Surrender, betrayal, and the collapse of promises

Well, it is quite a day today. Today, the mythology surrounding Donald Trump has collided with reality from every direction. We have a Republican senator admitting that Congress could reign Trump in, but then he surrenders anyway. And a candidate facing multiple allegations points to Trump and goes, listen, if he's allowed to do it, why am I not allowed to do it? And some former Trump supporters are finally saying out loud that the anti-war movement they thought they joined was actually a cult built around a lie. We're also going to look at Donald Trump's increasingly incoherent claims about gas prices, grocery prices, tariffs and Iran. And we have economic numbers that just are not cooperating with the fantasy. I'll also speak to economist Gabriel Zuckman, who I think. you will really be interested in hearing from. And we are going to dive deep on the promised manufacturing renaissance, which has run into some unfortunate data. Finally, Republican cowardice and MAGA disillusionment. It's all happening on today's show. If my equipment will work today, never a guarantee.

I have a remarkable video to start with today. This is what when I saw this video of John Cornyn, the outgoing Texas senator, summarizing basically the Republican Party's entire relationship with Donald Trump in one sentence, I realized that they know. Let me explain. Okay. They know what he is doing. They know they are supposed to stop Trump. And they have decided we are going to surrender. Why won't John Cornyn bother voting no against Todd Blanche for attorney general? Well, there's nothing we could do to reign in the president. Here is John Cornyn. the picture of cowardice himself. I was saying as recently as yesterday, he likes the idea of this fund that he wants to find some way to pay these people. Does that concern you as someone who's tried to fight against getting this anti-weaponization fund in place? Well, there's nothing we could do to reign in the president when he said he likes the fund and he wishes still exists, but the fact of the matter it's dead. And that's all we could do under these circumstances. We should be running that on repeat until election day. There's nothing we could do to rein in the president. That's Republican Senator John Cornyn. It's not a random guy being interviewed outside of Trump rally. Listen, there's really nothing I can do about this guy. This is not, you know, some powerless backbencher in a state legislature who's like, hey, listen, I just vote here in the state Senate in Arkansas. I can't do anything about Trump. This is a United States senator. This is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. This is one of the people who has the constitutional power to approve or reject Trump's nominee for attorney general. And John Cornyn makes the statement while explaining, listen, I'm just going to vote to advance Todd Blanche's nomination to lead the Justice Department. Now, the context is very important. And I think, you know, often they go, oh, we need the context. It makes it better. Somehow the context makes it even worse because John Cornyn and Republican Senator Thom Tillis, both outgoing. They objected to this $1.8 billion so-called anti-weaponization fund, also called a give Trump's criminal friends money fund, the anti-weaponization fund. The concern was this is going to become this pot of money for Trump's allies who said the government wronged us. And this could potentially include January 6 rioters who were pardoned by Donald Trump. And so John Cornyn and Thom Tillis didn't like that. By the way, this is just a brief. Let's take a brief detour. John Cornyn and Thom Tillis are the ones who publicly have spoken out against the weaponization fund, but they are not the only ones who are against it. They're leaving the Senate, so they're free to talk about the crap Trump's doing, whereas all of these other coward Republicans, they don't. Republicans only talk about what Trump's doing wrong when they're leaving or occasionally when they've decided I'm willing to be voted out. Okay, back to the main story.

Todd Blanche, after what he was told, hey, these Republican senators, they don't like your answers on this anti-webinization fund. Todd Blanche put a written order out rescinding the fund. And we talked on the bonus show extensively about how this rescinding is kind of BS because it can be reconstituted 10 different ways and the money still paid out. But the two Republicans then said, all right, we'll support them. And then the judiciary committee advanced the nomination, straight party line vote 12 to 10. But Donald Trump has been publicly saying, no, I like the fund. I wish the fund still existed. There's other ways that we could even do the fund. And by the way, even if they blocked the Todd Blanche, I could have kept him in place on an acting basis and just pursued the fund through Congress anyway. So like everything we set on the bonus show about the other ways in which they could do this anyway are kind of coming true. So reporters went to John Cornyn and they said, listen, we've got a problem here. Of what value is Todd Blanche's promise that the thing is dead, that the fund is dead? when Trump controls the executive branch and he's telling everybody, oh, we want to bring that policy back. And John Cornyn's answer is just a white flag. It's a pathetic and cowardly white flag. There's nothing we can do to reign in the president. And there is a rather obvious thing that John Cornyn could have done, which is he could have voted no on Todd Blanche. He could have said if the president is openly announcing he wants to reverse what we just negotiated. I'm not going to reward Donald Trump by confirming the nominee he has. And if we can't seriously get some kind of guarantee that this is not going forward, not just like the fund as constituted is dead, but Trump still wants it. I'm just not going to vote for him. He's not going to get my vote. That is advice and consent and that's the leverage. That's the mechanism for reigning in the president. He's like, I have no mechanism for reigning in the president after giving up voluntarily a mechanism for reigning in the president. John Cornyn demonstrated. They have leverage because when John Cornyn and Thom Tillis said, we're not going to go for this crap. That delayed the committee vote. And then the administration had to come in and negotiate because they needed corn and support. That's the leverage. After giving up the leverage he clearly had, he goes up, we just don't have any leverage here. Pathetic. He folded and he goes, I'm powerless. The pathetically weak Republican party in a nutshell. Republicans spend entire campaigns presenting themselves as the party of strength and strong borders and. strong military and strong leaders and tough negotiators, we never surrender. And they pose with guns and they produce ads with explosions and they talk about courage and all this stuff. And then Trump applies the slightest pressure. And they all of a sudden are helpless spectators with no leverage and no tools to reign in Trump. And a senator suddenly can't think of a single remedy. He can't vote no. He can't insist on legislation. He can't use oversight. He can't subpoena anyone. He can't block funding. He can't do anything all of a sudden. All he can do is go, hey, reporters, there's nothing we can do.

