The Chaser Report - T.A.C.O Friday

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

Dom and Charles embark on a weekly recap of US politics, where Dom farewells Elon Musk, and Charles explains the newest theory overtaking Wall St. "Nobody calls me chicken." -- Donald Trump (presumably).---Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] our caviar addiction: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. There's a lot of Donald Trump news to catch up on Charles. He's been picking so many fights with so many people that, in fact, the New York Times is Maggie Haberman has noticed a pattern in his battles with people. But also, you have a theory and will say goodbye to Elon Musk, who's no longer working for the federal government.

And apparently he's leaving Washington a bit disillusioned with the notion of public service, Charles, poor Elon. I know, isn't that sad? No, it's just this. He came to Washington with, you know, bright eyes, dreaming of helping out. Mr. Max comes to Washington. That's right, cutting two trillion dollars out of the US federal budget. He just, all he wanted to do was inflict misery on millions. He just wanted to sack people.

And admittedly, he did sack people, but not as much as he wanted. And then hide the back because it turned out they were needed to protect the individuals. nuclear arsenal. Anyway, we'll get into some of that after this. So, Dom, tell me about Trump. What's been going on in Trump land? Would you think it was a good or a bad idea for the US president to pick a fight with the world's most powerful university? That's what's been going on. Donald Trump has been essentially picking a fight with Harvard, and it's really escalated. Yeah. So you might remember that we've got to realize, like, so this is a standard method. And we actually,

predicted on this podcast about a year ago, which is when Orban got in in Hungary, he just defunded the universities and made them essentially toadies to his agenda. Yeah, so that's what Columbia did. Colombia was just like, sure, Mr Trump and don't. We'll get rid of all the diversity initiatives.

Yeah. And lots of universities. And change the curriculum. Yeah, yeah. And Putin did the same thing in Russia. It was a little bit easier. But, you know, he sort of made everything. And even in China, what's really?

really interesting in China. I once talk to this D-FAT guy who said, oh yeah, because there was a whole little scandal around one of the universities in Sydney. I won't mention which one, but UTS. Where all their students were sort of obeying the Chinese

Communist Party about Hong Kong and the Hong Kong process and they were being quite political in Australia about saying, yes, Hong Kong shouldn't be a democracy. It should be part of mainland China. And the funny thing about that is this defect guy went, no, no, no, the whole point is that, like, half the universities in China are known as free universities where there's a degree of academic

freedom. And then there's half of them which are just Communist Party controlled. And the problem is that UTS probably blithely didn't quite understand that what they were getting into was they were just funneling people literally only from communist-controlled universities into this system. I wonder how you know which university. Is it like, is it on the form? He said it's really easy to find out.

Like, DFET holds a list. Every five-ey-wise partner knows which universities. It's so interesting. It's very widely known. So this is the extraordinary thing. He's taking on Harvard and Harvard actually pushed back. And they, so they've tried to control which students who can enroll. They've tried to, basically they want to control over hiring as well,

any faculty and the course content. So really just completely messing with Harvard in, in a way that, I wouldn't have thought was possible in America. But this is what's happening. And a lot of foreign students are seeking to transfer. I'm seeing ads, ironically, from a university in China, saying, come and don't worry, Harvard students. Come to China and enjoy the rest of your degree here.

Well, if they're non-communist party controlled, then they would be as good as any university in the world. So apparently a lot of the students wanting to go. Donald Trump is now saying he's going to revoke the visas of a lot of the Chinese students at Harvard and so on. And Christy Noem, who we last talked, about on the podcast, if I recall correctly, the woman who shot her dog for no reason. She's now in charge of this and she says, eh, is she education secretary?

She sent actually, she, I'm not, she's, um, is she Homeland Security? She's certainly something in the National Security space. Oh, right. Because she's so good at defending against dogs. Yeah, right. Yeah, go on. Yeah, she said Homeland Security Secretary is not parody. So she said, let's get rid of all.

She wrote a letter to Harvard saying, uh, enrolling in national students is a privilege. not a right and you've lost your privilege, you literally said that to Harvard. And so, anyway, it's all being tied up in court and Harvard will probably win, but it doesn't matter because all the students are leaving anyway, because why would you want to go and enroll, you know, spend all this money on a three-year course

if there was a chance you weren't going to get it? So it's extraordinary to see this going on. But it also, Maggie Habman for the New York Times written this great article about Donald Trump's approach to attacks, just in general, which is that whenever it is absolute retaliation, and no one gets away with defying him at all. And if you defy him and he attacks you, it is your fault. So he plays the victim.

