Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to Sips and Substance, where we distill politics down to its essence. I'm Justin. We have Jonathan over here. Hello. And we are going to evaluate Trump's first 100 days in office because, well, it's been 100 days.
Speaker: And this is ah arbitrary metric that I guess FDR used and everyone else is using it. So we might as well too. Yep. I think It might be a little bit surprising on how we're going to evaluate these things, because if you listen to this podcast, I think it's pretty apparent that we are unhappy with the Trump administration, but we want to analyze this from three different perspectives, right?
Speaker: One from how the Democrats would view these first hundred days, how independents and swing voters and the double haters, how they're looking at the first hundred days. And then what are the Republicans saying?
Speaker: Well, I think also, you know, it's important that we also kind of keep doing what we're doing, right? we Neither one of us are bound and to be dyed in the wool, full-blown Democratic partisans.
Speaker: So what I think that I think it's important for us to do as well is just try to evaluate it from as objective a stance as we can. And so we're going to try to do that, too. Look at it from what Democrats think as a party politically.
Speaker: Republicans as well, how it's affecting independence, but also give our take, because this is the honest take of trying to be viewing what's going on without the partisan lens necessarily. Because I think you're you're right. We want the the three different partisan lenses, but also the the aspect of it from what do we think if we can try to remove ourselves from that as well.
Speaker: Right. That's a good point. And so we're going to also talk about the major initiatives that the Trump administration has undergone. So that's Doge, tariffs and the economy, deal-making in general, immigration, anti-woken DEI. mean, these are the things that Trump ran on. And so I think it's fair for us to evaluate the administration on these major initiatives that he's undergone.
Speaker: And then we're also going to talk about the major scandal briefly, which is Signalgate. That seems to be the one thing that has stuck in the media. And we have some news in that regard.
Speaker: The National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, has been fired, resigned. It's unclear. He has been appointed to be the UN ambassador. So is that a promotion, demotion? i don't know.
Speaker: um But we have Marco Rubio, the man of many hats, who is going to be acting National Security Advisor. ah He is the National Archivist as well, I believe.
Speaker: And he is Secretary of State. So I don't know. only You don't believe part of that is Trump knowing that Henry Kissinger was both secretary of state and national security adviser. And if Nixon could do it, he can do it, too.
Speaker: Maybe. I don't know. No, you know that when when that that thought is at least passed through his mind. um because certain When I think of intellectuals, I think of, henry i mean, whatever you say of Henry Kissinger, smart man, right up there with what Marco Rubio, right? Henry Kissinger, Marco Rubio, two two people of the same kind of same kind of background.
Speaker: So, But a beer this week, if you're a loyal watcher, viewer, listener, you've probably seen me have this one before. um My wife has come to a point where I have a lot of random beers that are left in the fridge from all these podcasts. We're doing a new one every week. And she said, you know what?
Speaker: Get rid of some of these beers before you buy some more. So finishing off the Heady Topper this week, this is a really good, um if you missed the first time, really good New England style IPA. I'm drinking it out of a can.
Speaker: and not a cup because they recommend that and i actually did experiment it's it's better out of a can the it's the carbonation is little more lively the flavor is a little more punchy when you have it out of the can this is my favorite new uh east east coast new england hazy ipa because it's not overly sweet a lot of the later iterations of the the hazy ipa are are too sweet for my tastes they have lot of the the like the citra hops and the really heavy on the the the fruit flavored hops this one is much much more balanced has more sort of dankness and bitterness going on at the back end.
Speaker: Really good beer. Other thing I wanted to mention briefly is the World Beer Cup was this week. They announced winners. So if you're looking for a beer this week, go over to the World Beer Cup list of winners, find something local and go have one. There's all kinds of good local beers on there. I linked that in the bibliography. So the winners are there. um And there are four, for example, for my little tiny town and in Colorado, we have four breweries that won something. So there's a good chance that you can find something near you um that's won and ah won an award and go check it out.
Speaker: You'll find some good beer. Before we get into the main discussion, I want to briefly mention the Canadian elections. because Trump had an outsized effect on the Canadian elections.
Speaker: If you don't follow Canadian politics, that's okay. We don't really either. But generally speaking, Canadian politics is cyclical. So you have eight to 10 year terms where, you know, the liberals will be in charge and then the conservatives will be in charge and then the liberals.
Speaker: And that's generally what happens. And Justin Trudeau was prime minister Canada for quite a long time. And Canada has their own problems and people are just sort of done with Trudeau and he ended up resigning.
