The Young Turks - Tit For Tat - April 11, 2025

Episode Date: April 12, 2025

Stock Market Shudders as China Slaps 125% Tariffs on U.S. Goods. Trade Shake-Up: Bessent Leads Talks, Lutnick Plays ‘Bad Cop,’ Navarro Sidelined. Judge Rules Mahmoud Khalil Can Be Deported. U.S. Cites Deportation Powers Over Beliefs in Case Against Mahmoud Khalil. Hosts: John Iadarola, Cenk Uygur, Wosny Lambre SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE ☞  https://www.youtube.com/@TheYoungTurks FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK  ☞   https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER  ☞       https://twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM  ☞  https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK  ☞          https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕MERCH  ☞      https:/www.shoptyt.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. The new BMO ViPorter MasterCard is your ticket to more. More perks. More points. More flights. More of all the things you want in a travel rewards card.

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Oh, my God. Begha! 3x3 315 3x3 319 319 319

319 319 319 319 Brimacki Thank you. All right, go ahead and drop it like it's Donald Trump's ill-conceived tariffs. Well, Wazni Lombre, okay?

Yeah, I forgot to drop it for a second. I recovered, okay? Okay, so John obviously legendary Daddy Dragon at the damage report and was. Not only is a senior writer at the ringer, which you should definitely check out, but on top of that, he's a host of the very logically named Waz Speaks podcast. Yeah, that's right. Check us out over there. That's right.

Okay, so guys, lots to get to. So a disastrous update on Mahoud Halil, but hold super important clarification on it. And that is just an enormously interesting story. Later in the show, a donor complains that they didn't get enough access from the Democrats. I don't believe them. Okay, we'll get to that. And Jamie Diamond tells kids what to do. Story hour with the world's biggest banker.

Okay, can't wait. It looks a lot to get to, I don't know, let's get it started. I hear he's big on TikTok. Anyway, okay, why don't we jump into our little updates on the tariffs, where we're at, where we're going, start with this. China was taking advantage of us and look at where we are. We finally have someone in the White House saying enough is enough, and it happens to be the guy who authored the art of the deal.

I'm gonna peg my money on the guy authoring the art of the deal. And to Mark Levins point, he said, maybe this will be a great, reset, like when we took down the Soviet Union during the Reagan years and we did it economically. Maybe to Mark Levin's point, that is what Donald Trump is doing economically with China. I'm going to put my money on the art of the deal guy. Or maybe Mark Levins a moron. It doesn't know what he's talking about. And he and she are both propagandists and will never say what they truly believe. She would have you believe that she's putting her money on the art of the deal guy. Bear in mind, it's not as much money as it was a

week ago though, even after he retreated flailing from his biggest tariffs, everybody's accounts are still massively, massively down. And Kaylee McEnany knows that as well as everyone does. By the way, we found out between yesterday and today that China's now jacking up their tariffs on our goods to 125%, which is a thing that I guess you can do. It's not quite as high as ours on theirs, we're at 145% because of something to do with fentanyl. And I have to say that while I've mostly been on board with the tariff thing, you know, 10%, 30%, 80%, 145 seems too high, I think. I could see 100, 145 seems like a lot. I think he's gone too far. But anyway, you know what else is going really far?

The Chinese finance ministry spokesman in his response to these anew announcement, he says, The US alternately raising abnormally high, abnormally high tariffs on China has become a numbers game, which has no practical economic significance and will become a joke in the history of the world economy. With tariff rates at the current level, there is no longer a market for U.S. goods imported into China, adding that if the U.S. government continues to increase tariffs on China, Beijing will ignore. Because realistically, at the end of the day, Once you've gotten to 125%, what's the difference if you go to 150 or 200? People aren't buying that stuff anymore, you just can't.

