The Adam Mockler Show - MAGA Star confronts me... it BACKFIRES!!!

Episode Date: July 29, 2026

Click below for premium Adam Mockler content: 👉 https://adammockler.com/subscribe 👉 https://www.youtube.com/@adammockler/join Adam is joined by Kevin Smith, MAGA influencer and host of the Loud Majority Live on Rumble, to debate if Trump’s ICE is incompatible with the Constitution and if Trump’s economy is a good one. Produced by Amelia Spitler Edited by @lurchedit & Vic JOIN THE COMMUNITY: Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/AdamMockler/ Discord: https://discord.gg/y9yzMU3Gff Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adammockler/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/adammockler.com/ Twitter: https://x.com/adammocklerr/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@adammockler Contact: [e-mail] Business inquiries: [e-mail] Adam Mockler - Mockler Media LLC Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Join Performance Auto Group this Saturday or Civic Holiday Monday 9 to 5 for the best time to shop this summer. We are living in a messy reality where he ended up. up trying to help someone and he got shot five times in the back for it. He interfered with a police investigation, had a gun on him. When they set up those protest zones, you stay with inside of it. That is how the piece is kept. He tariffed Kurd Island that had nobody on it except for penguins. He threatened 25% tariffs on every EU country if they didn't force Denmark to give us Greenland.

So give him Greenland. Like, hello. All right, everyone, we are back. Today we are joined by Kevin Smith, a three-time Trump voter, a MAGA commentator, and the founder of the Loud Majority. Kevin and I obviously disagree on some fundamental issues. So we're going to go through those issues and debate it. Kevin, how are you doing today? Doing good. Thanks for having me. So we have two claims.

We're going to start off with my claim, go back and forth, and then jump to yours. My claim is that Trump's ice is incompatible with the Constitution. Yeah, no, and my question would be, when did it become so? Because, you know, people like Tom Holman have been doing this job the exact same way for decades at this point. And it seems like the majority of the conflicts that we're seeing, and there certainly have been, you know, no doubt, are coming from a lot of these blue state areas that are making it more difficult for Tom Holman to do the job that he was once given the Presidential Medal of Freedom for. Yeah, so Tom Homan did work for Obama. And it's not Tom Homan's fault in particular that this is all happening. But you brought up a really good point.

This is seen predominantly in blue states. And it's because Trump is surgically sending his ice to blue states along with the National Guard against the way. will of the leaders there, and it's creating a lot of tension. So I think if I want to be charitable, the ice of 10 years ago was not a problem. The ice of five years ago was not even inherently a problem. It was fine under Obama, but I think we can both agree that we have seen a unique spike in the amount of violence coming from ice, and we've seen a unique spike in the lack of accountability of ice. I mean, I can list off like five people who have been shot, and those ice officers are allowed to walk back on the street with no investigation. So when we live in a

constitutional republic, we want our constitutional rights to be respected, like the freedom of speech, the freedom to carry a gun, the freedom to protest. ICE has been walking all over that. Do you agree with the shooting of Alex Preddy, for example, in Minnesota back in January? Well, I don't agree with the shooting. You know, I don't want anybody to get shot for any right. I would hope that nobody does. Obviously, there are conflicts with police, and whether they're, whether they're justified shoots or unjustified shoots, that I don't want to see anybody die. A lot of the problem and a lot of the pushback that is coming from ICE is because of the rhetoric around it in the first place. Now, you're right.

Ten years ago, ICE wasn't a problem. Five years ago, it wasn't a problem. But neither was the surge in immigration that we've seen over, particularly the Biden years. But in the past, I'll be generous and say 10 or 15 years or so. There's been a dramatic surge of people who we don't know who come from every country around the world. Basically, if you can get here, you were able to. to land when Texas tried to shut down the border, the Biden administration forced them to remove all of the barricades. Now, what they did was they used the supremacy clause under the Biden administration,

saying that federal law doesn't outweigh a state's right to do whatever. And right now, the Trump administration is using the exact same thing in deporting these agents. Now, I live in New York. Mamdani has said that ICE will not go to Rikers Island. If they can't go to the prisons to arrest the criminals, then they have to go to the neighborhoods. And when they go to the neighborhoods, that's when you see like the Renee Good incident where you got a block shut down, but people still got to get on and off the block and you get conflicts that shouldn't have happened in the first place. The person that they were trying to pick up in the Renee Good situation was recently led out of jail. If Tim Walls and Jacob Fry had just let them grab this guy at the jail, then Renee Goods never on that block.

