Michael Steele: The King of Debt Is Blowing Up the U.S. Economy

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Hello and welcome to the Bullard podcast.

I'm your host Tim Miller, delighted to welcome back one of our faves.

He's co-host of MSNOW's The Weeknight, which airs Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.

He also was the chair of the Republican National Committee, Lieutenant Governor of Maryland.

It's Michael Steele.

What's up, baby boy? How you doing, man?

I know it's Friday, so we want to end with the fun stuff.

So I just want to start with like, you and me have to kind of reflect.

Absolutely.

I mean, we're actually talking about it already.

Okay, we are never Trump from the jump, you know, and we warned people.

We said that we don't think it's going to go well.

You can't trust this guy.

And I don't know about you, but I was laying in bed last night thinking,

maybe I was wrong about this.

I mean, things are going so well.

The economic situation is good.

You know, foreign affairs, geopolitics.

We're going to have a nice new ballroom.

Yeah.

You know, it's a goal to get an arc in the middle of the city.

I'm loving the arc of the Trump.

Yeah, I love it.

We might get an arc to Trump.

Are you starting to have any doubts as well?

Are you just going to look at the landscape out there thinking, man, this guy's knocking

it out.

You know, I thought about that too, Tim, and I thought about it a lot.

And I came to the conclusion that I'm the only one who's got his shit tight.

The residents, my father's, they don't know.

I have no idea what the fuck they think they're doing, but they have ruined a once great

party.

They are in the throws of taking down a great nation.

We don't need to make this country great again because we've always aspired to be great.

That is what's made us great is the aspirations of generations of individuals who want it to

be Americans.

And this iteration of the Republican Party, this leadership from Thune, who I always admired

and enjoyed working with over the years to Mike Johnson, who was the backbentures, backbenture.

I mean, backbentures didn't know who the fuck he was.

So that you had that.

These guys for the grift, the graft, the bullshit, the lies, the culture war that is utterly

meaningless, sacrifice to great nation.

And at the end of the day, I put it on us because they are a reflection of who we are,

the American people.

Seven, at least 78 million of us decided, let's do this shit again.

After everything we knew, after everything we saw, they got hung up on the cost of, you

know, a piece of bread or tank of gas or whatever, whatever bullshit they wanted to make

up about Joe Biden that they didn't like.

Yeah, he was old, but Donald Trump was just as old and actually in worse health.

Now folks are sitting there.

I go, well, I just didn't know, I didn't, I didn't realize, bitch, please.

We told you, I asked back in 2013, 14 and 15.

We watched Marco Rubio get his ass handed to him on a stage in 2016 by a guy who was at

two percent in the polls at the time.

So yeah, Tim, here we are, I'm still in it, that's because I'm high on something, I should

sell whatever it is because that's cathartic to review.

I guess I would just say we warned them all, but I don't know about you.

I want to come on and just kind of do a victory lap and be like, hell, yeah, I was really

right.

And I was right.

We can just kind of say that I was right.

And I do like to text my mega friends sometimes and remind them that I'm right when I wake

up in the morning and I'm feeling a little feisty.

It's kind of even worse than I thought, like the scale of destruction, we'll start with

this to the economy.

Because since you mentioned that, people are worried about the cost of bread.

I was listening to Christine Lagarde this morning, she's ahead of Europe Central Bank.

And she said this, we're facing a real shock that's probably beyond what we can imagine

at the moment.

And she lists out helium and all these other commodities.

And she basically says she thinks that the markets have not even come close to pricing

in.

The damage that's coming and the cost of goods globally is going to skyrocket.

You would have thought that would have been the one to steal from JBL.

The one stove that he wouldn't have wanted to touch, you know, like it was the one area

where I was like, you know, I can do all this other stupid shit.

I can steal money.

I can have the Middle Eastern Sharia States pay me off in crypto currency.

I can make my wife can have a coin that we can, you know, rugpull stupid people with.

You know, I can do what I can build my arc to Trump.

I can do all these things as long as I don't fuck this one thing up, which is making

everybody's lives worse tangibly, financially.

And he's doing it.

He's doing like the one thing.

And he's like, why are you so proud of him in the middle on it?

It's like 10 more days.

We got 10 more days when we keep this thing closed.

I see.

I'm so worried here.

10 more days.

The straight is going to be closed.

Check in with you.

We were surprised.

The man couldn't.

I mean, I'm just surprised because I'm like, I thought he was the stupidest guy in the

world that he's being even dumber than I expected.

There's never been anything in Trump's business model that says success.

He wasn't a developer.

I mean, this was a guy who put his name on other people's shit.

And that's what he's doing now.

I mean, there's nothing about Donald Trump that was why his daddy told him, you're

don't go to Manhattan.

Stay here in Queens.

You could be a king in Queens.

There's nothing about him that has ever said success.

