Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Shock Polls Leave Trump Begging for His Life

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

The Federal Reserve’s new report is predicting a worsening economy in just the first 90 days of Trump, driven by his erratic trade, tariff, and immigration policies, as the 12 US economic regions report cratering manufacturing, home sales, tourism, and banks tightening their lending criteria. Simultaneously, Trump’s new poll numbers paint a disastrous presidency where he lost 7 points of support and now the majority of Americans “disapprove” of his performance. Michael Popok dons his Wall Street hat to tie these two events together and explain why Trump weakly threatened, but then backed off from, firing the Federal Reserve Chairman in advance of the report's release. Tushy: Over 2 million butts love TUSHY. Get 10% off Tushy with the code LEGALAF at https://hellotushy.com/LEGALAF! #tushypodRemember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Okay, flights on Air Canada. How about Prague? Ooh, Paris. Those gardens. Gardens. Um, Amsterdam. Tulip Festival. I see your festival and raise you a carnival in Venice. Or Bermuda has carnaval. Ooh, colorful. You want colorful. Thailand. Lantern Festival. Boom. Book it. Um, how did we get to Thailand from Prague?

Oh, right. Prague. Oh, boy. Choose from a world of destinations. If you can. Air Canada. Nice travels. I'm going to put on my Wall Street legal and political hat right now and synthesize a couple of things that have all happened at around the same time.

And for a reason, the Federal Reserve's beige book about the 12 districts of our United States and the worsening economy, because it's all the Trump failed policies are already making their way into the economy and into the beige book. And it's important because it is the book that is used by the Fed in May to set policy is out at the same time, almost identically that the polling numbers for Donald Trump are plummeting like a stone driven by independence and the rejection of his policies and Donald Trump now saying I'm not gonna fire the Federal Reserve Chairman all because he made a complete mess of the economy in the first 90 days taking a roaring bull

market and making it a scary bear market on the way to stagflation. Let me combine the Donald Trump's distractive policies in order to try to distract from his failures, his poll numbers, what he's doing at the Fed and why the new Fed matters, the new Fed numbers matter. I'll do it all here on Midas Touch Network. Let me jump right in. I told you last week that this week was the week that all the central banks, including the Federal Reserve of the United States,

start setting policy and dropping rates or raising rates depending upon how they see the economy. Donald Trump, of course, knew that that was this week also. So he launched a series of attacks on Jay Powell, who's the only thing as our Federal Reserve Chairman that's keeping the United States in our universe connected to an economy. He is the umbilical cord. He is the tether to reality. He is the only reason that the markets haven't done worse under Donald Trump is because there's an adult in the room his name is

Jay Powell and the markets the economy and the world global leaders and stakeholders believe in him and if he were to leave involuntarily or otherwise God forbid he resigned you think we're doing bad now on the way to stagflation high inflation rates, low productivity. Wait till you see what would happen if Jay Powell left. And finally, people within the Trump administration talked him off the ledge. But knowing that Jay Powell and the beige book was about to come out and look terrible for the beginning of the Trump administration and that the polling numbers were looking

worse, Donald Trump backed off because he watches cable news because he watches polls. That's why his policies and his actions are so erratic because they're not based on any thought process, no executive function. They're based on whoever talked to him last, whoever went into his office last. One of the reasons that he backed off of China, this whole thing we've been covering here on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF about Scott Bessette, the Treasury Secretary saying, well, the 145% tariffs on China isn't sustainable. We'll eventually have to drop them. And Donald Trump's saying, yeah, I'm going to be nice with them. I'm going to drop their tariffs. I'm not going to play hardball with them. You know why that happened? Because a series of corporate leaders

led by Walmart and Home Depot and the rest all marched into Donald Trump's office and told him to cut it out. That's all it takes. He changed his tariff policy originally and put a pause on it because he got a phone call from Jamie Dimon at JP Morgan Chase.

And also the guy that runs Pershing Square private equity who told him you are killing the economy. This is a nuclear winter that you're creating and then he watched an interview with Maria Bartiromo on cable news because he's not he's got nothing better to do and then he hit the brakes on the on the Tariff War for 90, but not before the damage is done. Let me tell you what the beige book says, why it's important for America, and what the polling says, because those two things do go hand in glove. First of all, the beige book comes out eight times a year.