And this is not like both, we both have super high levels, but that doesn't mean we're both gonna be hurt equally because if you look at this chart, we import a lot more products from China than they do from us. So look, the damage to our business is hoping to sell to China won't be quite as much, I guess, as it will be for them, although we will sell less products, but our consumers will pay a much bigger price because of how much more reliant we are on their exports. We import, or at least I should say, we used to import $440 billion. God only knows what that will be. And with these new jacking up of both of the tariffs on both sides, the stock market was hit even more. And I didn't know that that was possible, but

we've been hit yet again. And we'll get to more of Carolyn Leave it, trying to explain this away, and some more of the really scary numbers sort of underlying all of this. But what do you make of it? Yeah, and I have a super fun big prediction coming up in a little bit. Except it's not super fun, it's fairly dire. Okay, you did predict, by the way, last Friday, anyone who believes that the tariffs are going to remain at that level he said that they're crazy if they think they're going to remain.

Yeah, you know, I actually think I haven't bragged about enough, okay? And so we should really remedy that. But so you heard me, John, thanks for pointing that out. You heard me say it on this show, I said it on Pierce Morgan, pretty spectacularly. Carrie Lake apparently owes me an apology, that's awesome. And they said it on news nation on every show I went on. I said, look, I'm telling you right now, it's as bold a prediction as you'll get, meaning I am positive. And if I'm wrong, you come back and you flail me for this, that these tariffs won't last.

And they didn't last. So, and because there's certain economic laws that are invaluable. You can't, you can say like, oh, yeah, I'm going to bully you, can you bully Republican politicians? Sure, can you bully Democrats? Of course, right? But can you bully the bond market. It turns out, no, you can't, right? And so, look, guys, you know what a clown Trump is because he flip flopped and got nothing for it. So this talk of art of the dealer was one of our members yesterday said the fart of the deal is like, come on. Now, no, look, any right winger at this point, whether they're in media or otherwise. like going around pretending that Trump meant to do all this. He meant to put catastrophic tariffs, which crashed both the stock market and the bond market at the same time, which previously was thought unimaginable. They usually go opposite each other, but he managed to somehow miraculously crash both of them.

And then in a panic, he pulls out of all those tariffs except to China, and he gets nothing in return. And that was his plan? Well, if that's his plan, then the Russia, Russia folks are wrong. Correct. He's actually trying to destroy the country from within and works for Saudi Arabia or Putin or whoever else. But that's not, there was no plan. He's an idiot. There I explained it, which is going to lead to my prediction in a second, but was. I tend to echo your sentiments there. Look, I try to say this as much as possible talking about this tariff stuff. Tariffs don't have an innately positive or negative sort of quality.

It's a tool that you will use for a specific end. And what the Trump administration is absolutely never done, besides vaguely bringing back manufacturing jobs to the US, which manufacturing jobs we don't know, they've never had a stated goal for the tariffs. Now, if it was like, all right, we want, I don't know, we want to make chips here or we want to make, you know, some of the high tech technology here. All right, cool. Let's make some more factories out here. Here's the problem with that.

We even had tariffs on the raw materials that it would take to build these new factories. Now it's like, oh, the plan was always to isolate China. Okay, so why did we put tariffs on the rest of the world as well if the ideas that we're going to collaborate with them to put China in a corner? There's no plan. There's no there there. And I mean, in a dead giveaway where the McElaney lady sounds like a complete idiot is Trump came out on Wednesday and he said, yo, people were getting yippy. Not a word. I think he was meant to say like they had the yips. They were getting nervous. People were getting yippy. So he pulled it back. That's it. He literally said it in plain English. It's not art of the deal. It's not grand plan. It's I changed it because the bond markets were crashing. Yeah. It's a it's a great point. I, I will. want to kind of add on to both of you, but first, let's get a little bit more from the press secretary.

Trust in President Trump. He knows what he's doing. This is a proven economic formula. What is he asking of Americans at this time? He talked about transition cost, transition problems. Is he asking something specific for Americans to do? No, I think the president is asking for Americans. Trust in Trump, as I just said, trust in his economic agenda and formula. It's a proven formula that works. I mean, everything's down. Like literally every, the bonds are down, the stock market's still down and prices are surging. I guess it's a proven formula.

She didn't say it was a good formula. She just said it was proven. So she's actually being honest for once. But she says to trust, okay, well then I'll trust him that it wasn't really a plan because he said he came up with it on Wednesday. So so clearly it wasn't a plan. But by the way, that's not even true. That's not even true. Because I'm damn sure not going to trust her.

