Speaker 1: Welcome, welcome, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 2: Hello, Molly. I don't know about you, but it's still
Speaker 2: like Ontario to me.
Speaker 1: It will always be like Ontario to me. So Donald
Speaker 1: Trump did something that is one of the things that
Speaker 1: has worked really well for him historically, but seems to
Speaker 1: not be working so well for him anymore, which is
Speaker 1: when confronted with a wildly unpopular trade war that is
Speaker 1: going to cost Americans more money when they're feeling the pinch,
Speaker 1: he decided to to do a stupid stunt and rename
Speaker 1: something Lake America. And it didn't work the way it
Speaker 1: historically has for him.
Speaker 2: It didn't work because none of it's working anymore. When
Speaker 2: Donald Trump had net favorable approval ratings, 7, 8, 10
Speaker 2: points back in the day, when he had net favorable
Speaker 2: approval ratings on the economy in the teens and 20s,
Speaker 2: he had a lot more power. But now... He has
Speaker 2: approval ratings that are reaching historic lows for any president
Speaker 2: in modern time. Nixon had 24% approval when he left
Speaker 2: the Oval Office. Trump, in a poll I saw on Friday,
Speaker 2: has a 29% approval rating. He is in the territory
Speaker 2: of when Nixon ran from office because he was about
Speaker 2: to get his ass thrown out. Right. When he was
Speaker 2: net favorable on the economy, he had a lot more leeway.
Speaker 2: But nobody buys that he's good on the economy anymore.
Speaker 2: Nobody's accepting that theory anymore because they know it's not true.
Speaker 2: And they know he's a failure on the American economy
Speaker 2: at every level. And so trying to do the slamma jamma,
Speaker 2: I'm going to do a card trick. I'm going to
Speaker 2: draw in Sharpie on a map and make it make
Speaker 2: everybody freak out about it. Now people just make fun
Speaker 2: of him for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He used to be outrageous. Now people are just like, oh,
Speaker 2: senile grandpa yells at cloud.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, it's also, the thing is when you can,
Speaker 1: when it seems like you are, when you, it seems
Speaker 1: like your ideas are good or might work, you have leeway.
Speaker 1: And even it's funny because like, if you look at 2020,
Speaker 1: even in 2020 with COVID, people still thought his ideas
Speaker 1: on the economy would work and make them richer. And
Speaker 1: so what happened was, and in some ways COVID did
Speaker 1: Trump was voted out during COVID, I think, because people
Speaker 1: were whatever. But they still had faith in him that
Speaker 1: he could do economic stuff. Now, why they had faith
Speaker 1: in him, who even knows? I mean, an insane, objectively
Speaker 1: insane thing. But when they put him back into office,
Speaker 1: I mean, he was as popular as he had ever been.
Speaker 1: Fast forward to less than two years later. Right.
Speaker 2: And all the things that were a presumption about Trump
Speaker 2: from the very beginning in 2015, that he was a dealmaker,
Speaker 2: he was a negotiator, he was a businessman. He understood
Speaker 2: the economy. Unlike those liberal Democrats, that's all gone. I mean,
Speaker 2: Donald Trump is running a communist crime racket out of D.C.
Speaker 2: and people now figured it out. He's wrecked the economy.
Speaker 2: People figured it out. All the things he promises for
Speaker 2: promised them for the last decade are a wreck. We're
Speaker 2: losing our farms. We're losing small businesses. We're not gaining
Speaker 2: manufacturing jobs. We're not gaining jobs, period, at this point.
Speaker 2: They had revised the job figures from last quarter down 79,000.
Speaker 2: It's madness, right? All of it is unspendable. Now you
Speaker 2: can't just go, hey, hey, Trump just owned the libs.
Speaker 2: It's okay that I got my house repossessed. I just
Speaker 2: got the libs owned. That's not working for anybody.