And then he votes yes. Now, the most charitable defense of John Cornyn, and I don't even know why I'm trying to levy one. But if, if you want to put together a charitable defense, it's, well, he was just speaking narrowly. What he means is we can't stop Trump from supporting the fund. But we got a concession from Todd Blanche, which is the written order rescinding the fund. You can give them that benefit of the doubt, but it really doesn't change the central problem here, which is Trump is not like a radio caller going, I like the fund. I wish Republicans did it. He's the president. He appoints and removes executive branch officials. And so when Trump says, I like the fund and I want it restored, those are not merely words. It's he can pressure the justice department to act. And John Cornyn is voting to confirm the person who would receive that pressure. If John Cornyn trusts Todd Blanche to resist Trump, he should tell us why. And if he doesn't trust Todd Blanche to resist Trump, then he should be against the nomination. And this is the pattern that really has defined the Republican Party through this Trump era. Privately, they go, I have some concerns. Publicly, they might kind of furrow their brow. few issued a few of them issued these very carefully worded statements about norms and process and stuff like that and then the vote arrives Trump threatens them and nearly every single one of them falls in line and afterwards they go listen we we didn't really have any power to do anything you didn't lack power you lack the willingness to do it and go out on a limb and use the power and there's a huge difference between having no power and being unwilling to use it powerlessness can excuse a failure Being a coward doesn't excuse a failure. And the Senate, as undemocratic as it is, and we have major problems with the Senate's lack of democratic reality. It was designed in part to prevent presidents from turning the executive branch into a personal instrument, like a little guitar that they can strum to their liking. Senators aren't employees of the president. They serve separate terms. They represent different constituencies. They possess independent constitutional authority. And these confirmations shouldn't be loyalty tests. They should actually be checks on Congress. John Cornyn doesn't give a damn. He turns it upside down. Trump gets what he wants once again. We don't have oversight here. One of the reasons we need to get Democrats back in power in November is we need actual oversight. What these Republicans are doing is capitulation. Voters should remember this clip. We don't have, we can't rein in the president. When a Republican says, trust me to be a check on Trump, they're telling us they're not going to do it. And John Cornyn didn't say we're going to use every tool we have. And he didn't say the president must respect this commitment. He says there's nothing we could do. There was something he could do. He chose not to do it. And these are truly pathetic people. Remember when I told you that letting Trump get away with when you're famous, they let you do it. You can just grab them by the pussy, etc. That this was a destruction of norms. That's not, oh, we're clutching our pearls. They're destroying norms. No, it trickles down.

And we now have Max Miller, the Republican congressman, accused of horrible abuse of his wife. And in some circumstances, there's belief he may even have abused his kid, but he denies it. This guy is accused of absolutely horrible stuff by multiple women. And he said during a disastrous interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, listen. I'm not getting out of the race because Trump was also accused of this sort of thing and he stayed in the race. This is what I've been talking about. If Trump is allowed to get away with it and remain in power, why not Max Miller? By the way, this interview was a terrible idea. It went so poorly for Max Miller. Let's take a look at the first clip. There are now three women. three women who have accused you of violent behavior. Politico published a report in 2021 that says, when you were in high school, you, quote, pushed a girl out of the dorm of his room, and she fell down some stairs after he became enraged when she resisted his attempts to touch her, according to three people who were there, and many more who heard about the incident in the aftermath. Now, you deny that, but the woman in question told Mother Jay Jones reporter Abby Vassoulis just days ago that it happened and was, quote, one of the more traumatic nights of her life. I would love... Hold on. Individual to go on the record because that, Jake, I was 13 years. Hold on, because I'm not done with the list of women that have accused you of violence. Then there is former White House Press Secretary. Okay, you were young. Then there's former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham. who was your ex-girlfriend, she accused you of being abusive and having a violent streak. She wrote in her book, quote, I could do nothing right by him. I would wake up every morning, shaking with anxiety about his mood that day. I had seen his temper before, and it had scared me, unquote. She has recently filed a temporary restraining order against you in a defamation case. And now there are these claims from your ex-wife, Emily Marino. And I guess the question is, are all three of these women who don't know each other? Are all three of them lying? Yes, it's very easy, and I can tell you why. Every single time, and people have asked me, you know, what are you going to do? Are you going to drop out of this race? Are you going to resign? You know, are you going to get out before the deadline? And my answer to you, Jake, is no. and I can tell you why. In 2016, when President Donald J. Trump faced the most extreme allegations in the world that hit him day after day after day, and people in the media very much like yourself and others said that he would have no shot at winning, that he should not be the president of the United States. But guess what? He stayed in and he was resilient. And what the American people can see is that they can see that somebody is fighting who is resilient, and that is a quality that the American people cherish. And so for no second, am i going to sit here and continue to be debased by false and listen guys he's kind of right i mean this is what i've been saying for so long when we see someone like trump credibly accused by nearly 50 women of varied degrees of harassment all the way up to i mean his ex-wife accusing him all the way up to it including rape and then he becomes president

And then it happens again. And he's found liable of sexual abuse against E. Jean Carroll. And then he becomes president again. How can we look around and say to our kids and to other people, you are not allowed to do that and still be part of polite society? Like, well, look at how many accusations there are against Trump and he became president. This is the point that I've been making. What basis is there to say Max Miller has to get out if Trump stayed in and won multiple times despite dozens of allegations? This is the debasement that I've been talking about. And so when Max Miller says this, what he's really kind of saying is there are many voters out there who would still support me despite this. There are many people out there who disproportionately his Republican voters who don't care about this or they don't believe it or they've done it themselves and they think it's irrelevant to being able to govern. He's kind of right. And this is exactly the point that I've been making for a decade at this point in time. Now, a really strange moment during this interview, Max Miller appeared to threaten his ex-father-in-law, Bernie Moreno by saying that he would potentially expect, but let me, he, I realize he is ambiguous. Max Miller says that Miller might expose something embarrassing. about Senator Moreno, his ex-father-in-law. This is crazy. This is crazy. With your former father-in-law's story today about your daughter and the little blue bunny doll, that she cannot sleep without. If it's true, that sounds like emotionally abusive behavior toward a toddler to refuse to give it to her when she can't sleep without it. Jake, I would agree that if that were true, that would be incredibly disturbing and that the senator would be right. However... He has taken two years to publicly acknowledge for me to resign from my seat. Why is that, Jake? If he truly believed, like, I'm a father to a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, I believe that you're also a father to children. And I don't know if you're actually a father to a daughter. But what I can tell you is, well, Jake, then what I can tell you is, is that if my daughter came to me and she said, my ex-husband did X, Y, and Z, and then I waited because I was nervous that a political live stream was going to expose a deeply impersonal, embarrassing matter to the senator for him to take that action. Sadly, this has nothing to do with my daughter, Jake. And that's what this entire thing is about. This is nothing more than an individual who's being politically vindictive in talking about a blue bunny. When I have text messages, I can show you from our parent coordinator who is a mandatory court reporter. All right. So he seems to be alluding to something potentially embarrassing to his ex-father-in-law, Bernie Marin. Now, let me address another issue as we get into the next clip. Some of you, I know, have noticed that Max Miller's physical appearance has changed over the last many years. Max Miller used to have sort of a scrawny look. And I don't say that. I mean, listen, I have a scrawny look. I'm not saying it pejoratively. Max Miller used to have sort of a scrawny look.

