Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump Hit with Rude Awakening as Market Sends Him Brutal Message

Episode Date: October 31, 2025

Trump’s efforts to use the Shutdown to put a blindfold around the Fed to deny it key economic data so it would fly blind during today’s Interest Rate setting meeting, backfired, as the Fed Chair said that when in a “fog” you “slow down” indicating that Trump screwed up his efforts to get a second rate cut next month by keeping the Government shut down. Michael Popok puts on his Wall Street goggles to take a look at today’s Federal Open Markets Committee Meeting results and what it says about Trump’s failed economy and the suffering of Americans. Subscribe:  @LegalAFMTN  Remember 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Now streaming on Paramount Plus is the epic return of Mayor of Kingstown. Warden? You know who I am. Starring Academy Award nominee Jeremy Renner. I swear in these walls. Emmy Award winner Edie Falco. You're an ex-con who ran this place for years. And now, now you can't do that. And BAFTA Award winner Lenny James.

You're about to have a plague of outsiders descend on your town. Let me tell you this. It's going to be consequences. Mayor of Kingstown, new season now streaming on Paramount Plus. Donald Trump's efforts to blindfold the Federal Reserve, to deny it during the shutdown on purpose, key economic data coming out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics has effectively backfired because now the Federal Reserve, led by its Chairman Jay Powell, during a press conference following the vote of the Federal Open Markets Committee,

said, when you're in a fog, you slow down, you don't go faster. So if Donald Trump thought he was going to buy himself, yet another race, cut by denying key economic data to the Federal Reserve, that backfired on him. Now, yes, the Federal Reserve had to do another bailout of the Trump economy. I mean, the interest rate it's set today, cutting another quarter of a point, is effectively half of what the interest rate was when Joe Biden was president. And Joe Biden had a roaring economy. Get that.

Joe Biden had a deal with 5.3% or so interest rates at the bank-to-bank level. now it's down to two point now it's down to three point seven five to three point nine percent and the economy is still stuck in a rut and still crushing americans and now it's the federal reserve to the rescue including the two people the two enemies of donald trump perceived enemies in j pal the federal reserve chairperson and the board of governor lisa cook who voted for the rate cut because they're looking at american suffering i'm michael popock you're on the midas dutch network and legal a f i got to put my Wall Street goggles on to see through this fog, I am sure it was Donald Trump's intention

to deny the Federal Reserve key economic data that comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to put a blindfold around them, to put them in a black box, so they couldn't make economic decisions other than the lower rates. That's not what Jay Powell did because there are other private sources

of economic data that the Federal Reserve can rely on, including the beige book, its own internal analysis, which is done regionally around the country and other entities that provide data privately. You can see what purchasing managers are doing. There's data about that. You can see what supply chain managers are doing. You can see job reports from places like ADP, the payroll company. You can see it from some statistical sources.

You can see it from Adobe. These are all things that are relied upon. They're not replacements for the gold standard of the, Bureau of Labor Statistics, which Donald Trump has effectively shut down. They didn't issue their reports. They didn't find that to be critical information that's necessary to set the course of the economy. There's two halves to the economy.

There's the fiscal policy that's set by the President of the United States, and that includes his domestic spending policies, his budget bill that's been passed, his funding at the state level, right? Where he spends his money, how he spends his money. how jobs are created by the participation of the U.S. in the U.S. economy and includes his tariff policies, which are the centerpiece of Donald Trump's failed economic policies and their impact on the economy. Now, they're about to be ripped down, hopefully, by the Supreme Court.

There's an oral argument in the first week of November next week about whether he even had the power to collect a trillion dollars worth of tariffs from 130 countries. But the Federal Reserve, the second half of the equation, is the Federal Reserve on monetary policy. And we have never allowed a president to have control of both monetary policy and fiscal policy. See, the Federal Reserve is independent or is supposed to be. And they make decisions in reaction to what they see from the president's economic policies, his fiscal policies. If they suck, which they do here, then they've got to lower the interest rates in order to get money pumping through the arteries of the American economy. If they feel like,

there's hyperinflation because there's two competing interests that the Federal Reserve are concerned about because that is their mission. Keep jobs and employment high, keep inflation low. But the problem is high employment sometimes leads to high wages, lots of money in the economy, which leads to inflation. So they have to balance the two things. And they do it by way of the blunt force object instrument of the interest rate, which is set intrabank between banks. And then that flows down, how much banks charge each other to borrow impacts how much they're going to charge you and me for consumer debt, student loans, credit cards, and the rest. So you have to hit that. It takes a while of course through the stream of the American economy if you're on the Fed side. Now Donald Trump's

decided, let me put them in a barrel in a black box so they don't know what's going on. Except there's other independent sources that say the Trump economy is terrible. And then when this committee got together today, which is a committee of 12, and voted 10 to 2 to cut the rates a quarter of point. They already cut the rate a quarter of point last month. Now, voting for it was 10 people, including Jay Powell, who Donald Trump wants to get rid of, and Lisa Cook, who he wants to fire, except the Supreme Court pumped the brakes and said, see you in January at all argument. In the meantime, she's a Federal Reserve on the Board of Governors.