It's the 12 districts in America, the different Federal Reserve, you know, Federal Reserve of Atlanta, Federal Reserve of Chicago, Federal Reserve of New York. There's 12 districts. They all issue an individual report anecdotally about what they're observing in their various economic sectors, and that's all combined together in the beige book. And here's what the overarching in all 12 districts is telling us 90 days or so under the Trump administration. There is tremendous uncertainty about trade policy and immigration.

It is a, I wouldn't even say a mixed picture. It is low growth already and major declines with tightening lending standards. So banks, sphincters are starting to close. They don't wanna lend. So if you like an economy with tightening financial lending requirements, tourism is in the trash because Canadians are not coming here any longer.

And that's impacting many of the districts. People are insecure about disposable income, so leisure tourism is down, and federal workers who are now on the unemployment lines are not traveling. Federal worker travel makes our hospitality and airline industry run. Take them out of the equation,

you've got cratering tourism. Prices are increasing. Food banks and the demand on people who are hungry in this country is also, the need there is also increasing. That means that we have an economic crisis caused by Donald Trump that is rippling across all 12 of our districts. Based on that, when the Fed meets in May to set policy and to discuss whether they're gonna drop the rate in order to stimulate the economy, they also have to worry about inflation. See, all Donald Trump wants,

he's just a drunken sailor, sorry to drunken sailors, with nothing to lose, riverboat gambler with nothing to lose, he wants to print more house money. And the way you print more house money, even though we've got trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars of debt because of Donald Trump's first administration and his second administration,

he wants the Fed to lower the interest rate, making lending easier, pushing more money into the economy, more house, he wants to play with house money, and he wants Jay Powell to be his dealer. And he's not going to, because he has to worry about macroeconomic policy like inflation,

more, we saw what happens when $3 trillion worth of stimulus money went through the economy after COVID, when Joe Biden had to restart the heart of the economy, prices rose. There was also a logistical supply chain warping and housing market issues because people suddenly were migrating. It was like the prehistoric times after the meteor hit, we have migration patterns that change, people moving north to south, south to west, all putting pressure on the housing market,

and that led to increase in prices as well. So we know what will happen if we push too much money too soon into the economy. So Jay Powell, the adult, has to fix that. Listen, that extra hour of daylight, it's so good for the mental health, but so hard on the morning routine. If you like me take like 15 minutes to do your business on the toilet, at the best of times you need to get a bidet. Tushy helps me elevate comfort in the bathroom while getting me

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That's 10% off your first bidet order at hellotushy.com with promo code LegalAF. Now Donald Trump wanted to fire Jay Powell. I mean, one of the things he's arguing at different courts, including up to the Supreme Court, is to remove a precedent. It's called Humphrey's Executor. Came out in 1935, and it is-level positions like the Fed and taking them under his complete control because he'd fire everybody on the Fed.

He'd put in all of his lackeys and toties and bootlickers, and then we'd be in a real pickle. If J-PAL quit tomorrow, we'd be in a real pickle, unless he put somebody like Jamie Diamond or somebody that the world financial markets appreciate and respect, which Donald Trump doesn't seem to do that ever. So he got talked off the ledge by a combination of Scott Bissett, his Treasury Secretary, maybe Howard Lutnick, his Commerce Secretary, guys that had worked around Wall Street and said we can't get rid of Jay Powell. And so he backed off, but he knew this beige report was coming out and he knew the International

Monetary Fund was cutting their rates and claiming that there was, as we could all see, a world economic crisis caused by Donald Trump in just this short amount of time, which explains the polling as I transition to polling. Donald Trump's poll numbers are in the trash. He came, let me just give you the baseline, he came into office, came into office with the second lowest approval rating of any president in the modern era. The second lowest. Now you might be thinking, who was the first lowest? Trump, 45. So he only, he just, he just was the second lowest this time.

