The Dispatch Podcast - ‘Donald Trump Is FDR’ | Interview: Batya Ungar-Sargon

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

Jamie Weinstein is joined by self-proclaimed “MAGA lefty” Batya Ungar-Sargon to defend Donald Trump's first 100 days as president and explain how a "lefty" can be MAGA. The Agenda:—Batya’s MAGA journey—MAGA Reaganites vs. MAGA lefties—Batya on The Fifth Column—Exporting American exceptionalism—Trump’s first 100 days—Trump’s meme coin—North Korea style worship—“Trump sees a tariff like a Swiss army knife.”—Immigration and due process The Dispatch Podcast is a production of ⁠⁠⁠The Dispatch⁠⁠⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including members-only newsletters, bonus podcast episodes, and regular livestreams—⁠⁠⁠click here.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Conditions apply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Jamie Weinstein. My guest today is Batya Ungar Sargon. She is a contributor to the free press, formerly deputy editor of Newsweek, author most recently of the book, Second Class, How the Elites Betrayed America's Working Men and Women. We bring her on to discuss Trump's first hundred days, which, by the way, you'd be surprised how few people MAGA supporters, Donald Trump supporters, are willing to do that. But she is, has been everywhere, the most enthusiastic MAGA supporter I've seen in the media. It is an honor that we had her on for our own lively discussion on Trump's first hundred days. So without further ado, I give you Batya, Unger, Sargon. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Dispatch podcast. Thank you so much for having me.

It's an honored to be here. Well, I really appreciate it because I did reach out to a lot of Trump supporters over the last week to do this. I got some saying, can we go off the record? No chance that I'm going to come on and want to defend his first 100 days. And I'm so glad you did it. And then I saw that you pretty much are the only person going on. You went on the fifth column podcast. He went on honestly with Barry Weiss.

You've been on CNN. So, first of all, thank you. And second of all, I think it's kind of interesting. You're the one doing it because I think you come a little bit. I've read your book this week from a more left-of-center position to MAGA. So maybe we can just begin by having you explain to our listeners how you got to MAGA and kind of your MAGA philosophical journey and how it really does come a little bit from the left, which may be different from some other people.

Sure. I mean, now I feel really intimidated. Now that I know that everybody said, no, I didn't realize that this was such a scary thing to be defending. No, I'm kidding. I have noticed that there does seem to be a lot of hesitancy around defending the president's agenda. And so it is really a pleasure and an honor to be able to speak to it from the point of view I'm coming from, which is I call myself a MAGA lefty. My commitments are around things like, you know, being anti-war and being pro- labor, you know, being a social moderate, so being extremely tolerant, but also having a lot of respect for people who come from, you know, the religious communities in this country, I myself am religious, the kind of FDR model, I guess, of what it meant to be on the left. And when I look at each of those things, the inheritor of that platform is Donald Trump. So he is misunderstood as an isolationist. He's not actually an isolationist. He's very anti-war. And he believes, that it is extremely important that we as Americans not get involved in wars that don't involve us, but also even when we have to, that we think long and hard about the sacrifice of the

young men and women who are going to be fighting those wars for us. He was very deeply impacted by the failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I think that really, really informs how he sees foreign policy and what he's trying to accomplish with his foreign policy team. When it comes to labor, I think the protectionist agenda that he has instituted through closing the border, deporting illegal migrants, and then with the tariffs is exactly the kind of thing that leftists were pushing for a hundred years. This stuff works in raising working class wages, but he's also pairing it in a very interesting way with massive deregulations and tax cuts, which I think he's hoping will create the kind of economy that we've all been promised always

and never got, which is one that sort of raises all ships, that there's something there for the business community and for Wall Street, but also very much protecting the people at the bottom, the little guy, the hardest working Americans. And then on the social agenda, you look at where Trump is at. He's very pro-gay. He appointed the highest ranking out gay person in American history, Scott Besant, who's married to a man with two beautiful children. But he's very suspicious of the trans agenda and very worried about the ways in which it's impacting women's rights and children's rights. And I mean, like that to me, that kind of, that's the FDR coalition. So it took me a while to realize what he was actually trying to accomplish because the media is so

focused on sort of demonizing him as an extremist. But when I did realize what he was up to, I sort of felt like, I mean, on what grounds, if those are your values, would you legitimately oppose this president? And I think it's so amazing right now to see this realignment happen. to where the working class of all races is pretty united around this agenda. And meanwhile, it is the elites on both sides who are like really opposed to it. It's really exactly what people like me have been describing for a very long time. To see right now Democrats defending corporations and free trade and China, it's really staggering, like as somebody who sort of comes from there

and it's still pretty committed to all the things I thought we were all committed to. So that's kind of how I arrived at sort of at the MAGA movement. I think the dispatch would describe itself. I certainly would describe myself out of that Reaganite conservative tradition. And I kind of wonder, this is kind of based on what you said, and whether the MAGA movement wants to excise that part out of the movement. Are we this kind of political orientation no longer really part of what movement is, or what the Republican Party under Donald Trump wants to be?

I've only ever heard Donald Trump say nice things about Ronald Reagan on abortion, for example. Leading up to the election, you would often say, I support the exceptions just like Ronald Reagan. And of course, Reagan was famous for a lot of things, not just free trade, but also for deregulation, which is a very big part of Trump's agenda. And I think a big priority for him, that's not like lip service. He really believes that that's important. So from that point of view, I've never heard Trump, like, sort of say, you're no longer welcome here. He wants to have this big tent. Even within his cabinet, there was that sort of probably less of a big tent. Mike Wallace is no longer of National Security Advisor. But when I think of the Reagan, you know, the Reagan agenda, I think of it as sort of being, you know, American exceptionalism and a real willingness to get involved in conflicts abroad. I think of it as being about sort of free. trade and trickle down economics, and I think of it as being socially conservative. And to the extent

that those are your values, that that's not really where the energy of the party is anymore. I think on the social conservative point, there is a lot of, there's a much more room there, although I think if the GOP elects a very pro-life person in 2028, they will not win. Because I think it was Trump, that was very important to a lot of the normies and a lot of the Democrats who voted for Trump, who gave him his victory. On the free trade stuff, you see what's happening right now. The president is listening to people who are skeptical of the tariffs, but he's very committed to the tariffs agenda. So I wouldn't say you're not welcome anymore, but that input has been received and quite ignored. I think it's on the foreign policy that there is the strongest, perhaps willingness to repudiate

the previous version of things and just to say, look, we're not getting involved. in any new wars. Tulsi Gabbard has this really beautiful quote from a few years ago where she says when it comes to terrorists, I am a hawk. And when it comes to counterproductive wars of regime change, I am a dove. And I think we're seeing that now with Iran. Just this, you know, Trump will always do everything to avoid going to war. He thinks it's very wasteful and very horrible. And you could tell he's very deeply impacted by photos. He's been shown very recently from the war in Ukraine. So I think from that point of view, that the idea of like that it's our job

to be heavily subsidizing and engaged in conflicts around the world that don't do the three things Marco Rubio laid out in his confirmation hearing, which is make America safer, more prosperous and stronger. I think that probably is the place where that point of view is least likely to be given a hearing in the near future in the GOP right now.

I was going to ask this question later, but you brought up the term American exceptionalism. And when I was listening to the podcast you did this week, this one on We the Fifth, I think it's called it, Michael Moynihan. What the fifth column, yeah. The fifth column. I love those guys. I'm sorry, I got the name wrong.

You have this phrase, I've seen you do it other places, you know, Diana. If this, it would be only enough if Donald Trump did this, you know, but he did this. But this said one thing. And I wondered if it was a mistake, and now I don't think it is. I was going to ask you about it, that you said, if he only ended the idea of American exceptionalism or went against the idea of American exceptionalism, am I right to say that you don't believe

in the idea of American exceptionalism? Is that where you're saying? You don't believe Donald Trump believes in that idea? By American exceptions, I meant the willingness to go to war in other countries to push our values. I, of course, think America is exceptional. I think any American Jew who doesn't feel unbelievably,

unbelievably grateful to be an American citizen, deserves to have their Jew card revoked, just given the history and how much this country is done for us. I just want to add context to that, because Donald Trump has, I mean, I used to say this in 2016. 2015, he rejected the idea of American exceptional. He thought it was arrogant to say that we're better than other countries, which was obviously a very unconservative from the Reagan tradition thing to say.

People made fun of Barack Obama for not even saying something as explicitly as that. But I was just curious of whether, you know, that is what you see as well, and that's what you're saying, thank you Donald Trump for ending. No, I definitely think that we are exceptional. I just don't think we should be exporting our exceptionalism, certainly on the backs of our own working class, who has been downwardly mobile and paid the price for it. But also, you know, the hubris doesn't bother me.

I think everyone should be like us. I don't think there is any country that comes close to touching, you know, how great this country is. But we have not shared that prosperity with everybody. We have lost the sense of like the common good. In the last 40 years, the prosperity that we have generated has gone to the top 10%. And it's so funny because the left loves to rail on the billionaires. Oh, it's the billion.

