The Chris Cuomo Project - Why Trump Talks Chaos Instead of Costs

Episode Date: January 13, 2026

Chris Cuomo breaks down why the nonstop political firestorms — from foreign crises to culture-war flashpoints — keep pulling attention away from the one issue hitting Americans hardest: the cost of living. From housing and health care to groceries, insurance, and wages, everyday affordability is squeezing families across the political spectrum, even as outrage-driven headlines dominate the conversation.Cuomo argues that these constant emergencies aren’t accidental — they reward spectacle, distraction, and zero-sum politics while real economic pressure goes unaddressed. Whether it’s Venezuela or the outrage-of-the-week at home, the result is a country fighting over everything except the problem most people actually feel every day: how expensive life has become. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Join Chris Ad-Free On Substack: http://thechriscuomoproject.substack.com Support our sponsors: Get 20% off LEAN, a doctor-created oral supplement for weight loss, with code CUOMO at https://takelean.com Get up to 30% off OneSkin with the code CUOMO at https://www.oneskin.co/cuomo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I think that we just saw something that should be a uniting moment for right and left to finally do what's reasonable. Do you know what it is? Will you believe it when I tell you? I think we know what we just lived that gives us an ability for everybody to get on the same page of less of this and a lot more of this. What is it? I'll tell you. Chris Cuomo here. Welcome to the Chris Cuomo Project. So what is the thing that actually unites right and left here? Need, okay? I keep harping on affordability because it is right on every level for me to do so.

It is right because there is no other issue, certainly nothing trending on social media that affects more Americans in a more dangerous. way than cost structure, going in a direction that is not only killing the American dream. Forget about what we want. It's about choking people from the ability to get what they need. Basics, okay? More and more Americans are falling below the line of being able to have anything that they want and having a life that is all about need. you have a majority of Americans that could not deal with a health emergency, who do not have

more than a thousand dollars in the bank to deal with something, car issues, any of these things. So what brings us together in looking at this need? Because the state of play, it seems to ignore it. Venezuela is an opportunity. I don't care what you think about it. However, you guys on the left, share something with MAGA that I have never seen on any other issue except affordability. Maga signed on to Trump's campaign for different reasons, but one of them was absolutely his disgust, his disdain for America's intervention abroad. Remember that? And every time he's done anything abroad, He spends a lot of time having to explain why it was the minimum, why he had to do it, why it's so much less than everybody else did before him in the same regard.

Then comes Venezuela. And then comes his talk after Venezuela, where he does not do that, where he says, yeah, I'm open to putting boots on the ground to secure the oil. Wow, would that be a big mistake? Megan Kelly says, I'm a yellow flag. I'm a fucking blowing, honking red sign, okay? You put American boots on the ground in Venezuela to secure the oil. There will be blood, and it will be our blood.

And I'm not saying that the American military isn't up to who they'll be against. Of course, they're a superior force. But I'm saying you are dealing. Not with jihadis. They're not looking to die and get a bunch of virgins. You know, you don't have the same perverse, religious motivation of extreme Islamism, you know, motivating hatred of us. But you got trained generations of rebels and guerrillas and a lot of bad actors down there.

And America's enemies have also infiltrated who would love to take pot shots at American troops. And for what? Oil? We are already one of the main producers of oil. It is a world market. We're not going to change that. Having control of that supply, would that matter? Yeah, incrementally. but not worth what may happen, the disaster. So no, don't be open to that.

And I don't know why he's saying that except for the very simple, muscular politics of might makes right and looking tough because maybe you're open to it and I'm volatile and you don't know what I'm going to say. But MAGA voted for less of this. And sure, you can argue that Maduro is a special case. So close to us.

He led in all our enemies. They're all trying to get the oil. They use it against us. He's got terror groups in there. He's sending the drugs. You know, he checks a lot of boxes. He's a contagion. He's right off our border.

I get it. I get it. I get it. But then why did you say you're open to doing it in other places? Now, again, what's the best answer? The best answer is that Trump likes how that sounds. Yeah, you don't know when I'm going to come. You don't know where.

