Bulwark Takes - Trump’s Economy Implodes as MAGA World Spirals

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

Tim Miller and Sam Stein break down the economic news as Donald Trump's tariffs tumble the market, with fears of a recession on the horizon. Plus, Elon Musk's Tesla stock continues to nosedive, but Tommy Tuberville reassures the economic hardships will be "just a lil pain."

Hey, everybody, it's Tim Miller from the Bulwark here with managing editor Sam Stein. You know, it's not a great sign when the Bulwark channel turns into your weekday market update. If we've got to go over everything that's happened a minute by minute on the stock market, I think it's a sign that things have gone awry. And boy, have they. Here's the headline from CNBC. Dow tumbles nearly 900 points. NASDAQ suffers worst day since 2022 as recession fears erupt. A nice picture of a trader with a hand on his face. You think that's a stock photo or is that fresh? I believe that's a stock photo.

No. No, it's a good, it's a classic stock photo. Yeah. But things are ugly. If you look at the S&P, it's off nine percent from what was what was an all time high in February. So, you know, I mean, it's not we're not in we're not in the Great Depression era yet, but the chart go down, I guess. Yeah, not great. One thing to say. Yeah, you know, I've been, as you know, from internal slacks, I've been reluctant to jump on market stories because markets go up and markets go down. You try not to over exaggerate one way or the other. But now we're it's the trend's pretty

clear. I mean, it's pretty clear at this point. And it's funny in a way because so much of what is happening here, as far as I read it, is that the markets, people who invest, are like, wait a second. He wasn't joking about the tariffs? Oh, my God. And like, wait, hold on. Elon Musk and this like ketamine-induced Dogefest is like not that well thought out and they may be cutting things indiscriminately it's like oh my god this is a lot of chaos and we didn't think about that and i just want to say i thought about it i i knew this might happen i'm not like a genius and and i don't pretend to be one and maybe i should have invested monies and hedges or whatever

the fuck but like this was a pretty easy one to call i got it um yeah same i don't know again i would have expected to happen this quickly no this is i will say it's quicker than i thought it's quicker than it's been quicker than i thought and and i guess the other thing that's just worth saying in the interest of fairness is like the the joe biden stock market i know that the over on fox they're trying to call this the joe biden recession but the actual joe biden stock market as in the stock market when Joe Biden left office on January 20th, was really high. And it had run really hot. And so the bad news for Trump and for everybody that's invested is there's a long way to go down still to kind of get back to where we were at the beginning of the Biden administration.

A few points on that. A few points on that. A few points on that. Because as you know, the reason the stock market was so goddamn hot and high for Biden is everyone's just so excited about Trump coming back. Oh, right. Let's be real here. That was actually the Trump stock market. And now that it's back. It's a very strange thing.

The stock market went up when Biden was president because they were expecting Trump to become president. And then when he became president, it went back down. Then they realized it was, yes, because they realized that it actually was the Biden market. They had to – like, oh, shit, we got diluted because of Trump and now it's actually – no, it's fucking bullshit. It's ridiculous. And obviously, I mean, whatever. Their spin is so ridiculous and transparently ridiculous. It's very evident that this is because of volatility, because of tariff fears, because the fundamentals of the economy don't particularly look strong with Trump because you're seeing public sector layoffs, tens of thousands of jobs that will have profound private sector implications.

And I think your point is actually the last one is the most valid, which is this is not – we're not in inning 7, 8, 9. We're in inning 1. And I was talking to someone pretty smart today about this stuff. And they're like, look, the data hasn't even set in yet. What is the market reaction going to be when you see job losses in a month or when you see GDP flatlined? Then it's going to be really bad. That's when the stock market will really turn bad. And so I hope that's not the case because I genuinely want the economy to do good.