Ice agents are never on the block and the shooting never happens. I understand what you're saying. And I'm not somebody who's going to defend Biden's border policy. I consider myself more a Barack Obama or Bill Clinton Democrat, Democrats who had a strong thesis on immigration and yet still respected human dignity. So ICE under Obama, for example, did not have this problem. But I reject the idea that because there was a surge in immigration, the Constitution should now just be a suggestion for ICE agents to follow. I see this argument used a lot where people say, listen, a lot of immigrants surged over the border. Therefore, we've got to rough some people up.

There's going to be some collateral damage. And I'm not saying that's the argument you were making, but we have seen ICE agents violate the First Amendment and push protesters to the ground. I would say it's a violation of the Second Amendment to take somebody's gun and then shoot them in the back multiple times when they're just protesting. I would say it's a violation of the Fourth Amendment,

Fifth Amendment, and Fourteenth Amendment when you're taking away the due process clause from these immigrants and like Kilmore, Armando Obrego-Garcia. He wasn't arrested because they weren't getting him out of the jail or that they weren't letting access to the jail, Kilmar was arrested by ICE and detained with zero due process and deported to Venezuela. Do you remember this massive national case? Then the Supreme Court had to rule.

You have to bring Kilmar back. And they didn't do that because the Supreme Court's pro-immigrant or because they're like super soft on immigration. It's because this was a man who was deported with no due process against an order, a stay order. So there's all of these different cases where ICE not only violates the law, but they prove that ICE is hiring people with no hiring criteria, people who have drug usage in the past. Someone got killed in Maine last week, and the guy who did the shooting apparently abused his ex-wife like a year ago. The ex-wife came out and said that he was threatening to slit her throat and they released

a tape. So they're hiring people into ICE that are not qualified. Then after those people kill someone, whether it's, you know, Salgado in Texas, whether it's pretty or good or the guy in Maine, there's no accountability after. There was this case in Chicago where I live and record. It's a beautiful city. Have you been to Chicago? Yeah, yeah.

It's really beautiful, but there's this case in Chicago. It's the hottest place on planet. It's either freezing or you guys don't have. I don't think it's ever been 70 degrees there. Yeah, well. Or it's 100. Don't come during the winter. Don't come during.

I made that mistake. There's this case named Maramore Martinez. It's this 30-year-old teacher in Chicago. She's a U.S. citizen, of course. She's a U.S. citizen, and she was driving to school, and she was beeping. at a bunch of ICE officers, she got shot five times and they said that she was trying to ram her car into them. And then they looked at the body camera footage. It went to court. She's the US citizen.

She exercised that and I went to court. And they found that the body camera footage showed the opposite. They like surrounded her car and shot her five times. And the ice officer then texted, I shot her five times and she has seven holes. Like this despicable text, right? His accountability, guess what it was? Nothing. They didn't do anything. They let them all go. There was like nothing there. ICE maybe had some sort of slap on the wrist, but can you see where I'm coming from when I'm concerned, both about immigration, if there's illegal immigration, yes, that's bad. Immigration should be legal, but also concern about ICE being this basically lawless agency that is now way overfunded with no accountability. I mean, I can absolutely understand the concern. And like you said, before, and I don't want anyone to get shot, but like you said, there are things that could have been done to prevent every single one of the instances you just mentioned. You know, don't interfere with a police investigation. That is the beginning of the altercation. Well, ICE could have been trained better.

Shot for cops, you know, but if you do not initiate the altercation in the first place, if she had just been, oh, oh, look, people I don't like, I'm going to keep driving, nothing happens. Renee Good, same thing. She was on a closed street that she shouldn't have been on, yelling at the cops. Somebody overreacted, and she died. And it's tragic. But in none of these cases, the person was initiating.

It seems like ICE is either surrounding them or even if they are initiating. And by just honking their car, that can't be... Alex Freddie ran up to them. Alex Freddie was helping a woman that was on the ground. And as he was lifting her up, he was shoved to the ground and then he was on his stomach. Like Alex Freddie... On the side of the street that would have with the protests. Because the Alex Pretty situation, there was a, I don't want what you call protest zone that they set up.

So everyone could do their thing. He crossed it, interfered with a police investigation, had a gun on him, I believe, and bad things. And obviously, that escalated. It was a total disproportionate use of force, though. So they were pushing some woman to the ground. And then they pepper spray Alex Prattie. He's sitting there. He can't even see.