Because on Monday, when the leaks were coming out and saying that they're planning a 90 day pause, what did she say? She said fake news. She said, this is why you're discredited. And then two days later, they paused it for 90 days. So I'm not gonna trust Trump. I'm not gonna trust her. And by the way, some people might come out of this reversal and be like, okay, good. We went a crazy direction, and now we've dialed it back, and I guess we're in the same spot. Except we're in basically every way in a worse spot than we were. First of all, stock market is not even close to where it was before he started adding on the extra tariffs. We're still down. We're still seeing the bond sell off. We're gonna get to some of the other

They're fundamental numbers having to do with consumer confidence and uncertainty and all that. All that's worse, and maybe most importantly for Donald Trump, who would have you believe, hey, I prove now that I can like throw my fists around, okay, and now they're coming to the table to negotiate. But what have you really done? He would imply he's now demonstrated his power. I would say he's given up all of the theoretical like chaos leverage he had. Because in the past he might have said, come to the table, and if you don't, I'll put these massive tariffs on you.

And now the whole world knows that if he does that, all they have to do is wait a week. And then he'll get the yips, and then he'll back off. He doesn't have even the stupid wild card leverage that he had before. And what if, and we've all paid for that. I don't know, I mean, obviously most Americans aren't in an economic position where they can necessarily own stock, but for those who do, I guarantee you're still down thousands, tens of thousands, maybe for a few of you, hundreds of thousands of dollars, so that Donald Trump could demonstrate just how inept and weak he actually.

actually is. Proven economic formula. It's true. Herbert Hoover proved that it causes depressions. So I wouldn't go back in that direction. So, and now here we are. You know, we talk about the Unip Party and how they're in a lot of ways mirror images of each other. And what was, do you guys remember what the strategy for the Democrats during the Biden era was when Biden seemed to not really be delivering on the progressive bills that he said he was going to deliver on?

They said, don't worry. Later, it will magically make sense. And that strategy was called, quote, trust Biden. That's literal. That was progressive caucus, Permilla Jayapal saying, trust Biden. Now we're at trust Trump, trust Trump. No, I don't trust either.

Biden never delivered on those policies. Trump doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. And the proof is in the pudding. He got nothing in return. Are we rebuilding manufacturing? Oh, no, these tariffs are going to stay for 10 years and absolutely through the whole term and manufacturers are going to come back. So he gave up on rebuilding manufacturing because they're gone.

So which one is it? So none of that makes any sense. And replacing the income tax with the tariff money, which now we won't have. Yeah, of course, but it doesn't matter, nothing's gonna stop that runaway train, right? This is everything is about the tax cuts, they'll do nothing else. They'll do nothing else but the tax cuts, okay? So, and so now, look, you've heard me say throughout all this, there is a right way to do tariffs and you can target certain industries, and that's a progressive point of view

to rebuild the manufacturing base through very specific and targeted tariffs. That's possible, that's obviously not what he did here, he did nuclear level. But I also, we're as about as far as you could possibly imagine. I also say, hey, if you did an actual reciprocal there, they have 12% on us, put 12% on them, no problem, right? But if they have, you know, 12% on us and you put 145% on them, what is that? What is that? And China's right about that line about it being considered a joke in history.

It will be considered a joke because they're right. And John's right. Once you get to a certain number, there's absolutely no difference between 100% tariff and 145% tariff. Because you cannot sell that product. It's too expensive. No one will buy it. So you know what, Trump? Yeah.

They put 125%. We're not making it a million percent tariff. And I guess some folks would buy that. But come on guys, get better, right? So now, so you could have done this in ways where it could have been effective if you were strategic, et cetera. But on top of that, I'm even in the camp of no, bullying people works, intimidating people works. I, you know, we all wish that we lived in a world where it doesn't work, but it does. You've seen them bully the entire Republican Party.