Speaker: And the conservatives were on their way to victory, landslide victory. In comes Trump and he completely upended those dynamics. The liberal party and ended up winning. They didn't get an outright majority, but they ended up winning to the point where they're going to be the ones dictating the coalition and Carney is going to be the next prime minister of Canada.
Speaker: And so I think what's really remarkable is that the leader of the conservatives, he lost his own seat. Nothing ticks off Canadians more except for maybe bad refereeing and hockey than the United States telling them, hey, we're going to make you ah our next state.
Speaker: And so basically, Trump resurrected the liberals from the dead. As you said, they were going to get crushed. And then all of a sudden, they're going to win. And they did win. And Canadians are are sort of pissed at the U.S. across the board. they're They're sort of voting with their feet in their wallets. I was reading today that ah the tourism from Canada is down 21% already this year.
Speaker: right And makes up, they make something, something I want to say, like it was like 40% of all tourists, international tourists, something really high, all international tourists come from Canada. And that 21% is actually going to be a real drag on American tourist industry.
Speaker: there's There's feeling ah amongst you know tourism providers, ah service providers, that lot of small places are going to go out of business just because the Canadians are like, screw you, we're going to spend our money at home.
Speaker: um So there's some serious animosity towards the United States up north, and it showed in their po in the election, and it's going to show in any number of other ways too. Yeah.
Speaker: In my experience, it's really hard to piss off Canadians, but somehow we've managed to do it. Play hockey. They can be... real that's one that I played, you know, pick up hockey for years and years and years. And Canadians, very nice and friendly off the ice, not so much necessarily on the ice.
Speaker: But as this phrase goes, they're getting their elbows up about Donald Trump. Yeah. So, you know, again, why do we mention this? Well, one, they're one of our strongest allies, so we should care. We should at least follow to some degree their elections, at least know who the prime minister is and the ruling party.
Speaker: And also we wanted to sort of demonstrate the ramifications of Trump's policies on the international stage. And this is something that happened in the first hundred days, something to evaluate. Our forever closest ally is really angry with us, right? So angry that they're voting for the other guy because he's standing up to us better than the conservative.
Speaker: um And I mean, Trump doesn't care, right? his And his his people don't seem to care at all that Canada doesn't like us. But there are some real ramifications there, right? And it remains to be seen how bad those how bad things get, but it's not off to a great start.
Speaker: Okay, so the first thing that I want to talk about are just the raw numbers, because that's a pretty objective way of evaluating the first 100 days of Trump's presidency.
Speaker: And I'll be honest, They're fucking terrible. These are the worst numbers that we've seen in, what, 70 years? Is that is that right? Yeah, yes. Trump has cratered in his approval rating on some of his top issues.
Speaker: So the economy and immigration were net positive when he was elected and when he started office. And now he is net negative on immigration, the economy.
Speaker: He's getting crushed on inflation slash cost of living. He's getting crushed on trade. So overall, he's sitting at minus 9.7%, according to G. Elliot Morris, who headed 538 before Disney got rid of 538.
Speaker: And it's not... A couple of things I want to would want to clarify. it's It's not the worst approval ratings ever. It's the worst approval ratings after 100 days. Yes. We should stipulate that because still room to grow um yeah either direction.
Speaker: And also, that poll is not the only one. Right. We've read some other polls in the bibliography. The one that I was reading and focusing on personally is that the New York Times Siena College poll, which, again, shows him, um I think, even more underwater.
Speaker: I think it's like 52-46, so it would be minus 14. um But in any case, it seems to be a common theme, right, where Trump's support after 100 days is lower than anybody's. And I know you have a joke, Reddy.
Speaker: Yes. So William Henry Harrison, this is my joke, but William Henry Harrison had a better first hundred days. He was dead for 70 of them. Yeah, there you go. we go We're here all week. Thank you very much.
Speaker: So I find it really interesting, the the world that we live in, this polarized world, because if you talk to some of your Republican friends, they are really enthusiastic.
Speaker: They love Trump. so So how do we square this, right? How did he win the election in a polarized environment? And how is he getting killed right now in a polarized environment? And what it really boils down to is his base, really enthusiastic.
Speaker: Democrats haven't really changed their opinion of him. Maybe they're surprised at the amount of bad stuff that he's done from their point of view. I don't know. But it's independents that have really swung the polls against Trump.
Speaker: Well, I think it's fair to say they did swing the election, right? If he just had his MAGA core vote for him in November, he wouldn't have won, right? He relied on these independents and the sort of the undecideds to vote for him.
Speaker: And I think the reason we saw them we saw that then and we're seeing what do we see now is the main issue that people seem to vote on, those that group of people, was prices, right?