You know, it's like bad parenting, you know? Oh, I'm going to get you. You're not going to know when and you're not going to go. You know, that whole psychic. psychology bullshit of surprise, of anticipation of death being worse than death itself. Do I think he's serious about it as a policy? No, but I didn't think he was going to do this either. And I was probably, I should have seen the signs. And that's what all my sources are telling me now, is that they're not surprised. They're not surprised. I was surprised. And I don't think we should

see this again. If there are a special case, fine. Although I don't really hear Trump saying that making the argument that Maduro is such a special case. I do take a little bit of solace in the fact that they didn't kill him. I take a little bit of solace in the fact that they didn't blow out his government and put in a puppet or somebody else. I think that that's a good sign. So where's the unity? Here's the unity. Whether you are MAGA or mega or anti-Trump or anything else, we should all be on the same page after Venezuela, that we want to see less of that and more of dealing with what's happening at home. Because you cannot believe in good faith that the president isn't talking about and doing things

that are not part of the domestic agenda that was promised about price structure, gas and groceries, gas and groceries, gas and groceries, remember that? because it's easier and because it's a distraction. You have to see that. You have to see that no matter what you think of what happened in Venezuela or Iran or anywhere else, you must see that there is an aspect of that to it, of trying to make him look good heading into the midterms in ways other than the most easily measurable in your own life.

No matter what you think about what happened in Venezuela, unless you are a Venezuelan in exile, living in America, that situation does not matter to you anywhere near as much as the major, major cost pressure on American families. And what I didn't like in the moment that I actually realized you have something that should join you in purpose is when the president said right after Venezuela, stock markets up again. Thank you, Mr. Tariff. Wow. Does he really think that you're going to believe that on the left or the right? Do you really believe that tariffs are a tailwind and not a headwind on the markets? You know it's a handful of

companies that's driving the S&P 500, right? You know it's AI, right? Which is why it's so crazy that the administration was playing with giving access different aspects of our AI advantage to China or anyone else. Saudi Arabia, anyone, any other country. Why would you do that? This is our advantage. Why wouldn't you lock it in? Why wouldn't you go crazy on training people for the jobs that will be involved in AI? Why? That's why the stock market's up.

The stock market is up because of increased demand. In part, there's increased demand. Why? Because there's pressure on supply. Because prices are going up because small businesses are getting strangled by tariffs. Ask people who run small businesses who got things from China in the past. I mean, this is, you know, sure, you're not. you can cherry pick your metrics.

But the overall picture, consumer confidence, how people feel about their prospects in the next year, how they feel about prices, they're all negative. And they're all negative for good reason. And right and left can come together in insisting on attention on that. That's what this moment should teach all of us.

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That's the code Cuomo. Tell them, Cuomo sent you, and go to takelein.com. What Trump said to the right about, hey, you guys better be open on reproductive rights when it comes to this health care discussion that we're going to have at some point going forward. Why? Because the Hyde Amendment locked in what used to be called the pro-life movement. I don't like calling it that. Why? Because it makes it seem like if you're not in line with their thoughts, it means you're anti-life. And I think that that's ridiculous. And I think that it's really termed reproductive rights. And I do think they're rights. And I do think they should have been identified as such. And I think that getting rid of Roe v. Wade, while it was an imperfect

case made things worse. And I think letting it go to the states was the taking of a right. And that's something that we almost never have seen in America before in modern history. So him saying, you better be open on that, is what, about the upcoming healthcare negotiations? Why? Because he knows that's a big issue. That they don't want any money going to that. And he knows how much that has hurt people across this country, especially in states who decide to play with this faux understanding of Christianity in their politics and what's supposed to be a secular place. Healthcare costs, property insurance costs, driving auto insurance costs, costs for care, child care, health care, all of these things are ballooning.

I got my notices. My health care cost is up, and I'm one of the 160 million who gets it through. their employer or technically I'd get it through a union, right, sag after. My prices went up. My car insurance went up. My property insurance went up. And so is everybody else's or many of us. It's not just the ACA subsidies. You know, sure, that's 25, 29, maybe 32 million people. It's a lot of people. No question. But there are 160 million who are getting it through their employers and their costs are going up too. So you can play with old beef is up. And cough. And coffee. these up, but this is down and these are down and eggs are down. Overall, the cost structure is

killing us. Why is home ownership going the way it is? Because it's too expensive to build, enough to have the supply that we need, and the financing is just not advantageous. And people aren't making enough money. Why? Because we had a fundamental shift in our choice structure in our capitalist society. From, you know, as productivity goes up, wages have to go up. Because that keeps you in line with any cost of living adjustments. We stopped doing that. And the increase in productivity wound up not being rewarded to the worker who created it, but to the investor. That was the shift. It's not even as simple as it all go into the sea suites. You know, yes, CEOs, their percentage of salary over the worker has ballooned. Absolutely. I'm not saying it hasn't. I'm saying

