes live an article one simple as that. I mean, it was basically what Robert said, this is this is sort of high school constitutional law. Okay, this is not even law school constitutional law. So when you try to run a sweeping global tariff regime through a nineteen seventy seven emergency statute

that never mentions the word tariff. You're taking a pretty big legal risk. Pretty much open and shut case, rightly. The only surprise to me was that the ruling was six to three in the court, not seven two. It should have been at nine zero. But I expected Alito and Thomas to be partisans in here. They've never been serious jurists. Maybe they were serious jurists, but not in the last ten or fifteen years have they been serious. They've been always take thee what they believe is the

own the Libs partisan right. Never may never embarrass your own party in any way. Anyway. The point is is that they've stopped being legal guys a long time ago. But I thought both Corsic and Kavanaugh had come in here so mild. The real surprise to me is that Kavanaugh ended up in the descent on here, and it was interesting. He of course had to write his own He wrote the overall descent and he's hiding behind foreign policy, which of all the weak arguments that Trump lawyers were making,

it was the strongest of the weak arguments. Was saying, well, this is part of foreign policy, and a president has

to conduct foreign policy. Still, at its core, this was not about trade. This was about who governs, who's in charge of the purse in the United States of America. So the court ruled six to three that the International Emergency Economic Powers at AIPA reminds me of the Simpsons movie yep by yepa. This is aep BA EEPA. Sorry, I couldn't help myself. It does not authorize the president to impose sweeping global tariffs. Six justices ended up in

the majority, three dissenters. But here's what matters. There were seven opinions. Seven Okay, it tells you something. This court agreed on the result, but not on the reasoning chief. Justas Roberts wrote the controlling opinion, his argument was institutional, straightforward regulate importation does not equal in post tariffs, as simple as that Congress knows how to say duties, Congress knows how to say tariffs. It did not say either of those two words in the i EPA legislation. Tariffs

are taxation. Taxation belongs to Congress. Hard stop. Then there's the there there's the concurring opinion that I would want all of my wanta be law school, folks. And you know I always joke I don't play a lawyer. I'm not a lawyer, but I have been playing one on TV for a long time. I am. I'd like to think I have gotten sort of a pretty decent legal education over the last thirty years, as I love reading me some good Supreme Court opinions or just sense at times,

because you learn a lot about the politics of the court when you do. And he wrote separately, and he leaned hard into what's known as the major Questions doctrine, and then he also called out pretty much five of us go by the way, kind of amusing, but still before we get to what he called him out on. He was tackling major questions, right, which is the idea that when a president claims extraordinary economic power, Congress must

speak clearly. And here's where it gets interesting, or so it's called out all of his colleagues, first the liberals, for what he described frankly as a flip flop, because he basically said, hey, you opposed this idea of the major questions when it limited democratic administrations, in particular Biden on issues involving COVID in the workplace, COVID mandates and the student loan issue. But now are you using the

same structural instincts Justice Kagan. She was joined by Sotomayor, agreed with the outcome, but rejected the idea this was a major question issue. She said that the ordinary statutory interpretation was enough. Essentially, she was trying to defend the

fact that she was not flip popping here. She was trying to disaggregate the rationale she used to be in favor of Biden using emergency powers to do the student loan cuts, and she was trying to essentially separate it from her what appears to be literally the opposite point of view, which to somebody with no skin in the game, you know, the same way. It looks like robertson excuse me, Thomas and Ledo were partisans here. Essentially, of course, is saying and said, hey, looks like Kagan, so do my

own Jackson essentially have been partisan here as well. Then you have Justice Brown Jackson. She leaned into legislative history, saying Congress never intended AIPA to become a tariff machine, and therefore that's why she came to the same conclusion as roberts On the other side, Justice Kavanaugh wrote the

principal dissent in his argument foreign affairs is different. He saw this as part of foreign affairs, So the president traditionally has brought her authority here and major questions doctrine shouldn't apply in the same way in trade and diplomacy. Justice Thomas went even further, arguing Congress can delegate ter for Thorty Broadly, he basically said, nope, these emergency powers delegated it all away, and the President was perfectly within

his constitutional rights to do all of this. So to say this was it your typical liberal conservative split is an understatement. It was a structural split, and that matters. And by the way, just a little history lesson here, because I was curious, how often have we had seven of the nine justices all write their own either supporting opinions or dissent. Well, in nineteen seventy one, during the Pentagon Papers case New York Times versus the United States,

all nine justices wrote their own opinion. They agreed on the ruling, but they did not agree on how they got there. Right, They went nine nothing, but they ended up having individual opinions explaining that away a case that effectively struck down all existing death penalty laws in the United States Furman versus Georgia in nineteen seventy two. Same thing. All nine justices wrote their own rationales for how they got to their opinion, and then, of course dread Scott.

The infamous dread Scott decision, one of the worst in the history of the Supreme Court, also featured all nine justices in the last few decades. Seven opinions usually signal a massive turf war between the different wings of the Court. And as I've told you, there's there's three distinct wings of the Court, Okay, and I think Gorciats and Kavanaugh are sort of somewhere in between the two of the

conservative wings. Right, you have sort of a institutionalist conservative wing which is anchored by Roberts and Barrett. Kavanaugh mostly is with them on these institutional rulings. In this case it was Gorsich, not Kavanaugh. Thomas and Alito are usually in the more on the further the right spectrum, a little more in favor of even stronger executive authority essentially,

but a bit more partisan. You know, their takes seem to be grounded in well, what ruling do we want to get to and then they find a rationale to get there. And then you, of course you have the three liberals that rarely do they do they break ranks. So it is a I think a court that has split more in three than it is in two, because that's what Donald Trump does, right. He has divided his own party in that case. And you see that divide

on on on the Supreme Court. So I think that is there a is there is there that or is this a case where they all wanted to explain their own rationale? And I think it is clear that they really didn't agree on they they you know, you had a strong majority agree that the president overstepped his constitutional overstepped his constitutional authority, but they just disagreed on exactly what how he overstepped that authority. Still I can't help

but when you look at it sort of seven responses like that, it really is sort of it reminds me of the coalition against Trump in general, right, which is there's a large majority of the country, say fifty five sixty percent that don't like how Trump governs, the general direction that Trump is taking us. This episode of The Chuck Podcast is brought to you by ze Biotics. Let's face it, after a night with drinks, it's hard to bounce back the next day. You have to make a

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one for details about credit costs and terms, or Americanfinancing dot Net Slash, the Chucktodcast. But they don't all agree that as to on the same things. As to what he's doing. Right, there are some that don't like what Trump's doing, but maybe like what he's doing in immigration. There are some that may be like what he's doing in immigration, but don't like what he's doing on tariffs.

But it is it does sort of the fragmented court knows that Trump is an unconstitutional president and probably the most abuse abusive of the constitution of any president we've had, going even Nixon included. And yet right there you can't get a coherent singular message to sort of take them on, and even in the legal community, you can't do that. Now there's Trump's response, And as I said on Friday, before knowing Trump's response, I said, he's the wild card here.