Speaker: They didn't like inflation. Trump promised to bring down prices. And hey, wait a minute, he's not brought down prices. Prices are going up and prices are going to continue to go up. This trade thing has people spooked. The stock market is not doing particularly well.
Speaker: And and It's not a surprise to me right that these people that voted for, hey, I want lower prices, and wait a minute, we're not getting lower prices, they're not very happy anymore. It's interesting to know what you pointed out, that the MAGA base is still right there.
Speaker: And I think Trump himself gives us the insight we need there. but When he said, I could shoot somebody in the um in the street in Fifth Avenue and I wouldn't lose any voters, he has a pretty good understanding of what his voters are like, right?
Speaker: When we talk about, hey, the Trump voters are still enthusiastic after 100 days, I don't think the time period is what matters there. And I don't think it's the policies that matter there. I think he is he's got his base pretty much captured, right?
Speaker: Whatever he does, he's really good. Whatever we think of him, he is really good at spinning it so his base likes it. So if he does something that isn't working out, he'll tell them, hey, it's part of a grand plan, right? If he does something that is working out, he'll say, hey, look how great this is. Let's focus on this.
Speaker: Forget what the fake news is telling you, right? um He's just really good at reading them and giving them what they need to still be happy. And he's done that. But I don't think you can ascribe that to anything that he's actually done for the first 100 days.
Speaker: It's just the way he's talked to them and convinced them that he's doing exactly what they what they elected him for. I think I would push back a little bit because i do think that from an enthusiasm point of view, you have room to succeed and fail.
Speaker: So for instance, I don't think the MAGA base is particularly enthusiastic about tariffs. I think they like that Trump is portraying strength by saying, hey, we're going to screw over these people who have been screwing over us.
Speaker: But when it comes down to the issue of the economy, they're like, eh, not so much. Now, when it comes to immigration, DEI, all these other major initiatives, they're really happy about that.
Speaker: So I do think if Trump you know wasn't telegraphing his immigration successes, and I'm using air quotes here, i think there wouldn't be as much enthusiasm because it's like, well, we elect you to do something and you're not really doing it. They would still support him. Don't get me wrong.
Speaker: But the level of enthusiasm, I think, would be lower. Well, I'm going to push back on your pushback just a little bit, because I was reading an interesting sort of profile of Trump voters. It was in The Times, and they talked to Trump voters about the tariffs.
Speaker: And a lot of them that were interviewed are really enthusiastic about taking on China and about cutting the trade deficit. They believe the the the lines that Trump is giving them, and they are enthusiastic about that.
Speaker: But I think where I think you're right is that they're enthusiastic about it when it comes to Trump. And they're enthusiastic about the immigration stuff when it comes to Trump. I think it's interesting in in the Times-Siena poll, they asked um an issue, hey, what do how what do you think of how trump of how the Trump administration is handling the Abrego Garcia incident? Which, if you haven't been following that, that's the guy that was deported to El Salvador, despite a court order that's saying no.
Speaker: And only 31% of voters, of adults, or whatever whatever the sample was, 31% of their 25,000 people thought that Trump was handling it well, right?
Speaker: And this is in a poll where 42% of the people supported Trump. So it seems like Trump the the The support for Trump is a little bit divorced from support for these policies. They can have a problem with some individual policies, but they don't necessarily say, well, just because I have a problem with this, Trump's the cause of this. they They seem to be able to differentiate or just do differentiate between something they don't like, but they really still love Trump.
Speaker: Yeah. And I think this goes to the theme of campaign promises. And you know i think at broad strokes, he's doing what he said he's going to do. I don't think we necessarily disagree there. I think it's the the details like i think that ending the Ukraine war day one. Okay. Like obviously he hasn't done that.
Speaker: Is he trying to end the war? Yeah. Is he going to succeed? Probably not Just not because of him necessarily, just because I don't think that the Ukraine war can be solved diplomatically very easily.
Speaker: you know, both sides are. too far apart. Well, I wore a shirt today that will clue you in on how I think he's going to solve the Ukraine war. Yeah. I mean, I don't disagree that the Russians are going to get the better end of the deal.
Speaker: Yes. We can spend an entire episode on the Ukraine war and we probably will at some point. ah But suffice to say, ah this just isn't going to end anytime soon. The conflict didn't start in 2022.
Speaker: you know You could argue that it started before 2014. Well, so I would like to dig into little bit about the campaign promises thing. Sure. Because I think in broad, and it's like a broad stroke, he's been the kind of president that the MAGA folks wanted.