His first lowest was the first time he was president. And it's gotten only worse. He's down seven points, which is well beyond the margin of error and well beyond under-reporting around Trump voters since the day after his inauguration. So just since January, he started out riding high. 52%, the most

of America thought in January thought he'd be a good president and approved of him. And now it's flipped. 52% more than the majority in America think that he's doing a terrible job and only 45% approved. It's actually a faster drop than any other president in history. And it's driven by the independents in the polling who are abandoning Donald Trump in droves. What is not working is the weakness of Donald Trump, not only in the people that he picked that are self-destructing and immolating and imploding before our very eyes, like Pete

Hegseth, who won't be at the Pentagon too much longer. He then took the crown jewel of his cabinet, the State Department, and completely destroyed it and hollowed it out and shrunk it, destroying our diplomatic missions around the world and undermining our national security. And then he tried this flood zone policy. You know, you know how like Obama tried one big thing in his term to get Obamacare up and running, the Affordable Care Act? Well Donald Trump decided we're going to come in and quote unquote flood the zone.

We're going to go after all at the very same time. We're going to go after universities and law firms and judges and shrink the government and take on all those lawsuits and immigration all at the same time. Because we're gonna overwhelm our opposition. Well, how's that going so far? Because you didn't overwhelm anybody because the public interest groups

like the American Civil Liberties Union, the attorneys general, there's 22 democratic ones around the country, and other groups that have been formed recently like Democracy Forward, Democracy Now, Court Accountability Action, they're running into courts and they're doing it at great success. There's 140 or 150 cases already filed against the Trump administration, almost 70 preliminary injunctions and permanent injunctions. And at the Supreme Court level, Donald Trump is on the losing end of the last two decisions, one seven to two, the other nine zero about his immigration, his depraved immigration and deportation policy. And even if you look at all the emergency applications at the United States Supreme Court,

right now it is four to three in favor of democracy and against the Trump administration at the United States Supreme Court. And so the shock and awe, flood the zone, that miscalculated, because that's the sign of Donald Trump's administration, miscalculation, lack of thought process, they miscalculated that the public interest groups, the ACLUs of the world, the attorneys general of the world,

they've been ready. They thought there was a good chance that the Democrats weren't gonna win, that Kamala was gonna be rejected by the voters. And they were ready. Six months before, they were drafting white papers and draft lawsuits. That's why some people are surprised.

They jumped into court. They were in court in Washington state five days after the administration on birthright citizenship. So January 25th was the first round of cases. After January 20th, he was signing all those executive orders. They were ready.

So they didn't catch anybody flat-footed or by surprise. Certainly didn't catch Legal AF and Midas Touch Network. I mean, for God's sake, we formed Legal AF, the YouTube channel, about two months before the election, because I kind of had a sneaking suspicion that it was gonna be really important that we were here, the legal AF was present and accounted for, bringing truth to our audience. So when you've got the economic issues that have gone down the drain for Donald Trump trying to take the rest of us with them, you always have to look for Donald Trump. You have to look to the

polls. You know what they say, follow the money, you gotta follow the polling because he's driven by polls. He's driven by personal entreaties and lobbying by people that he respects. So if you wonder why we're watching such an erratic foreign policy, an erratic military policy, an erratic economic policy, it's because Donald Trump is a broken person and he allows himself to be flattered and lobbied by anybody. You know, comes up with a new

policy because he's watching television, because he's watching cable news, because somebody phones him, because somebody schedules a meeting with him. That's not policy. That's suicide. And that's, and that, I feel like we're strapped to a suicide bomber as in America. And we all want to get off and extricate ourselves, continue to do it together here first, speaking truth to each other as we then move forward. And the only way we can do this is at the midterms and the and eventually, of course, the presidency in 2028. Because if there was a cabinet with any balls, which we don't have, they would already be

invoking the 25th Amendment. And if we had a Congress that was in the hands of the Democrats, there would already be impeachment proceedings and possibly convictions. But we don't have that right now. So we've got to rely on the court system. We've got to rely on truth and information, no smoke or sunshine here on The Midas Touch Network. Take a minute, hit the free subscribe button, help them continue to grow to 5 million.

Come on over to Legal AF, the YouTube channel, Legal AF MTN, as we march towards 1 million, which we hope to accomplish this year. With your help, we will. We're adding 70,000 subscribers a month because of you. So until my next reporting, I'm Michael Popak. In collaboration with The Midas Touch Network, we just launched the Legal AF YouTube channel. month because of you. So until my next reporting, I'm Michael Popock.