There was a real opportunity, right. This economy sucks, people don't like it, and you know, these tariffs have been attacked on consumers. It is served as inflationary. In fact, earlier, just before this tariffruling came out, we got news the economic growth stagnated massively in the fourth quarter, right under one and a half percent growth, which is just terrible. Anything under two doesn't even allow us to sort of

keep up with inflation. That is not good, and it is part of it is attributed to the shutdown, but they're also has been this continued, you know, as we're seeing, you know, for about six months, many businesses tried actually not to pass on the cost of the tariffs that ended in the last quarter and the and we've seen in January a lot of price spikes in particular, all

of that has gone away. And that's so so ironically, you know, the best thing that could have happened to the congressional Republicans was for these tariffs to be viewed as unconstitutional. That's if Trump would go along and accept the premise that the Supreme Court is correct here. That's not what he's doing. And this is what should make all of us pause here. Man. The President didn't respond by arguing on the merits. He didn't argue about it

the statutory interpretation. He didn't respond by seeing the court misread history. He responded by doing what he does best, attacking his own appointees for simply being disloyal. And it is a reminder, right, if we did not have lifetime

appointment to the Supreme Court. He tried to fire Gorsich. He tried to fire Barrett, just like he's doing with the FED. So just keep that in mind. The founders knew that. I mean, look, none of us love this lifetime appointment business. And maybe we should have age limits and there's some ways to end it. But you cannot what you cannot have as an executive having the ability to fire somebody in another branch of government. And obviously our founders knew that, and that's why it's important to

give Supreme Court justices this. So here he is personally attack it Neil Gorsuch and Amy Cony Barrett. Neil Gorsich, who was voted with Trump quite a bit. In fact, he's rarely in that institutional Every once in a while he surprises you. I was pretty convinced he'd be with the seven to two majority. Like I said, the surprise for me was capital. But Trump did the usual personation, right,

he said this was an embarrassment to their families. So he's attacking the families of Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coneni Barr. And we know when Trump does this, it does it does you know, all of a sudden there are mentally unstable people out there who start doxing people start going after it is. It is terrible what he does, and

it's designed as a chilling effect, right. What you know, he goes after anybody that was supposedly that he viewed as on his side, and when they break ranks, he he goes after him in nasty ways because he's trying to prevent it from happening again. He's afraid it's going to get contagious. But here's the thing, more and more people, more and more Republicans. I think this is this is why I think this could be such an important moment

that this the breaking points don't happen. The breaking points are realized six months after that breaking point happens. Right, And so you know, if we go on and I promise you Democrats sweep the midterms, we'll say, Okay, this thing started collapsing. And it really sort of took another nose dive with the Supreme Court ruling and then his just unhinged response to it. And look, we're all kind of numb to this. Oh, just another day at the office.

He's just attacking members Supreme Court. He also thinks there's some conspiracy blaming foreign influence. You have the conspiracy of these foreigners right there infiltrating the Supreme Court. This is some foreign influence campaign on Justices Gorsach and amy Cony Barrett. Let's take it all the way through. Tell me how that works, mister President. Tell me how there's foreign influence on Neil Gorsich. Tell me how there's foreign influence on

John Roberts. You know you can't. You're gonna throw this out there. Give me some details. Show your proof. I'm sure your proof is with the with the with all the stuff you found out during when when you swore that you had evidence that Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States. I'm sure that evidence is in the same place at the evidence of of that's somehow foreign interest swayed Neil Gorsuch and Amy Cony Barrett. Show your evidence.

You don't do that. What you do is you count on your lapdog supporters to just take your accusation and run with it, and you count on algorithms to amplify

it and make it seem like a legitimate talking point. It's disgusting, it's awful, and yeah, we already have look another person came after you, mister President at mar a Lago. All right, stop this. The more you do this stuff, the more you put everybody at risk physically. You're putting the lives in dangers of two Supreme Court justices that you appointed. You appointed these people, and you're attacking them

and attacking their families. It's outrageous and it's awful. And the again, right, you have an entire Republican party who just doesn't respond to this anymore. I understand rationally why they don't. Doesn't get them anywhere, just causes more problems for them, and it's all sort of self preservation is why you don't speak out. But folks, he is super weak. This is the absolute definition of an emperor with no clothes, and every day we keep finding out how little he's

wearing under his little garments there. So he obviously is decided not to not to do this the normal way any other president when they're set back, they criticize the court, they're frustrated, they say this or that, but then they are like, figure out another way. Maybe they want to work with Congress, but nope. He doesn't view his loss as a constitutional issue. He views the loss as a loyalty issue. But let's go back to April. And this

is why I fear long term impact of Trump less than most people do. He really is lazy. I mean, he is super lazy, right. I often used the joke, Look, he's too lazy to be Hitler, He's too lazy to be Orbon. He's too lazy to be air to one. Okay, forget any of these other you know, forget using the north star of the Nazis. Right, just picked today's sort of authoritarian. It's too lazy to be Orbon. I'm too

lazy to be air to one. Right. Imagine you know, he actually had some political capital in the first ninety days of his administration, and he could have probably strong armed his narrow congressional majorities in the House and Senate to give him the authority if he simply said back in late March, hey, Congress, I want I want specific tariff authority. I'm going to I'm a better negotiator than you are. I'm going to negotiate these trade deals, but I need to control the tariff. I need you to

delegate tariff authority to the president. Let's debate it, let's vote on it. And there'd have been wouldn't have been easy, and he may not have won that argument, but that is how you try to win an argument. And then if you can't win the argument, then he can go find his own Republicans to challenge the primary folks, and you try to do it that way. It's what FDR would do when he had rakhal centrin Democrats to some of his ideas. But he also had pretty decent political

capital with Republicans in that moment. You certainly know he would have strong armed the House at that time, right, he was pretty much the House speaker at that point,

and John Thune was in go along, get along mode, I know, McConnell and you know. And they could have done it through the reconciliation process when they were doing their big beautiful bill. They were too lazy to pursue because it's what was it going to be hard? They were going to have to do some good old fashioned horse trading. But remember, right, the greatest weakness Donald Trump has is his laziness. It will always be the key as to why he didn't have the success he could

have had in business. Right. Too lazy in the casino business to right, he didn't want to deal with competitors, so bought them up, drowned himself in debt, and walked away. Right, he's just always looking for a shortcut. Right, Donald Trump has shortcuted his way to being a billionaire. Good for him. He's used the power of the federal government to actually

make himself a billionaire. Again a shortcut. But as president, his agenda is failing and he's failing to remake the American economy in his vision because he's too lazy to work with Congress. Bottom line, had he done that, he'd have had a shot. Markets would have been calmer, his political capital was fresher, Party was more unified in that moment, and he wouldn't have gotten all the authority he would have wanted, but he would have gotten some targeted authority

and it would have been legitimate. But again, he didn't want to bother He wanted speed, he wanted immediate leverage.