So this is the fascinating thing about Trump's negotiating posture, right? The whole point about negotiating as a victim is that you cannot, like, it is impossible to win an argument with somebody who thinks they're a victim, right? If you play the victim, you've taken yourself out of the point of negotiation. And Donald Trump is always seeing himself as a victim. But the other thing, the fascinating thing about this logic, too, is that it's a logic of an abuser. It's basically, it's basically, oh, you made me hit you. You made me hit you.

The quote here is quite extraordinary, like from Harvard. The last thing I want to do is harm Harvard, he said. They left me no choice. They've got to behave themselves. They're treating us with disrespect. They've got to behave themselves. I'm looking out for the country, he says, and I'm looking out for Harvard. So it's pretty chilling to see some of this rhetoric coming out of the White House.

It's lovely. But, I mean, it's very, yeah. The bizarre thing, though, Charles, is that for all this toughness, for all this, you know, I'm going to just punish everyone, I'm going to have all these culture wars on every front at the same time. It's two problems that are quite major. You'll get to one, which people in the markets have noticed. But the first one is he constantly loses lawsuits. And I know we've said, oh, to go to the Supreme Court and he'll win and all this kind of stuff.

But it's actually extraordinary how much he's losing. Just today, there's the thing called the U.S. Court of International Trade. which said actually all of the tariffs that you unleashed against the entire world are invalid. You can't do that. Yeah, because there's no economic emergency. There's no economic emergency. That's one of the reasons. But also, the legislation never even envisaged the president applying tariffs.

It was for things like sanctions. It's for stuff like, you know, if a country attacks you, you can immediately put sanctions on them. It's not at all to do with tariffs. So he's been completely operating outside the law. So it's going to be a big test of can he actually do what he likes? Because he keeps doing stuff and then getting slapped down like the birthright citizenship, all this stuff. So he's not very good at being a dictator so far. So what you're arguing is that the US institutions will actually rise to the barricades, rise to the occasion.

I don't know if they will, but they're certainly, they're doing what US institutions, the one thing that we know that they do very well. Throw sawdust. Which is, yeah, being sclerotic, making nothing happen. And that's the whole problem with US politics. You can't make anything happen in the US. There are too many checks and balances and rules and whatever. So what you're saying is that they should get out of the way and let Trump be a dictator. Sure, sure, that's what I'm saying.

No, but I mean, he's got three and a half years, and you think to yourself, gosh, that's a very long time. But the way these courts are going, I mean, I don't even know how much is the Supreme Court even going to rule on by the time his term is done, which raises the question then will he actually leave when his term is done? That's a question for another time. But it is fascinating that the sheer irritating slowness of the courts is actually genuinely getting in his way with a lot of the stuff now, including Harvard. The Chaser Report More news Less often

So there is one part of the US presidency where Trump does have quite a lot of independent action And it is foreign conquest Right foreign policy that the president has Basically open slather on that Yeah exactly So and he can direct the military The Commander in Chief, right

What I heard today which is just fantastic And I haven't seen the footage yet But apparently some reporter came up to him and said Hey, what do you think about Taco Trump? And he goes, what are you doing about? Tacos? He loves tacos. He loves Mexican food.

He loves Tex-Mex food. And apparently traders have been trading, like literally stock market traders, bond traders, that sort of thing. They've been trading on this concept of Taco Trump, which is Trump always chickens out. So every time Trump announces a, you know, tariff on something or, you know, we're going to sanctioned Europe, whatever. We know that, like, you can trade against that information. You can literally bet against that that's what's going to happen.

Let's have a listen to the exchange from today. Oh, okay. You've got the footage, authentic. The Wall Street analysts have coined a new term called the Taco Trade. They're saying Trump always chickens out on your tariff threats, and that's why markets are higher this week. What's your response to that? Oh, isn't that a chicken out?

I've never heard that. You mean because I reduced China from 145% that I said? down to a hundred and then down to another number and you call that chickening out because we have fourteen trillion dollars now invested we had a dead country we had a country people didn't think it was going to survive and you ask a nasty question like that That's a nasty question.

So the point is, apparently he's just been grumpy ever since. I love that in his recap, his recap, A, he couldn't remember the numbers. B, he's called a tariff for tax. And C, he's literally just unspulling the process. Poetry chicken out. It's quite extreme. So people have called you a chicken. What you mean?

Because I made a threat. Then I went, actually, no, I'm not going to do that. Or then I went, I've rethought my position on that. I've dialed it back a bit. Yeah, that's nasty. That's really nasty. And presumably then he went on to say, but I'm not going to criticise you because I want to pick a fight. So, wow, Trump always chickens out.

That's fascinating. But the point is that apparently ever since he's been incredibly grumpy and people are going, he's going to tank the economy. Yeah, yeah, to prove that he doesn't... To prove that he doesn't chicken out. This is the Marty McFlyer theory in the US policy. The point is, that combined with the whole court ruling against him actually having power over tariffs.

