The MeidasTouch Podcast - Senator Ruben Gallego on Trump’s Failing Presidency

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Starting point is 00:00:50 free of charge bet mgm operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming ontario trump voters are getting a rude awakening it seems every single day whether it's donald trump posting about reopening alcatraz or AI images of himself as the Pope, as the world is grieving the passing of Pope Francis, whether it's Donald Trump's trade wars against the world or Donald Trump saying he doesn't know if he needs to follow the Constitution and saying that he doesn't believe immigrants should get due process and that they shouldn't get trials at all. When we're looking at the polling data, we're seeing some of the biggest drop off as well among Trump voters. Latino voters for Trump now overwhelmingly disapprove of Donald Trump. And you remember we were showing you videos like this leading up to the election and even thereafter.

Starting point is 00:01:44 Let's play this clip right here. If they let in hundreds of thousands of people who already have criminal records, if deporting them creates a mass deportation, I'm all for it. But what if rounded up in all of that are people who work on a farm? They're doing the jobs that Americans don't want to do. Does that worry you? That wouldn't be fair. Of course, you know, they need to make sure that they don't throw away, they don't kick out, they don't deport people that are family oriented. That are family oriented. Let's bring in Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego. Senator Gallego, you were warning leading up to the 2024 election about Latino defections,

Starting point is 00:02:22 and that was one of the things that we saw. So tell us, what are you seeing now? Well, I certainly have seen a reversal, mostly among Latino men. And I would say it started about three to four weeks ago. So it's a combination really of the fact that they're deporting people that aren't criminals, that they're separating families, all these things that either A, a lot of these voters lied to themselves and said that that wasn't going to happen. Or, you know, let's be clear, Trump at different points in time will actually say the same thing. And he just said it two weeks ago, like we shouldn't be deporting anybody that's here working. Right. And he'll kind of drop these nuggets here and there to kind of give hope to some of these people that some firm, some reason would want to believe them. But the economy is the other thing that kind of has really pushed these guys

Starting point is 00:03:09 back out of at least not being big, big supporters of Donald Trump. You know, Latinos are, you know, much like, especially Latino men, I'm sorry, just like black men, they're the first to fire and the last to hire. You know, when wages get stagnant, they're the ones that feel it right away. It's all these things that they are more sensitive when things start going bad. And I guarantee you that if the economy, which it is, is slowing down, they're the ones that are feeling it right now. And I think that's why you're seeing these numbers kind of change. Let's talk about the economy because the markets are very volatile. It seems one day Trump or Scott Besant, his treasury secretary, will talk about, oh, there may be a deal, there may be that.

Starting point is 00:03:52 And so the market has these massive fluctuations. But I think systemically, when you take a step back and you're looking at the shrinkage in the GDP, you're looking at freight volumes and trucking volumes, another story's emerging. Can you speak to what you're seeing, Senator? Yeah. So these Latinos, men and women, aren't basing their feelings on the stock market. Not that some of them don't invest in the stock market. Some of them that I'm sure have 401ks or IRAs or aren't invested themselves. What they're responding to is to slow down the economy,

Starting point is 00:04:25 right? These are the men and women that are your truck drivers, your delivery, short haul delivery people. They're the ones that work at factories. They're the ones that do hourly work. And when they feel the contraction in the economy, they're the first ones that feel it, right? They're the waiters. So like if they start seeing tips being less tips coming in, you know, they're the ones that are working at factories and ones that are working on construction sites. And so if there's any slowdown, they're the first ones to feel it. And that, that is what they're responding to. So Besant and the president can come and say whatever they want to kind of ease the markets. If these men and women feel that they are unstable, uncertain about their future, they're getting fired or they're getting their hours reduced, they're going to be unhappy.

Starting point is 00:05:13 It doesn't matter what the stock market is doing. And, you know, if you look at what happened in the first quarter, you know, GDP contracted by 0.3 percent. And that's, you know, not that's even before terrorists hopefully get queued in, wait to see what happens second term. So this is, this is something that is going to negatively give an opinion. They're just not going to, you know, right now, they're not going to trust Republicans when it comes to the economy and immigration, which are the two things that a lot of them did trust last time going around. Well, how could they trust your Republican colleagues when you try to show objective data to them about the economy? What do they say? But have you read The Art of the Deal?

Starting point is 00:05:53 Have you read The Art of the Deal? It's a book, everybody. Yeah, yeah. Well, I never talk, I never try to talk to anybody about it, like bring objective data to the conversation. You know, I try to keep it extremely as close to reality as possible and what they understand and which not just Latinos, but everyone understands. Are your wages going higher? Have prices gone down? And normally they just tell me, no, that's not the case. And if you do that enough, they'll figure it out.