And now he has a very different look and even even sort of like the shape of his face has changed and some of you I don't know about this next part, but some of you have even pointed out he seems to even have like a slightly deeper voice than he used to the topic of drugs came up with Jake Tapper and I'm going to play that in a second and Max Miller talks about testosterone taking testosterone I am not like a blame drugs for people's actions guy. Like remember when when Mel Gibson was pulled over drunk and he was saying anti-Semitic things to the police officer who pulled him over and he goes, oh, it was the alcohol. Doesn't matter how many how many drinks you give me. I'm not going to start yelling racial slurs because they're just not they're just not part of me. They're not part of who I am. So I don't I don't buy that stuff. But there are a lot of questions as to whether this sometimes unnecessary. testosterone replacement therapy that some men are doing when they don't they don't really have low testosterone but they just they're getting jacked up on testosterone sometimes they use it for um you you know bodybuilding weightlifting etc um um It can be associated with violent behavior. Now, I'm not saying that to excuse anything. I'm saying many of you wrote to me and you said, man, this guy's physical appearance has really changed from that scrawny guy. I remember. Well, he's been taking testosterone. That topic comes up when Jake Tapper asks about illegal drugs. When's the last time you ever used illegal drugs? Because you're being drugs? Yes, because you're being investigated right now by the House Ethics Committee. The last time, I don't know, I would have to say. The last time I had illegal drugs would have been, I don't know, several years ago. I mean, I don't have a time frame on it, but I don't use illegal drugs. No, Jake, this is what they're doing, okay? This whole needles thing. This is testosterone replacement therapy. People are painting this as something that it's not. Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is the Secretary of War just three weeks ago, allowed our entire military who are males, to take testosterone replacement. That's what I was doing. I have not been using any illegal drugs. All right. So anyway, whether or not he was using illegal drugs, the combination of him saying I was on testosterone and many people going, he has a different look and anger. This is just sort of part of the discussion, not an excuse, not not even really an explanation, but something that's lurking around in the background. Whoever thought that Max Miller doing this interview? was a good idea. Oh boy. I'm guessing it was Max Miller himself who said I'm going to push through. I do think ultimately he is going to have to at least drop out of his reelection campaign, maybe not resign, but even Republicans are turning on him. What do you think? And by the way, a lot of Republicans have no idea this story is going on. As I write about in my forthcoming book, pay attention. The digital algorithms silo us based on algorithmic preferences. And there are millions of voters who are not even aware that this story is going on. If that algorithmic siloing is interesting to you and we should really all want to understand it, pre-order my book at david packman.com slash attention.

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What is happening right now may be even more dangerous politically to the future of MAGA, which is that MAGA voters themselves are realizing that the promise that brought them into this movement in 2024 to begin with was a con job. It was a scam. It was a grift. And some of the people now saying it are coming from Trump's own cultural base. Here is an interview on MS now yesterday with a MAGA voter. who straight up says Trump said no foreign wars and he went back on his word and this voter isn't happy. Let's take a listen. He promised not getting into any foreign wars on the campaign trail. That's one of the things that has angered me is like almost immediately. went back on his word. He also said he would bring prices lower. Obviously, you mentioned fertilizer prices. We've seen gas prices, grocery prices, real estate prices. Is that another frustration for you? Yeah, I mean, it's making it harder to pay off my college debt and stuff like that. I was doing pretty well for a while, and now it's kind of coming closer to a halt. I guess when you did vote for Donald Trump, is this what you were expecting? Certainly not with the foreign wars and stuff like that. No. So listen. He's admitting it publicly. Cool. That takes some courage. It takes some introspection. It takes some ability to reevaluate your beliefs. That's great. That should be praised. But we all told you guys that it was it was BS. When when Tulsi Gabbard as a Democrat ran as the lone real liberal who's against wars, we warned you. This is this is BS. Don't fall for it. And then when Trump said, I'm the anti-war president. And Tulsi Gabbard goes, hey, you know what? Even though I used to be a Democrat, Trump convinced me. He's the anti-war president. We warned you. Trump is only willing to say he's anti-war if he thinks it's useful as soon as he believes that war is what will benefit him or he wants to do it for ego reasons or he has a bruised ego and has to he's going to do it. So it was predictable. And we told these people, but they didn't listen. So it's a very simple complaint and it's absolutely legitimate. Trump promised to keep us out of foreign wars. He abandoned that promise and he got us into the war. Did he really make that promise? Yes, he did. He repeatedly says it. There's no confusion. I'm not going to start wars. I'm going to be the one who stops wars. Parents will no longer have their children sent to die in foolish, endless foreign Middle East conflicts. Central to Trump's 2024 campaign. And central to Trump's appeal among younger men like this guy and those in podcast audiences and the anti-establishment voters who believed that we've been lied to by the foreign policy establishment and they got us into wars. He made the claim very clearly. And now that Trump started a war, he says, well, I never really guaranteed it. I didn't guarantee it. And that is the scam. You make the promise in language that is so damn clear.

And then when you break the promise, you go, well, listen, I mean, it's sometimes presidents have no choice but to start a war, et cetera. And so these Trump supporters who have spent years performing cleanup themselves. When Trump changes a position, its strategy and its strategic ambiguity, even if he failed, he either didn't really fail and the media is lying to you or if it seems he failed, it's actually the deep state that made him fail. He breaks a promise. He never really made it. Okay, fine. This guy's admitting the promises were made and they were broken. But that was predictable. And so what we, I think, need to be thinking about as we go forward is reminding people when they go, no, in 2028, they'll go, no, JD's going to do this and that and it's going to be great. Hey, guys, remember when you believed that Trump was going to do this stuff and we were telling you, no, he's not. And we were right. It's happening again. And so they can get their retribution and, and, you know, come back from the dark side or whatever. But when it happens again, we have to remind them you guys already fell for it before. Now, this brings us to UFC fighter Sean Strickland. Sean Strickland was once an enthusiastic supporter of Donald Trump. And he is now straight up saying this is a cult. This is a very interesting clip. This is like a about a week old. I never got to it, but it really fits here. Strickland is not a liberal commentator. He is a former big supporter of Trump's. He's speaking to Sean Ryan and listen to what he had to say. He calls it like it is here. And like when you ever. Have you been to have you been to a Trump rally? No. Oh, dude, it's fucking nuts. No. So, like, when you're at a Trump rally, you're like, oh, I could definitely see how Hitler happened. Like, I'm not even, I'm not fucking joking. Do you do? When you go to a Trump rally, it makes you question the sanity of everybody. Like, Trump's up there talking about like, we're going to throw people in jail for burning the flag. And I'm like, dude, I don't like, I mean, again, you shouldn't do it, but it's like. You know, there was a fucking constitution. I'm looking at Vivek Ramaswamy. And Vivek Ramaswamy is just, like, fucking rubbing his head. He gets out and leaves the Trump rally. And I'm like, ah, fuck. And everybody else is just fucking full second. Yeah, fuck him, throw him in jail. Like, if Trump said, go grab a gun and go do anything, they would fucking do it. They would fucking do it. I know. It's a cult. It's, uh... And that's another good, that's one of the things about Christianity. You're not supposed to put, you know, you don't, you don't put your faith in man. They will. That's also right. That's also fucking couple of important things here. Number one, obviously the messenger is really important because if Strickland were some liberal commentator lecturing right wingers, that would be different. This is a guy who comes from, you know, the hyper aggressive, hyper masculine anti-establishment combat sports world.