It's not the billionaires. It's them. It's the elites. It's the educated elites. The top 10% now controls over 60% of the GDP. And it's been an upward funnel of wealth, a pillaging of the middle class. So that's what bothers me is like we're taking all this money and exporting it and all of this energy and we're basically that belongs to the American people and the American people are no longer

interested in doing that. But I don't think that means we're not exceptional. So I was using the term American exceptionalism as a term of art to refer to that kind of Reaganite foreign policy, not to suggest, God forbid, that this is not an exceptional country. We are. I just want us to be America first in our exceptionalism. I want a retrenchment and I want a sharing of the immense prosperity that we have generated. And I think on democratic grounds, when you have a situation where the majority of the people are saying very clearly what they want, they should get that. Let's go to the 100 days. You laid out some of the case. I'm going to press you on some of the things you said earlier, but when we delve into the issues. But first, maybe just give me why

these first 100 days were, as I think I've heard you say in other places, A plus plus plus. There's no limit to the pluses I would be willing to add to that. I've never seen in my lifetime a president accomplished so much of what he promised so quickly and so effectively. So I think from that point of view, just the promises that were made in the campaign and then kept, it's funny, he gave, there was a, he had a rally last week. And the rally sounded a lot like a campaign rally because he was saying a lot of the same things. Only he was saying them in the past tense, right? Because exactly what he promised to do, he then did. And just the sheer, uh, The energy, the number of accomplishments, it's hard to go through them all because they've

been so significant. And some of the biggest ones we just never talk about, I mean, releasing two dozen hostages from Gaza, like we act like that didn't happen. Every one of those hostages, I believe, are the majority of them, the ones who have given, they've all said we would still be in Gaza, if not for Donald Trump. That is like an astonishing, staggering accomplishment. he secured the border. There were only three people who crossed the border illegally this week. I mean, a staggering, staggering accomplishment.

That is when I think I have heard Democrats to their credit give him credit for, especially because they're going to be able to use that to come up with a more moderate version of immigration without which they'll never be competitive again. So he solved their problem too, which was the chaos at the border. The tariffs to me are just huge.

We have become addicted to cheap crap from China. We've sold out our children's future in treasury bonds to our greatest adversary. They'll be paying off, you know, the interest on that for generations. They make the PPE and the pharmaceuticals that we need in order to fight the pandemic that came from China. And if, God forbid, it ever comes to it and we do have to go to war with China, we will rely on them to produce the ships that we would need to fight them. Like, it's utterly unsustainable, the trade deficits, this feeling of just utter unfairness

when it comes to the labor of the American worker, which has been rendered non-competitive because everybody has tariffs on us and we had tariffs on nobody. And then the fact that the stock market has rallied, you know, S&P 500, the Dow Jones, everything back to where it was before Liberation Day. We had a great jobs report out today.

Who's responsible for that, though? Just to clear of the presence said earlier this week that this wasn't his stock market. Is that they rallied on Biden's economy or was that Donald Trump's rally? You can try to gotcha me here. Like I don't mind that at all. Like I'm trying to like explain to you why people feel who support the president feel like this is incredible. So it's, I'm not going to take responsibility for every silly thing he says. Like I obviously this is his stock market. That's all I wanted. That's all I wanted. You thought that was a silly thing to say. I mean, it wasn't a gotcha. It was actually a question

coming up, who's his stock market? No, I mean, I don't mind. You can ask me about every silly thing he said, and I'll tell you how I feel about it. Like, I'm not, I don't have a problem with that, but the service I'm providing here is explaining why so many people feel like this is going actually really well, despite the fact that the stock market suffered. And I would even go further and say for a lot of people, like myself and a lot of the

people I talk to, a lot of working class people, the fact that he was willing to stand up to Wall Street. and to enrage the entire global economic elite. Like, they were acting like, people in the media were acting like this was a bad thing that the Wall Street, you know, everybody's angry at him and everyone around the world is angry at him.

But to us, that is, like, I never thought I would see a president say to Wall Street, you go screw yourself because I don't work for you. Like, and it's exactly what you would have expected from a Democrat, but the Democrats did the opposite. you look at what President Obama did before he became president in 2008 in rallying the Senate votes to get the $700 billion bailout passed through. And then as president, allowing $30 billion in bonuses to go to the crooks who set up a system

whereby 10 million Americans lost their homes. That juxtaposition between the Obama administration choosing Wall Street and telling Main Street to go screw itself versus Donald Trump telling Wall Street, I don't work for. for you. I work for the forgotten men and women of the heartland. That is what I think people are going to remember in 10 years and 20 years from this first 100 days. I want to get into the issues. And I was trying to think of an interesting way first to do it that haven't been on the other podcast. So we will get to the issues. We'll get to immigration and trade, as you mentioned. But actually think as you mentioned, one of the services, you can give us the eyes of what other

people see that maybe we don't. So let me give you things, what I call things that you can't unsee and ask you what you think they say about Donald Trump and explain how we should take them. And then this level said a little bit on me. I didn't vote for him any of the times. I'm a conservative. I did for this window between the election and the inauguration think that the upside, I always categorize on the upside. There's an upside to Trump and a catastrophic downside and I voted against him for the catastrophic downside, but hope for the upside. And I kind of thought, well, maybe we'll get the ups on. Two days before the election, a kind of, before the inauguration, one of the things I can't unsee happen, and I started getting a little down. And that was he created

a Trump mean coin. Two days before he was inaugurated, lots of issues going on. A Trump mean coin occurs. For a period of time, at 5x is net worth. Let's say he's worth $5 billion. At the height of it, he was worth $30 billion. It went down, it got rug, pulled people lost money, but they're still making money off the fees. Some people estimate hundreds of millions of dollars. The Trump family owns 80% of it. Of course, last week, we learned that there's now pumping it up again. They're going to have a meeting in the Oval Office for the top 20 holders of it. Foreign countries can buy these coins. You know, thing I couldn't unsee. I would tie that with last week we learned that Donald Trump Jr. is going to be a part of a partnership starting the executive board, a club in

Washington C, that is 50x the price of any non-country club in Washington, D.C., the second most expensive club in the country next to Mar-a-Lago, where executives and people can come, members who pay $500,000 to meet with cabinet members behind closed doors. Well, how should we see this? And I put that in the context that we're told that this is the Main Street president, not the Wall Street president. How should we see these things? It's not my favorite thing that he's done. I think if there's something illegal there, somebody should point that out and sue it, you know, like, sue for it or, or gets in, like, I, I see why, like, this is, like, not populist. I don't see where anything illegal happened. What I have advised him

to do this, no, is this my favorite thing that he's done? No. But I don't see it as significantly different than the stuff that Joe Biden was engaged with with his son. I mean, I think that we accept or have accepted as Americans a certain level of this, you know, the idea that a president's children should be allowed to make money and that we understand that to a certain extent like Hunter Biden's paintings would not have been nobody would have bought them if he wasn't the son of the president but in a way that this is like if Donald Trump was selling paintings while president I mean Hunter Biden was bad the artwork this is the president doing it from the White House with a meme coin and now inviting people in the Oval Office people who can donate money

from all around the world and you're allowed to know who donated it where Whereas, as bad as Hunter Biden was, supposedly they're supposed to be anonymous, like, buyers of his ridiculous. Right. But isn't, I mean, this is much better because we all know who bought them. We all know who's going to be making those, like going into the Oval Office. This is all happening very much out in the open. It's not like a backroom deal where somebody paid somebody off and then they did something. Like, if, you know, somebody from, you know, India buys a bunch of these meme coins and then gets a meeting in the Oval Office and suddenly India's share of H-1B visas skyrockets, like,

we will know that that happened and then we will be able to call it out and find out whether something illegal happened. The point I would make on this is, again, I'm not, this is not my favorite thing that he's done. I would not have advised him to do this. But, you know, Elon Musk, right? We all know that the president is very close to Elon Musk. He sees him as an ally, an asset. He wants him to have a very good experience at Doge, despite the fact that I think Doge is a bit of a bust, is a bit of a fraud from the beginning. I'm not a big fan of Elon Musk. I think he has huge conflicts of interest, not least because the entire supply chain for every Tesla that's sold outside the U.S., which is most Tesla's, is in Shanghai. So to me, he is basically an asset of the

