The Ben Mulroney Show - Elon Musk ratchets up the language against Donald Trump's Bill

Episode Date: June 5, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Elon Musk ratchets up the language against Donald Trump's Bill -Economic Red Flags around Youth Unemployment with Guest: Dr. Eric Kam, Economics Professor at Toronto Metropolitan University 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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Rise to rewards with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. Terms and conditions apply. So, you're hosting the family barbecue this week, but everyone knows your brother is the grill guy and it's highly likely he'll be backseat barbecuing all night. So be it. Impress even the toughest of critics with freshly prepared Canadian barbecue favorites from Sobeys. Well, the honeymoon always ends. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. Thank you so much for joining us here on radio in podcast form on a streaming app and now on YouTube. And today is what the fifth of June 2025.

So mark the day. It's a day that Elon Musk and Donald Trump were no longer BFFs. So Donald Trump is a big proponent of the one big beautiful bill. It's a half a trillion dollars spending bill that just passed, I think, the first House of Congress. And Elon Musk is raving mad about it, raving mad about it to the point that he has made it his mission to carpet bomb Twitter with his outrage. What are some of the things he has said? Call your Senator, call your Congressman. Bankrupting America is not okay.

Kill the bill. And he tweeted all day long. I'm not gonna get into every one of them. He said, a new spending bill should be drafted that doesn't massively grow the deficit and increase the debt ceiling by $5 trillion. He had memes and he had quotes and outrage was being farmed.

What was my favorite one was literally the poster of the Quentin Tarantino film, Kill Bill. He just said, kill the bill. And so he's staking his claim to the belief that this is a pork-laden wasteful bill that does nothing to help America, doesn't drain the swamp. In fact, this in his mind is proof positive

that those who are supporting it, in fact reside very comfortably in that swamp. And I gotta think that for a guy who made it his mission for a few months to help this government trim waste, to find redundancies, find savings for the taxpayer, for the betterment of the health of the American economy. When he saw this, he's like, what the heck was I doing? What was my work for?

If this is the result, $5 trillion in additional spending. And there is a real schism that is building in the MAGA movement. Here's Senator Rand Paul, who is a libertarian. Here's what he said about what turns him off about the bill. This will be the largest increase in the debt ceiling ever. This will be the first time that Republicans alone

will be responsible for the debt. The debt will be basically owned by Republicans. And I'm not for borrowing $5 trillion over the next two years. I've told the president if they will separate the debt ceiling vote out, they very may well have my vote on this. But so far the negotiations are slow.

They seem to be picking up a little bit in the last couple of days. So I'm still hopeful that we can come to an agreement. Now, to be fair, Rand Paul is, he's not a typical Republican. Like I said, he's a libertarian. He's an outlier a lot of times. He doesn't necessarily walk in lockstep with whoever is running the party, but he is a

voice within that party. Senator Mike Lee, on the other hand, he is more of your traditional dyed in a wool Republican. And there's some news off of Twitter that Senator Mike Lee is now officially drafting a new constitutional amendment to make every member of Congress ineligible for reelection if the federal deficit exceeds 3% of the GDP, an idea backed by, who else, Elon Musk. And here's an update from Speaker Mike Johnson, tells Elon Musk that House Republicans don't have time to do a brand new bill as he suggests. Here's a quote, we worked on the bill for almost 14 months, you can't go back to the

drawing board. And we shouldn't. I know it's not perfect by some people's estimations, but you cannot make a perfect the enemy of the can't make. You cannot make perfect the enemy of the very, very good. I don't know enough about this bill. I suspect Elon Musk isn't looking at this bill and saying, well, it's not perfect, but it is very, very good. And I really want, I don't think he sees it as anywhere close to very, very good. So those, those were words ascribed to Mike Johnson, the speaker of the house on Twitter, but let's hear from him in his own words as he describes, as I called it, a schism, a break between Elon and the President.

I've talked to I talked to President Trump, you know, all the time, multiple times a day. Obviously, we've talked about this. He's, as you know, he's not. He's not delighted that Elon did a 180 on that. But look, I don't know what happened in 24 hours. Everybody can draw their own conclusions about that, okay? But I look forward to talking to my friend about it again, and I'm not upset about it. I don't understand the characterization of Elon Musk's position as a 180. He was a man who was brought in with a very specific mission, and he attacked it in my estimation with laser focus.

I'm not here to judge whether or not Doge was a good or bad thing. He had a job to do to seek out inefficiency, to find waste, to find redundancy, to find ways that the government could save money. This is not a 180. This is absolutely in keeping with the guy who sort of took on a government job, even though he's

the richest man on the planet. This was a guy who was living, the living breathing embodiment of Doge. And so when he looks at this bill that does nothing to trim waste, and in fact doubles down on a lot of waste, it's not a 180, it's completely in keeping with who he was and who he is. A lot of us though, we're waiting for the other shoe to drop. We've been living in Trump land long enough to know that when somebody comes at Trump, Trump comes back right quick and right hard.