University, stakes, casino, you know, properties, I mean, it just, it's all, it all ends at bankruptcy.

It all ends in someone else paying the legal bills, it all ends in someone else carrying

the full brunt of his destruction and what makes it work.

This is going to be the case study for sociologists.

What makes it work is that I classify him as the PT Barnum of our day.

He knows your sucker and he plays you for one and you allow it to happen.

You see it happening in front.

You see what he's doing and you're like, yeah, I want that.

You want to be a part of that.

You look at the people in his orbit who protect him and stand around him and will defend

him to the day.

And this man don't give two shits about any of them.

He will turn on all of them if it meant that he could get one more crypto coin.

He could get one more side piece human or otherwise.

And the reality, the reality is we fall for that.

We fell for that despite the warnings from the I work with Trump in 2013.

No, they know this is no, thank you very much, no, no, this ain't right.

This doesn't even pass any smell test in politics or business.

So you know, that's why at the end of the day, it rests back on us when we, when we look

for something.

And we think we find it.

And then all of a sudden, you realize that ain't it.

There is a hubris, there's a pride, there's a whatever you want to call it, oh, I just can't

admit that I was wrong.

No, you can say that.

I talk that out.

I was wrong.

It's hell about that shit.

I mean, come on, Tim.

If you are a father of a 12 year old girl, and in 2016, you're sitting there watching

a videotape of a grown ass man who wants to be president, someone that in this country,

we tend to hold up as a role model, an example.

And he says he loves to grab women by the pussy.

And you're going to say to your daughter, I'm voting for him.

Yeah.

Well, I think he was like, that dot, that was the guy that got grabbed, I think, you know,

you mentioned about how he bankrupted everything, something I haven't been able to get to this

week.

You know, there's a report about how the treasury, we have our balance sheet is basically

insolvency for the country right now.

Countries broke.

Treasury 30 year yield this morning is up to, it's about a 5% highest in September.

So she's like the cost of everything.

I was talking to my friend that owns a local pizza joint down here in New Orleans, I was

bumped into on the street yesterday and he was just talking about the costs and everything.

And it's like, imagine you're a restaurant owner right now, like you own an actual business,

you own an actual business, you dealt with this 2022 inflation shock that was like, kind

out everybody's hands, probably the Biden administration juice, the economy, a little too

much of the stimulus.

But like, mostly this is like this external shock from COVID and everybody's trying to

muddle through.

Okay.

Then Trump gets in, you get, you get this nut punch from the tariffs, you know, depending

on, you know, what kind of ingredients you got, labor costs are up because of the tightening

market.

They're bragging about how in major cities now, a population is down, net migration is

out.

They posted a bragging about that this week.

So labor costs are up, your rent mortgage is up, like that was already high and straights

are high.

And like that, those are now going back higher.

It was finally coming down.

It was like the one thing he was doing to alleviate costs was like bullying the front

and the economy and so shitty that eventually like interest rates are coming back down.

Well now he's fucked that up, interest rates are back up against your mortgage is up

or if you're renting, that person you're renting from is mortgage is up.

And now on top of that, it's just like, here we go, global energy shock, global energy

shock, price everything's up, everything's up, we're just at the start of this, but I

don't think that people have like just accepted internalized like the scale of the economic

problem.

I put an exclamation point with all kinds of red flags around what you just said because

what makes the description of the economic landscape so daunting is you're talking about

right now.

If you are a businessman or a business woman, an entrepreneur, you're going out.

You're looking downstream.

You're looking at what you're, what you can afford three months from now.

And when you see tankers sitting in the, in the straight of hormones, not moving, when

you see supply chains weakening, becoming more expensive for the things you need from

tablecloths to the food that you will serve people in your restaurant, all of a sudden

you're looking at your margins and you're going, well, in the restaurant industry, the

margins are already so paper thin that any type of shock has a direct impact on your ability

to stay open and to keep your staff.

And so where do you think we're going to be when we get into the throes of summer?

Where do you think we're going to be in the fall?

Because all of those are lagging indicators.

This isn't, this isn't real right now.

This is all stuff that's going to be coming home to roost in two, three months in the next

quarter in the next two quarters.

That's where you're going to run into the shock.

It's not like gasoline and this is where people get confused.

Okay, gas prices go up, you know, a dollar today, get, I mean, you know, a barrel, you're

going to see that the punk tomorrow morning, all right?

Even though that gas that's, or that you're going to that gas station has been in the ground

for 30 or 60 days, right?

You're going to pay the higher price right now.

That's not how it works for the restaurant industry.

That's not how it works for the retailer.

That's not how it works for the wholesaler, right?

And so because they don't know what that price is going to be because they've got it

not the ship yet.

And not only that they don't have a plan, I was laughing this morning, let me pull this

up.

They're talking about a reconciliation bill now because that's the only thing they can

do where they jam stuff through on 50 votes.

