Speaker 1: Welcome back, everyone to a new episode of You're Wrong
with Molly having Away, editor in chief of The Federalist
and David Harsani, senior writer at the Washington Examiner. Just
as a reminder, if you'd like to email the show,
please do so at radio at the Federalist dot com. So, Molly,
had you enjoy a Liberation Day the other day?
Speaker 2: I was traveling last week a lot, and so I
have missed a lot of the stm owned drong of
everyone's reaction to Liberation Day, Like I still haven't even
seen the original announcement. You tell me about it, David.
Speaker 1: Bye. I should preface this by saying, anyone who follows
me on Twitter knows that I get pretty into this topic.
I think it's the topic I cared about the most
when I got into I guess political journalism, and I
don't even know how to start. I guess. The most
surprising thing was that on Liberation Day the administration released
this kind of chart of each country and the reciprocal
rates that it wanted to have right, But it wasn't like, oh,
Japan has a two percent weight at tariff. They came
up with this kakamami formula. Where they measure trade deficits
and surpluses. So Israel has put zero tariffs on everything,
but they still get a I've got what it is,
a ten percent tariff rate on their stuff coming in
because of trade deficits. Now, I tell people this all
the time, no one seems to care. But poorer countries
than us are never going to be able to buy
the expensive stuff we make, or as much of it
as we can buy their cheap stuff. So Cambodia, Vietnam,
they're not rip in us off for buying stuff from them.
But anyway, I would just also preface everything by saying,
even if you're four terrorists and four protectionism, I don't
think that you can make the argument that the administration
rolled this thing out in any kind of coherent way
or way that helps the Trump administration. You have Peter
Navarro saying that, you know, we don't want to negotiate
it with anyone. We want barriers. It's good, we're self sufficient.
We're going to make everything here. You have others in
the administration saying we're going to negotiate every country. We're
going to have more globalization and fewer terrorists all across
the world, Like it's got to be one or the other.
And then there is this whole I'll call them the
grifter class of MAGA accounts and stuff like this, mocking
people who are worried about their four h one k
is a worried about their five twenty nines, or worried
about their economic future because it looks like we may
be heading for a recession. So anyway, I just I
guess I want to say the rollout was very incoherent
and used, so.
Speaker 2: I'm so much less interested in the optics. Like this
is like a pet peeve of mine that when you're
on TV people will talk about the optics of this
or the optics of that. They're good, they're bad. It's like, well,
let's just talk about the substance of it. And I
know you care about the substance, so I kind of
want to just focus more on the substance of tariff policy.
One thing that is interesting in people's coverage of it
is they keep talking about tariffs and very little about
other trade barriers. Sometimes a country might have not huge
tariffs on US products, but they have other trade barriers
or prohibitions on selling. So Japan, I'm sorry now.
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say, I'll give you an example
of where people bring up Japan. One of my pet
peeves is that I don't think anyone actually understands where
people have believe mythologies, like they vastly overestimate what kind
of tarists are put on our products by rich countries
that we trade with. But anyway, so Japan, everyone, Steven Miller,
you know, President's advisor, I forget what is specific title
is said that there are no cars in Japan, no
American cars driving in just Japan and Europe. And that's
not actually true. But the Japanese have zero tariffs on
American cars. So people will say, well, they have all
these other barriers to trade, like you know, emissions and whatever,
and that's true, but so do we. California and the
United States has emissions on trade too that make it
difficult to sell cars here, you know what I'm saying.
That make it just as difficult for other companies to
sell cars here as it does for US. Now, I
don't know that our good policy, but I'm not sure
that they're trade barriers. But anyway, even if that were true,
it doesn't really matter. For instance, Japan invests twelve times
as much as we invest in their country here that
also doesn't show up in trade, actually does show up
in a trade deficit that they're spending money here, so
they make this stab blew my mind. Honda makes nine
of the top fifteen most made in America cars, meaning
all parts and everything. So it's a far more integrated
and complicated question than just saying, oh, you know, Honda,
you know, we don't sell cars in Japan. The reason,
of course, is that they don't like big cars, and
it's as expensive to you know, manufacture cars that have
the wheel, you know, the steering wheel on the other
side and all that stuff. But anyway, I don't know,
I get it a little ranty.
Speaker 2: I can't read this thing. I someone shared on Twitter
from a small business manufacturer which I just thought was interesting.
Says it's a little long, so I'll try to skip
through it. We are a small business manufacturer and we
make specialty wireless products catering to niche clients throughout the world.
We have sold to most countries, including a few times
to even countries like Mauritania. We're also one of the
best slash leading manufacturers in our category of business and trade.
We see a lot of folks posting regarding tariffs and
how the sky is falling on our heads in a
global recession, et cetera. Here's the reality for a small
business manufacturer. Our clientele used to be almost sixty forty
before the pandemic, meaning sixty percent sales within the US
and forty percent outside including Canada, Japan, Australia, et cetera.
The EU was always less than five percent, barring sales
from Scandinavia and good sales in the UK. One of
the key reasons we were never able to penetrate the
EU market, even with a superior product was because of
the tariff and VAT charged by EU. Then the euro
almost became par with the US dollar, and this also
added to the equation, meaning they had to spend more
money to buy an American made product. Our raw materials, hardware,
et cetera. Are sourced within the US, parts are jobbed
out to local CNC machinists, and the final product is
one hundred percent made in the USA. After the pandemic,
the shipping costs for exporters rose up to very high levels,
almost double and at the same time, if a US
dealer is importing a similar product from a competitor in
the EU, the shipping costs for import are half the price.
So not only are we impacted exporting due to VAT
and high shipping costs, our domestic market is also constantly
being challenged because of imports zero VAT or customs duty
into the USA and cheap import shipping offered by FedEx, UPSDHL,
et cetera. So he goes on and kind of describes
how a traff might equalize things for them and why
shipping costs are so ridiculous. And I mentioned this in
part because it kind of infuriated me to learn about
how the EU makes it so that small businesses in
the US can't compete in their markets and how we
have done nothing about it other than provide for their
entire defense for eighty years.
Speaker 1: Okay, I could give you a bunch of businesses and
small businesses that I've seen on Twitter complaining that tariffs
will destroy their business as well, But I'll tell you this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, talking about the European ban.
Speaker 1: Okay, we instituted that policy in Europe. We force them,
We forced them to take our defense. That's what we
did with Germany and Japan. I am all for stopping.
Speaker 2: Saying after World War Two. Yeah, okay, the Japanese we're
eighty years past that.
Speaker 1: D Yeah, I'm trying to tell you something. So administration
after administration we strengthen that agreement, and if we want
to change that, I'm all for it. I think every
country should defend itself. But you can't just one day
wake up and slap Switzerland has zero tariffs on the
United States, and we slap them with like a twenty
four percent tariff rate because of the disparity in what
we sell each other, which is insane. It's a much
smaller country. My point is this, if you're going to
do stuff like this, you need a a plan. You
have to deal with people and let them first acclimate
to the new reality that you're you're you don't think
so you're making faces. I mean, so all of a sudden,
we are going to slap Europe with giant tariffs that
undermine our ability to trade too, because it's going to
be a trade war because we implemented a policy of
defending Western Europe in World War Two. It doesn't make
any sense. Can I actually, can we take a step
back though, before we get into the Can I just
go through. Every person who attacks me on Twitter when
I'm talking tells me a few believe some a slew
of things that are just untrue. Okay. The first one
is that we don't make anything anymore. US manufacturing is
an all time high, and output adjusted for inflation. Fewer
people work in manufacturing because it is much more efficient
and that creates other jobs. The other thing I hear
is that the middle class has been hollowed out. That
is not true. True. In nineteen sixty seven, the working
the middle class was fifty four point six percent. Now
is thirty nine percent, but the upper middle class is
thirty seven percent instead of thirteen. It has grown, and
the working class has shrunk because they become richer, not poorer.