Speaker: They look past the, I'm go to lower prices promise, right? Because they were all in before that. So that to me is the number one thing he promised on the campaign trail. He did it all the time, told people all the time.
Speaker: He brought in all the independents because, I'm going to lower prices. Right. He didn't do that at all. Right. um Prices are not lower. Prices are higher.
Speaker: Right. um But the MAGA core, that's not why they came to him. They came to him before. It's the people that came after. Right. That, were brought in by that promise and now they're disappointed about it.
Speaker: So those are, that's why to me, he's losing the independence but and why he's not losing the MAGA people because they don't look at that as the core promise that brought them on board, right? Their core promise was the things like the immigration, the fighting back, the anti-woke stuff, all that stuff, the grievances, right?
Speaker: Whereas the broader coalition you need to get elected, they're like, wait a minute, where's my lower egg prices, right? Right. Some of these grievances, going after the deep state, freeing the January 6th hostages, immigration.
Speaker: I think he's been largely successful in that he said he was going to do something and he's doing it. We've done several episodes about the so-called deep state, how he's you know affecting the health agencies, how he's affecting USA, the Department Education, so on and so forth.
Speaker: And he's eviscerating the talent there. Well, here I think under the deal it's useful to sort of distinguish between the types of analysis that we're looking at. yeah If you're saying, is he successful in terms of making his base happy?
Speaker: Yes, he is. Yes. Right. Is he making the independents happy? Not so much. Is he making, is he pulling over Democrats? Absolutely not. not And then from and a sort of outside observation, if we can remove ourselves from politics for a minute,
Speaker: don don't do Are the things he's doing making the country a stronger, better place? And I think, again, the answer to me is clearly no. um So I think if we're going to talk about Trump's success, you can see success through his political view.
Speaker: But outside of that, I think it's we're very hard pressed to find successful measures of the first 100 days for him. Yeah, I don't disagree at all. i don't even know how to describe what I'm trying to do.
Speaker: maybe Maybe just trying to help people understand that he ran on these things. We are a polarized country. He was able to get just over the finish line. But once he was over that finish line, what did you expect?
Speaker: What did you expect to happen? Well, we expected this. right Right. The moderates that he pulled in, the independents undecided, they didn't expect this. Right. Right. um And that's why you see this, to me, that's why you see this big drop off in support. It's like, wait a minute, we voted for you. You were going to do these things that are going to help us.
Speaker: And now you're not. What happened? I mean, and again, yeah, he's he's all in on making his base happy. Right. um You don't even get me started on like the ah RFK stuff and all that.
Speaker: Right. But Does that mean you have a successful first 100 days? By most measures, I'm going to say no. Right.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't disagree with that analysis. So we covered tariffs. ah deal making, immigration, all this anti-woke DEI stuff. One thing that we haven't really talked about much on this podcast is DOGE because we wanted to see what the end result was.
Speaker: and we've We've had our opinions and we followed it a little bit when we talked about sort of the funding cuts, getting rid the Department of Education, but we haven't really talked about sort of the DOGE initiative as a whole.
Speaker: And now's that time. And I'm trying to figure out what were their metrics for success. Because we said before that if it was to cut money from the budget, well, they weren't going to be successful because you can't really do that without touching Social Security, Medicare.
Speaker: interest on the debt, defense spending, Medicaid, you can't cut trillions of dollars out of the budget without touching those. And they didn't really have the authority to do that. That's going to require legislation. And Trump told them no, right? Right.
Speaker: he i mean say what you want about Trump again, he's at least an astute enough politician to notice that, you know what, a lot of my voters are old. If I cut Social Security, they won't be very happy with that, right? and And so there are certain things, I mean, Trump is a good, obviously a good enough politician to get elected president twice. That's nothing to sneeze at.
Speaker: he's not going to go jump full bore onto things that are going to just get him crucified by his base. Um, which again, cutting defense would do the same thing. There's plenty of ways we could cut defense and I'm sure not be any less safe than we are now.
Speaker: Right. Um, But we're not going to look into that under Republican president because that's their brand. And you're probably not going to look into it much under a Democratic president because being soft on defense is the number one, one of the number one critiques that the Republicans have towards Democrats.
Speaker: So all this stuff is off the table. There's not a lot of room, as you say, for cuts. um But they're certainly making a lot of noise, right, and causing a lot of harm with the minimal gains that we're getting from them.
Speaker: and We're getting rid of basically all of our foreign aid. We're going after anything, research, all sorts of research in terms into science and medicine. um They're just cutting randomly.