that's not where the majority of the money went. That should have gone to labor. It went to the investors. That's why stock prices are up so much. Dividends, driving interest. Why? Because those were choices. And that's all they are were choices. And the idea that, well, that's capitalism. No, it isn't. Listen, capitalism without conscience is just greed, okay? It's just greed. You know, there's a book that came out 10 years ago called Conscious Capitalism. You should read it. It could have been written now, like today. It's that you can make choice. You can make sure. where it's not all about your stock price. That's the biggest concern of everything. That's Milton Friedman. That was not Keynesian economics. Cansey in economics was you take care

of the people who take care of you. Productivity is up. Pay goes up. We stop doing that. And we're seeing the effects of it right now because you have corporate pressure on their profits that are winning out over everything. And that's why our health care is the way it is. And our other insurances and the cost of care and all the other attending costs in your life. They're all going and your pay is not keeping up. I know. So why are we talking about Venezuela? Exactly. And everybody should agree on that. Look, multiple things can be true at the same time. And we've gotten away from this. Why? Because everything's so absolutist and binary in this zero-sum game. Zero-sum means for me to win, you must lose. So in Venezuela, it's either good or bad. And it's just not that simple. It's good if you're in

Venezuela because you got rid of a despot. But it's not good if you look at it from an international law perspective or the message of might making right or a distraction of focus of the American government and culture at a time where you have, look, we just shut down the government in this country because of subsidies to a small fraction of people who are getting hit hard by increases in health care costs. People who need help to pay for insurance through the ACA, the Obamacare Exchange. Now, people will say, well, the subsidies are a bad thing because it's just a band-aid on the fact that costs are going up. Well, if you're not going to deal with costs, then of course you're going to have to have subsidies. But if you shut down the government over it and cause pain

to people for weeks. Lots of people. And now nothing? Well, the Democrats aren't in power. Yeah, but they could be talking about this all the time instead of this new reckoning that they got to meet the moment. Whatever is trending on social media,

they got to be in there and they got to be winning on that. The zero-sum mentality. I say no. I say that the left and right is best joined and maybe only joined on affordability. And look, Trump given this signal, hey, you better be open when it comes to reproductive rights or abortion or whatever you want to call it in these health care negotiations because of that Hyde Amendment that doesn't allow federal dollars to go to that.

That is proof that he knows that this issue is real. And you have to understand that social media and these algorithms are a distortion. They are not concentrating our interest on things. They are distorting it. They are perverting it. they're making us be in outrage mode all the time, be angry about everything, to see everyone as your enemy. They're either with you or they're against you. And on most of these issues that we have, it's just not that simple.

And making it that simple just makes it worse. Support for the first formal project comes from one skin. Now, when it comes to what you're going to put on yourself, you've got to make sure that anything, cream, serum, anything like that. that. You got to make sure that it's designed scientifically to make things better. Now, I know that sounds simple, but you'd be surprised how many products. Don't check that box. Okay? One skin does. Their formulas are powered by a scientifically tested and proven peptide OS01. It is patented as a peptide built on longevity science proven to target aging at the cellular level. Why? Because it's turns out that lines, wrinkles on the face do have an obvious cellular component to them, right?

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The issue that matters most to the most people on the right and the left is being ignored. And it is cost of. living. Cost of living. What you eat, what you wear, where you go, how you go, how you plan, how you dream, all of these things are being affected and we know why and we know it's fixable. The idea that you guys will argue to me, you know, the tariffs are good because not having tariffs is why we lost all these manufacturing jobs. That's not true. That's not true. And to the extent that it is true, that trade and balance is why we lost the jobs, that is such a small slice of the pie. The biggest reason that America lost manufacturing jobs is innovation,

meaning less need for workers to make the same things. The second biggest reason, reason is that American countries were allowed to go and shop for places with less regulations and lower costs. And they did that. Now, if you think that you equalize that by putting in the tariff, I think you're very naive about how the global markets work, and you're seeing it in China right now. If we have more tariffs on China than we've ever had before, and they just had the biggest trade surplus in their modern history. What does that tell you? How does China have the biggest trade surplus if they have the most tariffs on it? The answer is because they're not selling to Americans. They're selling, it's a world market. They're selling to other places more and to us less,

which means what? Which means prices here are going to go up two different ways. One, scarcity, because you're not getting the supply. And two, the demand is there, but you're going to have to have to pay higher for the things that you want because of the tariff having to be absorbed here. Sure, the home country, the manufacturer is absorbing some of it, but not all of it. That's why small businesses are under such pressure here. This is the issue. This is what matters to the most. Nothing else comes close.