So I was looking in punchball like what they plan on putting in that, you know, and, and

given the economic issues that we're facing right now, you would think that if they were

going to jam in one more thing that they would have some kind of plan to ease affordability

cause for everyone.

It's the biggest issue everybody cares about.

No, here's the list of things that they want to do with reconciliation.

They want Iran war funding.

Okay.

They want ice and CBP funding, the Save America Act, which is about trans kids sports and

making it harder to mail in voting.

And they're hoping that's a party line though.

So that's the plan right now.

The plan is not, hey, we understand that we that this war happened and it's causing pain

for you.

And we're going to we have this plan for relief, whatever it is.

You know, a lot of different economic levers you could pull, they're saying none of that.

No, what we're going to do is we're going to take more money from you and we're going

to put it into the stupid war and we're going to give it to the ice age and have the largest

budget in the world, right?

And then and then on top of that, we're going to make sure we're just going to make sure

it's as hard as possible for you to vote and and that we deal with the only pressing

issue that we feel is we need to deal with this year and that's trans.

Right.

The most incredibly important thing that, you know, the farmer in the middle of Iowa

was really concerned about as he's looking at his soy crops, whether it's going to blame

it on the trans kids there, that's that's basically what the Republican party wants you

to believe.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Let me ask you this.

The record.

They're going to do that.

The reconciliation.

Yeah.

That's what they're saying.

That's what they're saying.

They know that shit.

Don't fit in the reconciliation.

That's not how reconciliation bill you can just shove anything.

The parliamentarians going to lose her mind and see their ship in the government.

Yeah.

So let's just explain this to people.

Okay.

So we've had this DHS shut down for a while now.

The Democrats have been offering.

And let's just find the rest of the fun TSA FEMA.

Okay.

Trump's been saying, not going to do that deal.

Not going to do that deal yesterday.

I don't know.

One of his buddies was waiting too long in line at the Miami airport and called him up

on the phone and he was like, fuck it fine.

Okay.

He changed his mind.

He's like, well, the same Democrats have been asking for for weeks that he made.

He said, I'll do it in an executive order.

And then somehow a couple hours later, they're like, whatever, we'll just do it by unanimous

consent in the Senate.

So that's where the Democrats have won a second straight shutdown, so kudos to them.

And they have passed up to unanimous consent in the Senate.

The House has to deal with that.

Let's give you a little bit more complicated.

This isn't a congressional nerd podcast, but needless to say, if you're flying this weekend,

you're still in a boat.

We'll see.

The House has got to figure this out.

Then what's left is the Icensee VP funding.

And every year you get this thing called reconciliation.

We talked about this last year where it's a financial vehicle for funding the government,

right?

Like you can pick a number and say, hey, we're going to add another trillion to the

debt.

We're going to put these things in reconciliation.

The parliamentarian, as you mentioned, looks at it all and says, hey, it's just going

to add up to one trillion.

And if so, it's a way around the filibuster, basically.

You can do it on a party line vote in the House and the Senate.

And you're not supposed to do stuff like, you know, the Democrats couldn't have put in.

I'm going to make DC a state inside the reconciliation, right?

It has to be a financial tax and spend type issue.

How are they going to get the Save America Act in there as a tax and spend issue?

Do they actually care about this?

Do they even have the votes for this?

I don't even think they have the votes for this.

I don't think they have the votes for it.

I just think it's crazy, given the scale of domestic disruption.

And we got one car left to play here with our reconciliation, and it's like, we're

going to do mail-in voting, trans, youth, and funding the mass ice stocks.

They're not serious.

That's their agenda.

And every last one of them need to be unelected.

Folks, they are a threat to everything.

I don't mean, look, I don't care what you're feeling are about the country on this day

or that day.

At the end of the day, you want a country to be there tomorrow.

And the fact of the matter is, we're not handing that off to these.

Our kids, and certainly not to our grandkids, when you have this kind of disregard for the

process, the rules, the idea of a Congress that is a check on executive authority, a Supreme

Court that is a check on both congressional and executive authority, when all of that

is fundamentally of no value to you anymore.

This is what it looks like, and I'm telling you, it looks worse.

Steven Miller, if he gets his way on this save America, is just going to stop?

You think that son of a bitch is just going to stop when they have rounded up 100,000

more immigrants?

No, bitch, they're coming for your dumb ass next.

That's the problem.

That's what people are starting to figure out that everybody is on the menu in this world.

The Donald Trump wants to remake Washington is in his image for a reason.

He floated shit what a few days ago, he posted a little thing, well, you know, I deserve

a third term because they stole my second term, bitch, you in your second term.

What are you talking about?

And how dumb are we to fall for that?

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Let's talk about the third term thing for a second.

This is Franklin Graham at CPAC yesterday.

And I love Donald Trump.

Is he perfect?

No.

But I love that guy.

I love him.

And we'll only have one chance at this.