Trump aggressively courted that group. And so you can't dismiss Sean Strickland as like another MSNBC Democrat or whatever. His historical comparison is very interesting because Strickland has identified a mechanism. And he's identified when individual judgment is surrendered to the charismatic leader, what happens? Well, really ugly things happen. At a Trump rally, policy doesn't even matter. The product is, do you belong here? Trump. gives the crowd enemies. He validates their grievances. And he says, I'm the one who can save you. And eventually supporting Trump becomes the identity. This is why the whole like, well, he said he was anti-war and then he didn't do it. If you even care about that, you're forgetting that for a lot of people, policy is irrelevant. It's I'm identifying with Trump. And admitting that Trump lied means that you're effectively admitting that years of arguments and friendships and personal investment. were built around a fraud. Now, these two clips don't prove the whole movement is collapsing. There's tens of millions of people who support the guy. There's supporters who will invent another conspiracy and whatever. But when you start to see these defections, they give permission for more defections. And if you have a culturally trusted figure like Sean Strickland, I guess is within this, this kind of UFC fighting type manosphere space. When he goes, this is a cult and Sean Ryan goes, this is a cult. You're giving supporters an escape hatch where it's like, hey, listen, pull the rip cord. Pull the rip cord. Trump trained them to distrust all institutions other than him. That dynamic becomes very fragile when Trump becomes the one that you can no longer trust. And it will be very interesting to see what the electoral effect is here. A disoriented Donald Trump muttered under his breath and walked away after saying that he feels really bad in the Max Miller situation. Not for the alleged beaten wife. But for the alleged wife beater, Donald Trump malfunctioning badly during this bizarre exchange. Trump appeared confused and irritated and barely coherent. He stumbled from the alleged domestic abuse case of Max Miller to publicly humiliating one of his own appointees, Janine Piro. And then he finally ends making a declaration about Iran that is beyond parity. So let's take it step by step. Trump asked any comment on the Max Miller situation? Credibly accused of very serious abuses by a number of women. And Trump goes, oh, I feel really bad for him. For him? What are he talking about? I hope he changed to work it out. I feel badly for him. I feel badly for him. We have very serious allegations here involving domestic violence. And Donald Trump's instinct is I do feel really bad.

for the alleged perpetrator, not for the alleged victim. No generic statement about taking allegations seriously. He feels badly for the powerful Republican accused of the abuse and he hopes Miller can work it out because he feels really bad for him. It is an illuminating reflex. When someone in Trump's orbit surfaces with with serious allegations against them. Trump's sympathy reliably flows to them. Remember with Ghislaine Maxwell when he was asked about her during his first term, I believe it was. He goes, listen, I don't really know her. Maybe it was the second term. Now I don't remember when it was. He goes, but I wish her well. I wish her well. What about all of her victims? But this is Trump's instinct as someone accused by dozens of women. Trump asked about Janine Piro. who recently dropped charges against an alleged vandal of the reflecting pool because the guy didn't do a damn thing. And Trump goes, she was wrong. Everybody saw it. We have the tape. We actually have no tape whatsoever.

Everybody saw the vandalism. All you have to do is look at the tape. If you look at the tape, plus we have a witness or two witnesses that saw the vandalism. So certainly when there was vandalism, it was actually, in my opinion, it was major vandalism. And I told her I was not happy. Is she safe? Are you going to keep her in the position? I have not made a determination as to whether I will be keeping her. She was completely and totally wrong. Except we don't have any of the tapes Trump's Trump claims we have. They just don't exist. And in fact, others have said, oh, the cameras weren't actually there when this entire thing started. We've now added cameras, but we don't have them. Are you going to keep her? I haven't yet made a decision. That sounds pretty bad. That sounds that sounds really bad. And what is fascinating about the Janine Piro thing is she has played the game for years. Like she has had the unflinching public loyalty to Trump since Trump's political career started. But that's the way it works in Trump's world. Loyalty goes in one direction. Are you loyal to me? Then you're allowed to stay. If you commit even a single act of disobedience to Trump, you quickly become the subject of this cliffhanger. Do I keep you or don't I keep you? Oh, I don't know. We're going to have to wait and see on that. I'm not sure. I haven't made a decision yet. This is why so many of the people who supported Trump financially. and voted for him ended up getting screwed because it's what can you offer Trump when you don't have anything you can offer him you're useless to him you mean nothing to the guy he barely cares about a lot of his own friends you think he's going to care about you as a voter give me a break finally beyond parody trump asked well where are we on Iran and Trump goes in the next 48 hours I think we're going to figure it out how many times have we heard that

We're moving along very nice. We'll find out. We'll know in 48 hours later. We have, we have now reached the point. where the famous two-week timetable were always two weeks away. Trump realizes if he says it's going to be two more weeks with Iran, people are just not going to believe it. Maybe two days sounds more believable. And he goes, oh, it's going to be 48 hours. No explanation of what's going to happen. Iran has already denied that talks are ongoing, even though Trump insists that they are. What decisions are being considered? What should American expect? What's going on? It's just an arbitrary deadline that Trump kind of mutters as he walks away. And that's it. And he leaves everybody else to figure out, has the president made an important foreign policy announcement here? Is he is he just spitting out words that he even doesn't understand? And at this point, let me call your attention back to something. Remember after the 2020 election where Trump insisted, I won. And there was a period there. where when you would poll Republicans, do you agree that it was stolen from Trump? And there was a period of time when 57% of Republicans said, yeah, no, it was Trump definitely won it. And the discussion we had was a lot of those 57% don't mean it. But they understand this is what I say to show that I'm with Trump. He won the 2020 election, but they don't believe it. And a very similar dynamic is developing right now. wherein a lot of people are continuing to say we're making progress. There's negotiations. We're soon going to have a deal because that's what Trump is saying, but they also don't believe it. When that starts to happen, it is a significant breakdown in the integrity of the cult. And that's what's taking place right now. We'll see how it works out for Trump. We'll see how it works out for Republicans in the fall. But they deserve to be punished. And I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that we do punish them electorally. When government starts taking sides on religion, everybody loses. That is not a theoretical question. Right now, Trump's new so-called religious liberty commission is attacking church-state separation. They want more religion in public institutions. They want more religious influence in public policy. They want pressure to push a constitutional line that exists for a reason. We have to fight back. Not because we're against religion. but because we understand that there is separation of church and state. Religious freedom should exist and it should have nothing to do with government promoting religion. Government must be neutral. Our sponsor, the Freedom from Religion Foundation, works to keep state and church separate. So you've got free thinkers, atheists, agnostics, non-religious Americans who don't get erased from the American story. Power in a democracy should come from people, not religion.