Salaries and wages are up in real dollars for families
for workers. And finally, I just want to say, everyone
keeps saying we're falling behind. Well I can show you
that we're not. Not only are we not falling behind,
but we have significantly expanded the gap between US and
other countries in per capita GDP. I just think the
whole thing is based on a mythology. To begin with,
the people believe that it is completely untrue.
Speaker 2: Okay, you just went like in fourteen different directions, which
makes it I.
Speaker 1: Have a real problem to trying to get too much
out quickly.
Speaker 2: So just back well, And I feel like I should
mention at some point that I generally think tariffs are
attacked on us, and that doesn't mean necessarily that they're wrong,
but they are at cost. I remember reading years ago
this piece from a professor of economics about it's called
like just tariff theory or something, and so it kind
of went through the bulk of the piece was about
how tariffs are kind of bad, bad for people, their attacks,
they add to your costs. They're an inefficiency, but that
so is war, and war is always bad in the
sense that you lose lives and it costs money and
it's not productive, but that sometimes you need to go
to war, sometimes you need to do tariffs, and that
the policies I can't remember what he wrote exactly, but
that the policy should be kind of similar to just
war theory, where there are certain rules by which you
can go to war and they shouldn't be preemptive and
or they shouldn't be Yeah, they should't. You shouldn't be
the aggressor in a trade war, but you can respond
to a trade war. And I think that's a really
interesting idea for the situation that we're in. One of
the things that made me mad about this story from
this small manufacturer. And I recognize that you said there
are stories from other manufacturers about how tariffs are bad
for them. Where were you people like complaining about Europe's
approach to our products for the last eighty years. Why
aren't you freaking out about that as much as you're
freaking out about a response to it.
Speaker 1: Because I don't want I wrote a first of May,
what have you written?
Speaker 2: There's no book or anything like that.
Speaker 1: I wrote a whole book called Eurotrash. It is available
for sale at a steeply discounted price on Amazon because
it's how economics work, and you can buy it, and
in it there is an entire chapter maybe two. I
forget about this and related topics. We should not be
following the lead of countries that are poorer than us.
We cannot control what the EU does. Now you can negotiate,
and if you can try it and you want to
levy tariffs on them, you can, but that's a tax
on us in the end, we dominate because we make
things that are far more complex and far more useful
than what other people manufacture. Not so much the you
where you have like Germany is a pharmaceutical patent, so on.
But talking about China right now today, there are five
hundred thousand open manufacturing jobs in the United States that
are unfilled. This is every month average.
Speaker 2: I think that's widely considered to be a not true.
Speaker 1: Stat It is one hundred pritues.
Speaker 2: So I'm not saying that they don't list job openings.
Part of that is about reaction, like part of that
is related to the illegal immigrant crisis, where they're trying
to hide the hiring of illegal immigrants and they do
it through these ghost postings about jobs.
Speaker 1: But go on, Okay, most manufacturing jobs in the US
are not manual labor jobs anymore. They're you know, they're
they're more complicated and you need better skills. But and
I agree, even Milton Friedman, even Adam Smith said that,
you know, you can use tariff sometimes if people are
undermining in some way your ability to sell things. But
a flat worldwide tariff is not what that is. I mean,
you can admit that, right, I mean, this is not
some kind of surgical attack on China or you know,
I actually do so.
Speaker 2: That's the one of the fourteen things you brought up
in your monologue there was related to how this isn't
about China. I think it's all about China. I think
all of the tariffs on other countries are about pressuring China,
particularly in Asia. And even if you look at like
the redrafted quote unquote, what was it called a free
trade agreement? One of my husband's favorite things to think
about is how free trade agreements are always like twelve
hundred pages long, when if they were a genuine free
trade agreement, it would just say we have free trade.
But it's all like you know, rules and regulations governing
the trade between different countries. So after we redid the
situation with Mexico and Canada to have like privileges for
those bordering countries, China just moved into both countries and
started doing everything directly through them to get around our
barriers against China. That's even more true of China's nearer neighbors,
how they have just run through different countries. A lot
of trade inefficiencies do relate to trying to run your
products through countries with lower barriers.
Speaker 3: Elon's not cutting Medicare, just the billions in waste of it.
Watched out Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski. Every day
Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and the economy
and how it affects your wallet. As the left freaks
out claiming Elon Musk is gonna cut Medicare. Remember during
Obamacare when health insurance got double paid by Medicaid for
hundreds of thousands of patients and our government didn't check
whether it's happening in DC or down on Wall Street.
It's affecting you financially.
Speaker 1: Be informed.
Speaker 3: Check out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris
Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just don't know why you can't we care.
I just don't know why we care that or why
we would want to reimport. First of all, the argument
you're making is not the argument made by the administration.
The argument made by the administration is that Tarif's are beautiful,
quote that they will bring back jobs, they will reignite
the cities in the rust belt that have died, they
will help you. There are people out there who make
the argument that America is dying and that the only
way to save us, our fan families and so forth
are bringing back our tariffs that protect us from others,
not to bring more globalization, not to open up and
make it fair, and not just to go after China.
I you know, I just don't know why we care
that there are sweatshops in China. Sweatshops are good for
Chinese because their other thing they can do is starve
if they don't have them. So why would we want
to re import those jobs and bring them back. It
doesn't Lutnik said the other day that we were going
to decimate the armies of people screwing together iPhones and
bring it here. Why would we want to do that?
We make much better products. Our GDP is I think,
seven times larger than the average cap per capita GDP
and China. Why would I want to copy them? Why
would I copy Germany, which has a has a smaller
GDP per capita than West Virginia? Why why would I
follow their lead? It makes no sense to me?
Speaker 2: Okay. So one of the reasons that I think people
are open to re shoring some things here is because
of what we saw happen during the Global pandemic, and
it does relate to the shipping costs, but it also
just relates to the shutdown on shipping. A global economy
works great in times of peace, if all countries are
peaceful with each other, offshoring important services and goods elsewhere
can be a great efficiency that allows you to greatly
increase your gross domestic product. And that's all great, And
then if things go poorly, it's a nightmare disaster scenario.
If you cannot produce your own like most basic goods,
and some people might put telecommunications manufacturing in that, then
you are completely beholden to foreign entities that maybe seek
your destruction, and so it's a tension. I don't disagree
with basically anything you've said at this point. I also
see that there are concerns here with being too reliant
on foreign entities, including a foreign entity like China, the
communist China, which is gaining everything through their hybrid economy
which is partly private, like they have all the benefits
of free market with all of the benefits of a
controlled economy. And it's kind of like this powerhouse awful
situation as it relates to competing against our goods. It's
obviously not great for them. As you point out, you know,
we have much flourishing, but some of the stuff that
we've been getting from overseas we have a national security
interest in producing here. This would be you know, arms.