We'll never get another president like Donald Trump never.

And that's why it's important that we do everything that we can to try to get him re-elected.

Okay.

So, maybe I'm wrong about this.

Okay, so I want to be scared.

But I don't know.

I look around at this and to me this is, this is like the last gasp of a dying movement

to me.

It's like, I don't know, the third term stuff a year ago was having me, you know, I was

locked in on this.

I was like, I don't, I didn't even like the jokes.

I didn't like the people joke about it.

I was like, this is un-serious.

This guy's going to try.

You look around at the wreckage right now.

And like, you have this dottering nepo baby evangelical pastor speaking to a CPAC that's

like totally desiccated run-back guy that has sexual assault allegations against him.

Trump isn't even showing up.

Trump's joking about it now.

It's like, I don't know.

I mean, we should be vigilant.

But is pointing and laughing at this more of the correct approach or being scared of

the correct approach right now?

I think you point and you laugh with fear in your voice because you need to be.

I mean, yeah.

Okay.

That's CPAC.

But then there's turning point USA, okay, which is going to have three times the people showing

up.

We're going to be much more like raw raw.

Let's go get them, you know, you know, I love the KKK bullshit.

And so I think that you've got to be vigilant about all of it because that's the sucker move

to get you to think it's not dangerous, to get you to think the problem is has recessed

look, I grew up in Washington DC and the one thing I learned about cockroaches is that

they hide very well, right?

You think you think you've eradicated the problem.

Know you have it.

It's still going to be a problem.

And it may not rear itself up right now because they know you coming after them.

But when the table turns and it's on their turf and it's on their time, it's a different

matter.

And so you just have to be, you have to be vigilant.

You have to continue to use the butt spray, you know, you have to continue.

Now, I'm with you, I'm obviously with you on all that.

This movement isn't going anywhere.

It's just the Trump third term element in particular.

Just hit me yesterday when I watched the Franklin Graham thing because I'm only speaking

about my own feelings.

You know, you can only know.

You can only know what's happening inside of you.

But when I heard Trump joke about that, when he put the hats on earlier in the year,

I was like, this is fucking bad.

This is bad.

I watched that Franklin Graham thing and I was like, this is sad.

It's sad.

But it's still bad because remember, 78 million people put him back in power.

What makes you think 81 million people won't give him a third term?

I mean, because I don't know.

I mean, they're going to be pissed.

They're going to be pissed up.

I mean, because we're going to be pissed.

Right.

But when you live in it, when you create a grievance bubble and you pack as many Americans

inside of it as possible, yeah.

This is what you get people.

People want people to put a salve on the pain that they feel that our elected officials

aren't doing that.

They're not trying to be honest and say, hey, this is this is the cost of solving this

problem.

These are the things we have to do collectively.

Culture war is a bullshit because guess what immigrants aren't going anywhere.

They're always coming just like your great-granddaddy got here and your granddaddy got here.

The next generation is coming.

So you're not going to be able to hide from the world.

So why don't we place ourselves in a right way in it as we've always strived to do?

No one's having that conversation.

So if Tim, if all I want to make you as a happily married father, gay man, living in New

Orleans fear, what am I going to do?

I'm going to find the thing that scares you and I'm going to pick it that I'm going to

go with that.

And it could be the assault on, you know, in a reverse universe, assault on the trans

community.

It could be assault on something.

And what do you become protective and defensive of that?

That's what they do.

And what you forget in the process is the us, the US, and you're thinking about the me.

And that's the America, even with racism and slavery and all the things.

Back folks learned a long time ago that I have to survive in the us, okay?

All right.

Yes, it's about me, but I have to survive in the us.

And you cannot, you cannot give in to this sort of myopic view that it's just my story,

my neighborhood, my family, when the family down the street is being hauled off by ice.

Because they're in a problem for them to move their ass up the block.

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Speaking of black folks, trying to manage living in this world, living in this American society,

I just see the time story this morning about what's happened in the Department of War.

I read a little bit to you from that one.

Pete Hegseth dropped two black and two women army officers in the promotion list to be

general.

One of the black women in particular was a flashpoint.

I'm just going to read this directly.

Last summer, Hegseth's chief of staff, Ricky Burriot, chastised army secretary Dan

Driscoll for selecting a black female combat engineer to serve as the head of the military

district of Washington.

Mr. Burriot told Mr. Driscoll that President Trump would not want to stand next to a black

female officer at military events.

The official.

I don't know why that's it.

Shock the shit out anybody because Donald Trump does first off a strong woman and a strong

black woman.

Oh, hell no.

That is not with Donald Trump.

What?

And this is Amarosa a ratio.

This is Amarosa.

Right.

Right.

So Donald Trump and no way on this planet is going to stand next to a black woman in uniform

at a ceremony and has to salute her and acknowledge her.