And you've seen them from time to time bully other countries with tariffs. But again, you have to be smart and strategic and go, okay, I'm going to, isolate Mexico. I'm going to isolate Vietnam. And so now they're in a world of hurt because they're the only ones hurt by the tariffs, but we're not overly bothered by just Mexico or Vietnam putting tariffs on us. That's where we build up enormous leverage. That's how a smart person who believes in tariffs would do it. Now what has he done instead? Again, maniacal, right? Tariffs to everyone. Oops, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. Tariffs to no one. Now like these gargantuan tariffs on China, which leads to my prediction. First, let's go

one of our members, Vicky here on t-yt.com, she says, jank, you're always right. Most of the time, sometimes. I'll take it, Vicki. I'll take it. So let's put it to the test now. Okay, so my prediction is this. Yeah, no, the markets recovered, you know, in that big day on Wednesday, everything bounces back when they thought he got rid of all the tariffs or certainly he did get rid of most of them. And then it's had a little bit of an up and down and it was up today, et cetera. No, it's going to crash again. And Trump's poll numbers are going to be disastrous in the next poll.

And then the second and third poll, they're going to be just in a free fall. Why? Because none of the price increases has hit yet. All we've had is the stock market thing. But that affects your pension for some of you right away. But for most of you later, right? And a lot of you don't have any money in the stock market. So the great mass of American people are not nearly as affected as the people howling on cable news who are mainly super rich, right?

So it hit the super rich first, but it hasn't hit the masses yet. Already consumer confidence is way down. It's like at record low levels already, and they haven't gotten hit yet with the price increases. But it's okay, you took away the tariffs, right? No, we import so much from China. It seems like, well, it's just one country. No, that means not all prices are going to rise at the same time as they would have if we kept the global tariffs. But that does mean your iPhone price is going to skyrocket.

And a thousand other products are going to skyrocket in price. And since Trump is so good at propaganda, his side of the country doesn't understand that that's coming. Like they, when it was global, they thought, oh, no, we'll have some short term pain. And you know, look, maybe I got to pay five cents more for eggs or something, but it's going to be all right. Because Daddy Trump, he knows. Trust Trump. Trust Trump. We got this, right? He doesn't know nothing. And if you say to me now, oh, Joe, whoa, whoa, what would you know? The Trump's president? He's going to know a better thing. Okay. Perfect, good. Remember that because I'm not making these bold predictions because they're hard. I'm making them because they're actually easy. It is inevitable. Your prices on a lot of products are going to go up.

American people are gonna be super pissed. That's phase two, and that's gonna be more disastrous for Trump. Was. Here's what I think the viewers should have a better understanding of is that even if Trump had the most flawless, impeccable plan to reorient our trade relationships, you know, globally, he would have a hard time getting it through because not only would he be fighting a trade war against China, but he's also domestically fighting a war against the other party. So he's fighting a two front war here and doesn't have a massive support

for this stuff. Like sure, I'm sure most of the Republican base is still down for it. We're you know, three months into this guy's administration. Sure, people are still on board. There are no Democrats down with it. And he's trying to destroy all of the Democrats in their institutions, at the same time. So he's not galvanizing some massive popular support. This isn't FDR, right, during the Great Depression where the Democrats had massive majorities in both House and Senate. And there was like an actual mandate, like unlike a dude that won by one and a half percent who's pretending to have a mandate. So there's that. Like there's disunity for his very unpopular agenda. And then what people need to understand is that they're going up against the People's Republic of China.

sorry, they don't have Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, the owners of the economy acting in their own interest. When China says one of their major companies should jump, they say how high and they act on one accord. That's the difference. They can make decisions unilaterally for the benefit of their economy, right? And they can make those decisions, not with the arc of a four-year presidential term or even potentially eight years. 50 years into the future, these people are making plans. And Trump thinks that he can just show up and bully these guys as if they're not prepared and don't know every single pressure point of our own economy that is so intricately interwoven

and tied in with theirs. It's insane. This isn't like, oh, we hate Trump. Yes, all three of us hate Trump. But this is a bad idea, right? Like I was just saying the other day, like sometimes, you know, you take Biden with chips. I personally, I don't think we should have did the chipsag. I think we should be trying to compete with China and beat their butts.

We're Americans. We can be better than anybody if we put our minds to it. That's my personal belief. But you can understand the logic of like, let's keep them out of the chips market. Let's keep building our AI infrastructure because this is an important technology. Keep them out. I disagree, but you can see the vision. With this Trump thing right now, it's not that I don't like Trump.