Please visit ffrf.us slash David or text my name, David, to 511, 511 to learn more or to join. That's ffrf.us slash David or text David to 511 511. Text fees may apply. The link is in the description. Shopping for a mattress is one of those things that most people put off. Once you finally decide, we're going to do it. You just start guessing, which is why our sponsor Helix sleep is such a great way to go. I've been sleeping on a Helix mattress for years at this point. You go to the Helix website. You take a short little sleep quiz, answer a few questions about your body. How do you sleep? What kind of feel do you like? What are you looking for? And they will match you with a model that is built around your preferences. And that's it. It just simplifies mattress shopping. The thing I most like about my Helix mattress is that the whole process was very straightforward. I just answered a few questions. They matched me with a mattress that is what I wanted. And I've had it for years. It's in perfect condition. I'm far from needing to replace it. Go to helix sleep.com slash Pacman for 27% off sitewide, a discount they are only offering to my audience. The link is in the description. Today, I'll be speaking with Gabriel Zuckman, who's an internationally renowned economist, bestselling author of We Need to Tax Billionaires, and also one of the architects of the California billionaire tax initiative. Great to talk to you. Really appreciate you being here today. Thanks for having me. I'm very interested in this topic because it seems as though many people, not all, but many people agree. We need to do a better job of capturing tax money from the wealthiest of the wealthy. But there is some disagreement as to the best way to do it. So, for example, you raise the income tax rate. The super wealthy don't earn income. So it doesn't really make a difference to them. So then you say, well, let's raise the tax on capital gains and make it higher or equivalent to income taxes. But capital gains taxes come into play when gains are realized. And so if you hold assets at a gain, but don't sell and borrow against them. well, then the capital gains rate doesn't really affect you. So then sometimes we get to a wealth tax and then you hear about, well, it's hard to value a lot of the assets and people will leave the state or the country. There's capital flight, etc. So let's start at the 40,000 foot level. What does data tell us about the most effective way to tax billionaires?

The most important thing to understand is that the income tax is just not the right tool to tax the extremely rich. The income tax, the progressive income tax, is a big revolution of the beginning of the 20th century. a number of states started creating their income taxes, and then it became federal policy in 1913 with the federal income tax. And it's been hugely important. It's the pillar of modern tax systems. It is what has allowed governments to expand, to fund education, infrastructure, healthcare in part. So it's been extremely important. But it's an unfinished revolution because the ultra wealthy are still not in the system, so to speak. And the reason for that is that when you're extremely rich, It's very easy to structure your wealth such that this wealth will not generate any income or any significant amount of taxable income. And for instance, a few years ago, you had revelations by ProPublica on the taxes paid by US billionaires, and you saw people like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos. paying very little income tax. There's even one year when Jeff Bezos says, look, I'm so poor that I'm going to claim the child tax credit. And he receives the child tax credit. And there is nothing illegal in that. It's not tax evasion. It's the way the system works. If you manage to look like you're poor from... perspective of the tax law, well, you're not going to have any income tax to pay. And that's exactly what he did. As CEO of Amazon, he didn't pay himself a wage. Amazon didn't distribute dividends, so he didn't have to pay taxes on dividend income. And he didn't sell shares. And so he didn't realize capital gains, and so he paid no capital gains tax. So he really looked like the poor person from the perspective of the tax law, the income tax law, even though he's one of the wealthiest person in the world. And so once you've understood this, you've understood that the proper way to tax the super rich like Jeff Bezos is not with the income tax, but is with some form of tax that's based on wealth because income is very easy to manipulate when you're extremely rich. But wealth is much harder to manipulate. Okay. Couple questions on wealth taxes.

Wealth are we talking only about assets or assets and liabilities? And the question, the reason I ask that is even if we get beyond we only tax realized gains, well, the point of the wealth tax is also to include unrealized gains. If someone takes a big loan against their assets, that's a liability. So I could have a billion in assets and a loan for a billion dollars. And I go, I have no wealth. So how do we deal with that? So, wealth is the total value of all the assets that you own, real estate, but mostly for rich people, financial assets, equity, shares in companies, and so on. Net of any debt. Now, to your concern about, okay, those rich guys are going to avoid a wealth tax by borrowing money, I don't think that's an issue because if you borrow money... Well, you go to the bank, borrow $1 billion. Okay, but now you have $1 billion in assets on your bank account. So your net wealth has not changed at all. Of course, if you consume that billion dollars, then okay, your wealth goes down, but you are getting poor. So that's okay. But what I want to emphasize is that borrowing money does not... mechanically reduce your wealth. Let's talk about where wealth taxes have been implemented more versus less successfully, maybe. So I'll give you my understanding and maybe we agree on it. Maybe we don't, but we'll start there. It seems as though Switzerland has relatively successfully implemented a wealth tax and Norway has successfully implemented a wealth tax on the one hand. I've also read that France and Sweden. were not successful in the same way on those implementations. Is my understanding even correct, first of all? And then can you distinguish between the structures here? It's a fair summary that the two best functioning wealth taxes today in the world are those of Switzerland and Norway. Okay. That's fair. And I think, you know, I'd go even. further than you. I think the historical and the international experience with wealth taxation, by and large, is not a success. It's a pretty big failure. In fact, France is a good example, but Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, or used to have wealth taxes and they didn't work well. Now, you can look at that history.

and that experience in two ways you can say okay some countries have tried to tax wealth it didn't work very well hence it will never work end of story or you can look at it and you can say okay what were the problems can we learn from that history and can we draw some lessons and can we do better in the future The reality is that, of course, we can do much better because the problems that existed in countries like France, they have solutions. So most importantly, in France, like in many European countries, the wealth taxes that existed, they exempted the billionaires. The law was written in such a way that if you owned a lot of shares in a company. in France more than 25% of the shares of the company, all that wealth was excluded from the base of the wealth tax. Look, the wealth of billionaires is exactly this. It's owning a lot of shares in big companies. So of course. Don't write the law like that. If you create a wealth tax, it should be first and foremost on the super rich, so don't exempt their wealth. And properly in California, the California billionaire tax is written exactly like that. So in contrast to past wealth taxes, to European wealth taxes, it is... only on the super rich, just on the billionaires. If you have less than a billion dollars, you're not affected. But with no exemption whatsoever, if you have more than a billion dollars, you would have to pay five percent one off one time on all of your wealth. What system is necessary? This is a question about bureaucracy. It's sort of a very, you know, nitty gritty question. If you include. art and private equity tech startups non-public assets to what degree Do you need to get experts to accurately value all of those assets for the calculation? Does the government now need to have experts in fine art, go and look at people's art storage and talk about the bureaucracy a little bit? Yeah. Fortunately, it would be much easier than that. So number one. More than half of the wealth of billionaires corresponds to shares in publicly listed companies listed on the stock market. Very easy to value. Number two, most of the rest, almost all the remainder is shares in big...

private companies, not listed in the stock market, but because they are big companies, it's relatively easy to value them. You look at how similar companies that are listed on the stock market are valued by the stock market. The way to be done in California with Prop 40 is that the valuation would be done by private. Assessors so billionaires would have to obtain a certified valuation for their private businesses and that would serve as the base of the wealth tax and there would be penalties for undervaluation or overvaluation all of that has been written very carefully by the best legal experts of the US And so the government wouldn't have to do it, right? The private sector and the taxpayers themselves, hiring assessors, would have to do it. Now, sometimes there is a view that a lot of the wealth of billionaires is things like art. Yeah. What about the Picasso's and the yachts? And look, those things exist, sure. But first, it's a... very small fraction of the wealth of billionaires. And two, even those forms of wealth are relatively easy to value. Because if you own a Picasso, I'm sure that's your case, then there is an insurance value. It's insured, right? And so there's an insurance value that you can use for the purpose of the wealth tax. Let me propose a sort of different framework. And just to be clear, so my audience knows and you knows, I'm in favor of wealth taxes. I think that they're great ideas morally and ethically. We're just kind of trying to pressure test some of this stuff and figure out is this really the best approach. From what I've read, Prop 40 even as written. legally would be dubious in a number of ways. And what I mean by that is not that you and I are going to litigate it here, but just that it would be subject to litigation that could take years and no money ends up getting collected. There's a bunch of different reasons. Let me propose an alternative. And you tell me, isn't this simpler? And we make a couple other different changes. Number one. And the goal is let's get money from the very wealthiest people. We end stepped up basis. This is number one. Over a period of time, this will allow the collection of additional tax revenue. We do raise capital gains rates and also. If you borrow against assets that triggers capital gains as if you had sold it. Okay. So that's number two. We close a few tax loopholes like carried interest and dynasty trusts and offshore shelters. So I'm kind of throwing a bunch of different smaller things, but all of which have a legal path that is much clearer than it putting in place a wealth tax. Good idea, bad idea. What do you think?