Speaker: And as we've talked about before, firing people and then saying, hey, wait a minute, we need that guy. or a woman. Let's bring them back. Right. And i what I think is interesting you've looked this up for us and we we're looking, we're thinking about what were their what was their success or failure metric is they were trying to get $2 trillion dollars worth of savings, but now they say they saved us $160 billion.
Speaker: And then somebody looked into this and said, well, you know what, to save that $160 billion, they've probably cost us $135. So maybe they billion through all of the the ah shakeups and the drama and and dislocation and damage to our reputation internationally that Doge is doing, is it worth that much? That's more or less a rounding error in terms of the United States overall budget.
Speaker: Yeah. And I just think this is a wasted opportunity because if you look at some of the blue states, California, California, They're not the best run states. There's a lot of room to improve when it comes to sort of the Democrat pet projects.
Speaker: And I think once Trump won the election, that was a wake up call to be like, oh yeah, you know what? Maybe there is some stuff that we need to change. Clearly, the status quo isn't working for people.
Speaker: Clearly, there's some waste. What can we do about that? i think're Exactly right. I think a lot of people could have got on on board with the idea of, hey, you know what? California, for example, you have this homeless crisis, at least in part, because it's too hard to build houses out there.
Speaker: There's a lot of really active NIMBYism, the not in my backyard syndrome, and all kinds of regulations that make it harder and harder than it should be to build housing. Let's get rid of some of that.
Speaker: Let's make it easier to build housing, right? People would support that kind of change. Right. But there's not I don't i mean, there's a certain aspect of the MAGA core that sort of revels in the cruelty of cutting people's jobs and cutting all this funding.
Speaker: But that's not particularly popular outside of the MAGA base. And Trump just doesn't seem to care. Right. And don't get me wrong, like you're not entitled to have a government job. The the government is there to serve the public.
Speaker: And if you have a job that's not particularly important to serving the public, well, then now we can talk about cutting it. And that's what Al Gore did back during the Clinton administration. He spent seven years trying to reinvent government.
Speaker: And it was a bipartisan initiative and it was largely successful. They cleaned up a lot of the government. They modernized it. And I think that now that we're 25 years later, least years later,
Speaker: We can go through such reforms again. And there are some people in Congress like Ro Khanna. He's the Democrat who represents Silicon Valley. He was interested in doing these sort of things.
Speaker: But now, given the way that Doge has operated, I feel like you've burned so much credibility there that it's just not going to happen. You're going to have the Democrats really dig in.
Speaker: and they're not going to be interested in reforming. And so we're going to have, and eventually the Democrats are going to win. And then what's going to happen is the government is not going to work for the people in an efficient way. And then we're going to be here again.
Speaker: And meanwhile, the deficit is going to continue to rise. So I just think this is a really wasted opportunity. They've spent political capital for hardly any gains.
Speaker: One thing that I do want to mention though, is there could have been a motive that wasn't telegraphed. And that motive is consolidating power with the executive. So using Doge to sort of eviscerate the deep state, which is one of Trump's initiatives.
Speaker: You obviously can't sell it like that to the general public, but that is certainly one of the motives that could have been- Well, I mean, it's certainly consistent with everything else he's done with the with the executive branch, right? because he's And he has sold it to the American public as you know the president has the power to do these things. He's fired people from independent agencies.
Speaker: He's gotten rid of people in independent offices um because by saying, hey, I have the right to do this. He's doing everything he can in every other way. Right. But I don't know. I'm not entirely certain that that might not be ascribing too much forethought to what they're doing. they only you know I I kind of take Musk on the and face value when he's out there with his chainsaw saying, we're just going to hack and slash and, you know, we'll make mistakes and we'll fix it.
Speaker: But the old that standard Silicon Valley move fast and break things, right? That's Musk. and So, I mean, if you think about like when he took over Twitter. Same thing. Right. He just went in and he fired as many people as he could. and there's like, oh, we could use them back and maybe a few of these.
Speaker: it It was it's it's not like this is new. If you know what how Elon Musk acts, this is what he does. So I don't think unless somebody higher than him was really clever thinking, hey, we can put this guy in place and he'll end up doing what he what we want him to do, because that's how he wants to do things.
Speaker: And it'll really work out for us. Even that's just. I'm guessing this is, they expected this because that's what he does. Yeah, certainly possible. And then there's also the aspect of, if you go to the financial systems, you can find out where the choke points are. So one of the things that they did with the social security administration is that they said, okay, you're not going to be able to verify over the phone anymore. You're going to have to go into the office or you have to use computers, which you know but for someone in their,
Speaker: retirement age, maybe they're not particularly literate when it comes to technology. So I guess technically you could save money that way. think that's ageism, by the way. i think you're directing that at me.