Everything on your social media, trending list in our politics matters less than what I'm talking about right now. And we know why? because outrage sells because division sells that's why and if you can see that i'm not telling you that the maga person on the street or the democrat on the street or the liberal whatever you want to call them is now your best buddy that's not what i'm saying that's your choice that's your choice in terms of how you let things affect you how you decide to feel about things you don't control what happens, but you 100% control how to feel about it. Now, I'm not saying when you get bashed with a

hammer on your thumb, oh, that's great. It's not what I'm saying. I'm saying it hurts, but you get to decide what that means. Are you injured forever by it? Can you get past it? How are you going to process it? What are you going to do about it? These are your choices. Your decision to go on social media and light somebody up because they disagree with you, that's your choice. And you can rationalize it in a hundred different ways and make it okay or make it wrong. That's your choice. what I'm saying is that beyond choice in terms of obvious realities, America may be in a better position without Maduro. Venezuelans are almost certainly in a better position without Maduro based on not knowing what comes next.

Okay. It would be hard to foresee it being worse, but who knows? We got to watch. And the way it was done violates international law and maybe domestic law. and maybe sends bad messages as well. And the idea that we're obsessing on it for three, four days, and the president's just slipping in that tariffs are why the stock market's up, and he's just slipping in that his side should be open

to making some compromises on health care is not the right balance of urgency. And don't tell me we should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. We cannot walk without tripping over our own feet. We cannot do two things at once. we can't do one thing. We just shut down the government because of an inability to get anything done. And we've done nothing about that issue since that happened.

Why? Because they don't have to. Because you guys haven't come together to demand it. Because that's not what's all over social media, which is driving the overall media to talk about those things in those ways. I'm telling you, if you had five days of every trending item being a different aspect of the cost of living. And the media started feeding on that. And all of the influencers and the pod people started feeding on that

and talking about that all the time, the way they're talking about all these other things. Like they're talking about Somalis and Epstein and every other boogeyman of the moment. Things would start to happen in this country because that's where the pressure is. This is the unifying moment. This is the unifying cause.

Affordability of the, cost of living. And that's not a tax cut away. That's not a tariff away. That is real. That is deep. That is hard. And that's exactly why you keep being distracted from it. Because it's much easier to do Venezuela, to do Epstein, to do anything really is easier than dealing with the cost of living. That's why they campaign on the cost of living to seem high-minded, and then they get in, and they're desperate for distractions. No one more than this administration. There is a blessing and a curse, right?

The Trump administration, this president, does more things than I've ever seen in any administration. I'm not saying good things. I'm not saying bad things. There's something new all the time. Why? It's a great strategy. One, you keep moving it around, you exaggerate what you do in each of those things, and then people move on before they actually really have any accountability for whether it happened or not.

And even if there is some measure of accountability, you can distract them with something else that's more shiny in the moment. You've got all of social media, which is not only aligned with you, but their business by design is structured to help you. The algorithms are structured to move us from one thing to the next and keep the, Temperature very high. That's what sells. That's what provokes. That's what outrages. That's what they want.

And I'm telling you, I predicted it for a reason. I do not want to see a terrible thing happen in this country. Although I've got to tell you, playing this game of might makes right and use in force to create change around the world certainly doesn't discourage people from wanting to do the same. But the idea that you're not going to, you're not going to see a situation in America where we change these algorithms. We change the accountability, the responsibility.

No matter what the wrong is that's going on in our society, it's got a link to what's being fed to us on social media. And no, it's not as simple as it's always been that, hey, if you don't like it, change your channel. If you don't like it, listen to a different radio station. If you don't like it, don't have that person in your feet. This is the only media we've ever allowed that by design feeds us our worst inclinations. It's the only one. Broadcast isn't allowed to do it because of the FCC. They used to have the fairness doctrine.

