The Ben Mulroney Show - Ben speaks with Scott Jennings about all things Donald Trump, Tariffs, and Elon Musk

Episode Date: April 1, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Ben speaks with Scott Jennings about all things Donald Trump, Tariffs, and Elon Musk with Guest: Scott Jennings, Political Pundit on CNN and Partner at Run Switch PR If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You don't see how the words sing to you. Annali Ashford and Dennis Quaid star. I am not responsible for what my dad did. This going how you hoped? Happy Face, new series now streaming exclusively on Paramount+. Welcome back to the Ben Mulrooney Show. Alright, our next guest, in my opinion, represents the best decision that CNN has made since bringing James Earl Jones' booming voice back when he says this is CNN.

Please welcome to the show for the first time and hopefully not the last, Scott Jennings, political pundit on CNN and partner at Run Switch PR. Scott, great to have you. Well, thanks for that intro. You're saying CNN went from one Darth Vader to another. I'm here for it. I also hear that you and I have had sort of reverse careers. I started in TV and pivoted to radio and you did the opposite.

Yeah, that's right. Early in my life, I was radio guy back in Kentucky and enjoyed every minute of that. It's a great medium and I'm glad to be on with you today. Well, I wanna talk to you. It's really great to talk to somebody who has their finger on the pulse of what's going on south of the border because, look, there are a lot of Canadians who, when they saw Donald Trump win his second term, they said, you know what, good on him. He's got his mandate. And after the past four years that they saw as disjointed and overly woke,

they thought, good on him, he's got a mandate to do what he needs to do. And hopefully a little bit of that might come to Canada. And then we find out that we are enemy number one. And he starts talking about how we are gonna be the focus of tariffs and trade wars. And we're trying to make sense of it up here. What is your sense of what the people of America feel

about this denigration of a historical ally of the United States? Well, I think a couple of things are true. Number one, I think the people of the United States love Canada and I don't think that's gonna change. Number two, I think Donald Trump does not love, did not love Justin Trudeau, nor did he love the sort of lurch to the cultural left that Trudeau represented.

And so, you know, and I think that impacted his thinking about how to deal with Canada. Now, obviously you're having elections there and new leadership is coming in. My hope would be that we can have a resetting of the relationship between whoever wins the election in Canada and resetting of the relationship between whoever wins the election in Canada and the president of the United States. I think that'd be positive for both countries. But some of this to me goes right back to Trudeau. Yeah.

And Trump, you know, Trump is kind of a bulwark against a lot of people on the left who I think frankly, as a conservative, I consider to be kind of an enemy of Western civilization in some ways. And that's a big part of what was driving his election last year. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, this is a scenario that's not going to be good for anybody. I mean, we see it every day, every time a little bit more chaos is sown, the Dow Jones drops. And, you know, it used to be a barometer for the president. He said, look at the stock market. That's how good the economy is doing. And now it's telling him that they don't really like these unknowns. He didn't get elected. He didn't run on tariffs. He didn't get elected on tariffs. And in your home state,

where both your governor and senator have spoken out, Kentucky specifically is going to suffer because of these due to how much alcohol we buy. I have to wonder if this is going to put pressure on his popularity, his ability to hold the houses in the midterms and therefore his agenda moving forward. I disagree a little bit that he didn't run on it. Trump has been very transparent about how he feels about tariffs. In fact, even before he got into politics,

he spent 30 years in interviews talking about how he thought tariffs were a good idea. It is absolutely true. So I still think there's been any hiding of the ball on it. It is true that what he's going to announce tomorrow is well beyond what he did in the first term. And this is full implementation of his vision of a period of time in US history, the McKinley era, dating back from the 1890s up to about 1932. He believes the tariff regime of that era made the country rich. Now, there are economists that disagree. There are people that agree. We're going to see it play out

because I don't think there's anything stopping him. On the Kentucky piece, you're right. The governor of Kentucky and both senators actually have spoken out against tariffs. And to be fair, a lot of Republicans are very nervous about this because the party has been a free trade party and you know for many decades and now it's gonna be a party that's built on tariffs again and There are nervous Republicans, but I'm just telling you he believes in it. I doubt he's gonna be talked out of it I do think there are negotiations to be had between Countries after this is implemented and we'll see what other countries do in, you know, in relation to this. I saw this morning Israel is going to try to reduce or eliminate tariffs that they've had on the United States as an example. So we'll have to see how it plays

out. But you're right, the markets have been a little roiled by it, but I don't think he's going to be deterred because I think it's such a long, long held principle that he has. What do you make, how do you decide what stories you're going to follow and how much you're going to discount coming out of the administration? You know, Steve Bannon is referred to it as flooding the zone. As others have said, there's the signal versus the noise. And when you hear about Donald Trump musing about a potential third term, sometimes it sounds like it's a joke. Other times it's not. And I got to wonder, is that something that anybody should be taking seriously? I don't take it seriously because the US constitution is quite clear about it.