Speaker: No, but I mean, like, that incredible I think it's a dick move. no I know what you i mean. That's exactly the point, right? They do that on purpose. Yeah. That's also in keeping with the Silicon Valley kind of stuff.
Speaker: Because when you try to call up most of the companies out there and try to get somebody on the phone to talk to something, some talk about something, good luck, right? And that's intentional. Yeah. on one hand, yes, it's more efficient from a financial perspective, but it's not making the government more efficient in the sense that it's not addressing the needs of the people.
Speaker: So i don't know. I would argue that Doge has been a pretty epic failure. It's not really accomplished much. And there you go. Again, I'm trying to find the good here because it's a blown opportunity.
Speaker: I care about this stuff. you know I read ah Tom Coburn, you know the late senator from Oklahoma. He wrote a long paper ah called Back in Black about how to balance the budget again.
Speaker: And there's a lot of good stuff there. And it just it's a wasted opportunity. It really ticks me off as someone who likes fiscal conservatism. We've analyzed the Trump administration from the Republicans' perspective. We've given some insight into what Doge did.
Speaker: And now I'm going to hand the microphone to you, Jonathan, and talk about it from the Democrats' perspective. Not because you're a Democrat, but just I know you have a lot of opinions here. I'm actually a registered independent um because I don't like the whole rah-rah business.
Speaker: But in any case, right I think from the the Democrats' perspective, right it's... It's disheartening in one sense that they they can't get in the way much. but All they can do is have lawsuits.
Speaker: Right. um But it's also the kind of thing where and James Carville was out in front saying, that hey, let Trump let them do what they want to do. Stand back and let them make the country burn, but more or less.
Speaker: And I'm not a huge fan of that. And I don't think most Democrats are in favor of that because you let the country burn. There's a lot of Democrats suffering because of that. Right. A lot of the rank and file are not going to do particularly well under that sort of scenario.
Speaker: But, you know, by obstructing as much as you can and letting them do what they what you have to let them do, it is setting the Democratic Party up for a position to maybe come back.
Speaker: And And it's not to say it's a sure thing. as i think We found some interesting information. like When there are wave elections in, say, 2016 and and 2018. Democrats won by almost eight points in 2006 and over eight points in 2018.
Speaker: But now...
Speaker: democrats won by almost eight points in two thousand six and over eight points in two thousand and eighteen right um but now corn based on like a generic ballot, the Democrats are only up almost two and a half points, right? So there's a lot of work for Democrats to do.
Speaker: um And even in like May of 2017, so the same but same time we are out, Democrats were up five and a half points. So the country's more polarized now, ah even in the space of eight years.
Speaker: um So it's gonna be harder to pull people over, um but the Democrats need to do this. They need to take advantage of the way Trump is mismanaging a lot of things.
Speaker: Right. um And if you look at like what he started doing, this could be, unfortunately, um the tip of the iceberg of the economic problems that we have.
Speaker: If this stuff continues along the way it is, we continue to have a trade war stuff is if you know, I read that people like the the the ah management executives at Walmart and Target are worried there's going to be empty shelves, right?
Speaker: And if we start seeing Soviet-level empty shelves, people are not going to be very happy about that, right? People are saying, we're going to have a very bad Christmas, and Trump makes a joke saying, oh, rather than 30 dolls, you're going to have two. But what about the people that could only afford two dolls, and now they're not going to have any, right?
Speaker: These are going to be issues. And so, you know There's a lot of ways that Trump, you know, Trump is ignoring the Democrats and trying to steamroller them, but he's putting them in a position where they're going to be able to come back, assuming, which is a big assumption, that they're going to be able to sort of coalesce around a message. They have not been able to do so yet, um but the opportunity is there for them to do it.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, again, this kind of goes back to the doge aspect of things where Democrats were seen as an ineffective party. And until they have some sort of vision on how to correct, not only the Trump administration's perceived wrongdoings, but every past wrongdoing that the Democrats have been involved with, you're going to be kind of stuck.
Speaker: Right. Yeah, they they're not going to win... it's win extensively or win decisively, there's a word I need, if you're just a party of, we're not Trump. right You need to have something positive that people can grab onto. And so they need to work on that definitely.
Speaker: Given that, what's your thought of and on the independent situation? Right. Because at the end of the day, the Democrats need to win the independence. And in our show notes, we have the graphs from GLA Morris.
Speaker: And I mentioned this earlier on, but Trump is now net negative on immigration, his strongest issue. And I think it's just because of the way he's gone about dealing with the immigration issue.