Like it used to be an overt thing. What happened to those days? I'm not saying that that was the perfect answer either. It wasn't. But, you know, I go on tonight and I say, whatever I say, I got bosses, there's accountability, the media reports on what I say. There's feedback mechanisms, their expectations, their standards. But with social media, here's what we've decided. You talk about zero sum.

You talk about just this kind of battle to the bottom. Media has failed to do the job as well as it should. So we are now going to democratize it and allow it to be much worse. It's like what? Payback? So you haven't made it better. Everything you've done with social media is to make it worse. You say you democratized it, but it's more of a mobocracy than it is anything that approaches any higher degree of responsibility or integrity of purpose. You now have most of your trending items isn't about reporting.

It's about hot takes. Megan Kelly not sure about Venezuela. Who the fuck? Why is she? Who are you using as a touchstone? Why? Because it's an outrage algorithm. It's about people who generate outrage.

It's not about insight. It's not about who wants to make things better. It's not about who has ideas for change. It's just blame. Why? Because it's zero sum. And the algorithms play to it for the first time ever, more than any media ever has before. But I will end where I began.

There is a uniting moment here of urgency. Because right and left don't have to fight about these side issues because the entree, the main dish, the biggest problem in our society is affecting both sides equally, the cost of living. And there is a reason that the people who want power talk about it the most, and the people in power talk about it the least. Because it's hard, but it's real. And the president knows it, and the heads of the Democratic Party know it, and the heads of the Republican Party know it. They all know it. Now, they also all happen to be losing to the algorithms. And there are a lot of the Democratic Party. And there are a lot of the Democratic Party know it. And they're okay with that because they'd rather this shitstorm, this constant food fight, than to be measured

on the real work of accountability for the cost of living in this country. I'm telling you, that is the answer. That's why there's an action. And that's why things don't really change no matter who's in power. Why? Because there's always tension. You always have the filibuster in the Senate. And there's always this feedback mechanism, this false incentive of look at what makes people powerful. Look what makes people able to raise more money. Look what makes people more relevant in the media. Everything that checks those boxes plays against your interest. The uniting moment is here. Venezuela is an instruction on it. Again, I don't like how America did this. I'm happy for Venezuela. I'm happy for the Venezuelan people. I think Maduro was a bad guy. And I think this

put a good check on China, on Russia, and other inimical factors down there. But I just don't like America going in other places and killing people and doing whatever it wants. I don't. I don't like it. I can like aspects of the result and not like the mechanism of how it came to be. That's my right. and it's actually closer to right than just seeing it absolutely is a great thing or it's a terrible thing. But there's no place for nuance in a dynamic that is controlled by absolutism,

zero sum, and a war of division. Because that's what sells and that's what's getting paid. And that's what you are being tempted to consume. And the whole point of this podcast and all this propaganda, right? I am different. I'm critical thinker, independent,

free agent, is that I'm not simply nonpartisan, okay? I'm anti-partisan. The sides are killing us, okay? The lack of accountability and the freedom within social media and these tech bros to create algorithms that feed us mis and disinformation and feed us our worst and feed us division and feed us outrage as a diet, exclusive of nuance, exclusive of context, exclusive of any of the virtues that we used to at least implicate into our institutions is killing us, see it, and realize you already have what you need to come together. And it's a problem, the cost of living. Everyone is being affected by it, the top and the bottom.

And we do know why it's happening. That's why I keep telling you about the K-shaped economy. The top is doing better and everyone else is going down. Now, the curves are different. The indifference curves are different. There's variability within it. There's fluctuation within it. But it's the way our system is designed.

And it's what needs to be addressed, what needs to be debated, what needs to be fought over, and what needs to be changed. That is what everyone should be. want. Do you? I'm Chris Cuomo. Thank you for subscribing and following you. I'll see you at News Nation, 8 p. and midnight. Every weekday night, you can see the Chris Cuomo project, wherever you want. We've got announcements coming out about new subscription levels, how you can get more access to me and more content that is especially for you. You can buy and wear your independence, free agent, critical thinker. I am different. Okay. Let's get after it. Mug. I just used the other day, very nice.

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I appreciate you. I know it's rough out there. And I don't know that it gets better anytime soon, but I do know that you have a lot more control over what you care about and how you care about it than you're giving yourself credit for it right now. It's a new year. Look at these situations in a new way.

Let's get after it.