I think these are good ideas that we should do all the things that you've just mentioned. Yeah. But it's not an either or issue. It's not like if we do these necessary fixes to the income tax, then we don't have to do a wealth tax. We should do both. Do all of it, you're saying. All of them, right? Because. For sure, it's a good idea to close the step-uping basis loophole that allows people to erase any capital gains tax liability when they die. So let's fix that. Great. But the deeper problem. is that when you're a billionaire, you don't have to realize capital gains, neither today, not tomorrow, nor in 10 years, nor in 30 years. Even your children, you know, they are going to inherit billions in wealth. They don't need to sell those shares. And so wouldn't this stepped up basis issue deal with that at the time of death anyway? Well, it depends how you do it. So if you. say that when people die, then they have... Death is a realization event, so they have to pay capital gains tax at the time of death. In that case, yeah, they would have to pay when they die. The way some countries operate is that there is a so-called carryover of bases. I'm sorry, to be technical, meaning heirs inherit the basis of their parents. Any case, long story short, you do those fixes and In the best case, you get money, the government gets money when billionaires die. Yes. But that can be decades. In most cases, it's going to be decades down the road. Yep. And here there is something that's really weird. Because for most people, almost everybody has to pay taxes each and every year. If you are self-employed, you have to make advanced tax payments each quarter. The government really insists on you paying taxes on a very regular basis. And that's for good reason. It's because we have collective revenue needs for education, for health, for infrastructure, and so we can't wait. for 20 or 30 years before the government gets money. It needs money every quarter, every year. Why should the billionaires be allowed to pay in decades down the road when everybody has to pay now? That's the fundamental problem. And if you do what you described, which is just to say, okay, when people borrow money, they would have to pay taxes on that borrowing. fine, do it. But these are small amounts. It's important to understand that the billionaires, it's not like they're borrowing a ton of money. They only need to borrow money to fund their own personal consumption expenditures. Right. But that consumption is just very low relative to their true income or relative to their wealth. Yeah, it actually seems like that would apply more to people with between 20 and 50 million dollars.

True. Then as a percentage of their assets than billionaires. Good point. Exactly. For billionaires, it's just not quantitatively relevant. Yeah. Last thing, I just want to push back on this widely held view that somehow there's going to be a lot of litigation with the California billionaire tax. It's very complicated. Sure. That's what the billionaires say. Look, they want to defend the status quo. The current situation is great for them. Yeah. And they are making all sorts of threats. The reality. is that we're talking about 250 taxpayers. Yep. Their wealth very simple, in most cases, to value, to observe. They would have to pay first. They can sue. They can try to litigate, but the way the text is written is first you have to pay. And this type of argument that, oh, it's a new tax, it's going to be complicated, is exactly the type of arguments that people were making. at the beginning of the 20th century when there were debates about the creation of the income tax. The opponents, their main argument was, oh, but you know, income is just very complicated to measure because what's an allowed expense? What counts as revenue? We don't know. It's going to be a mess. No, that's fair. But let me interject briefly. I think. My instinct is that the legal problems, the most likely legal problems would be the following ones. I think although the retroactivity is smart so that if someone leaves, it actually goes back to January 1st. I think that's smart, but I think there's an argument that that violates due process under the U.S. Constitution, which I'm not going to litigate it now. I think that could be a years-long issue. Two, if someone leaves. in the midst of the year. And then they go, well, I was there for two of the 12 months. And then I don't know. I think that that's potential issue. And then the other one, I think is potentially an issue. And if you have thoughts on these, I'd love to hear them too. the taxation of worldwide assets. I just don't know how California tax assets sitting in Europe that have never been in the United States legally under the current law. I'm just not sure. I would love it if we if you had, you know, clear answers to this and you go, David, don't worry. That's not going to be a problem. It's not going to be a problem. Okay. The income tax in California is already tax on your worldwide income. Okay. So if you live in California and you have assets abroad, you have shares in foreign companies and the generate dividends and capital gains, all of that is taxable in California. But by convention with those other countries, right? That's the difference. Say that again. The other countries are part of an agreement that that will be done and to evade double taxation. So that's sort of like they we've come together to everybody agrees that that's what we're doing.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know. The way it works is that if you've already paid tax on that income abroad, you can credit this against the California and the federal income tax. Right. Now, if some countries also want to tax the wealth of billionaires and their wealth abroad, that would be creditable against the California wealth tax. Now, it turns out that no country tax is billionaire wealth, the wealth of California. Right. billionaires abroad. So that's a non-issue. But what I want to say is that the idea that conceptually is difficult to tax foreign wealth is wrong because we already tax foreign income. Absolutely. Income that derives from owning foreign assets. That's number one. Number two, under small retractivity. So this is actually a brilliant idea. So the way the text is written is it says if you were if you are a billionaire and you were a resident of California as of January 1st of 2026, then you have to pay the 5% one-time wealth tax, meaning it's too late for billionaires to move and avoid the tax. Exactly. The constitutional experts, the legal scholars who've been extensively consulted for crafting the text of Prop 40 or adamant. that this is valid. This is terrible with US law, California and federal law. I'm not a constitutional lawyer, but I'm relying on those best minds. And the reason why it's beautiful is that it really removes any risk of rich people fleeing, you know, moving to another state to avoid the wealth tax. They can't do it. The initiative was announced in November of 2025. So they just had a few weeks at the very end of 2025 to move out of California and cut ties with California. And what the experts in this area of law think, you know, California. tax law, believe, they believe that no billionaire was able to successfully cut ties from a tax perspective with California in such a short period of time. Because if you want to become a non-resident, you have to change doctors. You have to change schools for your children. Where's your veterinarian, this sort of stuff? Everything. And in just a few weeks in December, it's very unlikely that a single billionaire was able to effectively.