And then they tear him to the ground. I mean, in an ideal world, Alex Prady, I guess, would have, like, stood in the corner and just stayed behind and, like, not really done anything. But we are living in a messy reality where he ended up trying to help someone. And he got shot five times in the back for it. It's a total. I mean, look, I've organized protests all over New York. And, you know, we, I know when we do it, we keep them. When they set up those sort of protest zones, you stay within side of it.

And that is how the piece is kept. The problem is a lot of times there's instigation coming from these protesters. Actually, I don't want any of this to happen. But if the in the Alex Preddy situation and in the Renee Good situation, if ICE was restricted to just picking up the criminals from the jails, they would never be in the neighborhoods in the first place for the protest, for the overreaction, for the murder, for anything. If they were just able to do what they had done through Obama, through the first Trump administration, and not have to go into the neighborhoods, then none of this happens.

I don't think that's what the Trump's plan was. The Trump's plan wasn't to just have them pick people up from jail. The Trump administration has multiple times talked about ICE going into these cities and taking care of the worst of the worst. I have never once heard Trump propose the plan of ICE going around to prisons, collecting the criminals, deporting them, and then being done with it. Donald Trump and Stephen Miller set a 3,000 detainee quota per day to make sure people were being detained and picked up off of the street and to make sure that people were being arrested. Listen, if you are here illegally and you've committed a string of crimes or even any crimes whatsoever, I think that you should be deported. I think that is very common sense.

Of course. Civil crimes like what? like breaking into the country legally? I think that there's a, listen, there's a serious conversation to be had about somebody who's been here for 32 years and has built a family versus somebody who one year ago came through has committed crimes and is not contributing.

I think, you know, and they find, you know, I mean, that golden state killer, you know, he hadn't committed a crime in 30 years, but they still got him on the crime. I mean, it's like, it's one of these things that, oh, if you break in, but you, hide long enough, then we just forget about that?

No, no. I'm just saying with protected status. You know, everyone was up in arms when they got rid of TPS. It was supposed to be temporary. Many of those policies go back 15 years, particularly with the Haitians and the Syrians. I believe Haiti, I believe Syria started in 2009. I could have the dates of the exact year. But it's been 10, 15 years that a temporary program was set forth. And then when, a person has been under TPS for 15 years, they build a life here, naturally. And then it's like, oh, well, now we can't deport them because they built the life here. Well, they were under a policy that was never supposed to be. Well, what about this? Say, for example, somebody builds a life here

for 15 years and they are a business owner in the United States that is a net taxpayer, a net contributor to society. They have a son who's about to graduate college and is about to be a doctor. I know this sounds like a, you know, heartthrob story or whatever. No, no, no, I have family members who immigrated here legally, and they have kids who are doctors, heart surgeons back in Indiana. My grandpa moved from Syria in the late 80s. And everyone in his family is like a dentist or a heart surgeon. I believe 30% of physicians in the United States are immigrants of some kind. Do you think that type of person should be deported? They came on TPS, built a life, crime free. Is there a conversation to be had there? Normally I would say no. But the problem

I'm having is that this crisis of immigration has gotten so bad that, look, I understand you want to come here. It sucks where you live. You want to be the American. I understand all of that. A lot of our grandparents did it over from Europe, 100, 200 years ago. I totally understand that, but it has gotten to be so bad. And there has been so little assistance in certain areas of this country that you almost have to be harsh, not harsh, but you almost have to be extreme about it to get the problem under control. Do I think that the doctor should be the first person they deport? No. But until we get these numbers under control, until we figure out how many people came in, I mean, I've heard numbers from 5 million to 25 million. That is a, we took in 3% of the total population

of Haiti. Maybe, maybe Haiti would be a better place if we didn't take in all of their talented people. Maybe Haiti needs their engineers to rebuild after these hurricanes that they get. Maybe they need their nurses. Maybe if those people were actually helping their own nations, perhaps these places wouldn't be so bad that everybody wants to leave it. But we're taking all the it's kind of like the chicken. If you take all the talent from the Cubs, the White Sox will be better. Oh, not the White Sox. But like, if you take all the talent from one baseball team, another team's going to suck. But it's kind of like the chicken and the egg.