Speaker 1: With the leading arms producer in the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but we need to make sure every component of
it is done here. I mean, this is kind of
a silly example, but I always like to think about
the operation Pager whatever it was called, that Israel did
against Hezbola. Hezbola did not have control over its pager operations.
You'd be like, how could they? Well, yeah, it's true,
how could they? But we could have control over our
pager operations or our telecom goods, and that might be
in our interest, might not be. But it's like an
open debate. I think.
Speaker 1: I think our production and everything that happened under COVID
was more resilient than people give it credit for. But
I will say that, yes, if the entire world shuts
down all their production and all their shipping, it's going
to be problematic for us. And if the argument here
was we need to make more X semiconductors whatever, that
would be a completely different story. But if you look
at the person who is defending Trump. They're not talking
about specifics. They're talking about protectionism as a good which
will make America great again. I don't know where that
year again. Is Is it nineteen seventy? Is it nineteen fifty?
Love for them to tell me, because then we can
talk about those numbers.
Speaker 2: Okay, this is something where I do think I kind
of differ from you. I'm not sure, but and I'm
forgiving because I haven't been on Twitter as much as
as much as i'd like. That's horrible to say, so I've.
Speaker 1: Been on it way too much.
Speaker 2: So, Yeah, what is the free market for?
Speaker 1: Why do you not for social engineering? It's to make
us richer and to give us better lives generally, it's
not once we start centralizing it and trying to control
it in backfires in awful ways.
Speaker 2: Go on, what do you determine it makes for better lives?
Speaker 1: Well, you always say, oh, you know, people aren't little
pieces of GDP. But if you're talking about economic policy,
that's how we judge it. Now, social policy. If you're
saying that the way things are going, in the way
free markets work, destroy families or they have too you know,
or whatever it is, those are social policies we need
to deal with. If you're saying that we're too rich
and that's why it's happening, then you should not you,
but people should make the argument that they'd like to
see us a little bit poorer and with a fewer choices.
But once you try to centrally plan economy, is you
know that you know well that that doesn't really work,
and it's never really worked. I tried to preempt your
or dunk on me, but go on, no, I.
Speaker 2: Actually was just asking I had no to me, it's
the interesting question I keep you know that, great, Margaret,
that's your line about socialists being bad because they just
wanted the gap between wealthy and poor to be smaller.
And if even if that meant that the poor were poor,
so long as the rich are less rich, they just
want the gap to be small. And to me, that
was always a great And then you also you referenced
it in something that you just said, which is everyone's
wealthier than they were in the seventies, right, So if
we're all wealthier, then even if the super wealthy are
way way wealthier than what's the problem. And so, first off,
I was kind of thinking about that issue of in
a communal structure like a country, is it okay if
some people are getting much richer and other people are
only getting slightly richer and is not. One of the
things that has kind of made America great over the
years is a free market that enabled like wild fluctuations
and who was rich and who was poor? You know
what I mean?
Speaker 1: Like it literally happens more now than ever. You are
richer than ever in the sense that people move from
class to class upwards and have more than they ever had.
I think the problem is we romanticize how great and
equal things were in the past when they weren't. A
person in the middle class now lives like Royalty lived
in the nineteen fifties or probably even the nineteen seventies.
The house you have is on average one thousand square
feed bigger pause right there?
Speaker 2: The house you have? Yeah, how easy is it to
buy a house?
Speaker 1: It depends where you live. The home ownership rate was
peaked in the two thousands, right before two thousand and seven,
push too many people in housing, and now it is
at a higher or equal rate to what it was
in the eighties and seventies. It's hard for a young
person to buy a house, especially if they live in
these places where we are not building houses anymore. That
is an economic reality, not because of the free markets.
A free market would say keep building, keep building houses,
move to places where there are cheaper housing. Where there's
cheaper housing. I mean, I don't know what people want.
By the way, how do tariffs make housing prices go lower?
Speaker 2: Run?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: How about a car?
Speaker 1: By the way, I'm taking all my you're my strow
man basically for all the things that people are saying
to me online, but going what.
Speaker 2: Easy is it to buy a car?
Speaker 1: It's relative, It's relatively easy. I mean I have a
list somewhere around. I've just experienced this.
Speaker 2: Okay. I have children of car driving age. We wanted
to get them a complete beater. I mean the first
car I bought, I think I bought for like five
hundred dollars and drove it for many years. It's impossible
to get a cheap car these days. Like it's impossible.
It's very difficult. Sorry, don't mean to be so hyperbolic.
There were things happening with lack of like easy access
for lower incomes to cars to low paying jobs, like
I know you're talking about like these five hundred thousand
manufacturing jobs that are there, it's very hard for my
kids to get a job. I mean, yes, they're teenagers.
Speaker 1: Do you know where the unemployment rate is right? You
know it's at a low and consistently low. You think
it was easier to get a job in the seventies
that paid well than it is now.
Speaker 2: I think for certain types of people. And that's one
of the things, like when we talk about in the aggregate,
it just can leave out some stuff. So yes, I
agree that the country is very wealthy and has done
very well in wealth creation. How that wealth is shared
among different classes is not necessarily like us being at
our best right now. So I know that among the
tech bros, they're like, oh Ai, we will like automate
everything and then we'll put everybody on a universal basic income.
But we'll be wealthier than ever before. And I'm sure
you love that, and I'm sure you think that's great,
but it's actually there's more to an economy than just
the wealth generation we need.
Speaker 1: I don't accept your premise. We need people in plumbing
and construction and electrical work and carpentry and welding and maintaining.
Automation We need people like that. What the problem we
have is we have the government stepped in and created
a environment where we send everyone to college to get
useless journalism degrees instead of learning a trade and helping
the country and helping themselves. That is a different problem.
I don't understand how tariffs propping up a dying antiquated
mill somewhere in the Roust Belt is going to help
those people have better lives, so that, you know, you know,
that's what I mean by central control, by by government
controlling stuff. Sorry I interrupted you. Well, I just want
to say one quick thing as well. I've been very
scattered because it's honestly a huge topic to discuss, right
for every rust belt town we look at, and I
really feel for those people. You know, they built entire
cities around a mill, and that's not a good economic
model to begin with, because progress and creative destruction always
leaves people behind, and we should find ways to help them.
But we shouldn't ignore the giant, new, beautiful, rich suburb
in Florida and Texas and Utah and North Carolina and
South Carolina. We're production where there are products, where there's
a big production hubs, manufacturing hubs, I mean, and a
lot of good going on. I just you have to
balance what you're looking at. If you're only looking at
the worst thing that's happening, your policy is going to
be skewed in a way that's going to hurt a
lot of people who benefit from international trade, who benefit
from manufacturing and the higher efficiencies and technology that we have. Anyway,
I think.
Speaker 2: That's very true. I also think that some of our
trade practices unfairly outsourced a lot of this manufacturing to
a communist country. I think I've mentioned before that I
was one of the people who wrongly thought that the
most Favored Nation status for China and the opening up
of markets with China would help China become a freer country,
and that we would export our ideas to them, and
that everything would be good as a result of that.