But there's nothing that's giving people – I do. I just don't want – I don't want people to suffer, honestly. But there's nothing that's giving me particular confidence that they have their shit together. And the reason I say that is because they don't have their shit together. You had over the weekend Howard Lutnick being like, we're not going to have a recession. What are you talking about? I would never bet on recession. No chance. And then Trump's asked and he's like, yeah, we may have a recession. I can't rule it out. Are you expecting a recession this year? I hate to predict things like that. It's like, well, someone's got to have a playbook here. You know, nobody has a playbook.

And I mean, putting a crypto scammer in charge of the Department of Commerce probably wasn't the best call, but we'll see. I got to tell you, I'm yearning for the days of Mnuchin. Mnuchin is looking like top of the pops compared to the economic team

Trump's got around him now. It's just – I mean Hassett is a longtime clown. JVL wrote a great column on this. If you go to the Bull – on the history of Kevin Hassett, he's always been a clown. Besant, everybody was saying good things about, but he was saying some really dumb things in his interviews. Also, they have him doing weird shit like going to like Ukraine and like – it's like just focus on this stuff you know like do do this focus on stabilizing the economy speaking of dumb spin um just a few minutes ago tommy tuberville america's stupidest senator uh was on with larry kudlow and was asked about the stock market and whether that he has any concerns I want to see old ball coach. At the moment, the stock market seems to be in full-fledged revolt about that. Now, I have not spoken to the president.

I don't know if he's watching the stock market about this or not. He paused the Canadian and the Mexican tariffs. But do you think there's an issue here? Do you think there's a messaging problem here? Do you think there's too much uncertainty here? What do you think about this story? Well, first of all, I don't think President Trump needs to be concerned about it. He doesn't need to look at it. He's our only chance, Larry. We're leaking oil.

This country is leaking oil. We're leaking money. Four years I've been here, it's been going out the door. We've found out now where a lot of the money is going. We'll continue to find that out. But again, at the end of the day, President Trump has told people there's going to be a little bit of pain with this. And there he is. That's fine. You know, the stock market's gone up and down before. It'll come back. But when we start doing these tariffs somewhere around 1st of April, where everybody's got to be on the same level, I think it'll start leveling out and we'll build

the country back. We have no chance unless he does tariffs and holds people accountable to what's been going on. There's going to be some pain here. There's going to be some pain. I don't remember that during the campaign. There's going to be some pain. Is that in any of the ads that they did? It's like when you run the ball in the middle.

Yeah, everyone needs to pay you that middle linebacker. You need that middle linebacker linebacker and um i again but the other thing that is i think noteworthy about that clip and trump last night i don't know if you saw this on air force one he's a little giggle are you worried about a recession maria murder asked you and you kind of hesitated i'll tell you what of course you hesitate who knows all i know is this we're going to take in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs, and we're going to become so rich, you're not going to know where to spend all that money.

I'm telling you. You just watch. We're going to have jobs. We're going to have open factories. It's going to be great. And the plane is landing. And he was asked about the same question about the recessions and stuff. And both him and Tuberville are playing to the April tariffs

as the thing that's going to help the economy. They're like, we need to get these tariffs into place. That's when the money is going to come in. That's when things are going to go cha-ching. Well, I mean it's so illogical because if the tariffs were the panacea, then do the fucking tariffs. Stop – don't keep lifting them. Like if they're this great gateway to the golden age of our economy then put them in place and live with the consequences buddy stop lifting them but clearly they're not because trump lifts

them every single time and as you know i'm always taking the under and i'm pretty good right now on my record pretty good right now i'm pretty good also i'm feeling good about myself long term okay fine we'll see we'll see my point is they've rhetorically backed themselves into a corner where they were going to need to do it. I guess my point is even if you keep being right, like there's more pain ahead. Yes, of course, because this is illogical. Because every time they kick the can, there's another round of pain. Yeah, and at some point the markets, I guess, will be like this is just – we're not going to swing and turn. I guess, but there's real impacts.