CCP. When Trump found out that Elon Musk was going to have a briefing about our potential war plans with China, he hit the roof. And Axios quote was, what the F is Elon doing there? make sure he doesn't go. So even when it comes to a person who gave him $250 million, without whom arguably he could not have won the election, who he has welcomed into the White House and given this plum position, that did not stop Trump from being very aware

of the conflict of interest between him and his very close, perhaps closest buddy, the only person who he potentially sees as a peer. And he was very careful to make, sure that that didn't happen. Of course, there was a lot of fallout from that. We made it look like I think a lot of people thought the fallout was over Iran, but I think the fallout at the Pentagon was over this. And so to me, if he's willing to be that vigilant about Elon Musk's conflict of interest, that made me feel a lot better about this meme coin situation. But again, all of this

is out in the open. And another thing he's shown is just absolutely, totally unwilling to be in any way influenced by foreign actors, foreign countries, Israel showing up and asking for something that everyone thought would be an obvious thing, hey, back us, we're going to bomb, you know, the nuclear reactors in Iran. And Trump was like, no, you're not. We're not doing that. So I think from that point of view, like he just seems to be in a place right now where he is very clear of what the mandate is. And he is going about that and really not allowing himself to be influenced one way or the other, certainly not by bad actors and not even by his close his friend, Elon Musk. Let me just put a finer point, and then we'll move on to the next thing

I can't unsee for your comment. Actually, I got a text from my producer, you know, Adam, who says, actually, I was wrong. He might not know who donate. You can hide if you're one of the donors to the coin. I'm not an expert in mean coins. But I just think it's important, important to Elon Musk donating went to his political action committee. It seems at minimum Donald Trump will make hundreds of millions. If the coin goes, continues to go up like it did, he will make billions, maybe multiple X times his net worth as president promoting a meme coin. You're arguing that because Trump is better at it and therefore it is like a worse. I don't think any president from the Oval Office, we have evidence ever tried to make money off

the Oval Office. I thought his, isn't it Don Jr. who's running the coin, the meme coin? It's not Trump. It's an LLC. It's fight, fight, fight LLC of which the Trump family owns 80% of. We don't have the details of what percentage goes to different place. But Trump is promoting it. Right. He's promoting it, but it's his son, it's his family foundation. Well, I don't think we know who is the ownership of Trump. We know that Trump family owns fight, fight, fight, LLC. And they apparently own 80% of the coin. So it's exactly like Joe Biden and Hunter Biden. As if Joe Biden had an art, an art show at the White House and got money from it, probably. Every report says that he is likely

owns some of fight, fight, fight, fight, LLC, maybe a lot of it. That should be made clear. I mean, we'll see. I mean, but if there's something illegal happening here or corrupt, like that should be substantiated, but for now it does seem like...

Forget for a moment if he makes money or not. Why would he spend his time promoting this with all the things going on? Does that tell us anything about his priorities? That he would spend time, he'd create a meme coin before he got inaugurated with a million different things going on, and then he will tweet it out while president.

To me, that seems consistent with is his unwillingness to not disparage judges who are ruling over him, who have cases, he has cases before them. Like he's fundamentally resisted the idea that his freedom of speech should be abridged in any way due to his position or his power. And I think you see that consistently across the board with Trump. Like he very much rejects the idea that he should change the way that he talks or that there should be things that are off limits for him to say because he is the president or because he is the most famous person on or other because he has a lot of followers who might get angry at this judge if he says this thing or at his daughter or so forth.

Like that's how I see that. I mean, the question of promotion in that vein. But again, not my favorite thing that he's done. And if there is some corruption here that is actually something illegal going on, I will call it out. I just haven't seen that yet. While other money managers are holding, dynamic is hunting. Seeing past the horizon, investing beyond the benchmark, because your money can't grow if it doesn't move. Learn more at dynamic.ca slash active.

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use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Second thing I can't unseat, which you can help explain. The cabinet meeting the other day, every cabinet member goes around. It seems like they're, you know, they spent most of their time

trying to figure out creative ways to praise Donald Trump. There is a video from Vladimir Putin when he went to a business community and you had business leaders come and just want to praise Putin for thanking the economy. What does that say about Donald Trump? How should we understand why he seems to need that? I don't think there's any evidence he needs that. There's evidence that they need to do it or feel they need to do it or feel they want to do it. But you think he told them beforehand, you better get the compliments.

I need new compliments, new material guys. I mean, no other cabinet has ever done it. Why do you think they felt the need they had to do that? I think they feel really grateful to him is like the obvious, like... You think that they feel that they have to go and praise him, you know, one overtopping the other every time they speak about what they're doing? I think that's like the Occam's razor, no? What do you think?

I think it's a... I think they know that in order to curry favor with him, and to be in good graces, they know they need to praise it. It's like when Mike Pence, every time he introduced Donald Trump, he had to go, You know, I stand on the broad shoulders of the man behind me. You know, I almost compare it to, you know, every time devout Muslims talk about Muhammad, they go, you know, praise and peace beyond him. They have to, you know, it's like that version for Donald Trump.

You have to, every time you mention his name, you have to say, you know, he's bigger than a giant and stronger than a bear. I'm going to admit something that potentially compromises me. but I sometimes feel like, I feel so unbelievably odd by what he has accomplished. And I think to myself, like, girl, you have to stay objective here. Like, you're a journalist. Like, you have to think of things you don't like. You have to, like, how could, but no, that is my objective assessment is that he took

on both parties and slashed and smashed the elites and is waging class warfare on behalf of the forgotten Americans of this country. And that's my objective analysis. and that comes with certain feelings for someone like me who feels utterly disgusted and outrage with how this country has treated the working class and what that has done to our democracy and to our institutions.

You develop feelings when your objective analysis that you have developed through just looking at the facts and trust me, Jamie, it was not comfortable for me to arrive at this conclusion. I don't want to say like that it's more objective because I'm coming from the left and, you know, I got so much abuse because I recognize this, because people can recognize things that are in their interest to recognize,

but it was very much not in my interest to recognize this. It was very hard to admit it. So I feel like I came by the analysis very honestly, but once that happens, like, think about where we were, where both parties were on China 10 years ago and where both parties are on China now, because one man stood up to both parties with no one behind him and was willing to go to jail in order to say we cannot keep mortgaging our grandchildren's future to our greatest adversary. So that does, I know it's hard for someone like you to understand this because like you don't feel that way about him and probably you've never felt that way about a president. I'm not comfortable with the fact that I feel that way, but I do.

And I'm not going to, I can't lie about it. And if I met him, I would say, I can't believe what you accomplished on behalf of the working class. I would have other questions. I'd probably ask about the meme coin, you know. But I think that, you know, these accomplishments are significant and they are emotional. And people act like that means you're in a cult. But what it actually means is you care deeply about this country.

And when you see things going in the right direction, when you thought that was impossible, that makes you feel a certain type of way. And I think that that's what I see. I see what you're saying. I know it's funny because you're like, oh, wow, this looks like, North Korea, I can get where you're coming from on that. And I get why for someone who does not agree with me

that these are major accomplishments, that this could seem alienating. But I look at that and I'm like, well, let's say you are Tom Holman, you know, he's not in the cabinet, but I don't know if he's in that meeting, but you've waited your whole life to, protect the American people from gangbangers. You waited your whole life to do this. And someone

gives you that job and says, go for it, right? I mean, what are you supposed to say to that person when you're given the opportunity? You said if you meet Trump, have you not met Trump before? No. Where would I've met Trump? I was a journalist. I mean, honestly, I think if we send that answer to his comms team, I guarantee you he's going to call you to meet you. He loves, I think, things like that. So I mean, why wouldn't you meet him? You are a journalist. A lot of journalists I've met him. So I'm actually a little surprised. I was going to ask you to give us some insight from a meeting. I met him as a journalist. So I thought that you might have as well. You're a higher caliber journalist than I am, didn't? I don't think so. I don't think I would do

them anymore. One more thing I can't unsee before we get into the issues. Trump came into office and one of the first thing he did was strip people like John Bolton of security detail, security that was there for threats against Iran. He recently also signed an executive memo asking the DOJ to target some of his political enemies, particularly Chris Krebs, but he wasn't the only one. Chris Krebs, we only know of because he was the head of cybersecurity in 2020 for Donald Trump, and he came out and said the election of 2020 was not stolen and said that his boss was not telling The truth, Krebs has since resigned from his publicly traded company. Probably he didn't say this is the reason and denied it, but probably because he didn't want to create trouble for them or they asked him to resign. He also lost his global entry and now is fighting whatever investigation might come out. I guess two questions. Why would Trump focus coming in on people like Chris Krebs? And can you think of any president who ever has done anything at least as openly like this? targeting their enemies. I think from the administration's point of view, well, I thought you were

going to ask me about the lawyers who were involved in the lawsuits against him. There's that one, I forget the name of it, but that one outfit that basically does a lot of like democratic, political, legal stuff. I think it's Perkins Coy you're referring to. Was it that? It was another one, David Weiss, was it? I think the Krebs won is the most interesting because he didn't seem to have done anything other than say that Donald Trump didn't win the 2020 election. I think from the administration's point of view, we live in a society where our cultural institutions have become very captured by a left-wing ideology, which means that they frequently push the Democrats agenda rather than, you know, objective values that we're. we can all agree on, despite often being funded by the taxpayers. We're seeing this with like the lawfare against, you know, universities. I think what they're trying to do, not with those