Are they leaving the country because it's bad or is the country bad because they're leaving? Maybe a little bit of both. But I am a firm believer in brain drain. Brain drain is when you get the smartest people from China, from all these other countries that usually compete with us and we bring them over here so they can contribute to our society. But just to re-center the conversation on immigration long term for a second, if ICE wanted to go around and track all of the illegal immigrants that were here so they can sort

through and figure out who to deport and who not to deport, we could have a conversation about that. But in its current form, ICE is not doing that. They're deporting people with no due process, like Kilmore, Armando, Obrego-Garcia. They're killing people, and there's no accountability afterwards. They have too much funding and they have masks up. And here's a really good example of a long-term immigrant story that just ended up hitting the news. Lorenzo Salgado Arajo is his name, the man in Texas. He was 52 years old. He had been here for 35 years. He had a wife. He had three children. Two of his children had graduated college. One was a teacher. One was about to graduate college. So he had built this life year and a business. In my view, somebody like this is a nut taxpayer, a contributor to American society, and it makes our country stronger. He was trying to go through the process over the past two years. Maybe the Trump admin had pushed him to do that because he's realizing what's happening. Yes, he should have gone through the process much earlier. I do agree. However, two weeks ago, he was literally shot in the head through the side of his car window because ICE, rammed into his vehicle and then they revealed they got the wrong guy they were going after somebody

completely differently and this keeps happening over and over and over and there's no accountability so i i'm not trying to do that whole like middle let's find some middle ground here but i think there is some sort of middle ground between the biden policy of letting people in and and having people abuse asylum which i will concede was definitely suboptimal versus trump overfunding ice and giving them cart blanche to go through the streets and like shoot people and push people to the ground and do awful things i have uh so many stories or videos or just court cases where ice is lawless and then i'll wrap this up by saying there was a republican judge appointed by george w bush who came out with this you know really interesting court ruling in january saying that ice has violated

more court orders over the past few months than any agency has in their entire existence i believe it's over 200 court orders have been violated by ICE, which means even when there is some sort of problem with the courts and they think ICE has broken the law, they're just not showing up. They're violating the orders. We can't live, again, we can't live in a constitutional republic where we have an agency with masks going around violating court orders.

To me, that's very worrisome. I have no problem with the masks because of the violence that we've seen across the board. From them or against them? Against them, whether it's the threat, whether it's the doxing going on. I mean, you know, you and I both, I'm sure your DMs are a lovely place just like mine are. You know, we put ourselves out there in this sort of setting.

So that's going to come our way. I don't have a problem with them hiding who they are. I do have a problem when you have judges sometimes who, like there was, I think there was one. Was it in Illinois? Somewhere in the Midwest, I believe, where an immigration judge like hid an illegal immigrant criminal in the cloak room so that ICE couldn't get to them after there was an order of deep. portation put on them. So this is, we have a ridiculously broken immigration system. Yeah, yeah. The pendulum is swinging back the other way from the insanity of the, of, I mean,

basically it was if you could get here, you were here. Didn't matter who you were, didn't matter, you know, what you did beforehand. Do I like they're doing all of these, um, operations like this in this sort of way? No, but I think that if they were able to get some help, you're not seeing, if ice was this rampant and they were just running around killing people, why isn't it happening in Jacksonville? Why isn't it happening in Wyoming? Because Trump is flooding and surging ice into blue cities in order to punish. Because that's where they need to help.

Well, no, it's where specifically certain governors, like J.B. Pritzker has said stuff like he will coordinate with the federal gun authorities. He'll basically collaborate with any federal authorities that want to have a good faith collaboration. in the state of Illinois, but Trump didn't do that. Trump surged the National Guard from another state into our state, took control of it. They were walking through our streets and even people here that are conservative were like, why the fuck are the National Guard just randomly walking through the street and ice? That lack of coordination from Trump and these posts from Trump, Trump made a post. It was an AI photo of Chicago and it said, Shypocalypse Now, basically making fun of the Apocalypse Now thing. And I get that it's like memes. It's funny. But there's Black Hawk helicopters flying over in the meme and the same. cities on fire. This is inherently divisive. He's surging ice into blue cities in order to terrorize the people that live there. And if he wanted to coordinate and have a joint investment, joint operation with the state, I think he could just call them. But it's kind of like the tariff thing. He places tariffs on every country and fucking goes crazy rather than calling anybody and saying, hey, what if we just talk this through? My claim is that the Trump economy is a good

economy. Oof. Okay. There's a lot to jump into here. But I guess my broad question would be, by what indicator? Because when you look at the economic indicators and their trajectory under Trump, everything has gotten worse since he took office. Now, I'm not claiming that everything was perfect under Biden, but when Biden had left office, inflation was at a steady 2.9 percent. I believe unemployment was around 4 percent, maybe 4.1. And since then, inflation has gone up. Unemployment has gone up. Donald Trump's tariffs have ravaged the economy. Donald Trump's cutting of Medicaid has hurt a lot of Americans who need it. And that's before we even introduce the factor of the Iran war, which is also spiked gas prices up even further.