Speaker 1: The culture war stuff, the girls and boys sports, that stuff,
Speaker 1: only works if everything is fine for you. If you
Speaker 1: are not hurting financially, then you can worry about stuff
Speaker 1: that you don't really care about, ultimately.
Speaker 2: In polling, we call this a luxury issue, right? Right.
Speaker 2: When your life is good, you can worry about things
Speaker 2: that are more esoteric. Right. When the economy is strong,
Speaker 2: It's then you're like, OK, well, my job is secure
Speaker 2: and my taxes are going to go lower. And and
Speaker 2: so now I'm going to get pissed off at imaginary
Speaker 2: communism or imaginary Muslim terrorists or imaginary trans terrorists, whatever
Speaker 2: it is.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: But Antifa. Right. Antifa. But now it's become this very
Speaker 2: desperate situation for about 150 million Americans who are feeling
Speaker 2: a lot of economic uncertainty. And a lot of the
Speaker 2: things that you're hearing and seeing out there, like all
Speaker 2: the anxiety about data centers is a proxy for how
Speaker 2: badly Trump has failed on the economy and how badly
Speaker 2: they fear AI is going to be trained to take
Speaker 2: their jobs and how uncertain they feel about gas and
Speaker 2: food prices and, and, and health insurance and their economic
Speaker 2: ability to keep their home and all these things. And
Speaker 2: so the trickery Lake Ontario of a year ago might've
Speaker 2: still had a, been a one week story and there
Speaker 2: were then, ponderous op-eds and all the papers about it
Speaker 2: and how terrible it was. And now it's just like, again,
Speaker 2: crazy old man yells at cloud and people aren't buying
Speaker 2: it in the way they used to buy it. And
Speaker 2: I think that's a deadly problem for Trump in the fall.
Speaker 2: I really do because he's going to make the campaign
Speaker 2: about himself now.
Speaker 1: Well, that is so the old tricks aren't working anymore
Speaker 1: really is the net net of it. But so he
Speaker 1: did this meeting and, at the end of last week,
Speaker 1: where he met with a bunch of Republicans and he said,
Speaker 1: and now MAGA Inc. is sitting on, what, $ 300, $ 400 million?
Speaker 2: I'm trying to get their cash position, but it sounds
Speaker 2: like about $ 450 is the number I got the other day.
Speaker 1: So that's like a small country. And that's the GDP
Speaker 1: of a small country. And he has not spent any
Speaker 1: of it. And now he reveals to Republicans that the
Speaker 1: way he's going to spend it is on ads tying
Speaker 1: them to his legacy.
Speaker 2: If you're a Republican in one of those swing seats
Speaker 2: out there in the in.
Speaker 1: Like in any one of the swing seats like Alabama.
Speaker 2: Right. I mean, like the other day I had somebody
Speaker 2: make a decent case for me that Mississippi could be
Speaker 2: in play if the numbers keep tracking the way they're tracking.
Speaker 2: which is insane on paper, right? Which is nuts on paper.
Speaker 2: But Donald Trump is the one thing they can't afford
Speaker 2: to have stuck on them right now. Because if they
Speaker 2: have to, if Trump goes into, let's even just say,
Speaker 2: let's say he goes into Iowa and says, you better
Speaker 2: vote against Rob San and Josh Turek because I've done
Speaker 2: so much good for Iowa farmers. And Iowa farmers are
Speaker 2: going to be like, the hell are you talking about, chief? Yeah.