specific cases, but more generally, is suggest that we have to have some way of having accountability for the fact that these institutions have become drivers of democratic politics. There's this feeling very much among Republicans and conservatives that their personhood is not recognized by a lot of the institutions that we all rely on and that are funded by the public. So how do you change a culture like that? How do you take a culture that is the result of the fact that the people who end up on the boards of these institutions and people who end up, you know, in the top positions and then also who end up in the sort of mid-tier, you know, professional managerial class, that all of these people have a degree or two or three from a fancy university and that they have a political agenda and

orientation that is very much at odds with where the public is today. Like, what do you do about that? How do you create a sense that there is going to be accountability, that the right is going to start pushing back and standing up for its own values? And I think that this is the thing that they landed on. Now, this is not something I would have recommended doing. I actually think that given how many people tried to put the president in jail, he's been pretty circumspect about, you know, there has not actually been a lot of retribution and there has not actually been a lot of revenge. There's been a little bit, but by and large, you know, he has not gone after the people that everybody was expecting him to go after. So I appreciate that. I don't think that this was

necessary, but I do think that after you've been through what he's been through, coupled with this view of how do we change, like, the expectation that at the cultural level, the left always wins, despite the fact that they have lost the respect of the American people. And I think that a lot of those executive orders, when you go through them and you look at them sort of more broadly, that's kind of the orientation, that's kind of what they're trying to achieve. No, it's only been 100 days, so he has some more time to go after other people like Chris Graz. You'll have to have me back, Jamie, you know, every time he, you know, there's a new executive order targeting someone. Let's get to the issues. Tariffs, you like them. I'm just ask you, what is the goal of the tariff policy?

Oh, there are so many goals. I think for Trump, you know, a tariff, it's funny because somebody screamed this at me on a panel in a derogatory way, but it was like the perfect metaphor. I think Trump sees a tariff like a Swiss Army knife. Like it has so many different functions. It does so many different things. So for starters, it raises revenue. So we have a 10% global tariff right now and we're bringing in billions of dollars. We don't know exactly how much

because setting up the process of getting that money is going to take time, but it is already generating revenue. Now, I don't know if the goal right now for the administration is to keep that 10% tariff in perpetuity or if that's just the starting point for all of these negotiations that are currently underway. But that's just one. It generates revenue. Number two, it reshores manufacturing. Number three, it gets us off of our dependence on China and the Chinese supply chain.

I think what the administration is trying to do right now is create a kind of soft global embargo of China. And in order to do that, of course, we need our partners. We need our allies to participate in this. And I think that that's sort of what they're trying to negotiate right now. They're trying to convince other countries to put similar tariffs on China. I just read in the Wall Street Journal that China is coming to the table now on fentanyl. Never wanted to do that before. But now if there's 145% tariff on China, they want that. He put a China on Mexico.

They instantly started policing their side of the border. Tariffs on Canada are to prevent the Chinese from using that as a backdoor into our economy because of the USMCA. So it just does so much. And of course, just getting rid of the situation where we're the past. of everybody else where there's a race to the bottom in terms of wages. And so the product of the labor of the American workers no longer competitive, which is why we've seen all of this kind of destruction of the manufacturing base here in America. There was a poll that came out recently and everybody was mocking it. They asked two questions. The first question was, do you think

America should have more manufacturing jobs here at home? And the second question was, would you like to work in a manufacturing job in a factory? Or as more factory jobs, would you like to work in a factory. And so do you think America should have more factory jobs? 80% said yes. And two, do you want to work in a factory? 25% said yes. So everybody was saying, you see, factory jobs for thee, but not for me. I mean, my God, Jamie, we've never had 25% of our population employed in manufacturing. If we could get to half of that, if half of those 25% could get their factory job, their dream job, we would be well on the way to the American century in an American golden era. The middle class would be totally revived. Those numbers are fantastic. But because the

elites don't want to work in a factory, they imagine nobody else would want to. And the other piece of this is, this is not related to tariffs, but it's a really important piece. This whole idea that everybody should go to college and work in the knowledge industry and get a degree and forget at working with your hands for a living, the era of that is over. You know, we're overproducing college educated people by 50% 100%. It's 50% of college degree holders work in a job that does not require a college degree, meaning that we, like, they're just, the economy simply cannot sustain another, you know, 30% of this country getting college educated and working in the knowledge industry. What we do have is a huge dearth of skilled trades folks. We have a

dearth of truck drivers because that industry was destroyed by illegal labor. We have a dearth of people who can work in factories because of all of this deindustrialization. Trump has always believed tariffs are great and everybody is sitting around saying, oh, one day he says it's for this, one day he says it's for that, one day he says he thinks it's good for all these things. And what we've seen over the last, you know, since I guess Liberation Day, the last month is just a willingness to pivot as he sees how things are working, as he sees which parts are not working to try to pull along the economy and pull along the business community with this plan of getting us weaned off of our addiction to China. And I think today's numbers really show that

it's working. If the goal, at least one of the goals, is to get us weaned off of China and get our allies to work with us to oppose China and put tariffs on China and kind of do what we want with China, why would he spend the beginning part, and including Liberation Day, putting his boot in our allies' teeth? This is my read of what happened. Everybody who says, I kind of like the idea of tariffs. They should have done it in a targeted way. They should have done it carefully. They should have laid the groundwork first. They should have brought along our allies in a nice way, right? This is from, I assume you don't like tariffs, but even the people who are kind of on the left who should like them, this is sort of what they've said. My view on that is,

you know, for decades, these people have had unbelievably unfair tariffs on us and we have had no tariffs on them. They have shown zero willingness to have anything like a commensurate or fair trade policy with us. He tried in the first administration to get better trade deals and failed because there was absolutely zero interest. There was zero leverage to bring a country like India, which has, I believe, a 20% tariff on us on every single import to the table to renegotiate that because what are you giving them slash what are you threatening them with? Like there's nothing we could offer them that would be worth the billions that they take in from those tariffs. And so I think what Trump needed to do and what he did was he needed to show them that

he was perfectly willing to just go to the mattresses. And that's basically what Liberation Day was. He picked up a baseball bat and he said to the global elites, that's a really nice stock market you got there. It would be a real shame if anything happened to it. And then proceeded to basically destroy it. And then he came back to the table and said, you know what, you know what, I'm going to give you all a break. I'm going to give you a break.

How about just a 10% tariff? He lifted all of the big commensurate tariffs, came down to 10%, at which point, Jamie, they were relieved. So what he actually accomplished was a 10% tariff, global tariff, in which people said, thank you. Like, the art of the deal here is just astonishing. And now we see that we have trade deals that are in discussion, India, South Korea, Vietnam, probably the most important countries when we're thinking about creating new supply chains

and cutting China out of the picture. And those are imminent. We've already seen Vietnam and South Korea, I believe, putting tariffs on Chinese steel. like there's stuff is happening and it's happening now and it's happening quickly and it's stuff that could not have happened i believe in any other way i cannot imagine another way in which this would have gone down i disagree with a lot there but i want to try to keep focused Halloween is on Disney Plus So you can feel a little fear What's this? Or a little more fear

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Conditions apply. Visit rbc.com slash avion. What is the strategic 3D or 40 chess for keep saying Canada is going to be the 51st state causing Canadians to sell their houses in the United States? How does that help them get what he wants on China? Okay. So I have no reporting on this, but it does seem to me pretty obvious that Trump wanted the liberals to win in Canada.

Like everything he did, you know, the conservatives were up by so much. and everything he did made that worse and he knew that that's what was happening so I'm not quite sure why he thinks it will be easier

to negotiate with the liberals but I think he does think it will be easier to negotiate with the liberals the reason Canada matters I don't know why he's I really don't know

why he keeps saying 51st state and all of this but the reason Canada matters is because what happened with the USMCA is that basically we put all these tariffs on cheap cars from China

and so China started building car factories in Mexico to circumvent the tariffs. We have two back doors into our economy through Canada and through Mexico. And if they're not willing to work with us on the tariff front, we're basically helpless against the threat from China. So I think that's why they're very important. People keep saying, why put tariffs?

I mean, that's why we have to put tariffs on China and Canada and Mexico. They have to, if they're not on board with this policy, if they're not helping us with this policy, it won't succeed. why he's going about doing it that way? I really don't know. I mean, it's something somebody would have to ask him, a reporter who's met him, perhaps, Jamie. You also mentioned shifting supply chains. It's one of his goals here. That seemed contradictory to the goal of getting all the factories to come to the U.S. to produce in the United States. He doesn't want every factory to come to the United States. I think what he wants is a significant number of high-skilled factory jobs in the

United States working on the product of the future. And then I think that there are some things that he would, you know, that we would be okay with having a supply chain just somewhere else. But you're guessing that because he has not said that. He is not, he's not actually delineated any of his. I'm guessing all of this. Like I, I'm reading this, I'm reading what's happening. You were believing this is some McAvelli, this great plan that he came up with. I mean, I guess all the reporting around it is it really wasn't clear what the strategy was going in to almost April 2nd. I mean, they were deciding on this

in the last moments, some of which against his advisors and that you have people having Puna Navarro go to a different room while they convince them to send out a 90-day thing and that there is not this great plan that you just laid out. Trump is a chaotic person.