Starting point is 00:06:23 And I think there's going to be a lot of spinning that's going to happen from the right from Donald Trump. At the end of the day, you know, inflation is still high. You still can't buy a house in Arizona. Rent's still high. You can't buy a vehicle cheaply anymore. And now there's a really good chance that you're going to be losing your job. So everything that any trust that they've had for this president is now quickly, quickly eroding. You're a veteran. You were in the Marines. I want to ask you your view about how Donald Trump's been handling the military, Pete Hegseth's careless handling of classified information, cutting of the VA. What have you made of all of their moves there? Yeah, let's start with two separate things. Number one, this administration is the most anti-veteran administration in the history of this country. And I'm not even close, right? Today, we had the VA secretary at our committee hearing, and he could not pinpoint why and where he came about that he wanted to cut the workforce of the VA by 15%. There's no

Starting point is 00:07:31 logical reason to it. There's no study. There's nothing. They just came up with this number. Some doge boy out of, you know, San Jose, California, who has zero experience with, you know, the VA came up with this number and now they're executing it. You know, this recently they tried to float the idea of changing Veterans Day to World War II Day, World War I Day. Like, how stupid are you to even think about that? You know, there's veterans that are starting to see the effects of some of these cuts, you know, where you were hearing about, you know, therapists that have to have some of their sessions in open-air cubicles, which is horrible for privacy matters. It is all bad. And it doesn't surprise me.

Starting point is 00:08:11 Again, this man has zero concept of selflessness, self-service, or service to the country. And he thinks if he just acts tough that the veterans would be happy with him in the end. And that's not the case. On the military side, the lack of leadership from Hegseth, as well as just the fact that they're entirely eroding our world alliances and making the world more unstable

Starting point is 00:08:36 is what I think also pisses off a lot of veterans. We feel that the president's pissing away years and years of a stable relationship with stable and reliable alliance with our European partners. They're making us weaker versus China. All these things that, you know, some of these veterans and people that were military did not think would happen are now happening. In addition to just, you know, again, the hypocrisy of something like HEXF talking about, you know, the security, operational security that, you know, we need, and then engaging in such really, really risky information sharing that would have gotten me thrown in jail when I was in the Marines. Talk about your trip. You're going to Bucks County, I understand, soon.

Starting point is 00:09:27 They're calling it, the press is calling it shadow primaries. What are you calling it? Why are you getting there? Well, we're going there because we got invited to go, and we've gotten invites to a lot of places to speak about Medicaid and Democrats, and this is something that I've done before being a senator traveling the country. Even in Arizona, this last couple of months, I've been traveling to red parts of Arizona to talk about the cuts they want to do to Medicaid, how people are going

Starting point is 00:09:55 to get kicked off healthcare, how hospitals are going to shut down, maternity wards are going to shut down, all because these guys want to give a massive, massive tax cut to billionaires that don't need it and won't even notice it. The one, Bucks County actually works within my schedule. I have a pretty busy schedule, largely because I have two kids and I have a third one coming June 12th. But again, I look forward to talking to the people in Bucks County. They're much like the swing voters in Arizona. They want to hear the straight truth.

Starting point is 00:10:21 They want to know that the government's looking out for them. And they certainly don't want to be seeing really critical programs like food stamps, like Medicaid being cut just to help the mega, mega rich. I want to talk about this crypto bill. It's not getting a lot of attention. You posted about it recently as well. I think this began as a bipartisan effort in theory to put guardrails on these stable coins, build an ethic system around it and saying, hey, this is the wild, wild West. Let's reign it in a little bit. So this started with great intentions. But as you just posted the other day, well,

Starting point is 00:11:01 Politico wrote Democrats reverse course to oppose the Senate crypto bill. But you wrote, this isn't like a reversal out of nowhere by Dems. The fact of the matter is, Dems, including me and my team, were trying to negotiate with Republicans for weeks. The bill that was introduced for floor consideration backpedaled on a lot of progress we made and did not include other improvements we sought. It seems they want us to suck it up and vote for this bill without our input. That's not what we expected during this negotiation and not how I operate. Our statement makes clear we won't let them jam us. Looking forward to continuing to get this bill in a better place. Let's talk about this one first, but then I think it goes to this broader systemic issue where here

Starting point is 00:11:39 you are trying to engage people who are difficult to engage with. And then they kind of go sideways on you and trying to change the deal and then make it something that's less palatable. So talk about this bill first. Is it a big deal? What's happening? Well, it is a big deal. We do need to get some legislation through and reason why, because every other country now has some level of stable coin legislation. And we want to also have that industry, that economy here. But we also want consumer protections. We want national security protections, anti-money laundering protections.

Starting point is 00:12:12 And these are things that are fairly reasonable. And I had been working with Republicans and five Democrats on the committee who had worked and actually passed. And we said when we passed, like, there's more to do, but we want to continue in the spirit of bipartisan work on this. And all of a sudden, the language changed. They backtracked on some of the stuff we had already approved. They weren't even moving forward with further legislation. And then they announced the date of the first vote. And I think the purpose of that was really to put Democrats in a bad position and try to force us to vote for it. And, you know, as, as the, the ranking member on the, on the committee, I just cannot