Yes, I don't like him. But there's no vision. There's no, all right, we're shutting off China. industry in this sector of the economy. Here's this an American industry that we're going to give taxes sentence to. We're going to spend government sort of investment with dollars. We're going to open up the treasury for that industry. There's nothing. There's nothing. This guy's just going on TV and blubbering about. This is not going to work. It's going to fail spectacularly. Baz, you're sounding like you're developing a case of the yips.

Okay, I just want to add one or two things. And you're totally right about China and just like we just we don't have a trading relationship with China right now. That seems kind of crazy. I also want ever to remember, he's still got his crazy negotiations with Canada and Mexico. And he's still got that new baseline tariff on the entire world, which is around the level that initially he put on China that created the big dust up during his first day. term, that's worldwide.

And it was sort of my fear that if he does this worldwide 10% tariff or whatever, and then he jacks it up even bigger, and then backtracks, people will be like, well, this is totally cool and it doesn't hurt us at all. 10% tariff on the entire world can still do quite a bit of damage, let alone the 25% on automobiles and those sorts of things that again, he has not dialed those back. But I do want to just, to Jenks prior point about what the political ramifications of this might look like, you need to look at this index of consumer expectations. expectations, sort of like a charting of how people think things are going and how they're

going to go, how they feel. And this, oh, it's fun when you can say something historic, but April's reading was lower than anything seen as far back and during the Great Recession. It is the second lowest reading since 1952. And when you look at that chart, some of you are young, you may not remember all that. He's lower right now than Biden was when Biden got thrown out because he wasn't doing good on on the economy. He's lower than the darkest depths of the pandemic.

He's lower than the Great Recession. He's lower than when people were queuing up for oil and for gasoline during the 70s. And the most amazing thing about all of these is basically every one of those prior dips involved some level, complex world, but some level of act of God. Crazy things that this regime is doing, natural disasters, whatever. This is just Trump. He just decided, I'm gonna do some stuff. You know what? And I'm gonna get us lower than we've been basically since the Great Depression,

purely because he is that monumentally historically stupid. Yeah, he kind of grabbed us by the genitalia here for no reason. And he didn't ask permission. And just one last thing on John's point that I want to reiterate, you know, back in like the dot com bust or the housing market crash in 08 and just ruined the global economy, George Bush not credibly, but George but George Bush could be like, well, I didn't have an, I didn't do this, right? Obama could be like, I just took over a bad economy, whatever.

Bill Clinton could be like, yo, I could have never saw this coming, whatever. With this specific economic meltdown, there's no other reading. Yeah. There's no other causal effect. It's just Trump. He will wear this thing if he continues down this pad. Yeah. Yeah.

Can we show one more chart just because we have to give Trump credit for the amazing things that he does and when he breaks history. This chart of economic uncertainty, the line isn't supposed to go above the title. Look at that. The global pandemic barely registers compared to it. And that's purely just Trump. It took an international breakdown of public health, transportation, the economy. We literally were washing the exterior of our boxes of cereal. And people were like, not so bad.

Trump comes in there like, no. And by the way, look, it's not like some sort of, you know, the Wright loves to say Trump arrangement syndrome stuff. No, those numbers were perfectly fine when he won. They were actually pretty good when he won. So people were excited that Trump was coming in. They thought they were going to get something better. Now that they've seen what they're going to get,

that number can be characterized in words as well. And it's called oops. And so last word goes to one of our members on t.com, Pseudo dragon rodent, the US has now proven that it is an unreliable ally and an unreliable trading partner forcing the rest of the world to figure out how to get along without you, just like when you pulled out of the Paris Accords, the US is never going to recover the place it once had. And so that's a devastatingly good point because once the world thinks, hey, okay, it's Trump. Now, first of all, that's four brutally years. But now we don't know who Americans are

going to elect. What if they elect another Trump? What if they, and another one and another one? So if these guys are totally unreliable and they act in spazzy ways like this where they're like, oh, hey, ally, how you doing? And it slaps them across the face. Here's a 15% term. And they're like, oh, okay, so you guys are deranged. So obviously any rational set of people would make arrangements to go around you, right? And so that's what the entire world is doing now, making arrangements to go around us. And that has devastating long-term impact. All right, love the members.