And, you know, when you're taking on the elites of both sides, like 100% of Wall Street, the entire political class, the entire consultant class, like it takes a certain personality to do that. And that is not like a careful, like people like you and me don't do stuff like that because we're careful and we're careful about how we speak.

Like you have to have a certain willingness to break things. And that comes with a certain kind of chaotic personality. What it suggests though when like they say, oh, Peter, there's a meeting down down over there. Can you go to that meeting? And they come in and they say, tweet this out now. it doesn't suggest that like this is a guy who just breaks things and he knows what he wants and he does it. It's such a guy that is, we'll do the last thing someone tells him to do

and they convince them to send out a tweet when the other advisor would tell him not. It doesn't suggest a high level plan. Am I wrong? I mean, maybe I'm wrong, but in the sense that someone doesn't know what they're doing, they're going by what they feel at the moment. I think that's a very funny and charming story. It does not change how I see like, today's jobs report or the fact that the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial average have all recovered or the fact that China is begging us for a deal to get rid of the fentanyl that's killing 100,000 Americans every year. Like the chaos, like you have to compare it with the accomplishments, which are so significant. And I just like...

But, Patrick, when you said the accomplishments aren't there yet. You think what he's achieving would be an accomplishment because you like tariffs, but we have not achieved that. I think that, I mean, certain accomplishments have already been achieved, of course. I mean, there wouldn't be three people illegally crossing the border. Oh, no, I'm talking about the tariffs right now, though. There wouldn't have been, like, three people illegally crossing the border if Mexico hadn't, like, significantly upped its game on its side, and it did that because of tariffs. And China wouldn't be saying, I'm here to negotiate on fentanyl except for the tariffs. And Vietnam and South Korea would not have put tariffs on Chinese steel, if not for the tariffs, we put on them. Yeah, there's a

small possibility that there will be zero trade deals in the next 90 days, but it is infinitesimal, weaning ourselves off of the addiction to cheap Chinese goods in which we sold out our children's future to our greatest adversary. I'm sure you and I both agree on that, and that is not something that you can accomplish in a month. But given where we are, the fact that the stock market has rallied, the jobs report is excellent, the fact that there is this growing recognition that we're willing to do this as a country together for the common good. This is like a, it's a spiritual moment. It's a spiritual thing that is happening here between Americans. It's very cool. Is it possible that the stock market has rallied because they don't, they're starting to believe

that Trump will not stick with his tariff policy to any great extent? It's possible, but he will stick with it. They're wrong about that. Do you think it's rallying because they think he is going to just continue on with the tariffs and ramp them up or or not reduce them to a to a, you know, a baseline level? I think that despite the smugness of your smile, I do think that there is a feeling that things are actually probably going to work out and people are willing to play ball. I'm sorry, I don't, I don't mean to be smart. No, but even if they're willing to play ball, do you think the stock market is rallying because it likes that the tariff policy or it likes, there's going to be some level of certainty, or it believes that it will be a much

lower tariff rate for everybody and maybe eliminate. I mean, if Trump comes back for the deal of Europe and they, you know, reduce some barriers, you might call them significant or maybe insignificant, they allow us to sell things that they might not have allowed otherwise, but the tariff rate is back to where it was before. Will you call that a victory? Or will that not be good because you think the tariffs should remain in place? I don't think tariffs aren't end in and of themselves, except that they generate revenue and I like revenue. I thought they were, though. I thought they were an end of them. They raise revenue and they bring manufacturing back to the United States. But that's not a, I mean, once you re-shore the manufacturing,

you don't need the tariffs anymore, right? So they are a tool for achieving goals that we want, right? Like if we paid off our deficit, we wouldn't need to raise revenue, right? Like, they are a tool. But there's no way in 90 days if they come up with this deal that they would have resured manufacturing, right? I mean, they would take years for every short manufacturing. Right. They have to show that there has been a new supply chain created, that, you know, there is a certain, you know, significant investment. But that already we have. Trump has attracted over $1.5 trillion in manufacturing investment since he took office. And that number keeps growing.

So to the extent that those factories, that that manufacturing investment has already been committed, you know, as journalists, it's our job. to make sure that they actually happen. And, you know, I respect people saying, I'll believe it when I see it. But these are major, major companies committing to creating factories, to reshoring manufacturing, to investing in AI and in AI workers who are Americans and Trump signed executive orders

about training a next generation of young people to work in AI. I mean, this is all great stuff. So to that extent that we have already trillions of dollars committed to this project, right? Like, it's going to take time to build those factories. But the wins of the tariff policy, there are certainly already wins on the board for anybody honest enough to admit it. I do agree if those get built, that things built in the United States would be good. It's unclear, like in the last administration when they offered deals, some of them

were already planned and they announced them for Trump. And maybe some people saw the cabinet meeting and understood that, you know, saying nice things to Trump helps them. But I hope they get built as well. But let me ask you, as you said earlier, you get the sense that I don't like tariffs. You're right. I don't like tariffs. And, you know, Milton Friedman always would say that, you know, the negative side of terrorists are easy to see because they're concentrated in a steel town. But the positive effects, the reduction in prices and are much harder to show. You said on some of the other podcasts, well, the Americans will pay more for iPhone. That's a luxury good. But, I went to AI and I asked, you know, what goods prices will go up because of tariffs.

You got cheese, you got coffee, strollers, mattresses, power tools, paper towels, and detergent. Famously, Milton Friedman did the pencil. I don't know if you ever seen the pencil, how a pencil gets made, comparative advantage all over the world, inputs from all over the world to make this very cheap pencil. So I'm sure pencil prices will go up. These are not nothing. And over time, they increase the costs for ordinary Americans. the Americans that you write about in your book,

how is that not a significant detriment? So, first of all, I didn't say iPhones are a luxury good. I said people who buy a new iPhone every year, that is a luxury good. I personally do not have an iPhone. I don't understand why you would pay $1,500 for something when you can get one for $300. But I obviously understand that people like iPhones,

but working class people don't buy a new iPhone every year. They buy one once every four or five years. and in four or five years, you know, that price difference will have shrunk significantly. Secondly, working class people, many of them will have better jobs and better wages as a result of this policy. That is my belief. That is what we saw in the first Trump administration. We saw that the bottom 25% of wage earners saw 4.5% wage increase, while the top 25% of wage earners saw only a 2.9% wage increase, which means that Trump was the first president in many moons,

shrink income inequality, which is something no one gives him credit for because the left doesn't want to admit it and the right doesn't care about it. But working class people who have been left behind from the immense prosperity that we have generated in this country over the last four years will be making more money. So that's like the ideal. Now, of course, some things are going to become slightly more expensive. But I think if you look at steel and aluminum, which in the first administration, Trump put a 25% tariff on, when he put that tariff on, the price of steel and aluminum did go up for about four or five months, but then it actually came back down because we have a very healthy capitalistic society within the United States of America. This is kind of

the Hamiltonian view, you know, that you can have very healthy free markets within the country and that that will regulate the price points. Now, of course, some things are just so cheap from China and we have to find other supply chains, component parts, or what have you. But overall, you know, when Trump said, so instead of having 30 dolls, they'll have two dolls and maybe they'll cost a couple bucks more. And people got so angry at him for saying that. I have to tell you, like, I hear from a lot of, like, working class people. I mean, people reach out to me a lot.

I get hundreds of messages, thousands of messages some weeks. And so many people who have so little are frequently saying, but we have too much crap from China. Like, it's like an obvious, like, sense of, like, that we have gotten used to a way of life that is not good for us and that is not sustainable. And I was talking to a truck driver the other day. And he said to me, you know, what people don't seem to understand is that our whole lives as working class people

is making sacrifices for our children. So I started working when I, this is him. I started working when I was 17. I had my first two kids when I was 21 and 22. So that meant that from all of my 20s and my 30s, I didn't go to the doctor, they went to the doctor. I didn't get dental care, they got dental care. I didn't stay home, they stayed home, and I worked to give them a better life and a better

opportunity. And he was saying to me, like, yeah, maybe things will get more expensive. But if this is the price we have to pay for our children to have a better future, that is 100% worth it. Like, that is the ethos of my life. That is how he put it to me. And I've heard a version of that from so many people. And it just seems to me like the people with the least are the people least worried about this.