Oh, that's just not there's nothing in his makeup that ever that would ever tell you that

that would be something he would be for.

So yes, his little pet project in and Pete hexeth is going to accommodate that not what's

best for the military district of Columbia, not what's best for the army, not what's best

for DOD, not what's best for that soldier, but what's best for Donald Trump.

Donald Trump doesn't want to be reminded of his weaknesses.

He doesn't want to be reminded of his insecurities.

He doesn't want to be reminded of his failures of leadership and his capacity to be anything

other than a racist.

He doesn't want to be reminded of that.

And he likes the coloring that guys like hexeth give him to sort of put a veneer on it

to whitewash it.

That's why they're taking, you know, black history and stripping it down.

We don't want to talk about slavery.

So when we find a Negro that's going to go out and and parrot that, Byron Donald, right,

it make me feel good about my racism.

So yeah, I'm not surprised about that.

No, not surprised.

The bluntness though of it is certainly notable.

We should say in a major general Antoinette can't as the woman who got her promotion, but

now, now he takes us trying to intervene again.

You mentioned Byron Donald.

He's running against our old friend David Jolly.

You and David or David was Republican congressman, never Trump or one independent was on.

I'm in Florida.

Yeah.

Running for governor.

For the first time, and you know, I don't like opium, Michael Steele.

You know that I'm.

You rank clout.

I don't.

I don't.

I don't.

I don't.

Yeah.

You're not coming to me.

Okay.

If you want to feel like, you know, things are about to turn around any minute right now.

Okay.

This is the home for catastrophes.

Like, but for the first time this week, when those state legislative races, specials

happen in Florida, I started to think I started to look at the math.

We've now had 30 state legislative seats in a row that have flipped and they've all flipped

from Republican to Democrat.

That has not happened since before the, I mean, they've been measuring this and stuff.

Democrat to Republican.

Oh, no.

That was the last wave.

When you were there in 2010, no, I was about to say, you're a wave in 2010.

You guys didn't even get 30 in a row is, you know, like 27 or something.

Your record's been broken.

Your records have broken now.

So now this is the, this is the longest streak.

The flip, the average flipping floor, those Florida districts is in the low teens, which

is about what Trump won the state by.

And Donald's is a very weak candidate in Florida.

There's a lot of dissension within the Florida Republican Party, maybe more than any other

state, because there's still the raw feelings about the DeSantis Trump of it all.

I think Casey DeSantis was kind of going to be the era parent, but the Trump fight cost

to that.

Now you end up with Donald's.

Is our guy David Jolly?

Is that, is that crazy to think that that isn't so?

I don't think it's crazy.

I think the trend line speaks to the, the common sense of it.

I think a lot of voters look at the end of the day, Tim.

You know this very well from your days in politics, as a comms guy, as an operative.

The one thing you learn about communication is listening.

And Jolly is very good at that, always has been.

Byron is not a listener.

And so what is Byron?

He's not really a listener.

He's not a thinker.

He feels the need.

He feels the need.

He makes a whole lot of white folks feel good about themselves.

I was just said, he does not hold the mirror up.

He does not reflect back to them, the culture from which he comes.

To say, this is part of your history as much as anything else.

Why are you trying to wipe it out?

Let me help you help you, right?

And so the reality of it is that Florida race in Trump's backyard, in his district,

legislative district, losing that is a big warning sign for Florida Republicans.

It's a big warning sign for national Republicans.

And they don't want to listen.

They don't want to listen to what the voters are telling them.

And in many respects, it cuts along two grains, and you know them well.

One is still Epstein.

Epstein is not just about justice for the victims here.

But it's also for a lot of the folks in the Trump orbit.

And I'm not just talking about that MAGA corner, but the rank and file Republican who believed

that they were going to get to the bottom of this because they were told that.

The other is the economic who believed that their lives as we started this conversation discussing

would not get worse but better.

Their cause would not go up but go down.

It's appropriately framed that as affordability, right?

And the American people and Republicans who are still Americans, right, bought that.

They also bought that idea of affordability, which is why Donald Trump stopped making

front of the concept because his own base believed in it.

They thought it was a real thing for them because they're looking not just at this before

gas prices, they're looking at the grocery bills.

They're looking at how much it costs to put clothes on their kids' backs.

They're looking at this fact that the tariffs were in fact attacks.

And so yeah, and Florida is not immune from that.

And I think David Jolly has been making a good case.

Now that has to translate, as again, you and I both know into how you turn that vote

out, right?

And how you sustain the momentum that has been gained on a win like we saw this week,

not just in Florida, but in other wins around the country, tapping into that idea.

It'll be interesting to see the turnout of this weekend of the folks on the No Kings

rally.

At the No Kings.

You know, what does that look like in a state like Florida because that also could be

a leading indicator of where the people in that state are?

Yeah.

You look at that Florida, the first to see into selection 2018, which is the first Trump

midterm.