Thanks for being part of the show. By the way, if you want to be one of the members as part of the show, t-y-t.com slash join. You can get two months off of annual membership there, or you could hit the join button below on YouTube. All right, we've got to take a break. We'll come right back with, as usual, more devastating news, including Mahmahmouda.

Oh, yeah, Mahmouda-Lio. So bad news, but hold, holds, because. Because that news is a lot less clear than people are making it out to be. All right, we'll be back. All right, back on T.R.T. Jane, John Waz, and Julie, welcome. Now you're part of the Young Turks. We appreciate you. She hit the join button below. You can do that like right now as well. Also, by the way, the subscribe button is perfectly free and fun for everyone. So going nuts on the subscribe button. Yeah. All right, John. It's a proven strategy hitting the subscribe button. I've heard it somewhere before.

Let's talk about some of the perhaps the staffing fallout that could come from the big tariff blow up starting with this. Before we let you go, this is just breaking here. Sure. The media says you're in the dog house with Trump. Is that true? Or is that fake news? That's fake news, Jesse. Ah, well, I mean, if he says it's fake news, and with that genuine laughter, he's just so enjoying this conversation. I mean, look, I know that I should question public officials. I think that maybe I'm just being won over by his natural charm. But anyway, that's Peter Navarro,

and he's basically been seen to be kind of like the avatar of Donald Trump's ideological attachment to the idea of tariff solving literally every problem. If there's anyone who has more faith in tariffs than Trump, it would be Peter Navarro. And Navarro calls the reports that he could potentially be about to be thrown under the bus, fake news. But he was also implying right before the tariffs were dialed back that that would literally never happen. You could take it to the bank, they're here to stay. So he doesn't have a lot of credibility in the public marketplace of ideas or rhetoric. But at this point, I think we had talked about the possibility that he could suffer consequences when Donald Trump retreats.

What do you think about these reports? Yeah, so I've got a little bit mixed opinion on it, which is that, so is Navarro fake laughing? I don't have a mixed opinion on that. Yeah, that was wonderfully awkward. Like, eh, eh, eh, that's, oh, yeah, fake news, sure it is, brother. Okay, so yeah, he's lost power, best sent the Treasury Secretary, he's gained power. So we'll tell you what that means and the ramifications of that in a second.

But also, the upside is that they really do have a team of rivals. And is that, yeah, but how does that help us? Well, I want to explain that too. But first, let's keep making fun of Navarra. Yeah, let's definitely do some of that. It is looking like as of right now, he's been basically sideline. That's what Politico is saying, with Lutnik now being sort of elevated, but Bessent probably more so than the others, which feels like kind of like a micro version of the economic

like sort of argument, the factions that happened during Trump's first term, where again, Trump was interested in starting these trade wars and everything, but then like the adults in the room, quote unquote, sort of took over. It feels like Besson's kind of playing like that role in this particular case. But the issue for Navarro is that he's very tied in with basically every part of the disaster that we just experienced and we're still seeing the fall out of. He apparently was largely behind the way that they came up with those particular tariffs for Liberation Day, which liberated so many Americans from their retirement. So he came up with the formula, people are saying, or at least he typed in the prompt

to chat GPT that generated the formula, and maybe he ordered at Kinko's the little write-up of what it would look like. He also insisted that the tariffs would be non-negotiable. And so he's really closely tied to it, more than basically anyone else. Now, for political's report, they had three anonymous people close to the White House that they had as sources. So Jesse Waters is always going to pretend that it's the media saying something. It's the media being told by sources, the endless, again, stream of leakers inside the Trump administration. They're the ones that are the source for this. Now, it's also nuance.