And meanwhile, it is people who will never not be rich, who are the most worried that a plastic doll from China, you know, that a kid will have maybe a higher quality doll that was made in America and cost a little more than 10 dolls from China that are going to fall apart and break and get lost in the house because there's five of them. Was that gourd from your book you were talking to? That was not Gord from my book. It was a different truck driver. So here's why I think people were upset, Batya, at that comment, or I don't know if upsets the right word, but mocking it or upset might be the right word. Because I think back to the, it made me think back to the image of the Soviet premier company in the United States and looking in our grocery stores and being shocked about all the options that we had. And this was the American economy compared to what he saw at home. And what Trump was saying to me was like

the reverse of that. Like, you know what? You know, we're going to have fewer toys and they're going to cost more. And, you know, this is not the stuff of American economic prosperity in growth. So I think that's what some people felt. But to your point about your belief that this will, you know, do well for certain workers, I think it's a good way to put it. You believe that. But I do think you're categorizing the American economy in a super negative term. It was only three months ago that the economist was putting on the magazine, the American economy as the most amazing economy in the world, which doesn't mean there aren't segments of the economy who are not doing well as others. But when you compare it to a lot of places in the world,

first world places in the world, people joke about not having, I mean, there was a meme. I forget what the relation to do. There's no air conditioning in most of places in Europe, you know, a lot of places in Europe. There's all sorts of things. in places around the world. People would die, you know, around the world would trade places with the American middle class in a second. So, you know, to blow everything up in a revolutionary tariff trade policy for the belief that things might be better when most economists say they will not be better for even the

average American seems, well, certainly an unconservative. It's not a Berkian conservative strategy, but it seems a pretty risky proposition to say the least, no. It's a very important question. I'm very glad you asked me that. First of all, most economists were also telling us two weeks ago we were going into recession. So they get things wrong a lot, especially when it's not in their interest. They're very not happy with Trump, and they are often wrong about him, about the air conditioning.

There's something to me that is extremely distasteful about people who have achieved the American dream, who are in the top 10%, telling working class people who are working two, three jobs, and will never own a home. and have no retirement savings and feel like they can't afford health care and their children are worse off than even they were. But you have air conditioning. So you should be happy with that. The problem is not that they are poor, Jamie. The problem is that they are working class.

They work and they have been shut out of the most modest version of the American dream that people like you and I take for granted. And that is unfair and it is gross and it is wrong. Yes, our GDP is enormous. but GDP is not equally distributed. So, for example, having an open border policy in which you bring in 10, 15 illegal immigrants

and flood a number of industries with them the way Joe Biden did is going to be very good for the GDP because it's going to make rich people much richer. But it also means that all of the wage growth that we saw went to illegal migrants and not to American workers. It undercut their wages in four or five different industries. And the economists seem fundamentally incapable of addressing this point or accounting for it. The health of an economy cannot just be measured by GDP that is so wrong.

And, you know, I get that, you know, this kind of like, you know, distribution or whatever may, like, rub you the wrong way. But I think in terms of thinking about how do you have a stable democracy, which I hope maybe will appeal to you a little bit more, you cannot have a stable democracy without a stable middle class. I think that's something probably we would agree on. And the American middle class is shrinking. And I mean, not now. I mean, it's been thanks to Trump's policies. But for many, many years, it was shrinking. You know, in the 1970s, which was really the high water mark for working class purchasing power.

Working class people make, on average, a little bit more today than they did in the 70s. But the hallmarks of the American dream, a home, education, health care, or retirement, these things have just skyrocketed. in terms of, so their purchasing power has radically, radically diminished. So back in the 70s, the biggest share of the GDP of the wealth in this country was held by the middle class. And today it's held by the top 10%, often the people who are saying, well, you should just be happy that you have air conditioning because in Europe they don't have any air conditioning. And, you know, there's something about that that's just like we're not measuring the right

thing. Baja, I mean, with respect, this is one of the least favorite things that have. happen and these type of things that you obviously did a book, you talked to some working class people. And then you can say like, you know, look at you smug talking about air conditioning. You know, I talked to the working class and, you know, they want more than that. I didn't, I didn't mean you, Jamie. I didn't mean you. I meant like that argument, but you understand what I'm saying about that argument, that there's like this feeling of like that, of asking them to be satisfied with some when we, with their own disinheritance over like things that are like, well,

I understand, but because, I mean, but there's, yeah, I'm sorry, I really did not mean to offend you. I was not, I didn't mean that, I didn't mean that in a personal way at all. I understand. Okay. I'm misinterpreted, but I'm not offended. But I would say the reverse of that is because of this policy, which you believe will be better in the long run, they are going to get higher prices on things that really do matter to them, not iPhones every year, but strollers, pencils as the famous example. And if you increase lumber, and I know housing is a very important thing to you, the cost of housing will go up. I mean, these things do increase prices on the middle class. And maybe it's worth, maybe you'll, for a segment of a manufacturing town that

was decimated, if you bring a factory back there, that individual town, the people there may get a better break than they had before. But what if more people who are working class across the country who don't live in that town are now paying higher prices? And they're actually worse off. So, I mean, I think a lot of the economists that you're saying, who are part of, what you call a part of the elite, would say that, you know, if you, when you aggregate it across the country in the United States, more people will be worse off than better off. And maybe they're wrong. And maybe Peter Navarro, you know, the one economist who has this position is right. And economists do get predictions wrong often. I like to make, make jokes about that a lot.

But in terms of free trade, there's something, there's nothing as unanimous among economists as this will make people better or soft in the country, which may be wrong, but it does seem like a hurdle you have to go over. There's one thing that's as unanimous and it's immigration, mass immigration, which is like the most unpopular position in America today. So, but that is near, there's one economist who thinks that, you know, who is willing to admit that mass immigration hurts the working class and hurts working class wages. you know what? We're going to have an election in two years and then another one in two years after that. And if you're right and I am wrong, the American people will have an opportunity to vote on that. That's what makes this a great country. I may be wrong. I'm not sure that this is going to work, but I think it is worth a shot and it is worth cheerleading for it to work in case it does because the sort of dispossession of the American middle class is horrifying. It's terrible. And we talked about American exceptionalism, you know, a part of that had to do with this idea that everybody could achieve the middle class, middle class standard of living, the American dream, if they worked hard. And that's just not the case anymore. And I think Trump is the first person who has sort of an agenda for how to fix that the Democrats have nothing on this front. Like, what they want is a $15

minimum wage. Have you ever heard of anything so stupid in your life? Like, who can live on $15 an hour? There's nowhere in the country where that's a living wage. And they act like this is, or the pro, act. Like, it's ridiculous what they think is going to help middle class Americans. They have no plan except to raise taxes and redistribute it and to treat working class people like they're poor, which, of course, working class people don't want that. But I think Trump was the first person to say, I have an idea, I have a plan. And I think it's really worth sort of seeing, it does seem right now like things are much less bad than everybody was predicting. But you're right. It could be that all the economists are right.

And then Ali Crowe, come back on your show and say, Jamie, I was wrong. Forgive me. I'm humbled. I have a question. And this is going to be one of, you might accuse me of a smart question. You said Trump had an idea.

I had a plan. Do you believe he had an idea in a plan or just an idea? I don't really, I don't know the difference between those things. I try not like think about what's going on in its head. I don't have any way of knowing that. Like I can only like. Well, here's why with the plan.

And this is my last question on. and trade and will move, move to immigration, is that even if he was right, even if this was a great idea in the long run, and I know one of your answers as well, you know, no one else did it, so you can't really blame him for the way he implemented it because, you know, at least he's doing something. But there are many businesses right now on the verge of bankruptcy, and they are just the elite. They are people who started a company. And because, you know, they're not policy makers. Policymakers said you can get factories in China

and build things and build it here. And there on, we had Ryan Peterson on from Flexport, who's a logistics company. He deals with a lot of these companies. They're on the verge of bankruptcy because it was implemented right away very quickly. I see some of them on Twitter, who were Trump supporters saying Donald Trump, I agree with your

goals here. Give me a year. At least, I can't do it in this period of time. And now, you know, we're going to go bankrupt if it doesn't change. Was this, I mean, these are people who are, you know, maybe it's worth in the long run, but are suffering right now and we'll go out of business. Was this planned out right? I mean, was there, should there been more planning on how to implement this? I feel very sorry for them. I was listening to somebody on CNN today who was saying that he had already paid for inventory that was in China that he now couldn't get access to. And of course, like your heart goes out to people like this. I wouldn't be opposed to, you know, the administration offering them some sort of assistance.

I do think that there will probably be a pause at some point as the China negotiation happens. But I also think, you're right, that they are victims of a scenario in which they were encouraged by successive administrations to create businesses built on a business model that meant that their working class neighbors would not be able to afford a home. And that was not their fault. And so my heart goes out to them, but I still think the policy is extremely important. for our national security, I mean, for our health as a nation, for the common good, for our prosperity long term. So I would say they should help those people. They should offer them something. And, you know, this question here is, like, what are we aiming for? What is the downside and what is the plus side? Do the, wasn't there, isn't there, wasn't it Thomas Sol who said you always

have to ask, like, what, instead of what or something like that? Like, you know, there's always going to be trade-offs here. There's never going to be a perfect plan. This didn't go off perfectly, but I think that even in the chaos, as I said before, he was able to achieve things that I don't think could have been achieved in any other way. And I think long-term people are going to be very happy with it. But I don't want to dismiss those stories. They're painful to read. They're painful to me to read. And my heart goes out to those people. And I think about them a lot, especially as I'm, you know, one of the only people willing to defend tariffs policy. I said that was my last question on tariff, but I do have one more because you mentioned you believe

there will be a deal with China, which I just wonder, what do you think that deal will be? What would you be happy with? Because in some ways, if the goal is really what you want it to be, maybe there shouldn't be a deal with China. Maybe we should just cut off trade relations with China completely. So if this deal just reduces tariffs and, you know, gets some, you know, buying some soybeans again, which is not nothing if they really do it. Farmers create a lot of soybeans.