She wanted unilateral control. But it's lazy because it doing it every way I'm describing is a little bit harder. It's effort, It takes it. You have to have an attention span a little bit greater than a nat Well we know he doesn't, so he reached for the emergency powers because they work so well during COVID. So he loves these shortcut emergency powers that Stephen Miller consistently finds for him now, and he didn't want to have a debate in his own party, and this avoids deliberation. Well,

guess what his shortcut ran into Article one. So within hours of the ruling, Trump announces a new global baseline tariff under Section one twenty two of the nineteen seventy four Trade Act. So he's going back even further now

in congressional authorization to try to find a legal way around this. By the way, this new fifteen percent flat tariff that he's sent across the board expires in one hundred and fifty days, so it is he's going to need to go to Congress if he wants to continue it. I'm looking forward to Congress weighing in on this. This is where it belongs, and I think it's going to be quite the MRI. We're going to find out where

the Republican Party is today. Because one thing that has been true since Donald Trump took his second oath of office, every day he's lost a Republican supporter every day or every week, somebody leaves the reservation. Nobody. He has not added anybody to his coalition. You see it in the form of elected officials breaking from him, and you see it obviously in all of these in all of these polls. But what his response to this ruling is not good

in the short term. This will be good in the long term because we've established some guard raids, but it's going to be unstable in the short term. We have a bunch of instability where they'll be refunds. Justice Kavanaugh warned of chaos. Yeah, I mean, there was no reason to violate the Constitution, But there is some truth to this. Yes, there's chaos. The importers had to pay billions under this i epa misuse of the IEPA authority. They're going to sue.

They're going to want their money back. Sounds like the

government's going to fight having to give any of the money back. These are lawsuits could take years. It's not good for small businesses that need to deal with imports. It's not good for any business, but small businesses. Big business can can figure out how to mitigate the impact of this on their on their bottom lines. They can write it down right, they can they can get some tax savings out of something like this. But boy, small business,

this is a killer. That's why it was. NFIB was a part of the groups, a part of the bigger group of people that were suing over this. And oh, by the way, the President just exploded the deficit with his illegal tariffs because what looked like was going to be the ability to actually see some revenue uh come into the country used to at least shrink the deficit annual deficit. I don't think we were going to make any progress on the debt itself. Put to shrink the deficit. Well,

now if you've removed it, you know he was. Look, this has always been part of a larger project. As I've tried to let try to walk people through, we're ultimately the goal here. The people that have really gotten a hold of Trump are the folks that want to get rid of income taxes. And you've seen in the States,

you've seen attempts to get rid of property taxes. There are a whole bunch of people that want to move all taxation back to being consumption oriented, right, much more like a vat tax like the Europeans, right that everything is consumption oriented. Well, guess what that was our tax policy before we before the sixteenth Amendment and legalized income taxes. And you know what, that was worse for everybody, and it meant poor people paid a lions share the taxes.

Rich people hid from paying most taxes because they were consumption based and the income and the impact was much greater on lower income people than it wasn't higher income people, which is what made the income tax popular in that time. It was to make the rich start paying their fair share. And here we go again, right, it's rich and wealthy people. They don't want it. They think that once they have money, they shouldn't get taxed on it until they spend it.

And ditto with their property. Well, good luck funding any service that government provides today if you take away income

taxes and property taxes. But we are going to have a ton of instability now for a while. Right, he's going to all right, so he found one hundred and fifty days worth of ways to do terariffs. So he's going to find their sort of five or six my friend Bruce Melman, go check out his sub stack. There's five or six other pieces of various authorities that he can start to rebuild his tariff structure, and he'll do that, but it's going to cause all sorts of instability in prices.

Prices aren't going to come down, They're only going to go up. And at this point, right you think, oh, great, there's going to be no teriff, but as a business you have to plan that there's going to be some more tariff somewhere. So this is a mess. But you know,

did anybody expect Donald Trump to leave? I mean, at this point, when he leaves office on January twenty, twenty twenty nine, we're going to have half the White House probably not be rebuilt, a Kennedy Center that's gutted and not finished, half built structures, an economy in tatters because of the mess he has created with this tariffs. So let's zoom out internationally. What's going to happen all these

trade deals he cut using this illegal tariff authority. How many countries are going to say, hey, we want a new deal. The deal we cut is no longer operational. I think quite a few countries are going to do that. So if the tool he used for leverage is unstable, then the leverage itself shrinks. And oh, by the way, he still hasn't finished this trade deal with China, and he's going to meet with she in April. My god, has it ever been a better environment for the Chinese

than the environment Trump has created? Now he's alienated every major ally the United States has right handing over China, you know, handing, Canada and India, all these in the European Union better trade relations with China than with the United States. And he has sort of usurped his own leverage that he was trying to manufacture in going back and forth. Heck of a job, Trumpy, because every foreign leader is going to look at the Supreme Court rule

and go Court's going to intervene. We may there may be some refunds. Congress may have to insert its control again. Why do we have to negotiate with Trump on these deals? So we'll see, it's going to be a mess. But Donald Trump's been weakened quite a bit. So here's where it's going to get interesting politically if this now moves to Congress, and we'll see, right Mike Johnson does not want to put these votes out there now, I mean right now, Trump's going to be super vulnerable to Republicans

walking away from him right. I mean, we've already seen a handful of Republicans, and Trump got angry when when a Colorado Republican voted against voted to get rid of that symbolic vote to get rid of the Canadian tariffs, and Trump withdrew his endorsement endorsed his primary opponent. Now, in some ways, if Trump wants to try to purge his party and reorient it around his protectionist vision for

the United States, then this is how he's you know, he's going to have to go find more like minded folks and get them elected to Congress. But I'll tell you this, Colorado's have always been a free trade state. Colorad Bhado's was one of those states that you know, while they lean left there, they're you know, they're not anti right to work, not the most pro union state.

They don't like tariffs. It's free trade s date. I have feeling that Jeff heard, the congressman that Trump once endorsed and has now unendorsed, knows his electorate better than Donald Trump knows that electorate. So bottom line is this is an MRI moment for the Republican Party. Right, We're going to find out who is still a free market conservative and who isn't. So we'll find out if they're how big this fracture is. We know there's a small

fracture in the Republican Party over trading tariffs. We know there's a silent minority. I still think it's close to a majory, that's close to a majority that doesn't like these tariffs, but they're scared to say anything publicly. You've got to cover the Supreme Court. Well, we see more folks, especially as balloting gets closer, exposed themselves as free marketeers.