Speaker 2: Because Trump making it about himself is for two reasons. One,
Speaker 2: he's going to steal the money and take it out
Speaker 2: of MAGA Inc. And like, pay. MAGA Inc. is run
Speaker 2: by the Trump family already, as we know. So they're
Speaker 2: going to skim as much off of that cream as
Speaker 2: they can. But it's the idea you're going to go
Speaker 2: make this about him and not about affordability is just
Speaker 2: as if you're a Republican. I mean, you got to
Speaker 2: be thinking about the witness protection program.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I think that, look, the problem is
Speaker 1: ultimately that Donald Trump has really, his whole thing was
Speaker 1: that he was the president for the people who voted
Speaker 1: for him and not for the people who didn't. So
Speaker 1: you couldn't get disaster funding if you were in a
Speaker 1: blue state. FEMA would get funded, but they would come
Speaker 1: to your state if you were in a red state,
Speaker 1: but not if you were in a blue state. Well,
Speaker 1: here's the thing. All of Trump's economic policies have ultimately
Speaker 1: hurt people in red states, right? Farmers and, you know, ranchers, ranchers, right?
Speaker 1: The cattle ranchers. Now he's bringing in beef from other countries.
Speaker 2: Like poison Argentinian beef, right?
Speaker 1: At every point, the people who were supposed to benefit
Speaker 1: are getting fucked.
Speaker 2: Molly, he, his message for, for the 2024 campaign, both
Speaker 2: to more affluent suburban women and, which is one of
Speaker 2: their big target sets, was we're going to bring down
Speaker 2: the price of groceries. We're going to make your kids
Speaker 2: feel safer in school. You're going to have a better economy.
Speaker 2: No more DEI.
Speaker 1: You're not going to have to compete with people who
Speaker 1: are maybe- And your kids won't.
Speaker 2: Have to learn about civil rights or anything that you
Speaker 2: don't like.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: And then he was saying to white male voters, including
Speaker 2: a lot of white male Democratic voters, to be honest
Speaker 2: about it, he was saying, I saw like 40 plus,
Speaker 2: He was saying to them, I'm going to lower the
Speaker 2: price of diesel that you need to put in your truck.
Speaker 2: I'm going to bring an economic boom, so you're going
Speaker 2: to be building things and fixing things, and the working
Speaker 2: class is going to benefit from what I'm going to
Speaker 2: do to these bad guys, right? Well, it turns out
Speaker 2: that the people who've been hit hardest on both the
Speaker 2: economic calamity of tariffs, the economic calamity of the war,
Speaker 2: the economic calamity of his insane corruption, like this beef thing,
Speaker 2: he's got a deal. There's a deal under this beef thing.
Speaker 2: I promise you we're going to find out what it is.
Speaker 2: And those people are hit hardest. And it's like in
Speaker 2: health care. Look how voters used ACA at a slightly
Speaker 2: higher rate than you would expect, given their economic status
Speaker 2: and given their locations in the country. They were using
Speaker 2: ACA too. And now they're getting screwed because their health
Speaker 2: insurance is now out of reach in many cases and
Speaker 2: getting more out of reach. And Trump, of course, a
Speaker 2: couple of weeks ago or about 10 days ago, maybe
Speaker 2: he's like, we're going to have a great health care
Speaker 2: plan any minute now, which I believe you may recall
Speaker 2: we've been hearing about since 2016.
Speaker 1: But also like the cuts to SNAP, like Those people
Speaker 1: in the red states, they use the SNAP just as
Speaker 1: much as the people.
Speaker 2: In the blue states. People in red states depend on SNAP.
Speaker 2: They depend on disability. They depend on Medicaid. They depend
Speaker 2: on Social Security. And in fact, in many states, in
Speaker 2: many very red states like West Virginia, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska,
Speaker 2: they depend on those social benefit programs at a higher
Speaker 2: rate than the people in the blue states. they hate,
Speaker 2: which is mind-boggling.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I was struck by when
Speaker 1: we were talking about these NIH grants, We were talking
Speaker 1: about the NIH cuts and it's such an interesting, Elon
Speaker 1: Musk went in there and he cut all sorts of
Speaker 1: government programs like USAID, which bought, what did USAID buy?
Speaker 1: USAID do it, which was actually, it's a Republican program
Speaker 1: and it was actually brilliant. You probably cooked up by
Speaker 1: your old boss. Explain what they did.