And yet so far it's been two days and it's been radio silence, like no criticism, no rage tweeting, nothing. And there are a few theories out there. Here's Brian Kilmeade from Fox News about why Donald Trump might not be reacting the way he typically does. I think the Elon Musk thing really caught the president by surprise. And I hear he is furious, but I think he's so smart to keep his powder dry because he just plays into what critics would have to say the right can't

get out of their own way instead just you have a goal pass it Elon Musk is not in the senate or the house. That's a theory I'll take it for what what it is, but past behavior is the greatest indicator of future behavior. And the fact that he hasn't said one word, despite, I mean, people have done less to Donald Trump and have received sort of the scorched earth Sherman's March to the sea treatment by Donald Trump. He will, he's willing to go, you know, American Ninja Warrior on somebody just for saying, just saying, telling a joke about him. This is not that. This is a, this is a full frontal attack

by Elon Musk on something that is very important to Donald Trump. And so the fact that he's not saying anything, I don't think it's as simple as he's trying to keep his powder dry. He's a smart guy and he knows not to get in his own way. I don't think that's it. I think I think there's something else at play. I'm not quite sure. But we do know that when the story gets away from Donald Trump, when the narrative escapes him

and people take it and run with it, right now the narrative is with Elon. He's in charge of this narrative right now. Donald Trump, when he doesn't have control of the story, he creates a new one for us to talk about. And boy, I don't think anybody saw this coming. He made a big announcement that there are a number of countries, he signed,

I believe he signed an executive order, banning travel and restricting travel on 19 countries set to go into effect on Monday. So this is some, not all, 12 countries appeared on the list to be banned outright. Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. And this is, and there's more on the list. And this is being done, he says, because there

are in those countries, they are fomenting negative opinions about America, and he wants to keep Americans safe from people coming in, perhaps with militant and violent plans in mind. Here's Trump saying why it was necessary. The recent terror attack in Boulder, Colorado has underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted, as well as those who come here as temporary visitors and overstay their visas. We don't want them. Look, you know what? Given what happened in Boulder and given the

assassination of the two Israeli embassy workers in Washington, DC. Something did have to be done. This to me seems like a pretty big swing. But regardless, this is what we're talking about today. We've heard it before with Trump, you got to be able to determine what is the signal and what is the noise and focus on the signal. I don't know if this qualifies as signal.

We'll have to see. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. There is a lot of economic news out there. We follow it very, very closely because as you know, Canada's economy kind of been in the toilet for a while. And a lot of us are hoping that regardless of who was going to win the election, that whoever won was going to get us out of it. And so here to take a snapshot of where we are today is our good friend, Eric Kam from Toronto Metropolitan University. Eric, welcome to the show.

Good morning, Benedict. How are you? I'm well, you know, I'm not somebody who has a depth of knowledge as to, you know, the, you know, the Bank of Canada, the ins and outs, what it means when they make a decision, when they don't, you know, more than I, what does it say to you that, uh, for the second consecutive, when they could make a decision on changing the interest rate, they did nothing. What does that say to you? Well, it's a positive sign to me

that they're learning about actually how to run monetary policy because the previous prime minister didn't care about it. There was no reason to reduce the rates anymore. They are already, they're not historically low, Ben, but they're really low. And they are not preventing anybody now from getting a mortgage.

I mean, now, if you don't qualify for a mortgage, all due respect, you probably don't deserve one. So the only reason to cut the interest rate any lower would be to stimulate consumption, but they don't have to do that. They've already done that over the last post-pandemic years. And they've also wanted to cool the housing market to some extent, and the data shows that it's cooled.

So there was really, for the first time in a long time, no good reason to drop the rate any further. And all that could happen if you did it was possibly push in some inflationary pressure. So I actually think the Bank of Canada was right this time to hold. All right, well, that's good to hear. Are there things that you're looking for from them

in the next, like the next time this comes up? Well, sure. I'm looking like everybody does at all of the macroeconomic indicators. Oh, I'm looking at all that macro data too. Yeah, I mean, because there are a lot too much of it is trending down and we need more of these things trending upward. So we got to keep our eye on the housing markets, the bond market, and especially the labor

market. And I have real concerns about the labor market, which again, as we said on your show last week, I think it's important to say again, is that in this personal economist opinion, the three biggest problems in Canada today are housing affordability, government spending, and on the supply side, the lack of productivity in Canada. And none of those three things, Ben, are helped by just exogenously dropping the interest rates. So I want to see if any of those things improve before we start fiddling with the interest rate again. All right.

Well, let's cast our eyes south of the border. I think a lot of us on social media grabbed our popcorn for what looks like a bitter breakup between Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Elon Musk is livid, stark raving mad over the one big beautiful bill that promises, you know, $5 trillion in additional spending. And, and Donald Trump hasn't said anything yet. But I think rather than talk about the international war inside the the Republican Party, maybe you

could give us a sense of what is in this bill that makes Elon Musk so upset. Well, I wouldn't want to get into either of their heads, to be honest with you, but he's mad because he was brought in into Doge to effectively get rid of government overspending and government inefficiencies. And if you look at this one big, beautiful alliteration, it is very, very sweeping. But the bottom line is that the budget office projects that this bill is going to add approximately two and a half trillion

dollars to the national deficit. Now that was what he was brought in. Musk was brought in to prevent things like that. So, I mean, if you want to go through this quickly, it's a massive bill in terms of tax reform. Anything that Donald Trump did in 2017 becomes permanent. Um, MAGA savings accounts. So new babies get a thousand dollars and things like take tips, uh, take taxes off tips and overtime. So there's some positive there.