Yeah, yeah. It means that the one place that he can actually still not chicken out on is Ukraine, right? Like, literally, it's the one place where you go, you know, he's got this posture that he's pissed off with Putin, which is very unusual. He can blow shit up if he wants to. And he can just blow shit up. I'm predicting that World War III will happen in the next week. Because of Tarko. Because he'll want to prove.

And the only cause of action he'll have to. do is to save Ukraine, which is the most unexpected thing you, like, if the one thing you thought from Trump would happen is that actually he'll end up saving Ukraine. I think that's what's going to happen. I think he's just going to fucking carpet on Moscow. And I mean, it would be pretty amazing if we finally, after all these years, figured out the way to manipulate Donald Trump, the man on whom Bif 10 in Back to the Future was based, by the way. Don't you know that back to the future too?

Really? Yeah. Where is Trump Yeah, when Biff Tannen has a giant casino and runs the world Literally based on Donald Trump They had the idea of the dystopia well before Anyone else did Yeah, and so, but instead he's Marty McFly

You say chicken, you're chicken And he'll just do whatever you want. Fascinating stuff So Charles, at the same time While we're talking about people being sad and disappointed In Washington, D.C., it brings us finally to our old friend Elon Musk Now, when you're one of these

special government employees or whatever, someone who the president hires with no process. There's a limit of how many days you can serve without having a proper job. And he's hit that limit, I think, 100 or days, whatever it is. Yes, yes. Maybe 160 days. You've got a special government employee. That's right.

So that's winding down. But he's announced today he's out of there. He's not going to remain anymore. He's done. He's finished. And he's pissed. He's really pissed. A couple of things.

There's a big artificial intelligence data center in the Middle East. The deal went to a rival company. And Elon's like, why not me? Why not corruptly give it to someone who works for you? And then the thing he's really annoyed about, though, Charles, is the big, beautiful bill. Yes. He's the tax cuts because Elon believes his own hype.

He's radically anti-spending and doesn't think there should be all this sort of tax relief and stuff. He is really angry that Doge, which basically is aiming to end the US government, is being undermined by Trump's bill. Yeah. It shows you the complete incoherence of fascism, doesn't it? Well, I mean, this is the thing, Charles. When you have fascism, isn't it true

that generally the payoff for that, which admittedly is not a great payoff, but the trains run on time, right? Isn't that always the line that there's a degree of competence in actually sort of running the country? No, no, but actually the truth is that's rarely the case.

Like Mussolini, Franco, were completely incompetent rules. The only person who was slightly competent was Hitler, and then he was a terrible general anyway. That may also be simply because it was Germany, so the trains always ran on time. Yeah, exactly. Like, it wasn't actually Hitler doing that.

It was just that they really like the trains. It's also true that if you go to Italy, the trains also do not run on time, regardless of what political... And that's not a cliche, that's literally just the reality of the situation. Anyway, although that said, we learned in Sydney in the past week or so

that almost every train is always late in Sydney. It's quite extraordinary. So, well done to those involved in that. No, because there should be some comment. The weird thing is, wasn't this all laid out for them in Project 2025? Like, they had the manual of what to do, and they haven't been able to implement it. No, but I think that we always knew that Trump was, like, Musk was just going to explode. I thought it would be years away, rather.

We always knew that it was going to happen, right? You like getting things done quickly, you know this, except for self-driving in Tesla, which I think will never happen. But you know what I mean? Like, he's just sort of like, I don't. I think it was a useful fool for Trump. I think that's what was going on. Like, he just made it look like there was... He created a huge distraction for Trump

in the first hundred days, ruined the whole lot of agencies that Trump wanted ruined. And then it doesn't matter. He can just go off and lick his wounds. I mean, that is the thing he has done. He may not have saved much money out of the US government. Very hard to cut the budget. But he certainly left the bureaucracy in a total record.

But I am staying tuned for Act two of this because I think it must... The mask is now going to turn against Trump. Of course. And I think that that's going to be so much fun to watch. If X gets turned the other way and starts picking off. I mean, they all do in the end. Rupert Murdoch did everyone who's ever worked for Trump pretty much,

almost all of them, except Stephen Miller. They all turn. Even Steve Bannon has reservations about somebody's doing. So there you go. It's certainly entertaining to watch Charles. So we're part of the Aconiclass Network and see you on Monday. Well, I mean, the podcast doesn't run on time. Maybe we should get in bed with Trump so we can turn against him but have really...

Well, we can do an Andini Scaramucci style. Ten days. Yes. Let's work with Donald Trump for ten days. What a brilliant idea. And then that'll juice the numbers on the podcast. Talk to you later, Charles. See you.