Well, listen, you've made a very strong case that this is much more bulletproof, at least than some of the detractors claim. And I know many in my audience, myself included, are pleased to hear that. We've been talking with Gabriel Zuckman, economist, author of We Need to Tax Billionaires, also one of the architects of the California billionaire tax initiative. Really appreciate your time today. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Great pleasure. If you get scam calls, texts or emails, you know, people just trying to sell you stuff or sending you sketchy messages. This isn't happening by accident because your name, phone number, email, home address, relatives, job history can just be sitting there in a public database and then marketers can get access to it, scammers, different companies, and then they target you. What our sponsor Incogni does is just get rid of all that information from the corners of the internet where scammers get it. And this includes people search sites, online directories, data broker lists. Incogni will send removal requests to hundreds of notorious sites and they'll keep just following up. And if your data comes back, they'll get it removed again. What I think is the best is the custom removals feature. This is with the unlimited plan. Sometimes you might find your information. somewhere else, some one-off directory or a search result or a business database. You can paste that link into Incogni and they'll get to work right away to get it taken down. Removing your info from these databases means it's harder for scammers and identity thieves to reach you. And you can get 60% off an annual plan at incogny.com slash Pacman with the code Pacman. The link is in the description. Donald Trump seemingly desperate to make himself less popular, insisting to audiences, you should really love data centers. You really should. And this interview went so wrong that even the interviewer, Fox News host of Trace Gallagher realized Trump's brain seems to be glitching out here. This strategy did not work in times past. And I don't think it's going to work this time. Here is Donald Trump saying oil will go down. to 250 a gallon and that it used to be 185. Now, we all have you always have to account for. Oh, Trump's incoherent again. Of course, he's talking about gas, not oil. Oil is more like $70 a barrel. When we talk 250 a gallon, you're talking about gas. Trump's confused. But let's listen to what he says anyway. Let's charitably interpret it and then fact check it. And as you know, we control this rate totally through the blockade. But if we have no friction, then oil will go down to, I think it'll go down to two and a half dollars a gallon. 250 a gallon for oil. That's, wow, what a price. Two and a half dollars. You know, it was down to 185 before I had to make this little journey to the Islamic Republic of Iran. I had to make it. We had the best numbers that anybody's ever seen. But now you take a look with that going on. We have the, you just hit to get today. I think it's number 79, 79 days. We hit an all time stock market high. Yeah.

As met, let's ignore for a second that Trump is confused between gas and oil. This is just common. He's so confused at this point in time. You've always got to be going, oh, here's what he said. Here's what he meant. The guy, his brain's not working right. Uh, he's, his argument was before I did this with Iran, gas was a dollar 85 a gallon. It wasn't. As you can see right before Donald Trump did this big spike that you see the price go up here in this chart. Gas was, um, about 285 a gallon, not 185. Now, you can argue we had to go to Iran or we didn't. You can predict gas will come down or gas will go. You could do whatever you want. But you've got to start with the facts. And the facts are gas was already 285, not 185. And therefore, it is completely unrealistic to think that gas is going to go down to that level again. Donald Trump, then, picking an incredibly unpopular issue, Americans hate data centers. Listen, data centers are coming. Data centers are here. The question is where, which stakeholders have a say in saying yes or no to them. But these data centers are coming. There's no doubt. But most Americans don't like them. Republicans and Democrats. The Republicans and Democrats are uniting around we don't like data centers in our communities for the most part. And if you like them, you can get one, but most Americans don't. And Trump goes, people, they're making a mistake. It's great. Data centers are great. I think. I think any community that turns down AI is making a big mistake because your taxes are going to go way down. If you own a house, it's going to be more valuable. It's a, it's a tremendous thing. And I see it. It's almost like there's a, there's a campaign against, you know, data centers. But data centers, if you look at the data stats. Everything's good around them. Now, the thing they should look at is blue states and blue cities. Cities run by Democrats because that's really the threat to the country. Listen, data centers don't bring just great stuff to communities. There's the noise issue. There's the water use. There's the water pollution. There's the fact that they create relatively few jobs for their physical footprint. There's a whole bunch of different issues. Now, we're not much like arguing we shouldn't have cars because the horse buggy drivers will lose their jobs. That was never going to work at the beginning of the 20th century. We know that. Data centers are a thing. But we need to be realistic and honest and thoughtful about where and when we place them. Trump just going data centers are awesome. They make everything great. Nobody's believing that stuff. And hopefully nobody is believing this other lie from Trump either that we had prisons from other countries emptied out into the United States. Trump insists that it happened. But we are, we paid for the cost of that war many, many times over. Where have you heard that? But everybody was against it. And then when I won, they all think it was great. But nobody talks about it anymore. So I have to talk about it. Nobody talks about the fact that we have the safest border in history. And I probably got elected partially, at least in big part, because of the fact that the border was so bad. 25 million people. You know, people say 14. It's only 19 or it's only 22. It's 25 million people. It's probably more than that. They came pouring into our totally unchecked and unvetted pouring into our country.

And many of these people are not the people you want in our country. We have drug lords. We have people from many people, millions of people from prisons. 11,000, you've heard me say it, 888 murderers, most of whom or many of whom committed more than one murder. We're getting them all out. We've got so many of them out. We're doing such a good job. But with the hardest thing we inherited, we inherited the worst inflation in the history of our country. But anyway, this is all lies. It's all we, Trump did not inherit the worst inflation in the history of our country. In fact, inflation is up since Donald Trump took over. It was down to 2.9% when Joe Biden left. But there continues to be no evidence that prisons are being emptied out into the United States. There's just no evidence. How do you prove proof something didn't happen? Well, we should put the burden of proof on the person making the claim. And of course, there has been no such proof. In a weird moment, Donald Trump talking about how clean he is. He's clean. But these communists are dirty. An insult as old as communism itself. You know, one thing I said the other day for the first time ever, never thought of it. But you go to these cities that are taken over by the socialists and the communists. They're always filthy, dirty. They're disgusting. They're always dirty. And, you know, I'm a clean person. And people I know are clean. Clean. They like to have. And you are. I know you very well. You're very clean. But these, aside from crime, aside from all of the other problems, no jobs, no anything, no money. They're always filthy, disgusting, dirty.