Healthcare is savage. You have work requirements for Medicaid. And if you don't come in and get tested and get shown that effectively, like you're looking for work, you lose your unemployment. If you don't come in and show that you are working on your health, you lose your benefits. And that's huge. We know about the budget increases on defense and additional 150 billion on defense, 70 billion for border refinements, and 3.7 trillion in tax cuts. Now, again, you say, well, that's not bad, 3.7 billion in tax cuts. Yeah, the problem is, is that when you do that,

Trump becomes like every other leader in the West especially who says, you know what, if I'm gonna give on something, let's just let the debt go. And so he's not really concerned anymore about how much money he borrows on that governmental credit card. And I guess to use an economic term that pisses off Elon Musk. Yeah. Well, let's all right, let's come back to Canada for a second. And you know, when a politician says something like a record high immigration is impacting productivity and housing affordability. That's one thing. But when an organization like the OECD, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says it, that's a

different beast, isn't it? Well, it is. And what they're not saying, and again, I've said this before in your show, what you will never hear a Jewish person say is that we should just lock the borders, because we all still have PTSD over the 1930s. But what I think the OEC is trying to get across, which is an excellent point is that while you have to have some targeted immigration, especially refugees, Ben,

immigration as an economic growth strategy doesn't work. It has never worked and it will never work because all you do is you take all of your per capita economic indicators and you push them downward right and so that's part of the problem right not to mention again I know we're gonna get to the labor market but if you take all of your statistics and you just bring in more and more and more people to the tune of about a Half a million a year all of those per capita variables, right? You raise the denominator, the whole fraction falls and you make everything worse.

So it's not a growth driver. It does nothing for things like productivity, for research, for innovation, for competition. It, in fact, it hurts all of those things and it's detrimental to the economy. Well, that's why I was shaking my head. I was befuddled at the beginning of this week when the immigration numbers came out.

817,000 people were brought in in the first four months of this year. It's such a huge number. I thought the liberals had fallen on their sword, admitted that they had gotten it wrong on immigration, and were backtracking. I thought that was a whole, I thought that was a plank in the Carney, in the Carney platform. And to be sure he's not responsible for the entire year, but what the heck's going on here? I don't know. I don't know if it is being

staged as a humanitarian effort. I don't know. But I know that it is as an economist. And again, I guess I'm a humanitarian, I'm a human, but as an economist, and you bring me on to talk about trying to stimulate a stagnant economy, I can guarantee you this will do nothing positive. All right, well, let's finish up by talking about sort of the sad number for so many young Canadians that summer job postings are down sharply

from this time last year. What does that as an economist indicate to you? Well, as an economist and as a father, it is it really can bring tears to your eyes because the last domino to fall is the labor market. You and I have been talking about it for a year. And what it tells me is two things. Number one, you have people that are taking part-time jobs that were usually earmarked for students. You have people now trying to take those jobs just to pay rent and food for their families. And that's a little bit sad.

And then number two is when you look at young people, and I have one in five too, but I have one almost 21 year old in my house, they are job hunting through the internet and the internet alone and that is not going to be sufficient. If you want to get a job young people coming out of high school or university, you have to do what they used to call pound the pavement. Get your CV, print it and go out to retail stores and go into each and every one and ask if they're hiring because not everybody hiring. You know there's about 300,000 jobs posted right now. But a lot of those jobs don't make it to mainstream internet. So go in, knock on doors the way they used to do and try to find work. But know that some of those jobs are

not being stolen by your fellow students. They're being taken by parents who are not for those jobs, won't be able to pay the rent. And that's really sad. It's sad. And it feels like the whole system is upside down. And every time we talk about one of these things in isolation, it's sad. But when you realize that when you pile these crises on top of each other, you know, Mark Carney's got a Herculean effort on his shoulders to fix these intertwining crises that he inherited. You know what, Ben? No economic growth means no job growth and no job growth means no jobs. And now you have to put aside being an economist and you have to be a person and a father. These are people, these are people who are not going to have summer jobs, not be able to pay tuition or go into further debt to do it. And then the debt crisis just keeps

growing and growing and your survival story is... able to pay tuition or go into further debt to do it. And then the debt crisis just keeps growing and growing and your survival story is... All right, my friend. Thank you so much for joining us. We'll talk to of Days of Our Lives, you and a guest could win a three-night stay in Los Angeles, a VIP Days of Our Lives set tour, a helicopter ride over LA, and so much more. Watch Weekdays at One and look for the weekly code word to enter, Days of Our Lives.

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