Now, you can say that they've gone back down, but the reality is gas prices are higher now than they were when Biden left office. So if you look through indicator by indicator, everyone's struggling right now. Like the economy is not doing well. The only people saying the Trump economy is good would be you and like Trump himself. And maybe people who are rich as hell right now. Other than that, people are struggling. Yeah. No.

And you're absolutely just to be clear before we even get off. I don't support the Iran war. I think it was dumb to do it in the first place. We are seeing gas prices go up. And it's expensive. It's like hundreds of billions of dollars out of debt. That's a self-inflicted wound that I think that will come down and level out when this thing finishes whenever it does. But we can do a whole other segment on that one.

I'm not a fan of it. But no, look, we can start with the markets, which I'm a huge fan of. I day trade and whatnot. and we're starting to see so many more young people, particularly your age, get into retail investing. I think everyone should be doing that, taking advantage of things. The biggest economic thing that Trump has put out are these Trump accounts. I think this is going to be something that's going to long, long live past his administration. Everyone should be taking advantage of it.

Also, the reason why I think this economy works is because of the reinvestment back in America. I'm a fan of the tariffs. Now, yes, tariffs do cause short-term price increases. They absolutely do. But I'm also a protectionist. There's a reason why you don't see Fords on the streets of Germany or Chevys on the streets of Tokyo. And it's because those countries protect their own industries. They protect their own companies.

Meanwhile, you go, and look, I drive a Hyundai. So maybe I should practice what I preach. It's a great car, great car. But, you know, if we had those sort of protection of policies here, they would be Ford, Chevys, GMs, all Chryslers all over the American roads. Instead, we're importing cars. And we, the car built America. You know, Ford changed the world with what he did here, the entirety of the world. If we had more protectionist policies and we had people who were willing to invest in those sorts of things, I think it would further the steps that Trump has made with the tariffs.

Yeah. So let's jump in. with the tariffs first, then we can walk through the markets and everything. Protectionist policy isn't inherently bad. I don't think that having tariffs is inherently bad. Biden expanded on the Trump era tariffs and surgically tariff China because China steals our IP and they are competitive with us and they steal jobs from us. There's a lot of good reasons to use tariffs. However, that is not what Trump's doing. Trump is not being a protectionist. He's being an absolute idiot. Like he tariffed every single country in the planet, except for Russia and North Korea for some reason.

He tariffed Heard Island that had nobody on it except for penguins. He tariffed Switzerland. What did we get from Switzerland when he tariffed them? Well, hopefully we got some of the money that's being hidden from overseas. Well, no, like Switzerland, we already had free trade with them. So there's all these examples of countries that we already had free trade with. We had no tariffs with Switzerland and multiple other countries. he used tariffs like a hammer swinging it around, hitting all of our allies, and now the Federal Reserve says that two-thirds of the inflation we've experienced as Trump took office was because of the tariffs.

And I don't think we've actually gotten any real investment. Here's how I view it. So companies and countries that are making deals with Trump are just going to try to hold their breath and wait until Trump leaves office, run down the clock, and never actually have any of this manifest for this simple reason. Tariffs require continuity between administrations. If you want the tariffs to be imposed over the next 20 years, then whoever's president next, Gavin Newsom, J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, I don't care, whoever it is, they would have to keep the exact same policy in place or these companies wouldn't have the long-term incentive to reshore. Why would they come over to the U.S. for a three-year policy that Trump is probably just going to change

his mind on? So we're in a situation where certain countries and companies have said they're going to invest money, but it hasn't manifested. Manufacturing employment down. manufacturing investment is down. And I firmly believe a lot of these companies are smart enough to just run out the clock. So, you know, they're going to say, hey, Trump, we've got $2 billion ready to invest into you. Just wait.

Just wait a few years. We're going to do it long-term pain, long-term gain for short-term pain. We're going to keep experiencing this pain. I don't think it's ever going to manifest. There's going to be another administration where the tariffs are removed and the companies like, we got away with that. Well, I don't think JD, I don't think J.D. I don't think I'll remove all the tariffs.