Speaker 2: Because I think it's- USAID bought corn, soybeans, flour- cooking oil,
Speaker 2: a whole portfolio of agricultural products from American farmers.
Speaker 1: In red states.
Speaker 2: In red states. Okay, I have a great story for
Speaker 2: you on this one, too. In red states, they sent
Speaker 2: that food in bags that said, a gift from the
Speaker 2: people of the United States.
Speaker 1: Soft power.
Speaker 2: Where they were starving or there were famines or there
Speaker 2: were disasters. And it was like, oh, the Americans helped us.
Speaker 2: Now those bags are written in Mandarin. Right. And the
Speaker 2: Chinese are the ones taking credit for it. But a
Speaker 2: great story about this. I recently met a guy about
Speaker 2: a year ago. I met a guy who had been
Speaker 2: a three-time Trump voter, was a Trump fanatic. And he
Speaker 2: reached out through a cousin of mine. Long story short.
Speaker 2: He's like, you know, you and I don't get along,
Speaker 2: but I need to figure out how to save my
Speaker 2: soybean operation because I'm going to go bankrupt because my
Speaker 2: product was sold to UID. Yeah. Of my income, of
Speaker 2: my farm's income of $ 4 million, $ 0. 7 million a year. Whoops.
Speaker 2: So this guy.
Speaker 1: Shouldn't have voted for Trump.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Voted for Trump three times.
Speaker 1: I'm sure.
Speaker 2: And look, honest to God, my temptation when I first
Speaker 2: met him on email and texting with him was like,
Speaker 2: I was really tempted to be a dick. I was
Speaker 2: really tempted to be like, haha, fuck you. But then
Speaker 2: I was like, talk to me. Do you want to
Speaker 2: do some ads? Is it just because it hit you now?
Speaker 2: Or is it bigger than that? And he's not an
Speaker 2: unsophisticated person, right? He runs a big operation. He's like,
Speaker 2: you know what? You get caught up in it and
Speaker 2: then you don't want to back down from Trump. You
Speaker 2: don't want to back off of being a Trump guy.
Speaker 2: You don't want your friends to say, haha, you're a pussy.
Speaker 2: But now... It's because it's not just costing me. It's
Speaker 2: across the ag belt. It's across the soybean belt in
Speaker 2: the southeast, particularly hard. I mean, really bad. And you
Speaker 2: know what?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Those purchases from those farmers served a great national purpose.
Speaker 2: It wasn't just that we were supporting farmers. It was
Speaker 2: that we were out around the world showing that America
Speaker 2: had goodness. And I asked him about that. I said,
Speaker 2: did you ever think about what it meant? He goes,
Speaker 2: oh no, I know where our product went. I know
Speaker 2: what it was being used for. I know people who
Speaker 2: got fed because of it. And it's just like, you
Speaker 2: look at it and you're like, my God. The spiteful,
Speaker 2: shitty Elon Musk, Doge, data Republican dipshit crew that are
Speaker 2: out there looking through all the grants for a word
Speaker 2: like climate or a word like race or a word
Speaker 2: like diversity. So we've done that simultaneously. Fuck farmers, our
Speaker 2: national reputation and people in other countries. It's triple.
Speaker 1: But it's also like these were the guys who were
Speaker 1: so smart that they didn't need, you know, they were
Speaker 1: too smart. They were so smart that they didn't need
Speaker 1: the government. They were so smart that they didn't need regulation.
Speaker 1: They were so smart. They were too smart for the
Speaker 1: rest of us. And they ended up electing really one
Speaker 1: of the stupidest people who's ever been president again.
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't know if he's one of the stupidest people.