I did not expect the opposite to happen, that China
would become dominant, that they would be still a communist
country with all of the repressive regime that that entails,
that they would be the ones exporting their ideas to us,
and that they're hold their trade practices are they need
to they need to be stopped like they are a
threat to the country. I don't see why people understood
the Soviet Union to be such a threat, But they
don't see the descendant of that, or the new communist
regime that seeks global control, which is communist China. They
don't see that as a threat. And I do think
that this major shakeup is designed to disrupt China from
being like the core of the global supply chain. So
every country is trading with China, and China is able
to continue and grow and be dominant because of because
of that. I think that's what the tariff. So when
Trump does all of these like absurdly high tariffs against
all these other countries, they all start kind of coming
to him and saying, Okay, what if we drop this
trade barrier, and what if we did this differently? And
so there will be dozens of countries restructuring trade barriers
that never would have happened if the teariff proposal hadn't
been so dramatic. I know, you're like, we should have
done a five year plan where we told them if
they didn't do better, then we would slowly face stuff.
Speaker 1: In I don't know how how is Cambodia or Vietnam
supposed to do better. How are they supposed to balance
or trade deficit with US. They're small, poor countries.
Speaker 2: They also have trade barriers. They also have deals they're
doing with China, and they can bring other proposals to
the table for a drop on tariffs. Okay, there is
an area that China is very weak in that they
do not import much from America and we import everything
from China, so they need us to continue to be
a trading partner with them. They're also at kind of
a weak point in that they over expanded in their
real estate markets. They are their yuan is weak, like
they are at a moment where they do not have
maximum leverage. I think we saw, you know, just literally
in the last twenty four hours or so. They're trying
to indicate more strength than they probably have. But this
might not be the worst time to take on China
as the only real competitor to the US. And there
is a belief that if we just keep doing things
the way we've been doing them, it will be disastrous.
And I don't hear from a lot of the critics
of this tariff policy, and I'm totally open to one
hundred percent of the criticisms that you had, but I
don't hear a lot of like your thing is, everything
is great, there's no need for any change. And I
look at some of these trade barriers and tariffs that
other countries are imposing on, you know, my fellow man
in America, and I say, that's not great and it's
not cool, and it's not great that we let China
just dump all sorts of products into this country, thereby
keeping average Americans from being able to have a thriving
small business, and that we don't do anything about the
barriers and the tariffs and the taxes in other countries.
And we say that's okay. We're the big donkey, so
we'd like, we don't need anybody else to do anything.
We'll just take it and we'll let we'll have like
these really nice environments for you to dump all your
products in. But if you want to disrupt the global
supply chain, you do kind of have to do something dramatic.
And I think that this situation with China is going
to be the one that's enduring in a way that
it's not enduring, meaning the tariff situation with China might
be enduring in a way that is not enduring with
other countries. So you ask what Vietnam can.
Speaker 1: Do maybe China. I do not. Well, Okay, first of all,
I didn't say everything was great, and you know we
shouldn't do anything.
Speaker 2: But it does make me a little frustrated. Okay, Well,
I just want to defend you in part and then
complain about you in part the defense. It makes me
angry when I see people getting angry at you for
what you have said since the first day I read you,
which is opposition to Tariff's as bad economic policy. You
have never deviated and people are like, oh, you're trying
to hurt Trump or whatever. It's like, this is of
all your consistencies, and there are many, this is your
most consistent aspect, so you well, it's just it's not appreciated.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's true, it's not that great a deal.
But you know, I don't think I'm great for doing that.
I mean a lot of people have consistent opinions. But yes,
a lot of people think I hate Trump. This is TDS,
they say, and all this stuff. Five years ago, everyone
agreed with me on the right, you know what I mean.
It GE's so weird to me, But go on, I.
Speaker 2: Will point out that not like there has always been
protectionism on the right, and I was just even rewatching
like a ross pro thing. He got a lot of
support from the right for his beliefs, which are not
altogether dissimilar from Trump's right now. But the other thing
is that I wish these people who claim to care
about the free markets had done more in defensive free
markets as it affected average Americans.
Speaker 1: Like what that mean? A great way is in every
way that every quantifiable way we're better off. I mean,
I don't understanding.
Speaker 2: The hair on fire right now does not match the
lack of hairent like I have not seen AEI go
out there and be like our goal for the years
to get the Europeans to like stop their unfair trade practices.
Speaker 1: They shouldn't start from it.
Speaker 2: Wait, what do you mean they shouldn't.
Speaker 1: Because your premises are I disagree with them. First of all,
I ask people how much of the economy do you
think is important? How much of our stuff? How much
of the GDPs goods and services? How that much? People
tell me fifty sixty eighty percent, it's fifteen percent. Okay,
you are not dominated by globalism, and the truth of
the matter, is that if you want to buy in
the US, you can. But moreover free markets, everyone's like,
there's no such thing as a free market. Win to
a fair market, it's not gonna happen. I can't control
what the EU does. They have voters and democracies, and
maybe they ignore the democracy and do whatever they want.
And they're gonna do whatever they want. But we overestimate
what kind of barriers to trade there are. Now you're
saying vats are trade. That's how they tax people there.
What are we supposed to do about that? You want
to have a vat here to uncopy them. I mean,
people say, and this is a big talking point. If
terifs are bad, why why does every country use them?
Why does every country have censorship? Why does every country
not have a second amendment? We don't follow what other
countries do. We dominate. And by the way, you keep
saying China is like the dominant path they're not. They
make most of the stuff they make as garbage. We
make medical equipment, We make durable goods six percent more
than we did ten years ago. Everyone thinks that we
don't anymore. China does not dominate. They have how many
more people than US five times as many more people
than US. So yeah, in pure terms, they're going to
pump out more stuff. That doesn't mean that they're dominating US.
Most Chinese are incredibly poor. You want to talk about inequality,
look to China. Most of them can buy American goods.
Even if they wanted to, they don't have the money
to buy it. So I don't listen. I hate the
chi coms. I hope they fail, but you know, you
don't want to do anything to make Yeah, what am
I supposed to go to war with them all the time.
I want communism to die, and I agree with you.
I was wrong a bit too. I don't remember what
I wrote. I thought that, you know, when economic freedom comes,
usually political freedom follows, and maybe that's still going to
be the case. We don't know what's going to happen
twenty years from now in China. I just don't people
think that China is nipping on our heels. I mean the.
Speaker 2: Again, David. Yeah, eighteen things that were just said in
that you want to respond to one? And then I'm like, okay,
we've been gone to like twelve more and now I
don't even remember what I should.
Speaker 1: Have written down. Everything and we should have done it
one at a time. I apologize.
Speaker 2: No, it's just that there's a lot and maybe we
should just do it like weekly, since apparently we will
be in a trade war for the foreseeable future. I
do think it's worth pointing out that protection protecting certain
industries is an ancient idea that does relate to the
security of your people. Okay, so it's not I will
never deny that a tariff is a harm imposed on
the people that you know that have to pay it,
But there are strategic reasons why you might do it,
and every country in the history of the world has
done it to protect certain industries because there are certain
things that in the short term can be obtained in
a cheaper and more efficient fashion from another country, but
in the long term could lead to your destruction. And
that every single president, including Reagan, who wrote and spoke
eloquently against tariffs, has imposed tariffs. And it's been Tariffs
have been in place in our country since the very founding.
In fact, we used to pay for our country.
Speaker 1: Through So it's if you want to share, and.