We'll see and there might be votes. A rational reaction by a president would be to try to get authority in Congress, try to persuade, try to find a way to do this. I don't know if he's going to try to do this that way. I don't I don't expect him. I mean, he's already responded as I mean literally. A Democratic strategist said to me, if I could have scripted Trump's reaction to this ruling, I couldn't have scripted

it any better. I mean, is he is owning the every tax hike now in the country, every consumer tax hit. He just announced a fifteen percent tax hide and consumer goods across the board, So you now know that if you're paying more, it is directly associated with Trump's economy. It's unbelievable, he said in April this would likely end in the situation we're in now. The only surprise was that the ruling wasn't even more emphatic it was seven to two or nine zero. But what happens next is

far more important. Does Congress reassert its authority in the moment? Do we see free market republicans speak out publicly? Does the loyalty tests continue by Trump? If Gorsach and Barrett are disloyal for reading a statute narrowly, what happens the next time the disagreement is over something bigger than tariff's So this wasn't about trade policy. This is about how we govern and whether we have three co equal branches of government. And Donald Trump shortcut just ran straight headlong

into the brick wall that is the US Constitution. And guess what, he's super unpopular at the moment. Let me tell you about a new poll in the Washington Post. Through this for a few minutes before we get to the interview. Now, it's a poll of all adults and so far as we've seen the pattern. When it's adults, it's his job approval can't get out of the thirties. When it's registered voters, you'll see his job approval it's somewhere in the forty one forty two percent range. Sixty

percent disapproved. It's that disapproval number is huge. Here's a few more things. Do you approve a disapprove of the way Trump is handling This is again Washington Post IPSOS poll. So it's a you, gov, i'm, i'm, it's EPSOS. I'M. It's not my favorite methodology, but look that ship has sailed, but he is upside down on every single issue. He's got a majorities disapproving of him on every issue. They tested us Mexican border. Fifty percent disapproved of his policy.

That was the best issue he performed on. Forty seven percent approve of his border policy, Fifty eight percent disapprove of his immigration policies, fifty seven percent disp proove of his handling of the economy, sixty two percent disapprove of the relations that he has with other countries, sixty four percent disapprove of the tariffs, and sixty five percent hate this inflationary Now Here's the thing that ought to scare democrats. Americans are split on who they trust to handle the

country's main problems. Here's the specific wording of the question, overall, who do you trust to do a better job handling the country's main problems? Trump? Of the Democrats in Congress, well, thirty three percent picked Trump, thirty one percent pick Democrats in Congress. Thirty one percent said neither. How about that? Right? Does that not tell you where America really is? Right?

You know, you basically have the base of the basis of two parties saying one thing and everybody else feeling I don't trust either one of these parties at the moment, you know, you know, I continue to wonder is this an opportunity for a third party and independent? Does this? You know, are Democrats going to realize they have a

huge problem, that their brand is shit. They are seen as way too liberal, way too progressive, way outside the mainstream on some of these issues, and this is why they don't have confidence and sort of the rest of the electorate. Right, the base is animated on hate and Trump, and that might be enough in a midterm, but this poll is still revealing as again, Donald Trump unpopular in

every single issue that matters to Americans. The fact that this is not a blowout, that Democrats aren't more trusted right now to handle everything than Trump by ten or fifteen or twenty points, that's a reflection on the Democratic That's that's that's just a reminder of a red flag, all right. I, Like I said, I've got a terrific injury with game to beer here. It is, like I said, the perfect neighbor is. I used the MRI metaphor before. I think it's an MRI and race and culture in

America a little bit. Some of our gun laws are stay in your ground laws is sort of relevant in here. But here's the beauty of this documentary again using only footage from body cameras, no narration, no talking heads. It is a classication. You get to decide your own reaction without letting others try to influence you and tell you what you're seeing. You're seeing it all raw and in

real time. And I highly encourage it. I really do, because I think it will when you hear people say that, you know, it is just a reminder that that we've raised a lot of racists in this country, multiple generations, and it's going to take a while for us to eradicate that strain, that virus out of the American society. We're making progress, not fast enough, and this, this documentary will tell you that. So let's sneak in a break. And when we come back to my conversation about the

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dot com slash chuck. So again, that's Ethos dot com slash chuck. Application times may vary and the rates themselves may vary as well, but trust me, Life insurance is something you should really think about it, especially if you've got a growing family. Well, let's get into the time machine because guess what, let's just say thematically, it sort of fits with the with the broader theme of the

beginning of this podcast, having to do with emergencies and how those in power can abuse legislation that gives them emergency power. So let's get into the time machine. Where are we going. We are going back to February twenty seventh, nineteen thirty three. The German parliament building known as the

Reichstag burned. The fire matters, but the story isn't the flames. The real story is how fragile Germany's political system already was, how quickly legal authority became a vehicle for authoritarian power. And to understand the night of the Reichstag fire, you have to understand why Adolf Hitler was even in office in the first place. Because he didn't seize power, he was handed power. That's how this authoritarian regime in Germany began.

By the early nineteen thirties, Germany was exhausted. The Great Depression had devastated the economy. Remember, America was pursuing that horrible protectionist tariff policy that was essentially causing the rise

of nationalism all around the world. That's my historical opinion. But it had devastating impact on the European economy, particularly the Germans. Unemployment swords collapsed. Faith in the parliamentary democracy in Germany erode it. The president, Paul von Hindenberg, had already appointed three chancellors in rapid succession before he ends up appointing Adolf Hitler. First it was Heinrich Bruening. He

governed through the harsh austerity measures during the depression. He was the one that had to cut spending and wages in hopes of trying to stabilize the currency. Instead, it deepened public misery and he lost support inside that parliament. Then came Franz von Poppen, who had virtually no base inside parliament and ruled almost entirely by presidential emergency decree. He alienated both the left and the right and could

not build a governing coalition. And then the last one before Hitler was a gentleman by the name of Kurt von Schlatscher, who tried to split the Nazi Party and construct a cross party alliance. It failed and he quickly lost Hindenburg's confidence. So in under three years, Germany cycled

through three increasingly unstable governments. And during that entire period they had something called Article forty eight, the emergency clause of the Weimar Constitution, which was used regularly to bypass parliament because parliament was so dysfunctional and divided, so emergency rule had already been normalized in German society's some From there, Hitler didn't invent the habit. He stippingly stepped into the void.

So how did Hitler get there? In nineteen thirty two, the Nazi Party had surged to become the largest party in parliament. It was real popular support, but he did not. The Nazi Party did not have a majority in parliament, but in the November nineteen thirty two elections the Nazis actually lost seats. Momentum was slipping. Hitler was not inevitable, But what changed was the calculation of the elites. Again,

just think about the Republican Party circa twenty sixteen. But I digress. So what changed was elite calculation. Conservative insiders, especially Franz van Poppin, believe they could use Hitler's popularity to stabilize government. They assumed that they would dominate the captain, that they could box Hitler in, that his radicalism could be managed, that his mass following could be harnessed. Well, they were wrong, but they tried so. On January thirtieth,

nineteen thirty three, Hindenberg appointed Hitler Chancellor. Not because he was democratic, not because he had a majority in parliament he did not, but because the elites at the time thought, well, he's got the biggest block of supporters and we can control him, or so they thought, so he gets appointed January thirtieth, twenty seven. Twenty eight days later, excuse me.