They say that Navarro still has Trump's ear. Trump respects Navarro's aggressive populism, which for some reason in political's reporting doesn't have quotation marks around it, and that that doesn't mean he's at the center of it. And importantly, they also say in the reporting, those sources, that the big feud, the very public social media feud between Navarro and Elon Musk, that that isn't necessarily what's driving. Navarro maybe being put into the back seat here. I think it's mainly just the fallout of the tariffs themselves. But that's the way they're describing it right now. Yeah, so remember whenever there's a story like this, somebody leaked it to this reporter and they had an agenda. So what is their agenda here? This is the best side, the winning side. I'm not saying it's best in himself, but somebody on that side basically saying to Navarro through the press. Okay, now they would add in that remember Elon had nothing new with this because that person is probably allied with Elon. So they don't want people thinking that Elon's the real president and he's the one the biggest donor that's making the decisions, et cetera. So no, no, no, no, no, there's nothing new with Elon.

And by the way, it might not. It might not. But the fact that they said that doesn't mean anything. So now, Navarro, of course, in my opinion, is a grade A clown. He's the one that really believed that these nuclear level tariffs would work when no rational person should have thought that they would work. especially he's a Harvard trained economist dude that's embarrassing oh my god okay and remember he's a terrible guy too he's the one they came up with or at least detailed the fake elector plot to overturn the 2020 election in his book he was bragging about it like right

that we're bringing these electors right and they weren't the ones that were elected but so what and then we steal the election he doesn't say steal he has code words for but they're very thinly disguised. So as bad a guys you'll find, I'm thrilled that he's lost some power. But John's, the part of the reporting that's right that John told you about is that, no, he's not God. He's like Bob. You think he's gone? He's not gone. It's such an old school. What about Bob reference? I barely get it. Yeah, right. Bill Murray, check it out. So he's right there. Okay, anyways. So but look, to be fair, like both Republicans, Democrats in the past have pretended to have a team of rivals, Obama bragged about it.

They always pick the transportation secretary as the one from the other party. They never have any kind of real conversations or debates. It's just marketing. It doesn't mean anything at all. And Democrats will pick a Republican defense secretary half the time. It's just helping the Republicans seem stronger. There's always such a terrible and useless thing, right? But in this case, they really are rivals.

Navarro and Musk actually hate each other. And Bessent is definitely on the opposite side of Lutnik. So Lutnik's the Commerce Secretary. He's also lost a lot of power and leverage now. He was on Navarro's side. And Bess is the Treasury Secretary, he's the one that is more of a traditional Republican. Like we came here for the robbery. Let's not ruffle, you know, the pillows and the, you know, upholstery here, right?

Let's just, oh, that's nice and easy. We've got the $5 trillion tax cut robbery incoming. Let's all focus on that. And after we rob the American people, then we can go back to our fights. So my point is I'm not a fan of Bessett either. I'm not a fan of any of those guys. But they do have genuine disagreements. And one positive for Trump, I mean, the negatives are obvious, right?

I mean, what kind of knucklehead thought that those global tariffs are going to work? Okay. But the upside is when he's getting hurt bad in the polling and the markets or whatever, he does turn around. Like, thank God. Because if he didn't turn around, his ideas are so catastrophically bad that it would, I mean, I don't know that we can recover. But yes, once he hits calamity, he goes, all right, okay, I got it.

You, you, you're out of the room. The other guys, you're in the room now. Again, I would hope for a strategy that was a lot more thoughtful than that. But at least he has the ability to turn around when he's made a massive mistake. So we'll take it, I guess. was so how folks I want folks to think about this Navarro and Trump situation a very close friend of mine has like a celebrity client who like has a reputation for having a bit of like a volatile personality and the guy went out there and did something

crazy and I said to my friend I was like why didn't you step in front of this and he said to me was you know what I've learned about working with these famous powerful people they, when they have something in their head that they want to do, they're going to shop that idea to the people around them until they find one person that agrees with them. And that's what they go with. So I'm sure Trump took this tariff thing that he's literally been talking about since the 80s. Back when he was complaining about Japan, you can look this up. It was Japan back then who we were worried about their economy someday surpassing us and their cars were taking over our economy and blah, blah. Trump was talking about tariffs.