Speaker 2: So I'm just I'm just saying I don't want to
be so extreme about it as to say like, there
will be no perfectly free market. Ever, so if there's
not a free market, how you respond to other people
with unfair trade practices? You know, you have some room there,
and you do it precisely to avoid war. It is
better to have a trade war than a hot war,
and we are in many ways headed toward a hot
war in our current time. And if we can avoid
that through a trade war and using our incredible power
to reshape things away from China, that might be in
everybody's interest.
Speaker 1: All Right, you keep talking about you've you keep trying
to make a case that the administration doesn't make. I mean,
you know, they say, we used to pay for everything
with tariffs, and we will we can again, and we
can eliminate the income text. Yeah, if you shrink the
government by like a thousandfold, then maybe, And then what
happens when.
Speaker 2: We stop saying things I love?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Then what? Yeah? I wish? But have you seen
the new budget they're working on. We're not shrinking anything.
So the bottom line is people tell me, you know again,
this is just social media. I'm just reacting to what
people's arguments are that we're going to balance the budget,
that it's going to help. But no, it's not. We're
not We're never balancing the budget in our lifetime. I mean,
it's just not happening and well done.
Speaker 2: I do think that's another part and we really should
move on. But that's another part of the strategy. I
think we are facing financial ruin in our debt. We
do need to restructure, like people have been doing this
thing for decades where they're just like, we will kick
this can down the road and then a future generation
will completely implode over our debt. And you do have
to make some dramatic changes in order to pay down
some of this debt. And yes, part of it could
be spending less, but that's not working. Growing the economy
is a method that has worked.
Speaker 1: And protectionism. Never in the history of Earth has grown
an economy from a non No one has ever put
more tariffs on and become richer after. So I don't
see how that's supposed to help with any of the
stuff you just mentioned about cutting some spending, about how
about you know, I get that doses doing that, but
people I see are overestimating what is possible. When you're
talking about discretionary spending, you know you can only cut
so much. And by the way, I saw Donald Trump
was saying he wants to expand military spending to like
buy a trillion dollars or something. I mean, we you
cannot cut the debt if you keep spending more and
you never touch in titlements and you never touch the military,
and you never touch anything else. Oh man, that was
all over the place. But listen, it's a really big say.
Speaker 2: Some of this drama could lead to a restructuring refinancing
of our debt, and I do think that's another big
of the Trump administration.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry that wasn't happening this morning, right, I mean
the I.
Speaker 2: Know, well, it's not happening this morning because China is
really making a push again, you know, to scare everybody,
but they might not be able to sustain that over
the long term. Plus you might see drum Powell take
action here which would kill off that Chinese effort. So
it's another reason why I'm not freaking out as much
as you are. Is like everything changes like day to day.
You kind of have to give this a chance to work.
If you're not going to stop it right away, I
understand you want to stop it right away.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I want to quickly say something that the
freak out. I'm not freaked out about the market really,
and everyone says, oh, the market pops back. Yeah, I
mean so then the Great Depression wasn't bad. The market
pops back. No, The problem is that one hundred and
sixty million people have some connection to stocks. Right, there
are five twenty nine if for one case, et cetera.
But it's not just that. It's that small cap stocks
are taking a hit. All these stocks take a hit,
You're going to push the country into recession, and people,
working class people first will use their jobs. Trust me,
the hedge fudge guy who loses a ton of money,
he's still going to be okay. It's normal. People are
going to pay the price, and we should be worried
about that when we do dramatic This isn't a business deal.
This is a government we're talking about. Actually, can I
take a quick step back, say one last thing. Trump
should not be able to do this at all. To
begin with, it is unconstitutional for the president to unilaterally
put taxes on American people. And Congress is so weak
and they just do not care about their institution. They've
given away all their power. And this is part of that,
we would have a very long drawn out debate about
what kind of tariff regime we'd want or not want
in Congress, not on the whims of one person anyway.
Speaker 2: Well, I agree with that, but that ship sailed long ago,
where we have allowed the president to set these things
for so long. I mean, I totally agree. I'm an
Article one enthusiast. Congress alone should have this power art,
but they gave it up. In fact, I think they
even passed a law saying that presidents could do this,
which is why.
Speaker 1: That law is unconstitutional.
Speaker 2: Right, Maybe, so we'll see what Amy Coney, Barrett and
John Roberts have.
Speaker 1: Well, can I say something about that quickly? These freaking judges, sorry,
stop Trump from doing all kinds of things that are
clearly under the purview of the executive branch. But the
thing that is obviously not, no one does anything about it.
I mean, it's it just blows my mind. Yeah, I'm sorry,
Let's talk about something else. This is a very passionate
subject for me, which is weird. I think people are,
like tariffs are passionate subject for you. But that's a
weird thing to be into. Can I say one last
thing before I leave. Everyone says, what if you're wrong,
You're going to be wrong. But I'm not going to
be wrong. I'm not. I don't have a PhD in
economics or anything. I read Thomas Soul, I read Milton Friedman.
I read a bunch of people I trust. It's their
ideas I rely on, not my own. And if they're wrong,
I'll have to burn all my Thomas Soul books. I
guess I don't know what are you talking about next?
Do you want to talk about Amy Coney Barrett's and
she mentioned her.
Speaker 2: I don't think we have time for that. Let's do
it next week.
Speaker 1: Mike Gallon and Jim Vanda Hay all right, so there
was this.
Speaker 2: It's Jim Vanda High.
Speaker 1: Vanda High so hey, he started Political Right, I think so.
And Axios I believe yep. I was confused those two anyway.
Speaker 2: I made up both of those.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, they started the Daily Bugle. Let's just talk
about I'm not sure who said it, but let's just
go through it. So there's something of a discussion in
the on the professional left within journalism to why people
don't trust journalism, journalists anymore and these outlets anymore. I
mean obviously they're if I remember correctly, most polls showed
that people trust them less than they trust lawyers, and
you know, the I R s people usually hate. So
Jim Vanda High came up with three reasons why, which
he thinks kind of corroded public trust. One is Twitter
exposed I'm sorry, this is just I'm paraphrasing.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It was a long interview. But one is Twitter exposed
the bias of most journalists, you know, which I think
is actually a really big problem. But maybe I shouldn't
call it a problem. I think it just exposed people
for who they are, and that's probably good to know.
Do you agree with that?
Speaker 2: I do. I have always thought that Twitter's greatest gift
was that it exposed how much worse our journalists were
than we already thought. But I have a thought I
have a comment on that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, in I.
Speaker 2: Don't remember what it was, but I think it was
like before twenty thirteen, there was this story about Kermit Gosnell,
this abortionist in Philadelphia, and he had been allowed to
operate for decades, this horrific and he was in he
was charged, A grand jury was gathered and he was
charged with some of the murders he committed of born
children and women, and he ended up being convicted on them.
And when that story came out, it was like a
really big story about an abortionist delivering children, killing them
and then even killing poor immigrant women. He was doing
stuff like less treatment for immigrant women or black women.
He himself was black, but he would give better treatment
to white women, white citizens than other women who came
to seek abortions from him. And it was just unquestionably
a massive story about a serial murderer who was an abortionist,
and the media barely covered it. And I was on
Twitter and I just used to like ask everybody who
covered abortion why they weren't covering it, and their answers
were horrific, Like I don't remember the name of the
lady who was at the Washington Post, but she said, Hi, Molly,
I'm a health policy reporter. I don't cover local crime,
thank you. And when people saw that, they were so horrified, like,
you know, George Floyd's a local crime story, but somehow
that goes global. But when Kermit Gosnell's killing a bunch
of women and children, that's just a local crime story.