The committee is comprised of seven, the seven members of the Board of Governors, which run the Federal Reserve, and five additional members. which come from a group of 12 that are the Federal Reserve Presidents for the regional banks. They rotate. Five plus seven come together. They form the Federal Open Markets Committee, and they vote by majority rule. Ten to two, including two Trumpers, Bowman and Waller, voted for the quarter point rate cut. One of the members on the Board of Governors, who's sort of temporary, he voted.

Keith Mirren, he voted to cut it even greater. I'm not surprised because he's in the White House. He took a leave of absence as the chair of the council of economic advisors to the president to come work in the Federal Reserve. So, of course, he's a Trumper. He's like, no, the economy's even worse than you people think. I know I'm in the White House. That's how I interpreted that.

So he votes for a half a point. And one board of governor voted for, or one committee member voted for no change at all. But the problem is, what happens next month? What happens in December? And that's what Jay Powell during his presser today talked about, the lack of data. Let's play the clip. Could you give us a sense? I think we know a lot about the jobs data that's out there.

Can you give us a sense of what you're looking at to track inflation in the absence of government data? Thank you. So it's a lot of things. And it doesn't replace government data. But, you know, all of these. It's, you know, it's, I'll just mention some of the many. many names, price stats, Adobe, and others, and for wage inflation, there's ADP data. On spending, you're going to ask about spending at some point.

You know, there are lots of other things that we look at. But it's, again, it's many, many different sources, and again, including what we get out of the beige book, which will be sort of come out mid-cycle, as always. and it doesn't, doesn't replace the government data, but it gives us a picture. Again, I think if something material were happening, if there were material developments, I think we would pick that up. I don't think we'll be able to have the very, the very granular understanding of the economy while this data is not available.

Howard? Howard Schneier with our Reuters. Thank you. I just wanted you to elaborate a little bit on what you said. moment ago about a continued shutdown making it more difficult to make a move in December and that may make you more cautious to the degree you are relying on private data that isn't the gold standard or that you're relying on your own surveys of the beige book do you worry at some point you're going to have to start making policy by anecdote you know this is a temporary state of affairs and you know we're going to do our jobs we're going to collect every scrap of

data we can find, evaluate it, and think carefully about it. And that's our jobs. That's what we're going to do. If you ask me, could it affect the, you know, the December meeting? I'm not saying it's going to, but yeah, you could imagine that, you know, what do you do? What do you do? And if you're driving in the fog, you slow down. So that could or could not. I don't know how that's going to play into things. We may get, the data may come back, but there's a, there's a possibility that it would make sense to be more cautious about moving. I'm not committing to that. I'm just saying it's certainly a possibility that you would say,

we really can't see. So let's slow down. When you're in a fog, you slow down. So if Donald Trump thought that he was going to cut off all the inputs into this box of the Federal Reserve that sets rates, this machine that sets rates, cut the fuel lines and hoping they would sputter and he would get a bigger benefit

because he's been pushing for cutting the rates in half. the rates to be like 2% because he's like a he's like a sailor on leave right he's like a riverboat gambler with nothing to lose that's why we don't want presidents or dictators or dictator presidents to have control of monetary policy at the Fed the central bank fiscal policy his own policy and the data and Donald Trump's trying to get all three manipulating all three because there are short-term and long-term horizon problems. Trump is on the shortest of time horizons, both chronologically, and given his political, his political chances and the midterms. So he doesn't care about 2027, 2028, 2030, and what he does to the economy. He just wants

free money, fire it out, you know, $100 bills being fired out of a fire hose. Yeah, yeah, everybody. Spend it. Let's get, let's get the economy looking great, okay? Doesn't matter if after that's all over, you get the hangover of hyperinflation because he'll be long gone by then. Every dictator or president that's gotten control the Federal Reserve has wrecked the economy and created hyperinflation. And there are no examples of that not happening.

That's why we don't let it happen. That's why even the Supreme Court has seen that the independence of the Federal Reserve is very important. That's why Lisa Cook is still sitting on the Federal Reserve and has not been fired. So Trump was like, hey, let's take advantage of the shutdown, right?

Let's cut off all their data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, all the consumer data and the job data and the economy data. Yeah, no, because they have other sources. Now, as you heard from J-Bowell, it's not great, but we're going to do our job. It's not great, but we'll cut, but we have to do our job. Hopefully it's in the short term. It's not the gold standard of data that we can rely on or that the world relies on. So now the rest of the central bankers around the world,

or looking at Jay Powell like, boy, really, you're set rates without any of the core government data? You just, it seems like you're setting it by anecdote as that reporter asked. But this is, again, the games that are going on. You know, when the cats away, the mice shall play, Donald Trump has decided during the shutdown, he's just going to create more pain for the American consumer, more pain for the American voter, more pain for Americans, and try to get away with it. There's no, you know, let's fire more government employees and put them on the unemployment line and cut off all funding. Let's defund more of the Department of Education.

Let's cut off welfare payments, food stamp payments, snap payments, food payments, things that go against, to prevent starvation and malnourishment. Let's save $8 billion. I got a ballroom to build everybody. I got to, I have to go to Europe and go kiss the butt of the Japanese, pardon the Japanese. because I wrecked everything in my tariffs. I got to do all that and do a big show before next week's Supreme Court oral argument about tariffs. We'll continue to follow it all right here.

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