Two terms for presidents and the 12th amendment makes it clear that you also cannot serve as vice president if you are ineligible to serve as president. So I actually don't take it very seriously. And I heard Trump comment on it yesterday and it sounded to me like he was downplaying it somewhat.

So I, you know, I, uh, signal a noise that I hear a Canadian, Kevin O'Leary. We're on TV together. Sometimes he says that a lot. And I think there's a lot of truth in that. I try to pay attention to the things that are actionable today, the actual policy decisions that are being implemented. And I try not to get too hyperventil, hyperventilative about about some of the stuff that seems a little more farfetched fever swamp

kind of stuff to me. If you're just joining me, I'm in conversation with Scott Jennings, and I'm trying to get the lay of the land south of the border. And look, one thing that Donald Trump did campaign on and a person he campaigned with was Elon Musk and cutting government waste by way of the department, or Doe's rather, and yet despite that promise and getting a mandate there is a type of American who has decided that their outrage trumps his responsibility and there is a lot of blowback on Elon Musk, on Teslas. Teslas everywhere are unsafe right now.

What do you make of this? Well, first of all, all the Trump derangement syndrome of the first term has migrated to Elon derangement syndrome. I've never seen anything like it. I mean, here's a private citizen who does a lot of things for our country in terms of entrepreneurship, innovation. I mean, just rescued our astronauts for goodness sakes. And the American left has lost its mind

over Elon Musk, all because he committed the unforgivable sin. He supported a Republican for president. You know, he used to be beloved on the left. And now you have these people losing their minds over. I think it's frankly, domestic terrorism. I agreed with that label when Donald Trump put it on there. I think it's true. I mean, it's more than just vandalism of individual cars. You've had dealerships firebombed and Elon, I know for a fact, gets a lot of death threats every single day. I like Elon Musk. I think the Doge effort is long overdue. I think Republicans have been desperate for someone to come along. Didn't Obama suggest something very similar a few years ago?

I mean, that video is all over my social media feed. He said he echoed this years ago. He did. And you know, the truth is a lot of politicians in Washington have echoed or given lip service to this over the years, Republicans and Democrats. And now Trump and Musk have finally decided to do something about it. And

you know, back home in Kentucky, we say a hit dog hollers and, and in Washington, that's what's happening. There's a constituency for everything. There's always a reason not to do things. But in this case, we're almost $40 trillion in debt, the fiscal health of the country is important. And you know, just since 2019, in the last five years, I mean, the government has gone from spending four and a half trillion to almost $7 trillion a year, tens of thousands of employees added to the government, it is expensive to operate, it is huge. And that's just in the last five years. And all Republicans are asking is, does it have to be this big? Does it have to be this expensive? And I think Musk is saying, no, it doesn't have to be. It can be more efficient.

Lastly, and I only have about 35 seconds left. So I'm going to ask you to give me a quick sound bite. Greenland, what do you think the prospect of the United States taking control of Greenland actually is? I don't know. I love the idea of acquiring it. It's a long held Republican idea dating back

to Abraham Lincoln, Secretary of State William Seward, who wanted to buy it in 1861. And so I thought it was a great idea in the first term. I think it would be great to have. I don't know what the prospects are, but I've been broadly supportive of Trump's views on this and on the Panama Canal, frankly, because I do think that's a serious national security threat that the Chinese pose on the canal. Scott Jennings, can't thank you enough for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk to us on the Ben Mulroney Show. Hope to do it again soon.

Thank you very much. Wow. What a great chat. I do. I really do hope we get to talk to Scott again, just trying to understand what makes that man tick. I think is really important. The more you know the guy opposite you on you across the table, the better you are. Tune in to Renovation Resort every Sunday and look for the code word during the show.

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