But that's certainly not what you're talking about. That's not the type of radical change that you would like to see. No, I think long term we have to have high tariffs on China. I don't know if it has to be 145% tariffs, although Kevin O'Leary is out there saying these should be a 400% tariff. So, you know, the administration's coming in under. But when you get those FTX deals like Kevin O'Leary, Kevin O'Leary didn't, maybe you can say whatever you want. Totally. So I think that they're, you know, they'll always now be, I mean, always,

hopefully, you know, if Congress doesn't pass some sort of legislation this is long to be over, you know, next time the Republicans lose, which if they nominate J.D. Vance might be sooner than we all think. But would you not like J.D. Vance? No, no. I like him. I just don't think he can win a general election. That's interesting. Why? Oh, because I think he's very. vulnerable on a lot of different issues that are very important to the normies who gave Trump

his victory. Interesting. That's a topic for another day. Immigration, I agree with you. Immigration has pretty much legal immigration stopped at the border. I do wonder though the costs. Do you think that's a good thing, Jamie? Yeah, I'm for, I'm for, Jeb Bush was for ending a legal immigration and legalizing those who had come here who aren't criminals. So, I don't see too many people who are for illegal immigration. So, yeah, I think it's good that there is no illegal immigration. But as Trump would say, he wants a big open door, which I'm not sure some of his base say. But I guess my question is some of the consequences of that on the other side.

And one of them is it does seem that tourists who are coming here, and it's hard to tell if this is systematic or these are one-off examples. But we see these stories in the newspapers of getting harassed coming. in the United States. So you might have no illegal immigration, but to end America as a place of people wanting to visit, that seems like a negative, the image that it creates. No? You know, I live in New York, so we feel a certain type of way about tourists. But I thought you were going to talk about how people are, you know, there was, I saw a chart that people are canceling their trips to America. In part because, because there was one story, I think people were traveling to Hawaii and Germans and they were.

harassed because they didn't, and maybe there's more to the story. They supported like BPS or something, yeah. Yeah. And there's more than one example, but yes, people are canceling their trips because their anger. Canadians are selling houses in Arizona and Florida that they have because of the way Trump's treating them. I guess I'm saying the other side of the coin is that it's not only Mexicans who

aren't coming illegally across the border. It seems like a lot of other people don't want to come at all. And if the long run goal reduces everybody wanting to come here, is that more. negative than illegal immigration coming across the board. I think I feel about that the way Trump feels about what some journalist asked him, how he feels about the fact that China doesn't want to buy our movies anymore. And he was sort of like, I can think of worse things. I mean, you know, this is, tourism is important.

Our hospitality industry is important. I don't think this is going to be like a long-term thing. But it's not, I can't say it's at the top of my list of things that I'm worried about. Well, here's what I would say I would, I am worried about and I'm concerned about. And one of those things, I almost had it in the things you can't unsee list, you know, I don't know if the gentleman that everyone's going down to see in El Salvador is a gang member or not. There's a lot of negative stuff.

I just saw something new come out about him. And he's probably not the best poster boy for this. Maybe it was the gay Venezuelan hairdresser who seems to have been sent down there. And to me, it is a real problem that to send illegal immigrants. who you don't know are gang members, even if one of them is not a gang member, down to El Salvador to a dungeon there that they may never get out from.

I guess my question is you, what do you make of this and is this America? I mean, is this the concept of America that you have in your mind as something that is fathomable? Yeah, I have no problem with this. the fact that nobody's talking about the lovely gay hairdresser suggests to me that something else

was disclosed or discovered about him like why would they have chosen the alleged wife beater human traffic or gangbanger as their poster child if they had this lovely other person who didn't have any of these problems so the fact that the only mistake they made was this one guy who turns out to be somebody

who nobody would want to live next to suggest to me like a pretty high level of success. Their only mistake was sending him to El Salvador rather than to another country. But I feel like... That's a pretty big mistake, by the way. I mean, it's a pretty big mistake to send him to El Salvador where they have kind of, you know,

whatever they do with their people in their own country, one thing. But basically, you may never see the light of Bay again. You may never get out there. He's an El Salvadorian. You're talking about the Garcia. Yeah. I'm talking about some of the Venezuelans. that were sent to El Salvador.

He as well, because he had a real claim, but let's take him aside and say the Venezuelans that were sent there, specifically the gay hairdresser, but we don't know who else might have been sent there without due process, may not be a criminal other than crossing the border illegally. If there were any mistakes made, they should sue to have their cases heard,

just like this Garcia-Obrego-Kilmargo-Obrigo-Gargo-Garcia fellow did, but we're not hearing that actually. And I think that the real outrage is that like these people were allowed to just walk around freely in the country to begin with. And that's the thing that is really bothering me here and this whole question of due process. Forget the fact that due process meant nothing to these people when they broke our laws and committed a felony to enter the country. But what about my rights as an American citizen to not have to share the streets with someone like Kilmorrow Bray? Diego Garcia, who was accused by his wife on many, many different occasions of beating her, which is a deportable offense.

Like, why was he still here? I think from my point of view and from the point of view of a lot of Americans, like, we're focused on the wrong, like, judicial part of this here. Like, yes, I get it. I mean, I agree with you. The guy shouldn't be on the streets if he's convicted of that. He shouldn't have been in the country if he's that. They should, you know, even if he was convicted of the gang, I'd be less concerned about

sending him to El Salvador and what they do with them there. I do have concerns as an American of sending people without due process to a dungeon which they may never escape from because we make mistakes and get things wrong. The idea that we are sending innocent people there seems pretty crazy. It's just something that doesn't seem American to me. I believe that the Constitution provides for people who are here illegally to have due process. rights. But I think that we have gotten used to acting like they should have the same rights as an American citizen. And I fundamentally object to that at the highest level. And I think we all need to have a little bit more zealousness when it comes to protecting our own rights as Americans,

which implies that other people, especially those who come here illegally in violation of our laws and commit crimes while they're here, like the idea that we should be, expending huge amounts of energy on these people. It seems so alien to me and foreign and insane. And so to me, when you say as an American, are you comfortable with that? As an American, I am not comfortable with the fact that Obrego Garcia got a deportation order, which was then stayed. Yes, he should not be sent to El Salvador because a rival gang might kill him. But he was then just allowed to stay instead of finding another country to send him to. That was a violation of my rights as an American.

to walk the street. I'm planning with sending him to Gitmo while his due process plays out. Seriously, I'm not even kidding. It would be much better to send people to a place like Gitmo where they, you know, if they're innocent, they would have time to go through the process, then to send them to a Gulag in El Salvador, which is like maybe never see the light of day and they don't have due process rights. That is my concern. But he got process, Jamie.

This guy got due process. He had an order of deportation, which just died on the vine because a judge said, well, you can't send him to El Salvador, and no one decided, okay, well, then let's go and find another country to send him to. So that he had a lot of due process, actually, a lot. Yeah, I'll leave it to legal experts who seem to have, in my mind, won the argument when they're debating with J.D. Vance and whether he went through the proper due process. But let me explain why I think it matters to even American citizens, or at least they have reason to be concerned. Well, I would be concerned if I was Chris Krebs, who we talked about earlier. When Donald

Trump says, you know, I'm looking in the ways to send American citizens. First, he says really violent criminals. But if you're looking at this from a distance, especially if you've been targeted by Trump, like this is an example, Chris Krebs, and Trump is sending people without proper due process to El Salvador, says he wants to send American citizens without due process, and then targeting you, you know, maybe he won't do something like that. Probably he won't do something like that, it doesn't seem that what would stop him from sending a political enemy that he has prosecuted to some place like El Salvador, where they have no due process. To me, that's like totally unimaginable. I mean, he didn't say American citizens. He said

homegrown terrorists was the phrase that he used, which homegrown to me suggests could have been somebody who was radicalized here, but is not necessarily, he didn't say citizens. But then they're defining, I mean, there's, questions of what is a terrorist? Are you abating and abetting a terrorist by helping, you know, an illegal immigrant or something along those lines? So, you know, you can expand what what you define as a terrorist. I think it's unlikely too, Batcha, but when I wrote in 2016 in my case against Donald Trump that, you know, there's a five or ten chance he might try to overthrow the government and stay under power. I thought it was unlikely then too. So I, so, you know, what seems

unlikely now, Trump's serving a third term. You know, I think you have to take a little bit seriously. And the way to take it seriously is to take it, you know, the first instance when it's not applying to American citizens due process. And that's where I get concerned when you might be sending people to a dark hole. To me, that argument is the one creating the slippery slope. Like, it's saying like, oh, there's a slippery slope here that Trump is in danger of falling down when it's actually the person saying that who has created the slippery slope, there's no evidence that they're going to actually start treating American citizens the way that they've been treating these illegal gangbangers.