February twenty seventh, the Reichstock burns now a Dutch communists Marinis vander Lub was arrested at the scene. Most historians today believe he likely acted alone. Whether the Nazis helped or simply exploited the fire is still debated to this day. Right was it an inside job? Was you know? Was vander Lubi a patsy? But politically it didn't matter. Hitler immediately framed the event as the beginning of a communist uprising,

and that framing found fertile ground. Enemy of my enemy is my ally and everybody feared the communists in Germany. Germany had a growing Communist block inside the Reichstock Street. Clashes between Nazis and Communists were common. Political violence was happening a lot. The violence was real and fear moved quickly. So the next day after the fire, twenty eighth, Hindenberg

signed the Reichstag Fire Decree under Article forty eight. That decree suspended, essentially what is the equivalent of our first Amendment. It suspended freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom

of assembly, protections against arrest without charge. This was constitutional authority, legal authority. Their constitution essentially created a dictatorship. Legally. Thousands of communists were arrested immediately, their ability to organize a campaign was crippled. And then here's the here's the key with it. A week later, they're holding elections anyway, They were having another round of elections in March. So on

March fifth, nineteen thirty three, Germany votes. The Nazi Party receives forty three point nine percent of the vote two hundred and eighty eight seats, not a majority. Even after the fire, even after the repression, the Nazis did not command a p a majority of German voters. But here's where the mechanics mattered. The Communist Party won about twelve percent in that election, but many of its deputies were prevented from taking their seats. They wouldn't let the Communists

in there. So it you take away the Communists, suddenly that looks like they do have a majority. So when you combined with conservative allies, the Nazis had the numbers to move forward. Later in March, they passed something called the Enabling Act, in a granted Hitler's cabinet authority to

legislate without parliamentary approval. Just they just he would decree. There was no more legislative branch in Germany at this point. By the way, to get this passed, it required two thirds majority. The legislature basically voted to eradicate its existence. And why did it pass because the Communist Party members weren't a to vote, they were absent. Some opposition members were simply intimidated by the Nazi thugs. Conservative parties calculated

that cooperation was safer than resistance. Again go back to nine twenty sixtey. Sorry, the authoritarian turned required votes, it

required signatures, it required a legal procedure. The German dictatorship was done via constitutional rules. Why did it work well? By February nineteen thirty three, emergency governance had already been normalized, Parliament had already been weakened in Germany. The economic crisis had eroded faith in liberal democracy in general. What they looked around and wasn't working. People didn't like people didn't like that economy. Elites believed the temporary authoritarian measures would

restore order. So the Reichstag fire did not create authoritarianism, but it accelerated a system that was already leaning in that direction. And that's what's so always been so unsettling about this incident and history, because the incident is not the fire or the arson. The most unsettling part of this story is its legality. German democracy didn't collapse because laws were ignored, just the opposite. It collapsed because the laws were used expansively. But they were used, and they

were used under crisis conditions. Emergency powers are not inherently authoritarian.

It's who uses those emergency powers. But when crisis becomes the organizing principle of governance and legislatures differ rather than assert authority. Emergency becomes permanence. Hitler did not overthrow the system in one night. He operated within it, stretched it until it snapped, and then created his own scary version. The reichs Dog didn't fall in flames, It fell with signatures. Boy,

such a reminder. History doesn't repeat, but it certainly does run all right, little question time, By the way, I might as well share this with you so that don't

name anything Hindenburg because Hindenburg is a politician and Hindenburg is alm all End in catastrophe. That's the real takeaway. That's my other takeaway from our time machine history of the Reichstug fire. But anyway, let's take some questions. Ask Chuck. This comes from Jaye New York, and he says, hey,

you mentioned last week that populism almost always leads to with anti semitism. It is an accurate correlation with some obvious historical examples Hitler's Germany. But my question is why does populism lead to anti Semitism? Is it simply because populis often look for a scapegoat and Jewish people provide an easy target As a non Jewish person, I've accepted the correlation of populism anti Semitism. I've never really considered the why Jay, It's an excellent question. I think one

is we're a super small minority already. Two that's so, and minorities get scapegoated generally. Two Jews do punch above their weight in corporate America, in the finance world. So in tough economic times, it becomes if you already, especially if you you know, look, there's less anti Semitism in South Florida because there's more Jews that live in South Florida, right, you know, they're to me, the correlation of anti Semitism

usually is where there's fewer Jews. Right Wherever you see the least amount of Jews, you'll see the most amount of anti Semitism. Some of it's driven by some some hateful sects of Christianity, not Christianity itself, but there are some sort of sex that most Christians would denounce, that that that use religion to sort of teach hate of Jews.

But it's it, I've all, you know, look as I look at it, and you're just like I just I find it amusing that this tiny you know that that we Jews here that were like point three percent of the globe's population or something like that. And yet we're and in fact, we're still below our population high are below the popular what the Jewish population of the globe was pre World War Two. And you know, we're apparently, you know, behind all these incredible conspiracies. So we really,

I guess, punch above our weight. But look, it's always easy to scapegoat entities you don't know. And it's still there are still huge pockets in this country, huge pockets around the world that no Jewish people exist, but have never met one. So when you have not when you don't know anybody as a three dimensional figure, it's easy to turn them into sort of two dimensional enemies. It's the best explanation I have. But it is, you know,

I appreciate that. I mean, it's interesting the way you word it, you sort of you accept you accept that as an accurate correlation. I mean, it just it just is always what happens. I think sometimes we forget that, you know, bad ideas are usually not rational. Maybe that's a better way to look at it. Next question comes from Bills from Newburg, Oregon, but he says temporarily Falls Church, Virginia. Well,

it's nice to have you as a neighbor. Bill, he says, I think if you answer this one, then I'll enter the five timers club. If that means that you've read five of my questions on here. If you do honor

me thus, I humbly thank you. Is this the first administration that runs the most like a business that you've ever seen? Long a mantra Republicans, I think they finally got their wish and this administration is run the most like a business or any other. Your defense of Casey Watperson's Corporation is acting rightly in the face of the Epstein files made me shake my head. I think this administration is handling the Epstein files exactly the way a

corporation's pr department went. I often say, go Kaines, but this time I'll say, go Seahawks, my adopted team. Thanks Billis I didn't know I was defending the Casey Washerman Corporation ex actly rightly in the face anyway. Not quite sure. I get the question you're asking if it's running more than well, Well, it depends on if by running the business, do you do what's in the best interest. A business is supposed to do what's in the best interest of

its bottom line. The question does Donald Trump run this administration and the best interests of the bottom line of the United States, or does he run it in the best interests of the bottom line of Donald Trump. I know that sounds a bit sort of like hyperbole, but I feel like he makes more decisions based on what's in his best interest in the private sector, he and his friends, et cetera. But it's not always in the best interest of the bottom line of the United States.

So that's where you know, he's picking winners and losers. So I don't I understand the I understand the premise here question. I just don't see the evidence that he is running it like a US. If he's running it like a business, he's not running it like a business that wants to grow, expand and be successful over time. Right, it feels like he's running it more like how does a legacy business that's trying to survive rather than thrive.