I was messing with somebody that just does some cross-border Canadian, has a business that does cross-border Canadian. Your fentanyl guy? No, he's not my fentanyl man. Okay. No, it's more in the construction world. They're talking. It's like, yeah, this is affecting their planning.

Yeah, they don't know what is happening. And we're in building season. It's the spring now in America. And so a lot of this lumber and steel stuff that's coming from Canada, it's costing more right now. So it's going to make building more expensive. Look, I have a fridge full of avocados that I just – You've been stashing? I've been stashing.

They're all going bad. Avocados have a very limited period of ripeness. I don't have avocados. The other thing to note is this is bullshit because we were promised price of goods coming down on day one. Charm on the show was never like, oh, it's going to take

a little while. You might endure a little pain. A little pain. There's going to be a little bit of pain with this. But at the end of the day, you're going to be better off. And that was never the promise. The promise was this would all be done within five hours. And goddamn, the goods are going to be so cheap and your wages are going to be so high and you're going to be so tired of winning.

And that's not the case. And now they have to adjust and say, well, there's going to be some pain. And this is because Joe Biden is so bad. And it's like that was not the promise. That was just not the promise. Final topic, speaking of stocks go down, among the stocks going down, Tesla. And, oh, boy, it's going down big. One day hit of 15.5% today.

It's down to 222. I played for SE Cup on the podcast today a video of Dave Portnoy of Barstool, who's a Tesla stockholder, ranting about how Elon needs to get back to work because the Tesla stock had been tanking. If you're going to send emails to federal workers and say, what have you done for the last five days? I think Tesla shareholders are entitled to ask their CEO, Elon Musk, what have you done for Tesla the last five days? He gave that rant when the stock was at 280. And it had been at a high of like 360 or something like that. So at 280 is when he did that rant.

It's gone down to 222 since. So it's gone down an additional, call it 30%. First of all, the high, high of the stocks was 4.6470. So it's down half the price, right? More than half. He's lost every bit of earnings he had. Yeah. He's lost every bit of earnings since the election.

And we talked about this last week, you and I. I mean, I still am perplexed by why the Portnoy position is not more uniformly held, which is he has a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders of the company. There should be some sort of reckoning here that they need to have him either relinquish control or get back to work. The big shareholders have got to be like, excuse me, why are you shitposting Poland right now? Are there other things that we could be focused on? It's nutty. It's nutty.

And today, I don't want to make this another Elon thing, but Twitter was hacked relentlessly throughout the day. He's blaming the Ukrainians, by the way, as we're recording this. Of course he is. There was a massive cyber attack to try to bring down the x system uh with uh ip addresses originating in the ukraine area tesla prices are just absolutely shit in the bed and he's out there picking fights with reid hoffman being like were you on epstein's island that lawsuit was funded by re by Reid Hoffman, who is a major damn donor.

And also an Epstein client. And he's calling Mark Kelly a traitor to the country. And he's like doing all this stuff that would, if anyone in our normal lives were ranting like this online, we'd be like, get a grip or sign offline. Like, I think he's overextended. I just happen to think he's overextended. Our guy, Josh Green, posted this uh great reporter elon musk's net worth has gone down 145 billion dollars

since january 17th that's a hit a hit like even elon is probably not happy with that one who knows i can he get? Can he count anymore? I don't know. He might be struggling to process numbers these days. Maybe. We'll see, though. Who knows? I mean, he just could be totally.

It's just a little pain. There's going to be a little bit of pain with this. Just a little pain. Just a little pain. Just a little pain. A little pain for sure. Just a little pain, baby. Just a little pain.

Kill him. Anyway, the water boy. That's my water boy impersonation. Bobby Boucher. Bobby Boucher. I should not be denigrating Bobby Boucher. Shame on me to denigrate Bobby Boucher to compare him to Tommy. One of Louisiana's great football players.

I know. One of our greatest residents of all time, Bobby Boucher. Sam Stein, thank you for doing this. Everybody subscribe to the feed. You can get your disaster porn here when it is required. And we'll be back soon.