They revealed on Twitter just how bad they were. It
was like the heyday of Twitter, where people just didn't
really think through their responses, and it did a lot
to make people not trust the stories media we're telling.
Speaker 1: If I remember correctly, this is the first time that
the name I heard. I remember hearing the name Molly Hemingway.
You were a big part of that story. Was it
that around to twenty ten something like that.
Speaker 2: I don't remember, but there was a movie made and
there's a compositive character of me and another journalist named
Molly something I can't remember.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I so we agreed that it exposed them. Then
the other one he has is the coverage of COVID
and how bad that was. Now I totally agree. I
think COVID is going to be remembered as a very
pivotal moment in American political history that could change the
way a lot of people view the world expertise. It's
turned people against experts, but it's also left a vacuum
of expertise in the sense that we don't trust even
anyone anymore. And I think it's a huge problem. And
it's the expert class that created that problem, not the
people you know. And then the lack of coverage of
biding during his presidency, essentially that he was basically, you know,
unable to make decisions and to be president. He has
a couple of you know, he says, these are a
couple of bad breaks and a couple of you know,
bad apples leading the way. Now. I always go back
to the Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh for me was the breaking point
completely where it was no longer something that you could
call bias in any way, and it was just active
by the media to destroy someone that they didn't like, right,
and they all participated. It was just just a bad apples.
Almost every outlet I can think of participated in that.
And then they all participated in the Russia collusion hoax.
They were participants. And if they weren't participants, and they shouldn't
be in journalism because they're idiots. So I wrote a.
Speaker 2: Book on Trump for a little booklet on Trump versus
the media back early in his term. And one of
the things I did was ask people when they lost
their trust in the media. So I'm asking people in
twenty seventeen because unlike Mike Allen and Jim Vandahei, I
knew what was going on in twenty seventeen and in
fact had known for a long time by that point,
so when I talked to people, their answers were things
like the Hurricane Katrina, or the Duke Lacrosse rape hoax,
or things like even predating that people outside of Mike
Allen and Jim Vandahi's tiny, tiny, tiny little bubble have
been losing trust in the media for decades. I think
another really obvious example you might have made would have
been twenty sixteen, when one hundred percent of the people
in the media assured everybody that it was literally impossible
for Donald Trump to win the election, and then he
did so. I think these examples are cute and funny,
but like ridiculous too, because it's such a long standing issue.
To not mention the Russia collusion hoax in particular is
a laugh. And of course Mike Allen and Jim Vanda
High were participants in that. They were publishing part of
the hoax material, so they can't really admit it. I
saw a little bit or read a little bit of
what the response was, and I think the only way
to say, because like he also said, I think was
Mike Allen said that they didn't cover Joe Biden's obvious
mental decline because they didn't want to seem like ideologues.
Are you bleeping kidding me right now? You didn't want
to seem like ideologues for whom like they were being ideological.
They weren't covering Biden because they had a deep seated
dislike of anyone challenging the status quo, which was Donald Trump.
They knew that if they reported honestly and accurately and
fairly about what everybody could see, that it might help
them lose power someone who came in, someone might be
able to come in who would disrupt the status quo.
They're nothing but ideologues, and like, the only response to
someone who says, we didn't cover Biden's obvious mental decline
because we didn't want to be ideologues is to laugh
uproariously in their face for five minutes.
Speaker 1: Vanda Hi is wrong in that, even if you had
a few bad apples leading the way, where was he
and where was everyone else challenging those bad apples like that,
there's no one who said, wait a minute, Biden doesn't
look I remember I wrote a piece I think it
was titled like stop trying to convince me Joe Biden
isn't a confused, huttering old man or something like that.
And I was written up in one I forget what
outlet is one of the conspiracy theorists about Joe Biden.
No one came to my deffin not that I'm that
big in voice, but no one came to people like
mine defense saying, hey, he doesn't look okay. You know,
he wandered off into a field and the Italian Prime
Minister had to like lead him back, you know. And
then when we saw that debate, it all blew up
and all of a sudden, they just switched sides. They
just literally pushed him out of the election. I mean,
this is not journalism. So I think the probably is
that we keep calling these people journalists when they're not.
Speaker 2: And as evidence of this too, they kicked him out
of the primary, or they kicked him out. Yeah, the
kicked him out of the presidential election, but they didn't
kick him out of the presidency, as if the looming
presidential election is more important than the remaining seven or
eight months he had in the president And see.
Speaker 1: And I quickly want to say, I've always said this,
I don't everyone has some kind of ideological view. They
see the world through that view. No one can be
perfectly unbiased, and I'm fine with that as long as
you're honest about it. Like I feel like I've done
journalism in the past from a certain perspective. I don't
lie about it, but it has to be true. The
Russian Russian conspiracy theory was a lie. They knew it
was a lie. The Kavanaugh stuff was a lie. They
spread it on purpose. And also Van der Hay doesn't
mention that, yeah, there are a few bad, worse apples,
but the others spread their stuff all over the place,
So what's that stupid? Pro Publica will publish something right
because they have literally no journalistic standards, and then but
New York Times won't publish that. But then they will
spread what pro Publica says. You know what I'm saying.
So it's like this little it's like the Vietnamese taking
Chinese products. It's selling it to ust, you know what
I mean. So I yeah, that's what they do.
Speaker 2: I was exactly right. I was looking at pro public
As nine to ninety form where they have to list
like what they spend their money on, and they said
that they're yourphalist, like your three biggest things that you
did the previous year. So for their twenty twenty three
tax form, they brought in like fifty three million dollars
all from crazy left wing entities. So they like to
present themselves as impartial journalists. It's like, so interesting that
your impartial journalism only targets the right and is only
funded by crazy left wingers. Isn't that interesting? But they
they did all of that money, spend almost like all
of it on targeting Clarence Thomas and Justice Alito. They
said that their three biggest things they did was target
the justices and they launched they said as one of
their successes that they had supported the Democrat strategy for
ethics inquiries into these people. Their second biggest thing was
going after Leonard Leo, who is widely perceived as being
like supportive of these justices. And then their third thing
was like they ran one article on pacemakers or something.
So like of the top three things, too, were there
years long campaign against it to delegitimize the Supreme Court.
If they were as real journalists and not complete brazen.
Speaker 1: Activists, yeah, if they were ideological, but you know, gave
us valuable stories. You know that maybe we don't like
but are true. There would be one thing, but I
remember they're the ones who concocted and spread that story
right before the election because everyone thought abortion was going
to sing Trump that a woman in Georgia had been
killed because she wasn't allowed to have an abortion, and
it was a lie. She had taken the abortion pills
and that's what killed her, and that's not true. It
is obviously activism. So I zero respect for the end
and their whole goal is just to destroy the court.
You notice that Congress doesn't have a bill up for
the Supreme Court reform bill up anymore for voting such.
Speaker 2: An urgent need to get that last year?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Or where's the bill to get rid of the filibuster?
I don't see that anywhere. Filibuster reform right. You know
what the sad thing is. I am a huge fan
of the filibuster, but I think that as soon as
Democrats have control, they are going to destroy it. You know,
they they say that about Republicans, but they're the ones
who don't care. And you know, I don't know where
that ends.