But I've always you know, if you ran the government like a business, you would you probably would get rid of a lot of poverty measures because they, you know, you might get rid of. You might not stockpile as much defense weaponry either, Right, you know, so there'd be a lot of regulation, a lot more regulation you might get rid of if you were running it like a business. Anyway, I don't think he's running it in the best interests

of the US government's bottom line. I think ultimately, if he's running it like a business, he's running it in the best interests of his own bottom line. I'm trying to see where you caught what I was saying about Casey Wasserman, and how you any I wasn't defect. I look at the Casey Wasserman situation and think, you know, I was talking with the journalists who said that they

they had a line. The way they were dealing with it is anybody with Epstein ties pre two thousand and seven, they weren't going to treat treat like what were you thinking that they were willing to give anybody preos basically pre charges being brought against him some benefit of that. There's a middle ground of people that sort of still kept in touch with him and then until he you know, then and then walked after that, and then there's anybody that you dealt with him after two thousand and nine,

you don't, right. Wasserman is one of the few that is being punished for emails that go back to twenty oh two, twenty o three that don't seem to go there. So that would be one, but it is, you know, and yes, I do agree that the Epstein files in that sense are being Yes, the handling of that on a pr level, I'll give you that that right. The best way of business would do is just put it all out there, make every you know, don't organize it for people. Make other people have to figure it out.

The problem with this is that every couple of days there's like a new It feels like a new development because you know, somebody is, you know, methodically. You know, there's hundreds and thousands of people methodically going through these these files, and there's always something new to find. And again you look around. I mean, I miss this. I'm a I'm an adjunct professor at USC. Apparently we had some USC professors get caught up in the Epstein files.

So this has been like a machine gun that went off erratically and bullets went everywhere, and everybody's paying a price except Donald Trump. I think Donald Trump's paying a price too, right, you know, is he going to pay a direct price or does he pay an indirect political price, and I think he's paying the indirect political price more importantly, Bill, if that is your five timer, congrats, welcome to the five Timers club. Maybe we should get mugs or something,

get some swag for that as well. Next question comes from Philip and Biloxi. He says, Hey, they're my Congressman. Mike Eazel surprisingly is embracing the Supreme Court's decision. He was interviewed locally on WLOX where he said, and I'm paraphrasing,

we may not like it, but the Supreme Court is the final word, and we have to obey the law of the land. He's also running a local radio that says something like, thanks to Trump and Eazel, the economy is booming and we're living in a golden age. Which is why I say it's surprising because he normally echoes all of Trump's talking points. Thanks also for being the only national voice I know that occasionally speaks about Mississippi politics.

Philip and Biloxi, Well, you know, that's very heartening to hear, and I think it is a reminder that I do take the more optimistic approach about elected officials that most of them do want to accept the structure of the constitution that really the most abusive, the person that has the least amount of respect for it is the guy sitting in the Oval office. And and yes, you certainly have people who don't want to look like they're on

the wrong side. And notice how you know that there's different ways you can sort of accept well, Supreme Court the law of the land. He doesn't want to get caught being anti Trump, but he may be very happy that this happened, you know. So the point is is that given where he is at, you know, I think the the he couldn't get caught pushing, you know, publicly celebrating the Supreme Court ruling. So I think there's a difference, Right, I'm curious to see who celebrates it, who uses this

as a moment. You know, who else is Don Bacon not running for reelection? Right, who else goes that far out on the limb on that? But and let's see, you know, what does he do if he does have to vote in Congress on any of these things. I'm not convinced that Trump wants to go do that, but we'll see. Next question comes from an elected official, John m imperially, a mayor from New Jersey, and he writes, first, Chuck, thank you for the tododcast political junkie and amateur historians

dream come true. I'm the mayor of a small town in New Jersey and frequently electure on American history and specifically the Constitution from a quote citizen's point of view. So here's my question. What if the Constitutional Convention had been held in the spring or fall of seventeen eighty seven rather than the summer. My point is that the delegates of the Constitutional Convention could not wait to get

out of the hot, muggy, miserable Philadelphia that summer. The result of brilliant constitution and principle, but with way too many particulars rushed over and not properly thought out. One other thought for you is to throw out in your toddcast exactly who are the founding father. There's the fifty six men who signed the Declaration of Independence, the thirty nine men who signed the Constitution, or the six men

who signed both. And when I asked, who do the six men who signed both are, no one gets it right. They are George Climber, George Reed, Roger Sherman, Robert Morris, James Wilson, and Benjamin Franklin mayor imperiality. First of all, I want to come visit your town. Love love hearing this, appreciate you loving the history part. I think you had to sign both. I think to be founding father. So let's go at the six, right, they should they shouldn't. We probably should make a bigger deal out of them.

You know, I have confessed a few times that I'm a sports card junkie. I guess you called it a baseball card junkie. In two thousand and nine, Tops put out an American history set and it was great. It had like little insert sets of Medal of Honor winners, and it was every Medal of Honor winner up through two nine, give you a little and I I just loved it. I you know, my daughter was five at

the time. And so I made a big deal and we built we have this great album of it and all this stuff, and and it has a whole bunch of subsets of those that signed the Constitution and those that signed the Declaration of Independence. But we really ought to say, make a bigger deal on the six, you know. And you know, at least one is a name that most people already know of Benjamin Frank. So it's a it's a pretty good it's a pretty good place to start.

But that's a kudos. Let's make those Let's make the uh the founding six. Let's maybe over time we give them more and more of their due. Thanks for listening and thanks for your service. John another New Jersey and writes in this is John from New Jersey. I don't think it's the same John, any rights. Was waiting to hear your thoughts on these two news bits. One that Gallup ending its presidential poll in two and Alila Mahea

is beating Tom Malinowski in New Jersey special election. I think it's upsetting the Gallup is choosing to stop polling presidential approval rather than report on the current administration's port rating. Do you see other firms mimicking this? And what are your thoughts on Mahia's win. I'm curious about how the June primary will go if there's more of a consolidation in that primary, But it looks like the establishment is already called lest a rounder. I did some Gallup thoughts

on my sub stack last week. If you wanted to read those, I you know, it's funny when you're in this When you're making content in multiple places, you touch everything.

You don't know if you've touched everything in every place, and I have not, you are correct. I have not touched New Jersey eleven here. I've done it in a couple other spots. I think I did it with the Silissa podcast, and we haven't touched and Gallop. I don't think I mentioned on the podcast maybe quickly in passing, but I did write up on gal I look, first of all, parse the announcement very very carefully from Gallup. Gallup said they're going to stop publicly releasing their job

approval on the president. I didn't get clarification of whether they're not actually asking the question. It's absolutely malpracticed to not ask the question on any survey you're doing, on anything in the public policy space at all, because you've got it is. It is a helpful way to at least understand how partisan folks are behaving where they lie. It gives you a better sense of which policy ideas have political traction versus those that may have, you know,

or less driven by ideology, more driven by popularity. It's it's just a it's it's it would be malpracticed not to have that piece of data with you. It is hard not to wonder Gallups primary. You know, they do a lot of survey work and private survey work. Can

they have a lot of federal contracts? The lack of trust anybody has in this country right now of any corporation and Donald Trump is amazing because a lot of people immediately looked up the amount of federal contracts that Gallup has with the government, sees that was quite a bit and could easily see right, Donald Trump already was mad at Politico, So then everybody in the government had to cancel their political subscriptions, whether they had a political

produce subscription somewhere, et cetera. And uh. And it sounds like Gallup was worried about its bottom line and worried about its business. It's possible they thought there was no upside to it since a whole bunch of other people were putting it out publicly. Nobody was saying Gallups was the best of the polls that are out there. Gallup had the best brand name out there, but their poll for a long time hadn't been the best poll. It