Speaker: Immigration was one of the top three issues during the 2024 election. And we mentioned that the Biden administration largely failed on that issue and that they had to shift to the right.
Speaker: What it really boils down to is through executive action, we felt that you weren't going to be able to solve the border problem. And we largely still agree with that analysis in that if you're going to allow asylum claims,
Speaker: You need to add more immigration judges to get all those people processed. Now, what I think what Trump is doing is he's created this environment where people don't even want to claim of asylum anymore.
Speaker: So that is one way of doing it. And in ah in a lot of ways, that kind of proves our hypothesis wrong, that you can't solve this through executive action because he's created an environment well where...
Speaker: There is a caveat, though. we still think I still think you can't solve it through an executive action if you care about the rule of law. Sure. Right. So he's he doesn't.
Speaker: He's kind of he's pushing the boundaries of what's allowable and getting rejected by trump lawyer Trump. Trump appointed judges, a guy he appointed in Texas today said, no, you can't use this.
Speaker: ah The Alien Enemies Act. Right. um It's it does not apply. We're not under an invasion. So he's not necessarily going to be as successful as he hopes he can be without getting some sort of ah some sort of buy-in from the legislature. Now, he is making conditions miserable, right?
Speaker: um And I think you it's we're right to say that that's probably why he's losing support among independents. because if you think about it, he's successfully cut down border crossings.
Speaker: And yet he's losing ground with with voters. And I would imagine I haven't done a poll, any polling about this or seen anything. But these videos of a of the prisoners being held by their necks and walking around in their boxers in these in these prisons and in El Salvador. People think we're doing this.
Speaker: This is the United States. And again, i think it resonates positively with some aspect of the MAGA group. I think there's a lot of resistance to being that cruel of a country among larger swaths of, excuse me, swaths of the population.
Speaker: Well, that's absolutely correct. We saw that with the first Trump administration with the child separation policy. Yeah. Yeah. People are all for cutting down on illegal immigrants, but people like to have the image of themselves as, hey, we're good people. right This is a good country.
Speaker: This is a little too much to take. The independents fundamentally voted for stronger border security, which is fine. They voted for a deporting criminals.
Speaker: Again, fine. I don't know many people who support keeping criminals in our country. But the way that the Trump administration has found the criminals, which there weren't that many, they said, well, shit, our numbers aren't high enough.
Speaker: And so now they're going for other people. who, again, yes, they are breaking the law by being in this country illegally, but there is sort of a humanitarian aspect that the American people feel. And they said, wait, why are we deporting the lady who's here illegally, who's been here for 25 years, but has been, you know, say, cleaning houses, she's been a nanny, so on and so forth.
Speaker: Well, but also, though, you're you're you're sort of not really giving them credit for the full measure of their cruelty, because they're they are now working on deporting people that are here legally. They were appealing to the court again today to get permission to rescind the author authorization for 300,000 Venezuelans to be here.
Speaker: So these Venezuelans are here legally, right? um And the Trump administration wants to say, you know what, let's end that and send them home, right? And it's not just them. They did the same thing with Haitians.
Speaker: um They're doing... Similar things. Oh, I can't remember the other. Afghan. Yes, the Afghans. That's it. um that were Which we owe them all kinds of for all kinds of reasons.
Speaker: But people are here legally. They just want to send them home. um And they want because that boils down to in me, the Stephen to me, the Stephen Miller perspective that he doesn't want anybody here.
Speaker: um And Trump's letting him do it. Right. And that's what's again, the MAGA types are like, yaay But the larger group of the population is like, and not so much.
Speaker: Okay. So we've covered independence and how they feel. They feel betrayed for the most part. So yeah, now that we've we've looked at, we've tried to to take the partisan lenses and so what, what Republicans are thinking, what Democrats are thinking, what independents are thinking.
Speaker: um Now we're going to try to do our best to remove ourselves from the partisan politics aspect and just look at the impact of these policies. um And when I do that, first thing that comes to mind to me is, it's my turn to have a joke, um is this an old joke that my dad was particularly fond of.
Speaker: um He's since passed away, but this joke is resonates and I think he would appreciate that I'm i'm using it today. um If he was to look at a situation like this, I think he'd ask us a question, so so do we get a kiss with this?
Speaker: And then you might ask, well, why would we get a kiss with all these Trump policies? And the response is, obviously, well, usually when you get screwed, you get a kiss first, right? um And I think, again,
Speaker: it I'm sure it comes off to people that are pro-Trump that this is a partisan view. But when I look at just the objective impacts of the policies, and it's it's overwhelming how many things that Trump has just knocked on its ear from the way we used to do things.