And hopefully I'm as good as I think I am and I can get him elected. But I'm firmly behind J.D. We'll see. That's a hard one. Yeah. I look, none of them are easy. So we'll, I'll go with them. Believe me, I'm a Republican in New York, so I'm fully aware. It's, I think the tariffs that made the most sense and the ones that I was the happiest with were not so much the ones that he put on the adversaries, but it was the ones that he put on the countries that surround China.

Because if you're going to tariff China, like President Biden did, which I was the huge fan of, China doesn't follow any rules. they just drop off their cargo ships in Vietnam or in the Philippines or in Indonesia. And those were the biggest tariffs, that sort of Indo-Pacific area that China would just use their ports through. I mean, it's not exactly like they're following maritime law. They don't follow any laws, China. So, you know, or flag, change the flag on the cargo ship, so to speak, change the manifest. And then you get around those sorts of tariffs.

It also comes down to us. when you and I and the average citizen. We've been for some reason trained that whoever has the most brightly colored plastic crap when they die wins. And because of that, we're like, we've never had more, never had more stuff. Americans have never had more expendable income ever in the history of no one around the world has had expendable income the way we do. And a lot of people seem to think that the economy and the world,

has gotten objectively worse when it's never been objectively better. I mean, the housing market is wild, wild right now. I would say that a lot of the reason why the housing market is so wild and why wages are down is back to the last segment because we imported 25 million people from all over the world. That's why you're seeing these red states not have the sort of housing crises that we're seeing in, I mean, I'm looking for a house right now on Long Island. That's never going to happen, you know, but I think that the economy, works where states and where areas play along with the, as you said, the goals of the administration.

And when they bucket and these high tax states are the ones doing the worst right now. People are fleeing California, Illinois, and New York. It's not my data. That's why blue states are going to lose so many electoral college votes moving into 2032. The recount did a great thing about how the only people that are struggling right now are in blue states. And that's why they're running. I mean, I can't name one person. that moved to New York, but I can name you 500 that live in 30. I don't know if the only people struggling are in blue states. That might not be fair. There's a lot of people struggling in red states. They got their Medicaid taken away. And wealth inequality is bad. Okay, a few things. You started off by talking about

tariffing secondary countries around our adversaries. Honestly, that's fine. That's a good idea. Doing secondary tariffs, it's great. I wish we would do that more with Russia, secondary sanctions against these countries like India, as we do. However, again, that's not what Trump did. It's literally just not what he did. He got in. like an idiot, he just put tariffs on every single country, backed off half of them, re-applied half of them. He was corrupt with some of them. He put tariffs on Vietnam and then removed those tariffs when Vietnam announced a $1.2 billion Trump golf course. It's just like pay-to-play BS. If he wanted to surgically target China in the countries around China, so they're no longer stealing our IP and our jobs,

I would be for that. That sounds like a smart policy, sounds a little bit risky, and it sounds like something we should try. But it's not what he did. He has caused direct inflation due to this. Secondly, you're right that when the reapportionment comes, Democrats are screwed right now, but I disagree that it's due to immigration. We don't have to circle all the way back around to that, but there is a serious housing problem in many, many blue states, in red states as well, but in a lot of blue states. A lot of it has to do with regulation, with the incentives that are currently created in our political system for politicians to keep housing prices basically the same or higher because

the largest voting block right now are older people who own homes. who are 60 to 70 years old. And if you own a home, you're not going to vote for your housing to be lower or to be cheaper because you own a home. So there's a lot of incentives we can talk about and a lot of supply restrictions, but I just don't know if it's all about immigration. I think that the reapportionment that's happening in blue states is really bad. Like blue states need to start building. J.B. Prisker introduced the build plan, which is going to deregulate certain industries surgically to allow more housing to be built. This is good stuff.

I think that building housing is good stuff. there was even just a housing bill two weeks ago that was passed by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, and Trump refused to sign it at all. So I don't think the Republicans truly care about this when Trump, yeah, he said it was because of the SAVE Act. And I can believe that, but you at least should sign this housing bill that both sides agree on. So just to reel it back a little bit, when I think about the indicators that define the American economy, I think about the big ones, like unemployment or like inflation. You can even use the stock market, but I'm not sure that's the best indicator.

These are all doing bad. These are unemployment is doing bad. Inflation is going up. Unemployment among young Americans is up like 20%. Unemployment among black Americans is also up a lot. You can look at the GDP growth, which has slowed down. You can look at the national debts. The national debt is skyrocketing.