had been sort of problematic for a long time. You know, I remember when they stopped, they had a daily tracking which was a total mess because while I don't think their methodology changed, how people interpreted the changes just created all sorts of friction and they did a terrible job of communicating when they're when the tracking pole would change. So, you know, I think Gallup got out of the public

polling business a long time ago. Right when it used to be the CNN USA Today Gallup pole, that was the you know, basically the only pole that was considered better than that one was NBC News Wall Street Journal. But over time, the CNN, the Gallup pole had shown a lot more instability, and I know that we we certainly stopped using it as a reliable indicator. So I'm not going to sit here and call the Gallup pole, you know, but I but it would be it would

be malpractice. Not the doing any survey that you do public, public or private, in order to understand your survey better, in order to have a baseline, in order to know your your your survey isn't totally out of whack. You know, job job approval is one of those ubiquitous questions that helps you and you know, understand whether you basically have a you know, it's a the fact that so many

other posters do it. It serves as almost a check to make sure you're you don't have a you know you know for sure, do you have an out could you have an outlier survey, et cetera. So do pay attention to the fact that they just simply said they stopped they were going to stop publishing the result. Again, I can't imagine anybody would actually stop asking it. I mean again, it's a it's it's one of those questions.

It's almost like a stabilizing question. It helps you understand whether your your survey is is A is a trustworthy uh A trustworthy survey. As for the MAHI, I thought, look that the most fascinating aspect of this was the aggressiveness of APAC right. They wanted to take Malanski down.

They went after them hard, and they were successful. They raised the negatives of Malinowski and they see but the candidate they were hoping to help ended up finishing third, and the candidate that benefited from APEX attack ads in Malinowski, was somebody further to the left than Malinowski and perhaps just as unfriendly to some of APAX issues as Malinowski had become So it was really one of those a reminder that when you do attack ads and multi candidate

races in primaries, know what you're trying to do. If you're trying to take somebody out, do know who could benefit you? Know? And are you sure you're going to end up with somebody that isn't going to be more more of a problem for your issues? In this case, I think it was. It was that, I think it And this is where when interest when a big interest group goes after somebody, sometimes it's you know, Canada and candidate be cancel each other out and a candidate c

ends up benefiting. We got some three way prime. We got a three way primary coming up in Texas, right, We're going to see something like that take place. Right. Does Wesley Hunt benefit from all the corn and attack

ads on Paxton? Right rather than Cornyn? I mean, it certainly looks like Cornan has not benefited from all these attacks on Paxton, but instead the Demo generic Democratic vote has benefited when matched up against Paxton in general election matchups, and Paxton's negatives keep going up, but it is not helping Cornyon. So it is a reminder that Basically, negative ads can work, but don't assume those negative ads will accrue to the benefit of another candidate that you want

to benefit. It could always accrue to a third candidate. But as for look, I think I certainly you know, I see why everybody's going ahead and rally. It shnocked off somebody who used to have the title commerce and seem to win despite not being the biggest spender or anything like that. So I understand why the establishment at this point is like mam, might as well, might as well get behind money. Next question comes from Robert Leeds any rights, Hey, check me the press, missus you I

worked in several campaigns. Anyway, I'm a gold trader, and I have said for years that during Trump's first term and again during the second, gold seems to do weird things.

On the eve of the job's report, huge sell orders would come in overnight when the market was strong, gold would crash for five seconds, go back up, and then a bear's report will come out at eight thirty. After seeing your podcast today, I wanted to share this. You're doing a great job. Thanks well. What he was talking about was this weird again, and I think we've got to get some regulatory structure around these prediction markets versus gambling markets, et cetera. But there's got to be a

way to deal with fraud. And somebody gamed the jobs numbers. Right when Peter Navarro goes out warns of a bad jobs report, jobs report turns out much better the next day than when he went out there. And of all people to go out there as somebody who's already of questionable credibility on his information in general, right, that just

smells crazy. And you know this is where I you know, we're going full speed into these new markets without you know, we were building the ideas first and trying to come up with the regulation later. Very hard to put regulation on something that's already left the station. And I'm concerned about this, but we don't seem to have a very good, very interesting what you say on gold, you've just explained why I do not get involved in those markets at all.

I don't trust them. I think there's the people that are most involved are doing it as hedge and games in gaming it in some form, and those are just not That's not where my comfort level is. You know,

I like, I like, I'm more of them. My financial advisor and I were more of the warm Buffett acolytes, right, like investing in companies that people use, you know, durable goods, not always durable goods, but some durable goods, some texts on this on that, but you know, companies that actually succeed,

not just hypotheticals. Next question comes from Dan in Fairfax. He goes, hey, I consider myself an informed voter, but I am lost when it comes to this issue. From what I gather, a judge in Tazewell County has ruled twice that the redistricting effort shouldn't proceed, but the state government is moving ahead anyway. I also read that state democrats think any lawsuit of posing the measure can only

be filed in Richmond, which is really confusing. Further, the state Supreme Court doesn't seem to think this is an issue requiring urgency. Can you explain what's going on? Thank you, Dan, fair Facts. Look, it's a fair point. I think the the the legis the democrat. The democrats and the legislature continue to believe that the Supreme Court is going to overrule this staswell judge like they did the last time. But let's just step back. You know, I find this

whole campaign. I've seen the ads. The ads for Yes use every talking point I was using about why there shouldn't be re redistricting around, and it was just like confusing. Like when you hear an ad or you're like, well, I agree with that. I agree with that. You know, there shouldn't be politics in this. We got to take the politics out of this. That's why you've got to vote yes. You're like, wait what And I sit here and I'm like, I'm you know, am I being gas

lit by this ad campaign? Look, ends justify the means is bad policy, period. And ultimately that's what this entire effort in Virginia is about. Ends justifying the means. We have to do this now because of what they're doing in Tech. We have to do this now, and what they might do in Florida, what they might do in Indiana, what they might do in Missouri. Uh, I get it. Politics, ain't bean bag. You've heard me say it before on the Virginia front. Your right to be confused. I'm very

confused too. Some of it had you know. I Ultimately it feels as if these state supreme courts are you know, and what we've seen the courts are ultimately going to side with a legislatures on this because ultimately, right, that's that's who has the supremacy. Here is the legislature. Uh. And if this is what they've chosen to do, and they're going to the voters, so I suspect that this stay you know, I guess it's weird early voting starts

before the end of the stay right. I think early voting is supposed to begin the six and this stay this this this is supposed to basically be a not a statement, sort of an injunction against this process till the eighteenth. I think it's extraordinarily confusing. I have a feeling this map's going to pass pretty but this amendment to do this is going to pass pretty easily. But I'm just I don't think this is a good long

term look for Democrats. And I you know, I understand, Hey, you got to get power now, You'll worry about how it looks later. Is the mindset. But again, it goes back to ends justify the means, and we're watching an entire Republican party that's probably going to regret at some point being an ends justify the means. Party, and they've been that party in particular since certain certain orange haired man strode down an escalator. And it is, it is,

it is. I can tell you this. I know Spamberger is going to regret having to start this partisan and it's interesting how she is having you know, some of it is just because the legislatures this there, this redistrict effort, you know, they vary, the clock is sticking, you know, they they literally had to move this in days and

get it done even before she got sworn in. And it has put her more as a partisan actor than I think I ever thought she would want to be, and look like very curious to see, by the way, what her State of the Union response comes across as I think when you're when you're the Democrats, it's who i'd pick, right, you want to pick somebody who just won and won by a lot from a state that used to be you know, and share her profile from the national security space. So I I you know, I

think I get why they picked her. I do. I mean, I'm I'm there's two ways about sort of her tenure. If you're going to do hardcore politics, better to do at the start of your term. And then you moderate us the term goes on. On the other hand, it's hard to make you know. This is a first impression for a lot of voters in Virginia. But Dan, I'm as confused, and the ad campaigns are only more confusing.