Let's pull this out.

He'd be Andrew Gillham who had some problems by 32,000 votes.

But for those problems, Andrew Gillham would have won that election.

Yeah.

And I think it wasn't like Wengering on those in that primary, someone else probably could

have won that election.

So DeSantis wins by 0.4%.

Now Florida has had some turnover since then.

We had COVID.

There were a lot of loose state refugees who were ever going down to Florida.

You know, they wanted to, you know, they wanted to go to their COVID parties and, you know,

hang out in close quarters together without worrying about the virus.

So the makeup of the state changed a little bit.

Anyway, if you're in Florida and listen to this, I think there's been a lot of despair

about the Democratic Party's chances there.

And I think that maybe this is an opportunity to turn it around.

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podcasts.

We got so kind of fired up about everything that I kind of breathed over the details of

the Iran war and what's been happening.

So can we just go back to that?

Oh, yeah.

So here's the latest.

Trump did announce, as I joked about earlier, that 10-day extension of his deadline for

Iran to open the straight of hormones or face the destruction of its energy plants that

takes us to April 6th.

And that's going to move to, just going to move to it.

And that really does matter.

And when we had WISE at dawn earlier this week to talk about the economic stuff about this,

it's like for every day, it's closed.

It's like a week that it's going to take to fix the supply chain stuff.

And this is just exponential problems.

So anyway, 10-day extension.

We're moving additional troops into the area.

But something to keep monitoring, Israel this morning at 40 came on, said that they vowed

to intensify and expand their war in Iran.

And then Reuters right before we came on, has a report saying that we can determine

with certainty that we've destroyed about a third of Iran's vast missile arsenal.

There's another third we don't know about.

And then another third that's buried in underground tunnels and bunkers we haven't been able

to get to.

So I mean, putting that all together, there's been, yes, some degradation of the Iranian

capabilities, but maybe not as much as we thought.

The gap between our objectives in Israel seemed to be wide.

How do you get led into a war with a partner you can't control?

I mean, the conceit about this war, the lie about this war was told to us within the first

24 hours by Marco Rubio himself who could not explain with a straight face or with any

credibility as Secretary of State what the hell his Department of State was doing, who's

been largely cut out of any negotiations.

Why is it Marco?

Are you sending with cough and Jared Kushner?

Dom and Dom are, choose which is which, right?

Yeah.

Or corrupt.

I'm a corruptor sitting down at a table.

What are you negotiating?

They're negotiating a land deal.

And you've got Bebe Netanyahu sitting there going, yeah, send the putzes in the room.

We'll let them divvy up the spoils.

But I get off on going after around defeating this enemy and blowing the shit out of everybody

and killing him.

And so call me crazy, call me, call me Ron, but what did you just say, the Israeli government

announced?

They vowed to intensify and expand.

And Donald Trump was saying what we want to bring it down.

We want to de-intensify and we want to contract because we want the straits of homoos to

open.

Yet, why are we sending?

Now they're now what, late last night, possibly 10,000 more on top of what's already the young

men and women who are already being sent overseas.

So what are we doing here?

And is it your kid?

My kid's faith pass, draft, age, their pass, all right, all right, not my concern is

for your 18, 22, 27 year old child, right?

What are we doing?

Why are we allowing this to happen and allowing ourselves to get brow beat into this?

Oh, on top of that, Tim, Russia is helping Iran.

The amount of money that Russia is bringing in a day, like when you look at who is benefiting

from this war right now, it's the landman characters, people in Midland, they're doing

real well.

West Texas is doing great.

And Russia, they're printing money right now, they're trying to be, was teetering, China

has internal capabilities.

It is crazy.

The Israel thing, I just want to say, and this is a problem with A, not being honest about

the war, not selling us on the war, not explaining what the missions and objectives are.

Israel's objectives are clear.

Like in that statement where they said they're going to intensify attacks, they said because

the Islamic Republic has not heated warnings to stop firing missiles at Israel's civilian

population.

Like Israel has a legitimate security concern, like there can be different views on what

their strategy is and whether they're exacerbating it with their own actions, et cetera, et cetera.

But like they have a legitimate security concern, we don't.

So it's obvious, it was obvious from day one to anybody with eyes that eventually, like

we were going to become, come at crossways on our missions and objectives because Israel

has a legitimate security concern that they do and that's intense and short term and

real.

And we don't.

And we don't.

So like, so, so how, so it creates an uncomfortable partnership, it's a very uncomfortable partnership.

And in this case, the tale, BB is wagging the dog, Trump.

Yeah.

That is one of the most obvious facets of this in that when you look at the situation

before, the level of restraint that other administrations, Republicans and Democrats have

used in this regard with respect to Iran was justified, right?

You just can't go Yippee Kaya into the Middle East because of the very thing you just

noted about the security concerns being of one nation outweighing the security of the

region.