And we pay $1 trillion per year just on the interest of that debt. So we're not going. It's bad. You're not making me, believe me. I'm a, I'm a deficit. So you're not going to this war, which you said you disagree with. And now they're asking for $1.55 trillion for the military. I'm just not sure this feeds into a healthy, productive economy. So I guess I'd ask again, what indicator do you think is doing well for the American people?

Well, firstly, I think that the indicators are people are, people are using their feet to find better circumstances. They are better in red states. Like I said, I'm a market guy. I think everybody should be in the market. So when I see the bull. run that we're on right now. And obviously a lot of that is post-COVID, you know, where everything took a dump. But right now, things are on the upswing. They haven't gotten there yet. And when it comes to owning homes, you're talking about boomers and, you know, they, believe me, nobody had it better than them. I have no sympathy for those people whatsoever. You know, Caleb Hammer does a great he does well. I mean, nowadays, though, think about the voter base that kind of votes politicians in. It's people

who are like 40 to 60 years old already own homes and have their feet planted in an area. These people don't have the incentive to vote for policies that lower the price of housing when they own homes. So I think there's a lot of distortionary things in our housing market beyond immigrants. Well, to be honest with you, Ezra Klein has a great book called Abundance, where basically I read the part about the housing, basically about how you can't build anything in any blue states. I mean, Bill Maher has a great thing, a great bit about how it costs like three million dollars to put up a toilet in San Francisco, you know, and it took two and a half years. If, and I haven't seen J.B. Pritchco's housing plan, but I hope they get rid of some of these

regulations. Yeah. I hope they do it. When I, when I see a guy like mom, Donnie talking about freezing the rents, all like, I'm like, that is not how you make things cheaper. That is not, that supply and demand still works. And as I was talking about with the immigration before, look, there's a housing shortage. We should probably stop importing more people who have a need a place to live. Rents in these cities would go down. Also, I'm a huge proponent of unless you're going to go to college for something real, don't go. I'm actually working with a few members of Congress right now to make it easier for people your age that went to college and they're saddled with a mortgage right now to allow student loans to be expungible through bankruptcy. That would free up,

that would free up tens of millions of Americans almost instantly. So there are steps that could be taken. that coming out of the COVID era and coming out of a lot of these blue city lockdowns during the COVID era, look, it's a hell of a lot easier to destroy an economy than it is to build one back up. It's a lot easier to build anything. It's a lot harder to build anything. I think Trump is destroying it actively. I mean, between the Iran war, the tariffs, the cuts in Medicaid and the permanent tax cuts for the richest and the debt problem, I think it's being destroyed. Now, we can talk about markets for a second. Everyone got a tax cut. Everyone got a tax cut. Except for the people that were hit by tariffs, which were the, like, mostly the poorest Americans were disproportionately hurt by tariffs.

That's a tax increase. But when you say a tax cut for the rich, that's, it's a little dissident. If everyone gets a tax cut, so do the rich people. But what he, but he did put in tax cuts that specifically hurt rich people in blue states with the salt tax deduction. I, I, that was that was a game changer for the middle class, particularly in places like New York and California. When you place tariffs on goods and services, especially good, the people who will be hit the hardest by that are the people who have the lowest amount of disposable income because a large portion of that disposable income will now go to this tariff tax. So it's a direct tax on that.

That's easy. Yeah, of course. But the tariffs were massive. They were a massive tax. Every single item, every single country. I mean, this hurts people. So I understand that the tax cuts were across the board, but I think they disproportionately helped the richest.

Aren't they permanent for the rich people and temporary for anybody that's not rich? I believe there was a permanent and temporary effect there. I don't believe. I believe most of them are most of the one might sunset, but I think, but a lot of bills. The no tax on tips, they sunset. The no tax on overtime, that sunsets, that all disappears for certain. I'm certain about that. And it disappears right after the midterms. But either way, I think it's not impressive that the stock market is hitting all-time highs.

It hits all-time highs a lot as long as there is not a huge global catastrophe. I think it's impressive that Trump has been able to tank the stock market like three times in a row after taking office. On Liberation Day, the stock market tanked. During the Strait of Hormuz's original closure, the stock market. I bought like crazy, my friend. I was cashed in bottles and cans to buy, to buy some techs. Well, I'm glad you did. I'm glad that you were able to buy in.

But you know how many Americans are struggling based off of this? Not just the stock market, but due to tariffs, due to that, due to health care, due to all of this. And yes, I'm glad that like the top 20% of the country are able to double down when the stock market is tanking. But Trump through his policies has impressively tanked the stock market multiple times. And it has grown slower in the past 16. months than it did during the final 16 months of Biden's term. So just to rephrase that.