These are really old insults, you know, as many of you know, I'm not a communist, but that doesn't mean we say communists are filthy and dirty. Also, it doesn't mean you call non-communists communists. These, this is just red meat. Trump's out of ideas and everything is just crashing down around him. So this is what he's come up with. And in fact, an incredible moment was when Trace Gallagher asks Trump, what's your big message on the economy? Now, Trump could have said, well, my messages were making progress, but we've got a long way to go. Let's keep a Republican. Let's keep Republican control for another two years so we can finish the job. That would be, it would be a lie. We're going the wrong direction, but it would be more of an Obama type message in 2012 where Obama said, listen, we've done a lot to get out of the Great Recession, but we have more work to do still. Trump's message is basically everything's awesome. And in fact, the tariffs have been great, which people mostly understand have not been great. One, you're here to talk about the economy. Right. What's your big message? You want to leave one takeaway with this crowd. What is it? So tariffs have been incredible. We've taken in hundreds of billions of dollars. Supreme Court gave us a little shot, but we're allowed to do it in a different manner. They said that. But we are anyway. I mean, regardless, we have the law. This is pathetic. We have not taken in any tariff money from other countries. The tariffs are paid here in the United States. The importing American company pays the tariff. And then they pass about 80, 85% of the cost along to the consumer. That's what it's been. Now, as I've asked before, does Trump not realize that's how tariffs work or does he realize it? But he thinks his followers are too stupid to know the difference. I don't know. And then Trump insisting, everything is cheaper. This is an A plus economy. This is very risky politically because Americans do not believe it. Of Iran, I had to make it. We had the best numbers that anybody's ever seen. But now you take a look with that going on. We have the, you just hit to get today. I think it's number 79, 79 days. We hit an all-time stock market high. 4.1Ks are the highest they've ever been by double and triple. Yep. And then I read where we're doing badly on the economy. By the way, 401ks have not doubled nor tripled under Trump. By the way, job numbers. We have more people working in the United States today than ever in history. We're doing an unbelievable job. Costs are coming way down. I inherited. You know, they talk about costs. I inherited very, very high costs. And they're all coming down now. The food, the groceries. Inflation has been more than zero, meaning prices are going up. Even if you get inflation down to 1%. That still means prices are going up 1% a year. Does Trump not get it? I genuinely don't know. It's all coming down. We've done a great job. You know, I think we should be given an A plus on the economy, but I think that's coming. People are starting to talk about it. Run that on a loop. This is an A plus economy, says Donald Trump, truly delusional. On Venezuela, Trump says, we're taking out hundreds of billions of dollars there. I looked up Venezuela's GDP.

It's a little over a hundred billion. How are you getting hundreds of billions out of a country whose entire GDP is only about a hundred billion? Well, people were so opposed to what I did in Venezuela. It lasted one day. And now they look, we're making hundreds of billions of dollars. And so are they. They're getting Venezuela's like a different place. But we're taking out hundreds of billions of dollars. They're taking out hundreds of billions of dollars. It's a different place. It's actually becoming me to have the tragedy the other day with the with the problem as you know, but there was a terrible problem. The earthquake, I guess you'd call it. It was a word when the ground shakes and it rattles and the thing where that happens. This is that statistically impossible hundreds of billions out of a country whose GDP is 110 billion. And finally. Donald Trump, as is often the case, struggling to find words, talking about TiVo and DVR. This is a tough one to watch. Our country is rocking and rolling. We've never been this successful. They don't want to talk about it, but they're having no choice. And again, whether it's Laura or Sean or Jesse or you, you have such a good. You're the best trace. I watch you all the time. Thank you, sir. Sometimes they tape it and watch it. It's okay. I don't know what they call it today. They used to call it TiVo. Maybe they still do. Yeah. But I love TiVo or it's equivalent. DVR. But you do a great, you do a great job. Thank you. Really good. I love TiVo. It's so nasty. Now, for some of our younger viewers, TiVo was a device and service with which you could record programs off your TV. I think when I used to work at Circuit City like 25 years ago or something like that, in any case, Donald Trump struggling for words, as is often the case. That was supposed to be an easy interview. And it just goes wrong every single damn time. Let's talk about manufacturing and factory jobs. It was always a fantasy that we were going to see this massive renaissance of American manufacturing. It was a fantasy for a lot of different reasons. It was a fantasy number one. Because factories take a long time to build. And so we know what is in the pipeline because it takes years. Number two, we have 500,000 open manufacturing jobs right now that companies can't fill. So how on earth was Trump going to create a manufacturing boom? It was always a fantasy. Factories are going to come roaring back and jobs will come back. Foreign companies are going to rush to build American. CNBC went on TV. And they announced the following. And it is ugly. Now, if we look at factory orders, this is a fresh June number, expecting up two tens, comes in down three tens. Down three tens, of course, compares to last month, down 1.3, which makes it unfortunately the best month since it was positive over five in April. Now, if we take transportation away, it's still a negative number. Expecting up four tens, X trans, we're now down four tens. That would be the lightest number going back.

back to April of 25. That does not sound like the greatest manufacturing boom in the history of the world, does it? Factory orders down a fraction of a percentage point in June. Economists expected that they would go up. You take out transportation equipment, orders still fell 0.4%. In other words, you can't say airplanes had a weird month and that's the only problem. I always want to be fair. Manufacturing hasn't collapsed. We still have some manufacturing in the United States. AI investment is helping some industries. There's expansions of factory activity in some sectors. So it's a mix. But the numbers are mixed is a huge retreat from we will have a revival of American manufacturing the likes of which you have never seen before. And the world will be itching to come and manufacture stuff in the United States. That fantasy was much simpler than reality and also more attractive. Now, what was the economic theory? There isn't always one, okay, behind Trump's economic policy. But the theory was. If you put tariffs on imported products, companies will go, we got to start manufacturing in Ohio and Michigan. And then we'll hire millions of Americans who will happily take factory jobs, rinse, repeat. Very easy. Couple problems with that. Number one, factories are expensive to build and it takes a long time. Two, supply chains can take years to reconstruct domestically. Three, tariffs raise the cost of imported machinery. Four. Tariffs raise the cost of imported input goods that the manufacturers need. Five, companies aren't going to invest billions based on policies Trump might change tomorrow because someone whispers something to him at 2 a.m. And he goes, reverse the policy. So there's a lot of reasons why that was never going to happen. Now, let's go even further, though. There's another problem MAGA wants to ignore. which is that I've said, I don't hear anybody talking about this to pat myself on the back. We're actually talking about it. Right now, we could increase manufacturing employment by 500,000 in the United States without creating a single new job because there are 500,000 open manufacturing jobs. To be more precise, a couple months ago, it was like 5005,000. Right now, the latest federal data we have shows 481,000. manufacturing jobs that are open right now who wants a manufacturing job there's almost half a million available So before we get to millions of new factory jobs, maybe somebody should go, why can't employers fill the half a million manufacturing jobs that are available right now? The answer is not Americans are lazy. The answer is not Americans don't know how to work anymore. If a company advertises a job and nobody takes it, that is the market providing some feedback.

the salary might be too low or the benefits are bad or the factory is nowhere near where the workers are or maybe the job requires training the company doesn't want to pay for there's a whole bunch of explanations so when trump talks about these manufacturing jobs we have americans desperate millions they want an assembly line position at whatever salary the employer is offering That doesn't exist. It simply doesn't exist. And so if you want to really be serious about manufacturing, you need long-term investment, you need worker training infrastructure, stable trade policy, not on again, off again, and you need wages offered that makes the jobs worth taking. Trump has offered tariffs and a slogan or two. And so now factory orders are falling. Manufacturers are paying more for their input costs. And we have half a million jobs available right now. Not only are the factories not magically returning, it's getting worse and signs point to it getting even worse. On the bonus show today. We will look at the primary results from yesterday on both the Republican and Democratic side. Congressman Chuck Edwards is abandoning his reelection campaign after an ethics panel report has been released and a new 2028 straw poll. Folks, look at this. There's a Republican straw poll. Marco Rubio leads JD Vance by 36 points. What can and can't we deduce from this poll? We will talk about it on the bonus show. Sign up and get instant access. Sign up today. I'd love to have you join us on the bonus show. Sign up at join hackman.com.