Speaker: um And if I'm just gonna just run through the list of things where I think that there are problematic policies, and we can talk a little bit more about anyone that we want a little bit more detail, but him mess he's just ruined our hard power in a international relations status.
Speaker: We used to be, until Trump, the damin dominant military power in the world with strong alliances and opposition to dictators. All that's out the window. He wants to pull us back.
Speaker: We're the first, we we talked about this before, but we're the first country in history to willingly try to abdicate our position as the strongest military power. We also are the strongest soft power country, meaning we had a lot of influence because of the good things we did around the world and what we stood for.
Speaker: We're giving all that away. We've gotten rid of the USAID. um we've gotten we're We're upending some friendly, stable relations. We're making the United States less attractive. And we're ceding the field to China, who is more than happy to jump in where we're leaving. Everywhere we're leaving, China's pretty much coming in, right? And they're creating relationships around the world that we're abandoning.
Speaker: The economics aspect, we've talked about this ad nauseum, um but he's upended world trade where we were we were we basically created the system and we're dominant in that system and it made us the number one economy in the world.
Speaker: ah Our stock market is suffering for it. Our GDP growth is down. We have negative growth. We contracted in the last quarter. right Consumer prices are up. mean and just It's just shocking.
Speaker: how we've had ah basically an own goal, right? In terms of self-own, if you like gaming terminology in the economics in a hundred days, right?
Speaker: ah cutting education as much as we can. Research funding is going is going away as much as they can happen to cut. um They're cutting K-12 funding. They're trying to eliminate the Department of Education.
Speaker: The rule of law is completely being over overrun. The Department of Justice is no longer neutral. We've got Doge cutting wherever they feel like it. um We've talked about the immigration and deportation.
Speaker: We talked about what's going on with lawyers and suing law firms. um We've talked about pardons. We've talked about firing people from independent agencies, just running, just trampling all of the normal aspects of the rule of law to benefit presidential power.
Speaker: And then it doesn't even get into what they're doing in public health, which I don't know if you've been watching, you know, that is one of my particular issues. fixations, right? The stuff that that Kennedy is allowed to do in gutting the DHS, CDC and NIH and speaking out against vaccines and getting in the way of vaccines. Now it looks like he's going to get in the way of us even having a COVID booster in the fall.
Speaker: um You know, the, the, just And even things as simple as just general competence, right? You got Walton Hegseth, kind of speaks for itself. We're deporting citizens now.
Speaker: um They've sent, I think, three children in the last few days have been deported with their with their mother, um despite perhaps some objections from their father and all kinds, including a kid who was getting cancer treatment. So that goes over really well. right And then they're doing things like Doge firing and then rehiring. It's just...
Speaker: from top to bottom, it's not hard to find a list of things that they're doing that are just upending years, if not decades, of successful government policy because they can.
Speaker: Right. It's a very good example of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. As we said, we can always improve. We seek to have a more perfect union. But to throw away our position in the world like this, it's not good. And Again, we're not going to see some of these effects for three, six months on a lot of these issues, especially in the health and research sector, but it will catch up to us.
Speaker: And our international relations, they might not be poisoned forever, but it's going to take a long time to get some of that trust back. yeah And as we said, we we don't want to,
Speaker: you know go through all these things in detail. We've done several episodes, so please listen to those episodes. And we well we will revisit them as as needed, too. Yeah, because these epi these things are not going away.
Speaker: right um So yeah, there's just all kinds of stuff. and and there were And like you said, consequences are coming. If we don't have a COVID booster this fall, thousands of people will die needlessly.
Speaker: Right. um It's just it blows my mind to think about that. It's just it's it's a tragedy that three people have died of measles who should have been vaccinated and didn't and and not would not have died of measles more than likely.
Speaker: If thousands of people die of covid because Kennedy hates m mRNA vaccines and the covid vaccine in particular and Trump lets him do that. um I hope we hold these people responsible.
Speaker: um it Not 100 percent confident the Democrats will figure it out how to do it, but I'm hopeful. Well, think that's a good place to wrap up. I think the numbers speak for themselves.
Speaker: The first hundred days of Trump have not been good, but we live in a polarized country. And so independents, they've lost a lot of confidence in the Trump administration. Democrats never had confidence in him.
Speaker: And Republicans, they give him really good marks. So you know it is what it is. And the only real recourse we have right now, 2026, 2028. twenty twenty eight Elections have consequences and we're feeling them right now.
Speaker: Yep. Make sure you're registered and get out and vote and tell all your friends to get out and vote too. So with that said, make sure you like subscribe and we will see you next week. Right.
Speaker: Right.