Well, that's because they reopened the world post-COVID. That was a, in the way that the Iran war has been a self-inflicted wound, the 16 months at the end of the Biden administration was just because we reopened the country again that we should never have shut down to begin with. So I mean, it's fair. It's a fair point. I get that you're saying it was bounce back growth. But that bounce back growth then didn't carry over to Trump's term because he tanked to the stock market three times. I find it more impressive that Trump was able to slow the stock market growth than this idea that just because we're hitting all-time highs once a week that Trump's economy is good. Like you can admit, under most presidents, we're hitting all-time highs like once a week

or like once a month. It's just a common thing in the market. Save like a lot of it as well. I think a lot of it is also when it comes to the markets has been investment in some of these American companies. People feel like there is a future. So they're investing a lot in stuff that They don't even know if it's going to pay off exactly. Like Dell, where Trump is directly saying, go buy Dell after he bought like a million dollars worth of Dell. Does that scare you at all? But he's like, hey, go by. He did that because Dell invested in the Trump accounts that I'm a huge proponent of.

And I think everyone should be as well. The Trump accounts are fine. Yeah, they were an idea from Cory Booker originally. I think they're good ideas. I think it's fine. Well, look, whoever has a good, whoever has good ideas, I'll take whoever's doing it. You know, I mean, I didn't like ObamaCare, for example. I didn't like it when Mitt Romney proposed it.

I didn't like it when Richard Nixon proposed it. So it's, you know, ideas tend to go back and forth. And I, like I said, I'm a bit of a populace when it comes to this. So the protectionist stuff, I think long term, as you said, is important. I think if we were to tear foreign cards that would make people party on that. Can you agree that there's a difference between being protectionist versus whatever the hell Trump is doing? Like he's not being protectionist. He's being insane.

He definitely went in with a hammer. I think he went. But Trump was also a big ass kind of guy. ask, not ask. Yeah, yeah, I thought you said ass. I was like, damn. Oh, please. I don't need to get a call.

No, he's a businessman. He's a big ask. He goes in, you know, if he thinks he can buy it for a million, he acts is for $5 million. And he's doing that with a lot of the tariffs. I've read most of the art of the deal. I get the anchor technique. I've used it myself when like trying to negotiate my apartment.

It's important to anchor. But that is, again, it's not really what's happening here. Trump is simultaneously playing multiple games. He comes in and places tariffs on every single country. This isn't just some negotiation. This is very delicate. This is the U.S. economy. This is inflation we're talking about.

And this is goods and services or goods mainly being more expensive. He puts tariffs on every country, not for some art of the deal master negotiator reason, but because he's literally kind of just economically illiterate. He places tariffs on islands with nobody there. He places tariffs on Switzerland. On South Korea. We had a free trade agreement with South Korea. He tore it up, then pieced back together the trade agreement and wrote his name on it and got nothing.

Well, we don't really have a free trade deal. They are one of the most protectionist countries in the world. Like I said, with Hyundai's, perfect example. There are no Chryslers in South Korea, but there's a hell of a lot of their cars. We had a very good agreement called Chorus with a K, K-O-R-U-S. It was a really good agreement that was brokered a decade prior and Trump tore it up. Well, I think, firstly, I think that a lot of these, I am not a free trade guy. I think free trade is mostly bullshit.

Sorry. I think it's mostly crap put in by absorbently rich people who benefit from cheap Chinese labor. I'm not a fan of it. So I wouldn't mind if we tariffed even more of it. And when you say we taxed our allies over in Europe, that's also because of weird trade alliances that they have, where you tax the European Union in one shot, whether or not you want to put it strategically here there and everywhere. I mean, he threatened 25% tariffs on every EU country if they didn't. forced Denmark to give us Greenland. I'm not sure he's using them strategically. I'm pretty sure he's just trying to throw him around. So give him Greenland. Like, hello. So Kevin Smith, I really appreciated

this conversation. I mean, this is America where two sides obviously disagree. You and I are coming from different angles, but we both did this in a respectful way. We both had our ideas go back and forth. And I really do think that is uniquely American and something that we should keep on pushing for. So thank you for joining us for this virtual episode of our debate show. If you guys know anyone that would be get on the show. You can email team at macromedia.com. Make sure you drop a like and subscribe for more content and thank you all.