Starting point is 00:12:51 allow them to just jam us and pass bad legislation that has, you know, open loopholes that will create, you know, really bad situations for consumers, for investors, all these kinds of things. Especially when we're, we're here, especially when we're here. We're here to work. We're here to speak and try to come up with a good bipartisan bill, but don't try to fuck us on it. That's not going to happen. And they're trying to do these threats where like, oh, if you do this, the crypto industry is going to say that you're anti-crypto. We're all going to label you guys as anti-crypto. And that only makes me even more intensely mad at them because now you're anti-crypto. We're all going to label you guys as anti-crypto. And that only makes me even more intensely mad at them because now you're just doing more and more threats. We can get a

Starting point is 00:13:29 good bill. We could get a good bill that protects consumers, protects investors, brings back a lot of this innovation back to the United States. And we have the time to do it, but you can't throw us in the corner. You can't try to fuck us and then you know uh you know deal with it like that's just not gonna work um especially when you still need our votes no matter what you know i read i read the bill because i'm a dork like that and one of the things that i saw in that they were trying to jam through it seemed to me in my reading of it was some exemption for the presidency that like donald trump is not he he gets to do deals with Abu Dhabi and whoever he wants to do it with. It doesn't apply to him. It applies to every, was that in there or was I, was I reading that right? Or so we, we have had an understanding that there was going to be, this is not a Trump

Starting point is 00:14:15 focused thing that there's going to be a general understanding of what you would do with any type of industry currency altogether. And that means that the president, the vice president, and members of the executive cannot engage in this because it is essentially self-dealing, right? Same with senators, by the way, and same with members of Congress. They should not be able to issue their own stable coin, issue their own coin in general, anything like that. You should not be able to do it.

Starting point is 00:14:41 So that was our understanding. And again, this isn't a Trump-focused thing. He is going to be able to do his meme coins all he wants. That's a totally different subject matter. But no one is going to have an exemption at all on this. And that's not the biggest hang-up on this at all. It's the fact that they're backsliding on their word and, again, trying to basically force our hands. And in you know, that's my opinion. I think that's going to work. Senators, are there any other issues? I always like to ask this when I have senators on here or governors, because there's things that I'm not seeing. And you probably don't get asked some of these questions because the reporters have, you know, they go in with a

Starting point is 00:15:19 series of questions. Are there any other areas that you think is not getting enough attention that you want people to know about in front of want people to know about in front of the huge audience that we have here that you think, look, we need to be spending more time on this or that or here's what I'm focused on right now? Well, look, I'm focused on a couple of things. Housing. We just need to figure out how to get as much housing online as fast as possible. You know, when we talk about it, like everyone thinks about it in the way, like, yes, it's

Starting point is 00:15:49 important for us to ask for people to be housed, right? We don't want homeless people. But it's also important for a couple of reasons. Number one, financial stability. People that have homes are more likely to, are less likely to end up below the poverty line, are more likely to have are less likely to end up below the poverty line, are more likely to have better healthcare outcomes. Children, when raised in a stable housing environment, end up also having better healthcare and educational and societal outcomes, right? The fact is right now,

Starting point is 00:16:18 you know, people in their mid-30s are not going to be able to buy a home for quite a while. There's just not enough market that not bring about to the market. And when you're, even when it is there, it's extremely expensive and interest rates are so high. And then you're also creating generational wealth. And then also like at some point, it's just damn depressing, right? Like I was lucky enough. I used the VA home bill at 26 to buy my first condo.

Starting point is 00:16:46 But, you know, there are men and women that are at home with their parents leading up into their 40s. But, like, no matter what we say, that's just not good for society, right? You want people to be happy, proud of themselves, be able to start families or not start families, but living on their own independent lives. And we need to make sure that government is focused on figuring out how does that look like. And it could be a combination of things like making sure we have housing subsidies, low-income housing, affordable mortgages. We need to make sure that cities don't over-regulate and under-zone those areas. That's one of those areas that we should be working on intensely as Democrats. And the other area is energy. If you're on your phone and you're doing anything with your phone, with computers, AI, or anything else like that, you are causing a lot of

Starting point is 00:17:31 energy. And the United States is going to have a big problem in about 10 years if we don't upgrade our energy, energy grids, as well as trying to bring more energy on. And of course, a lot of that will be renewables. But I also do believe that, you know, we have to really, really look at nuclear. And I think that's something that Democrats don't usually engage in. But in order for us to make sure that working class people are going to be able to have affordable energy and still keep the lights on and still be able to have the kind of high tech jobs we want, we're going to have to do a massive investment in nuclear, which, by the way, will also keep our carbon footprint down. And it's one of the things I'm working on right now, actively is trying to figure out how we can get more nuclear energy deployed across the country. Senator Ruben Gallego, thank you so much.

Starting point is 00:18:14 There you go. You didn't see that one coming, did you? I did not see that one coming, but I'm glad we had you on. We'd love to have you back on as well. And thanks for all you do. Yeah, please do. All right, everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to 5 million subscribers. Can't get enough Midas? Check out the Midas Plus sub stack for ad-free articles, reports, podcasts, daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski and more. Sign up for free now at MidasPlus.com. Thank you.

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The MeidasTouch Podcast - Senator Ruben Gallego on Trump’s Failing Presidency

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