And so there's always been this delicate balance that I know this first hand.

I worked on the original Iranians claim, Trump, you know, at the, at the end of the Iranian

hostage, the firm was Syrian morse back in the early 80s.

That is impossible.

You were working on that in the early 80s?

Yeah.

I was just getting back from, I just gotten back from the seminary and after I left

Augustinians, moved back to Washington, landed at Syrian morse and you know who I worked

with at the firm?

Mark Ginsburg was a young associate at the firm.

Jane Frank Harman was a young partner at the firm.

And the former senator of the great state of Ohio, okay, Republic was a young associate

at the firm and I got tasked with pulling the, this had never been done, pulling the initial

research on how we frame this tribunal to deal with resolution of the issues outstanding

regarding the Iranians and the impact that they had on Americans and the claims that Americans

had against the Iranians.

And I learned a lot about the Iranian people, learned a lot about the government and a lot

about the history and that history is fraught with U.S. intervention, that history is fraught

with U.S. playing king and the people having a different idea, which is why we wound up

with the Shah.

And so when you understand all of that and you look at the buffoons that are now in the

Middle East who don't appreciate that history, who don't, are not coming to the table with

the storylines that have held somewhat in balance how we play ourselves our role in that

in that region.

We are now in a very precarious spot and when you have bad actors like China and Russia

benefiting, it is not, it's not going to be good for us in the long term if we continue

down this road.

So I think there's a lot to be concerned about here.

I think you're right when you say, you know, we're going to get to April 6th and then

what?

And, you know, and what does it look like between now and then?

You know, it's not just the, it's not just the military, but it's also the economic impact

that we're going to have to contend with.

Hey there, it's Ryan C. Cress for Safeway.

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Hi, this is Alex Cantrowitz.

I'm the host of big technology podcast, a long time reporter and an on air contributor

to CNBC.

And if you're like me, you're trying to figure out how artificial intelligence is changing

the business world and our lives.

So each week on big technology, I bring on key actors from companies building AI tech

and outsiders trying to influence it, asking where this is all going to come from places

like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon and plenty more.

So if you want to be smart with your wallet, your career choices and meetings with your

colleagues and at dinner parties, listen to big technology podcast wherever you get your

podcasts.

We like to be fair and balanced on this podcast.

So I do want to play the account, account review for you about how we had to do this because

the threats were so great and you should actually be kind of scared if you live in this country

right now just going about your daily life because the threat was so great from Iran.

Let's listen to the vice president of the United States.

And it's options to ensure that Iran never has a nuclear weapon.

You talk about people who walk into a crowded supermarket and have a vest on and they blow

up the vest and a couple of people get killed and that's a terrible tragedy.

What happens when what's on the vest is not something that can kill a couple of people

but can kill many, many tens of thousands of people.

That is the most important American national security objective that exists for any administration

at any time is you don't want the worst people in the world to have a nuclear weapon.

A nuclear suicide vest in your local Harris teeter.

That's something that JD Vance is saying we are concerned about and that's why we're

in this war because there might have been an Iranian with a nuclear bomb on their

suicide vest.

I don't know how that would work.

Exactly.

I think that that would be pretty conspicuous.

Okay.

I'm sorry, America.

This is for me is, and I know what is for you, Tim.

It is too fucking serious to have such unserious, such politically driven, such politically motivated

and biased assholes running this war and running our country.

What the vice president just said was bull shit.

It makes no sense.

We always live in the fear of someone in a vest that nuclear or other one, I mean, take

the nuclear shit off the table.

That's just crazy.

I mean, it's kind of important though.

I don't know.

How's it going to work?

They're going to go to Ishtahan.

Thank you.

You know, material, fissile material.

I mean, put it on their vassal.

Playing us for split until they know they're playing us for stupid.

They're mixing these images and sort of creating this space in which this thing could happen.

No, that will not happen.

Now, if he said Tom, he chemical warfare, okay, that's a different conversation, but that

can happen now.

You have to go to war with Iran to be worried about that.

The fact of the matter is Iran was at the table negotiating.

The Obama and the Biden administration, we had a deal.

Trump took the deal off the table, tore it up, right?

Then we were living in the wild, wild west of nothing.

Donald Trump, at the coming into a second term, there was the beginning of the negotiation

of a new deal.

Donald Trump tore it up.

And the key man he put there was a son-in-law who doesn't actually work for the government

who is on the take from Iran's top regional rival.

Thank you.

Not probably not the guy that you want there if you're trying to negotiate.

Not the guy you want there in the room.

And so to hear him now say this is, it's just mind-numbingly stupid and it's insulting

because what this administration is not talking about in all of that.

If everything, okay, Mr. BP, I'm going to take everything you're saying is true.

A, why don't you say that on the first day?

B, why is your story about why we're there in the first place change three, four, five,

seven times?

C, why can't you tell us how this ends?