Speaker 2: But well, on that, we might want to make a
little mention. I said not to talk about the Supreme Court.
But what did you think about what they've done this week?
Speaker 1: Well, I think it proves that we don't have constitutional emergencies.
That the Trump administration was right to take it to,
you know, take it up the chain of courts. I
think I wish the Supreme Court was maybe Congress needs
to do it, but I wish the Supreme Court was
a little harsher on judges who inject themselves into the
process where they don't belong on constitutionally. And I actually
think for instance, the aliens alien what's it.
Speaker 2: Called, the Alien Act, Alien Enemies Act.
Speaker 1: Alien Enemies Act. I thought that was a good decision
that actually injected allowed Trump to use it, but also
injected some process into it, like I wanted, you know, so,
I think it was kind of not totally a victory
for the administration, but I do think it was a
good decision.
Speaker 2: I actually think it was a complete victory for the administration.
Everyone was making a big deal about how it said, like,
of course, these people have due process and need to
be notified of that under you know that they can
file a habeas petition. They always could file a habeas petition.
They purposely didn't file a habeas petition because they would
have lost. They went to Bosberg and they tried to
do this like Administrative Procedures Act challenge, and he allowed it,
even though the jurisdiction was always under habeas, which would
have been a different court.
Speaker 1: And so but then the Trump administration argued that they
could throw them out before before that, you know, before
they had any right to that kind of process.
Speaker 2: So I think that was a big win a court,
you know, just and if you care about rule of law.
But there's still the larger issue that the Court needs
to provide some guidance to lower court judges about when,
where and how nationwide injunctions can be imposed or just something,
because it's like the number of cases that are running
like a like an out of control train at the
Supreme Court is untenable, and the fear and cowardice in
just setting some guidelines is not making much sense. You've
had justices on both you know, both Democrat nominated and
Republican nominated justices saying we can't have this issue where
people just go to a friendly judge to get a
nationwide injunction. Alena Kagan has said it. Clarence Thomas has
repeatedly said it for a long time. Gorst said it
nearly his entire time on the court, and it just
needs to be dealt with and pretend like covering your
eyes and ears and acting like it's not going to happen,
like it's all going to be okay, is not going
to cut it.
Speaker 1: I don't have expertise on this, so maybe I'm wrong
in this theory, but it seems to me like Amy
Coney Barrett cares very much about process, Like I think
her decisions actually have a common theme and philosophy, Whereas
Roberts will inject himself into like Obama Care and rewrite
the law to make it work because he wants democracy
to run things.
Speaker 2: But then then claim that he wants to defer to.
Speaker 1: Congress that any well, yeah, and here defer to common
So there is no consistency there. I know people are
mad at Amy Cony Barrett. I think she's more consistent
than they give her credit for. But I am not
like a judicial expert or anything.
Speaker 2: So I was thinking about this yesterday about Amy Coney
Barrett's strategy. She has definitely consistently said that she cares
about process, letting things like slowly work their way through
the lower courts. She's alway is going to be looking
for like the most modest approach to take, and she
views this as a form of judicial restraint. So judicial restraint,
you know, I think it starts like the phrase I
think maybe is first used at the end of the
eighteen hundreds. But this idea again that you will let
Congress make the laws, that you don't intervene unless you
absolutely have to. And it can also be a form
of letting other courts handle things so that the Supreme
Court doesn't have to handle everything. And you might think
that this preserves the legitimacy of the court. But I
was thinking about it almost as it relates to foreign policy.
You know, I hate the term isolationist, right, but if
you take people who get that, who get that slur
lodged at them, I think a better way to describe
them as restrainers. They just as a matter of principle,
believe in restraint of the military. Now nearby to restrainers
relative to the neo KHN interventionists would be realists. Realists
do not believe in restraint as a matter of principle,
although they might be inclined toward it, but they think
sometimes you just need to take out a bad guy.
So if Solomoni is killing a bunch of Americans, you're
not saying do nothing, and you're not saying in Vaderran,
You're just saying, we're gonna take them out and then
we're gonna get out of here. Okay. I think Amy
cony Berry is on the isolationist side of judicial restraint
and that she should move to the realist side of
judicial restraint, meaning her instincts are not bad. In fact,
they're healthy for the longer term. But she should understand
too that sometimes doing nothing is actually just not a
good way to solve the problem and that and I
think this is something that she'll learn with maturity. This
is her fourth term on the court, and it is
commonly believed that you have to give a justice like
three years before you get a feel for who they are.
In her case, her first term on the court, she
did not even meet some of the other justices until
that spring because it was COVID closure. And the next
year was also very weird due to COVID closures, and
it just was kind of like not the best friendliest
bringing in to the systems of the Court. And she
also was only a federal judge for about you know,
longer than David's suitor, but not that much longer. She
had only been on the Seventh Circuit for a couple
of years, like less than two years. I think when
she gets the call to become a Supreme Court justice,
prior to that, she was one of the country's most
well regarded law professors. Right. You see this in her writing.
She's it's like, I have a seven part thing, and
I'm gonna agree with this and not with this, And
she's like way overthinking everything in a way that an
academic might like, it's good that our court does not
have a ton of politicians, but sometimes we move too
far into the law professor's side of things. And so
I think the ideal situation is that with a little
more time, she realizes, oh, there's a reason why all
the conservative justices are just like making clear decisions, not
just because it avoids some of the problems, but because
it provides clarity to the lower judges. A seven part
convoluted opinion that she's known for is not providing clarity
to the lower courts, and her job is to provide clarity.
It's not her nature, it's not her background. But she
could get there, or she could just like continue down
the path she's on where she's getting praised by the
New York Times and Slight and making friends with Katanji
Brown Jackson and all that stuff. Like, she kind of
has a decision to make, and I honestly have no
idea what that decision will be. But if I were
her advisers, I would encourage her to move to the
realist side of judicial restraint and away from the extremist,
like isolationist side of judicial restraint.
Speaker 1: I like your foreign policy analogy in the sense that
I believe my foreign policy is like non ideological, whatever
works to help American interests. I'm for it, But I
do think if you're so, if you're in the court,
you should be relentlessly and obsessively thinking about how do
I uphold the Constitution? But can Congress? I still don't
have an answer for this, and I wonder if you do.
Can Congress come in make a law eliminate me.
Speaker 2: They absolutely could not, like this Congress can do anything,
but they conceivably a Congress could do it. I want
to push back on what you just said about like
relentless adherence to the Constitution. I think you need to
recognize that everybody who's a Republican appointed justice believes that
they are adhering to the Constitution. Possibly even John Roberts,
although I don't think he makes it. I don't mean
like as a particular insult him. I just don't think
he thinks that's like a big part of his job.
But you actually should have some focus on pragmatism and
how what you say will be able to be understood
by a lower court, because the Supreme Court does have
these inferior courts that are to follow it, and if
you make it incomprehensible for them, you're just not doing
your job very well. And there are two separate things here.
First off, I want to just talk about the pragmatism.
I love Justice Gorsage. I really really love him. I
think he's just a brilliant mind, and I love his courage.