And I think from the administration's point of view, like that's kind of unfathomable. The whole point they're trying to make here is that there is a difference between being an American citizen and not being an American citizen. Citizenship has to mean something for it to mean something. And I think that is what they are insisting upon. I think there's at least a 5% chance of Lettta James is convicted that El Salvador could be a, I hesitate to laugh because I'm actually a little, I do think unlikely, unlikely. But a lot of things I thought about Trump unlikely occurred.

I should say also, God forbid. And if that happened, I would obviously be at the forefront of the resistance against it and calling it out. But that was a funny thing to say, Jamie. You said Doge was a failure, so I'm not going to kind of, but you think that the deficit needs. to be, or the debt needs to be reduced? Yeah, I think they should raise taxes on the wealthy. This has like, you know, I think it's something like 82% support among the American people, including 66% of Republican voters support raising taxes on the wealthy.

Like, I don't see why there's any hesitation to do that. I think Trump actually, from his point of view, he's worried, A, that rich people will just flee the country, and B, I think, given the tariffs and the immigration controls, which were very weighted in favor of labor. He wants to give the business community some reason to be optimistic and celebratory and really invest in America. But to me, like, it just seems so obvious. Like when 80% of Americans want something, it should happen immediately.

So I would support, you know, keeping, you know, 10% tariff in place, raising the, you know, raising taxes, you know, marginal taxes on the wealthiest. And then lowering the corporate tax rate to incentivize business and investment. So I think that combination, like, would work for me. But I don't think they're going to actually go in that direction. The issue with, like, old school, Reaganite, you know, the ones being excised. Jamie, I haven't been able, I haven't said one thing to please you. Like, even when I criticize Trump, it's on the things you like about.

No, but I would say both Trump and this is that there is a way. Like, the raising taxes doesn't help. The terrorists who don't help. There were gentlemen who ran in 2012 that are now called rhinos, named Romney and Ryan, and they had a plan that would have fixed the debt. But they're the only thing that is off limits. But I guess, anyways, let me close with two questions here. Foreign policy.

I do believe you're right that Trump has an anathema to wars. I don't know if I would characterize some of the past conflicts the way you did. But here's my question. I favor trying to get a settlement with Ukraine in Russia. And I actually did very early on because I didn't see, I didn't see this as a positive result. I thought when Ukraine had the advantage early on might have been the time through a position of strength to come to something. I don't know if Putin would have come to anything. I think, and I think as you do, he's a very bad man. But is there not consequences to what occurred

in the Oval Office? When you bully and kind of have a mercantiless position to what are our allies, like Ukraine is our, you know, an ally and we, even if we want to end the war, we should be sympathetic to their plight because they were invaded. Isn't there consequences to like give us your minerals or like we don't want to support you? I mean, this is not the America that we've know, right? And people around the world, foreign policy, countries that that are, you know, allied with us because of our stances and our views and our power might now view us differently. I think the mineral deal is, from Trump's point of view, the security guarantee that Zelensky was asking for when he torpedoed that Oval Office meeting by making it clear that he had changed the position. And you saw first, I think, Vance realized that and then Trump realized it, and that's when it went off the rails.

I do think Trump has a bigger plan in mind for this is just my analysis. I don't have any reporting on this, but I think he sees Russia as a potential, I don't want to say ally, but a way to break up the Iran, China, Russia, access, if you will. And I think that what he's trying to achieve here is a much greater realignment to the extent that our allies don't like that, they're not going to like anything he does in that space. It is too soon to tell if his play is going to work, but I admire him for trying to end the war so vociferously. I haven't seen anything that I think suggests that that is not his number one goal. He talks about... What do you think of... What do you think of him calling Zoensky a dictator

in the cause of the war and not saying something similar about Vladimir Putin? I think that he has probably, we'll see, I could be wrong about this, but it seems to me right now a very accurate understanding of how Putin thinks. And his view of foreign policy, my understanding of it is that, you know, in the liberal model, which really reigns in the kind of foreign policy world of the expert class, there's this sort of view that when you have a disparity in power and you're trying to get people to the table to negotiate, you have to shrink the disparity. So you have to sort of weaken the stronger party and elevate the weaker party. And when they achieve some sort of parity,

then they can both come to the table and negotiate, you know, as equals or what have you. And I think Trump's view is more a kind of real estate view where he views a disparity in power as actually being very good because both sides have an incentive. He thinks that if you sort of raise up the weaker party and bring down the stronger party, neither party has any incentive to actually negotiate because the weaker party is now stronger.

The stronger party is now weaker. So neither of them wants to get out. But if you say, look, Putin, you have all the cards, right? You are the person who has the nuclear weapons. And because you have, you don't value the sanctity of human life, you have an endless supply of cannon fodder, right? And Ukraine, you don't have any cards left because the American people are done funding this. That's just a fact. Like they're just not willing

to do it anymore. So at that point, how can we use the disparity in position in order to achieve something? I think that's what he was trying to signal to Russia is, you know, you're not going to be worse off now than you were before you invaded. And the thing you were most worried about, which was Ukraine being part of NATO, which in my view is not something the equivalent of which the United States would ever accept. For example, if China started setting up shop in Mexico, we would never accept that. So recognizing that and saying, I get where you're coming from, now come to the table and let's put an end to it. And of course, none of this is to diminish the fact that this war is completely Vladimir Putin's fault and responsibility and every death lies at his feet.

It can both be the case that he is a murderer and a dictator and be the case that Russia has legitimate security concerns and that if we want them to ever come to the table, those have to be first and foremost recognized. Now, what I've gone as far as trying to say, Zelensky is a dictator, probably not. But I think that in Trump's view, this is the only way that you can get Putin who holds all the cards to give something up, for example, Kerson, you know, to get back to the status quo before he invaded as the final settlement, which is probably how this is going to end. One more question.

There's a lot where we could go in here, but it's much longer than I usually do with the podcast. I'm enjoying this. I'm very flattered. I could go to the Oval Office. I could talk about some of the other things and maybe push back a little bit. But I just want to get some credit me. Is your belief that Vibra Poon? who, by all accounts, is described as very calculating, you know, former KGB, that if Donald,

he will be more susceptible to giving up what he might not have given up if Donald Trump's more, it will flatter him and attack Zelensky, that these things will make him give more than he was willing to give as opposed to defining what his interests are before going into negotiations. I don't think it's about flattery so much as a. recognition, which the previous administration was unwilling to give, that the initial ask before Putin even invaded is something that is reasonable. I think that's the better way to put it. So before Putin invaded, and then within two weeks of the invasion, he laid out his ask,

which was a ratification of the status quo, that Crimea be recognized as part of Russia, which nobody disputes is going to be the reality for a very long time, that Ukraine not be admitted to NATO, which I don't think anybody disputes is going to be the reality for a long time, and that the Donbas region, which at the time was in a civil war conflict, be recognized at the time Putin wanted it to be recognized as the independent republics of Donetsk and Lujansk. Now I assume he would want it recognized as Russia, because Russia has declared sovereignty over that region.

I think what he was looking for from Trump or what Trump thinks or what my interpretation of Trump's and, you know, the way that he's treated this issue is he believes that what Putin needed was some signal that his security concerns and his desire to have the status quo before the war ratified and recognized rather than constantly feel like Ukraine was sort of going to be co-opted by the West, that those are reasonable and legitimate things. things for Russia to have wanted without, of course, saying it was legitimate then to wage a war over that. Well, let's leave it there and close on this question. I want to go back kind of where we started. You came from the left. That's kind of your orientation into MAGA. This is what you said on Barry Weiss's podcast this week. What we are seeing right now is a market reorienting itself around American prosperity. As Americans, we owe something to the common good. And I think it is hard for an elite that has gotten used to getting rich off the backs of the working class to understand that. When I hear some of the things that we've been talking about here, especially

with trade and stuff, I do see more of a left-wing approach. Sometimes, you know, the elite, a cultural revolution, Maoist type, you know, like, let's get back to the factories. Is that is that fair to say that you see Donald Trump more of a man of the left than a man of the right? The Democrats want you to believe that Donald Trump is George Wallace, but Donald Trump is FDR. He's bringing back the FDR coalition and the FDR agenda. So I don't know if he's of the left, but I would say he is a populist who to me seems very clear is willing to do pretty much anything to restore the dignity of working class life in America. And that is a very noble, noble goal.

With that, Bacier, thank you for joining the dispatch podcast. Thank you so much for having me. God bless you, Jamie. Calling all book lovers. The Toronto International Festival of Authors brings you a world of stories all in one place. Discover five days of readings, talks, workshops and more, with over 100 authors from around the world, including Rachel Maddow, Ketouru Isaku and Kieran Desai.

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