What's your plan to get out?

What does that exit strategy look like?

D, when you start to implement that, what the fuck are you leaving behind?

Right?

Because like Venezuela, all you did was take out, decapitate the leadership.

Like any good little writhing thing on the ground that can regenerate its body and grow

a new head, that's what's happening here.

You didn't take out the guard.

You didn't take out the leadership because why that leadership, if you read the fucking

intelligence, would tell you that a lot of it is underground.

A lot of it is dispersed all over the country just like the damn nuclear weapons you're

trying to find.

I mean, just tell them what are we doing?

They're looking out for us.

They just don't want a nuclear weapon on the suicide vest.

That's why we're at the war.

That's why everybody's paying more for everything.

That's why Americans are dying.

That's why people in the region are dying.

That's why everything's these days.

Here's a solution.

I have a solution for the administration.

Stop the war.

No, let's just get rid of all this, all the vests.

Oh, okay, band vests, vests control, band vests, let's band the vests.

Vests control.

That's not looking into them.

Vests control.

All right.

While we're being nice to them, one last thing, and then I'll let you go, because I do

again, you know, sometimes when you read more Trump affiliated outlets, they all

offer these like kind of 40 chess rationalizations for what's happening.

Like I was looking at the free press this morning, and they did somebody in the free press

talking about how the people who don't play chess, is that the American War was really

about China, actually.

Now, the administration isn't saying that, but like the China that Iran was working with

China, and by closing the strait, we're going to destabilize Asia, and that's good.

It was kind of, it was hard to follow, but it was like a money hit on a fist.

Yeah, but that's what, anyway, that's at the Barry Weiss out, that was telling you.

So I was thinking about potential 40 chess things that they could be doing.

Okay.

And I'm sure you saw the news about how Trump is going to put his signature on the dollar.

It's going to be the first time that a sitting president has signed the bills themselves.

This is obviously Kim Jong-un, Esk, and Wrong, and Horrible.

But I'm wondering, they couldn't think about a way to take prices down.

But if you have like bonfires of money, right, if people are so upset about the dollar

that it's scale, they're burning it, then that can lead to deflation, actually.

You could get deflation if you're taking a lot of currency out of the market.

And so maybe that's the plan.

Maybe we're looking for a deflationary.

Yeah, you're right.

He wants the project.

He wants his signature on the dollar, and people are like, oh hell no, I just don't

forget.

I just burned this shit.

I don't know.

I'm not spending this burning.

Just burn it.

Look, if y'all haven't figured out now, by now, Donald Trump wants his name on everything

because that's what a megalomaniac does.

Everything is them, and they are everything.

If they could redefine the laws of physics, literally, they would, all right?

And they try, politically, telling you up is down and down is up.

And so it doesn't surprise me.

It's like we mentioned before that the damn archie wants to build in Washington, what he's

doing with the East Wing, renaming the Kennedy Center at himself, and look at what's

happened.

Nobody wants to perform at the Kennedy Center.

And I guess we can listen to Kid Rock for the next three years, but you have three hobos

in the audience.

I mean, what I don't know what you're talking about anymore, because what Donald Trump

is doing, again, he wants his name on a dollar because now when you look, pick up the dollar,

you see his signature.

He wants that ugly bullshit signature of his that he never learned how to write cursive,

right?

Never learned how to actually write his name.

So he just scribbles it because he's lazy.

You can't even write out to damn name.

You can't even write your name out in a way that we can understand what it is.

So we have to have our brains processed the symbolism of your name, because otherwise

you can't read that shit.

You take someone who has never seen Donald Trump's signature and showed it to him and

they go, what the fuck is that?

The three-year-old gets sick.

What is that?

It's not our money.

So this is what representative of our fallen empire though, you know, three-year-old signature.

It's so many ways.

It's so many ways.

So yes, put your signature on the damn dollar.

I like a good bond fire.

I don't mind.

You know, like, you're in the bills, baby, burn in the bills.

I got bad news.

I just asked Claude if that would work and said technically it could reduce inflation.

Yeah, but it's inefficient compared to central bank tools like raise-against rates.

So I don't know.

Probably not going to work.

Just an idea though.

No bad idea.

It's a real one.

That's the chairman.

You can catch him at 7 p.m.

That's right.

And the East.

Every two a week.

Nice, baby.

MS now.

Yeah.

I hope to see you in person soon, all right, sir?

You got it, my friend.

You take care.

Enjoy yourself.

The best to the family.

It's dad-a-troner.

All right.

Back at you.

Everybody have a wonderful weekend.

Cheers.

We'll see you on Monday with Bill Crystal.

Woo-hoo, woo-hoo.

I got money to burn.

I want to burn it on you.

Come on in here.

Yeah.

We got one.

Sure.

I've got one.

It's been a good year.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We got one.

Sure.

I've got one.

It's been a good year.

Yeah.

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