I love many things about him. He made a joke
at the Federalist Society a few months ago about how
he was speaking so long that it was keeping people
from getting to the bar. But as they knew, he
didn't care about the consequences of what he did. And
he was making a joke because of this decision that
he authored with the left wing justices on I don't
remember who else was in it, but it was about
it affected Oklahoma, and it was about whether Native tribes
are subject to American laws in some sense and basically
turned well over half of Oklahoma into like a law
free zone. It was because of his belief in the
you know, I assume it's because of his belief in
the Constitution that he did this. It's been a complete
nightmare for everybody, and we'll probably need to know. Someone's
going to need like if you've got like a child
abuse of a Native person of someone else, there's like
nothing the law can do, you know. And there can
be repercussions to this strict adherence, and it should be
balanced with pragmatism for the effects of what you do.
And I would say that about the entire conservative movement.
Adherence to principle is so important, and so is understanding
the manner in which you implement that. And the it's
like you were just talking at the beginning, they've done
a poor job of implementing this tariff policy. Well, that's
not a principal issue. That's a prudential issue, but prudence
does matter, and the justices should balance that, and so
should all Americans, like all conservatives, should adhere to principle
and also think about strategy.
Speaker 1: I agree with you on prudence on lawmaking and implementing policy,
but I think that worrying about pragmatic solutions as a
judge is kind of a cancer that grows into you
making laws.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. I think that's the legitimate concern.
Speaker 1: Yes, all right, do you want to talk about culture?
I don't know how long we've been on.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't really have much, but go ahead.
Speaker 1: I watched I was watching a show called whether we've
spoken about, called The Pit. I like, I binge watched
most of the first season. I guess that's that's a
really nerve wracking show. Right. Did you let me just
say how many episodes of you know you haven't really
watched it?
Speaker 2: Zero?
Speaker 1: I thought you said you did. I guess it was Mark.
It's really well done. I never watched er or shows
like that, but I guess maybe it's something like that.
So it's just one day in the life of an
emergency room. And Noah Wiley, who I think actually was
in the YR I don never watched it is the
kind of the chief doctor of the emergency room, and
he's as a doctor, as a fake doctor. He's a
magnificent I think he runs that place really well. He
shows compassion, he helps people, you know, when he has
to do, and all that. The only it's a little bit.
They have real up close views of operations and things.
I could do without all that. Yeah, yeah, but I
will and I will say that there are some kind
of subplots that are are sometimes annoyingly lefty, you know
what I mean, Like the trans person, Like every social
thing that we talk about shows up in an episode.
It's kind of like after school specially in that way.
But overall, I think it's a pretty good show. And
the other thing that I watched was Draft Day? Have
you ever seen that with Kevin Costner? Noep. It's about
a gm in who runs the Cleveland Browns and he
makes a very bad trade on draft Day and the
rest of the movie is about how he corrects it.
And I want to say, what was it called idiot plot?
Where a whole movie revolves on people being very stupid?
Speaker 2: You understand that at all?
Speaker 1: Okay, that's what this movie is, though I still enjoyed it.
He makes this terrible trade and then he like reverses
and does all this stuff, and in the end he's
celebrated for like saving the day. But I reverse engineered
this movie and I thought about all the trades he
made and none of it makes any sense. So but
if you'd like football, you probably enjoyed I like that.
Kevin Costner makes lots of like all American sports films,
you know, we don't have enough those, and that's all
I have.
Speaker 2: Okay. I have been traveling a lot and that got
me some hikes in in Arizona and Tucson. Arizona, which
I've never been to before, is just absolutely beautiful. I
would love to go back to hikes more. And the
cacti and the weird animals they have, like javalinas, which
are rodents that look like pigs.
Speaker 1: Really, I've never seen those. I've been out.
Speaker 2: Well, I did, and it was terrifying, but it was
just beautiful and wonderful. And I was also in Florida
in Tallahassee, which is like a different kind of pretty.
I was speaking at this thing called Word of the South,
and it's an interesting music lecture hybrid. So I was
speaking with the Wall Street Journal Supreme Court reporter, and
we had our thing was so his name is Jess
Braven and then we were moderated by this guy named
Del Scuggs, who Scruggs, who is a local musician, and
so he would play a song and then he would
ask a question, and then he would play a song
and then ask a question and it was really interesting.
But like George Clinton was down there giving a concert.
On my ride from the airport, I was in a
car with a bunch of musicians, including bj the Chicago Kid,
and there was that really, oh, who's that? Like very
famous guitar player slash producer. Sorry, I guess he's not that,
is it? Larry Mitchell was in my elevator. Do you
know who that is?
Speaker 1: He got like.
Speaker 2: Belong dreads, He wears a cowboy hat, black guy, really
great guitarist and also is like affiliated with a bunch
of backs. Anyway, so that was kind of fun.
Speaker 1: And George Clinton has to be in his eighties right.
Speaker 2: Mark and I saw him perform a few years ago
during and he sat for the entire show, and he
did this show as well, and then still slowly like
I've barely been home, but watched another episode of Say Nothing,
which is good, and also finished White Lotus.
Speaker 1: I heard, so I have not watched any of these
people say the first season was great, second season less great,
in the third season even less great. Do you agree
with that?
Speaker 2: No, I think this might have been my favorite season.
But I thought all three were really good. I think
they're good. I just find the guy who Mike White.
I find him interesting. This one was more I had
to fast forward through in terms of sex stuff, including
homosexual incest, which is just not something I want in
my mind. And Kylie wrote Kylie Griswold wrote a really
good piece on it about the spiritual themes and the
cost of Christianity for the Federalist that I would recommend.
Speaker 1: But it's funny to hear someone say other than the
homosexual incest sex scene, it's a pretty good show.
Speaker 2: I don't know. In my dotage, I'm getting like less
tolerant of even watching these things.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this quickly. Is Walton Goggins involved
in that scene? I hope not.
Speaker 2: I don't want to give away any spoilers, Okay, don't
get Also, one of the things I really liked about
this is that it had so three was kind of
a theme in this show begins with like an image
of that here no Evil See, no Evil Speak, No
Evil Monkey trio. And then there are three kids in
this one family, and there are three friends who are
on a trip and they are my age. Okay, three women,
ones like a Hollywood starlet, one's a Texas Trump voter,
and one's a New York divorcee whose life is a
bit of a mess. And they are childhood friends. And
one of the things I loved about this is that
I also have a three way friendship from high school,
junior high even that I'm still very close to these
girls and we still sometimes go and do things. I
think we're gonna see Devo together here in a couple
of weeks, and we are very different, and you know,
I'm I'm the Trump voter. But like, not that these
three people lined up in any particular way, but some
of the conversations they had they just hit me because
I've had a lot of this myself. You know, when
you're friends with someone for that many decades, you go
through so much together. Everyone does, you know, everyone has
their ups and downs. And it was just kind of
nice to see it portrayed, and I was honestly a
little surprised that a man could write some of those
so interestingly.
Speaker 1: And well, it's funny that you bring up Divo because
I actually was listening to them lately because they were
two you know, well known for me to like and
because when I was a music snob as a younger person.
But the truth is, they were like completely transgressive and
weird and interesting and so different from everything that was
going on. They're really really good and fun to listen to,
which you think, Yeah, and I.
Speaker 2: Was in that club debo I think I told you about.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, all right, great, Well, anyway, if you'd
like to email the show, you can do so at
radio at the Federalist dot com. Thanks for discussing Taris
with me, you know, it gets me really excited to
do and maybe we'll talk about it next week as well.
Until then, Few lovers of freedom and anxious for the
Fray