But look, it's gonna pass because this will be a super small turnout election and we already know those that are fired up on any messaging that involves checking Trump are gonna win the Battle of Turner. All right. Last question for this episode comes from Jim Tobahana, Pennsylvania. I

think you're giving me your age, but I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna do it. I don't want to. I don't watch you bragging about how much younger you are than I am. Jim, all right, just because you got you got ef You've been on this planet eight less years than I have. You don't have to rub it in my face. Uh. Anyway, your question, does international diplomacy have a greater long term impact on legacy Trump? With his focus on the second term so much abroad, I

don't see how this positively impacts his legacy. Putting his name on statues the Kennedy Center giving h seems like a short term ego boost for him. Band aid that the next administration can reverse. Ultimately, long term legacy seems like strength in the US with a focus domestically, with an emphasis on improving his approval rating. Focusing on more of a bipartisan agenda would be the biggest way to

improve as a long term legacy. Am I right? If prices continue to soar in the behavior of his cabinet, no marf k Junior Agency's ice, he's diminishing his own legacy. Jim, you're you know you're doing You're you're applying something that I used to have to ban during my meet the press days, during our staff in there and be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Stop trying to use logic with me. You know, in the Trump era we banned logic. Jim. Everything you're saying

is so logical. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes right. George W. Bush did that, right, He's like, you know what, I'm gonna focus on pep bar. By the end, we realized that Rack was gonna be a terrible legacy all this stuff, but he's still you know, there were some things he did that that were about his legacy, and guess what one of the most positive legacies he has is is what he's done in helping fund cures for AIDS in Africa and what the pep Far program has done.

I know that Elon Musk and that those people I have been trying to destroy that last positive legacy of the Bush administration. But you know, this goes back to I, don't you know Trump's the first guy. You know, I used to do these exit interviews with retiring members of Congress when I when I had my multiple when I with with the Daily Rundown and with then I would eventually change it to Meet the Press Daily and Meet

the Press now. And I used to do these exit interviews with retiring members both sides of the aisle and get as many of them that would sit down, and they were really legacy questions. And you know, but I also wanted to know, like, you know, when was the first time you wanted to run for office? And why

do you want to run? Things like that? And you know, because I've done these sort of candidate interviews back thirty five years now where people want to run for office the first time, you know, back at the Hotline, we used to interview these candidates, cook Report, and we used to, you know, piggyback on the Cook Report. This is what they They do this more strenuously than we did a

hotline back in the day. And one of the things that I that I've learned from those interviews over the years is that I used to say, you know, it always made me feel better about the democracy, because everybody, whether they were, no matter where they were on the political spectrum hard left, center, left, hard right, center, right, independent, whatever you wanted to put it, they all ran for office on for one thing. There was always something they wanted.

There was the initial trigger, you know. I remember talking to one congressman. I said, so, what what got you involved in congress? His first office was on the school board, and he was mad that they drew drew the lines, drew kid out of a certain school district. I'm going to go on the school board, And he admitted, he goes. Once I got on the school board, I realized they had nothing to do with the lines. It was somebody else,

he goes. But but I got involved, and and and suddenly he said, the more he learned about government and how it worked, the more interested he got. So Donald Trump's one of the few people to successfully gain office, whose simple motivation seemed to be sort of the same motivation somebody has to go streaking on a football field. They just wanted to be noticed, right, They just wanted to, you know, be famous. They wanted more people to have

to respect them. It's a weird motivation. But he wasn't motivated because he's got an issue he cares the most about. He was maybe he has a daddy. There's plenty of We've had a handful of presidents and presidential candidates who I think got involved in policy because they felt like it was the only way to please their dad. You know.

Boys said, there's a lot of politics is filled with presidents are filled or it's amazing how many of our presidents have daddy issues one way or the other, including this one, by the way. But I don't think he really cares. You know, when you when you're so worried about putting your name on stuff, it shows you that you really don't care about Like the Institute of Peace was never his idea. He just wanted to slap his

name on it because it uses the word piece. The Kennedy Center isn't his idea, But he wants to slap his name on it because he's afraid his name is going to disappear. You know, He's only a real legacy is going to be that ballroom in the White House, right, And I think he thinks, hey, they still call the balcony Truman's falcony, so hopefully they'll always have to call you know, the ball room will always be the Trump ballroom. Well he might get that, and there'll be some Donald.

There'll be some Donald J. Trump elementary schools, and I you know, you know, we know this, it will be. But I don't think he's got an issue. He the if he cared about one issue throughout his entire career, it was, you know, his belief in tariffs. But even that, I don't think he fully understood why he believed in tariffs other than he was trying to come up with a talking point to insert himself into a political conversation

back in the late eighties. So again to go back to your question, Jim, everything about him makes sense, but you're that that's not how Trump's wired. It's just not how he's wired. You know, You're you're one hundred percent right in these things. By the way I've gone, we've gone now a couple hours and I didn't get to and I'm going to save this for Wednesday, but we're going to do I'm going to give you. I'll give

you this hint now, the Christy Nomes Senate campaign. That's a fascinating exit ramp that the Trump White Houses try to come up with to get rid of Nome. Fascinating situation. Also want to get into the Maha moms and how yet another monsanto, the first major donation they'd ever given to Trump. Let's just say they reminded Trump of that. That's why they got the executive order that they got. But those Maha Moms, We're going to get into that too on Wednesday. So look, it was a hugely busy weekend.

That last question reminded me of a couple other issues. I didn't get to get to. Maha moms and Nome for South Dakota Senate where two of them. But I'm not gonna I'm just going to leave that as a tease for the next episode in forty eight hours. Thanks for listening. By the way, we were having some of our you guys have been great. I know there's some new subscribers out there, some new devots. I appreciate having you. How do I know new? Because we keep growing and

things are going well. I can tell because I now got more people telling me, hey, I've got fewer people coming up to me saying hey, I miss you. What are you doing now? Now it's like, hey, I miss you over there, but I really like what you're doing now. So that's all because you guys are liking, you're subscribing,

word of mouth, all of those things. And so let's just say I appreciate it because it's you know, this is an entrepreneurial business, and it is credibility has earned one listener and one viewer at a time, and this growth tells me that you guys are help are expressed or saying that I'm earning it with you. So thank you, and with that, I'll see you at forty eight dollars