Speaker 2: I believe he may well be the stupidest president. And I,
Speaker 2: you know, I know, I know my president's pretty well. And,
Speaker 2: and I think Donald Trump is in fact the stupidest
Speaker 2: person to ever hold that office by several, by several
Speaker 2: different metrics.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I'm struck by when we
Speaker 1: talk about this is we have a, we have like
Speaker 1: a moment here where Donald, Trump is the most powerful
Speaker 1: president we've ever had.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Because the Supreme Court ruling, because of what he's done,
Speaker 1: because of the Congress, the makeup of the Congress being
Speaker 1: completely fucked for any number of reasons. We have the
Speaker 1: most powerful president and the stupidest. I mean, like and,
Speaker 1: you know, I've been reading. I just want to say
Speaker 1: one other thing. I've been reading Maggie Haberman and Jonathan
Speaker 1: Swan's book, Regime Change.
Speaker 2: And it is you are amazing.
Speaker 1: It's a horror movie. It's a horror... Like, you read
Speaker 1: it and you can't... Like, it's so scary.
Speaker 2: You can't believe that people in that process with him,
Speaker 2: in the White House with him, don't snap. Don't lose
Speaker 2: their minds and just say, fuck this, I'm out. I'm
Speaker 2: going to go public. You can't... It's like the stupidity,
Speaker 2: the corruption, the cult, all together are... We will we're
Speaker 2: going to have a hard time unless we do some
Speaker 2: real serious soul searching and and and and some serious
Speaker 2: accountability after this. We have a hard time ever recovering
Speaker 2: from this if we don't change direction as a country hard.
Speaker 1: And this it is fucking wild. I mean, that is
Speaker 1: it is just why. And that's what I would say
Speaker 1: is it's just completely insane. Like insane. Yeah. Insane. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2: But at least we've got Lake America now.
Speaker 1: Lake America. By the way, that's like the red meat
Speaker 1: for the base, right? It's like they're eating the dogs. Racism, right?
Speaker 1: They're eating dogs, right? And then we're going to rename stuff.
Speaker 2: To own the libs.
Speaker 1: To own the libs.
Speaker 2: But you can't eat owning the libs.
Speaker 1: But then there's one other thing that Donald Trump does,
Speaker 1: which I'm going to read to you right now. Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: it's a truce from this morning. And he said that
Speaker 1: he would like Kristen Welker to have the I'm going
Speaker 1: to read you the truth. Kristen Welker, the unpopular hostess,
Speaker 1: it's in quotes of the once great meet the press
Speaker 1: is now considered meet the fake press. I guess he
Speaker 1: watched it and he's not happy. And again, this is
Speaker 1: actually a little bit interesting. He's mad about the same
Speaker 1: thing he was mad at Belmar for, which is her
Speaker 1: saying that not all of his endorsements worked.
Speaker 2: Right. The power of the Trump endorsement was unquestioned for
Speaker 2: a long time in primary elections. Yeah. And now, even
Speaker 2: in primary elections, the power of the Trump endorsement is
Speaker 2: falling off. The one race they spent money in this year,
Speaker 2: Darlene Graham, for the primaries- worked, but barely. I mean,
Speaker 2: for Trump to have to go and spend several million
Speaker 2: dollars to back Darlene Graham in South Carolina, a state
Speaker 2: where he was beloved for three terms, one South Carolina
Speaker 2: every time, the fact that he had to go and
Speaker 2: work it there and she barely won the primary, it
Speaker 2: is fading. The magic is going away. And as much
Speaker 2: as people should never take their eye off the ball
Speaker 2: that Trump is going to be dangerous, Trump is like
Speaker 2: a snake, right? Once you shoot the snake, some snakes
Speaker 2: will still be able to bite you. So he's dangerous,
Speaker 2: even though he's a wounded animal.
Speaker 1: He's also going to mess with the midterms.
Speaker 2: Of course he is. Yeah, no, we should not, folks,
Speaker 2: do not expect good outcomes when he is in the room.
Speaker 2: He's going to keep fucking with everything.
Speaker 1: Their vote will be counted. This is probably actually the
Speaker 1: most important election of our lifetime.
Speaker 2: Legitimately, folks, the most important election of our lifetime. Yeah.