Back then, he's had this seed of we need to do tariffs for 35 years now, right? And so Navarro is the only person that literally takes him up on it. It's like, yeah, boss, let's do it. In fact, let's do it in the most extreme, ridiculous, stupid way possible. And then he does it and it inevitably fails. And Trump's like, this idiot Navarro. I don't know why let him talk me into this. And now he's been sideline, but make no mistake, it was Trump's idea.

And Navarro was kind of the only sycophant who was dumb enough to put his name behind this thing. And so now he's been sidelined, but he'll never be permanently discarded because Trump deeply, deeply, sincerely, almost religiously believes in this tariff regime. And so, you know, that's what we're going to get. But I think the only thing that we can take, you know, be heartened by. And, you know, Nate Silver in his newsletter either today or yesterday, it was like, well, we shouldn't have the mark. be the like sort of fourth branch of government like ideally we'd have a freaking leader that had a vision and had a plan I think this is the first time in a long time though that Trump ran into something that was tangible it's

not like some norm that we've established this intangible that's out in ether like no you can't say this like no you can't align yourself with this person like no no dude like the way the global economy works these businesses have to plan months, if not years ahead for how they want to spend, how they want to hire, what they want to invest in, what they want to do R&D in. And if America, the biggest consumer economy in the world is a basket case, the markets are going to be cooked. There's nothing Trump can do about that. I think at this point, everybody's wondering the same thing I am. Who is that celebrity? But anyway, I think we're going to take a break. I'm going to ponder.

that try to get wads to tell me and then we'll come back with more that is a a remarkably a stunning proposition right it's a very aggressive proposition by the government that Essentially because Marco Rubio says so, a green card holder, a permanent resident of the United States can be taken into detention and found removable simply because Marco Rubio says so in a two-page memo. You know, what Mahmoud Khalil was saying and what other student activists and students who have been detained or spread of detention were saying was really very basic and uncontroversial, that Palestinians deserve to live, that they have human rights to. So that in that clip was a lawyer for Mahmwood Khalil responding to Marco Rubio's memo, which we're going to break down here. But the story has been developing throughout the day. We had been expecting a Louisiana immigration judge to rule on whether or not Khalil could be deported from America,

despite being a legal resident simply because Marco Rubio disagrees with positions that Khalil has taken, things that Khalil has said. And regrettably, the path has now been cleared for that to actually happen, despite the government it doing a clownish job of making the case for why that like incredible and radical step needs to be taken. So we're going to take you through all of this and I try to figure out where we go from here. But the judge we're talking about is assistant chief immigration judge Jamie Comyns. She stated in this in this hearing that she had no authority to question Marco Rubio's determination of the need to deport Khalil. So what's the evidence for this?

Everybody's been wondering, we've been told that this person could be a terrorist for all we know, an imminent threat to America. So Coleman said ordered the government to turn over any evidence supporting the deportation order and people were wondering, was there an assault, was there property damage, was there a death threat made against a Jewish student? No evidence was actually turned over, all that was turned over was the two-page memo being referenced in that video. And that memo does not even allege any criminal conduct by Khalil, not even an accusation,

Okay, and remember, this is a legal permanent U.S. resident graduate student who is just, you know, doing what Americans do, which is speak out and organize around issues they care about. So all Rubio did was argue that he could be expelled simply for his beliefs and his speech. He said that while Khalil's activities were, quote, otherwise lawful, letting him remain in the US would undermine, quote, US policy to combat anti-Semitism around the world and in the United States, in addition to efforts to protect Jewish students from harassment and violence in the United States. And he added that condoning anti-Semitic conduct, which they're not even describing, there's no evidence of anti-Semitic content, except the fact that he advocates

for Palestinian lives, their ability to continue to exist without being murdered. That by itself is just, that's all the evidence you need, that he is an imminent threat to the lives of Jewish students. And so the judge ruled that the government had met the burden of evidence that the law requires. That letter that just says his beliefs are enough, that's the burden of evidence that the judge was waiting to see met. And no other evidence was provided by Homeland Security, no documents, nothing, that's it. And so that's not it for the deportation. He's going to have a little period of time to appeal that. The appeal will definitely happen. But this is, this is, This is one of these hard lines that we've been waiting to see whether the government would cross.

I've been trying to raise awareness about the true cancel culture, the true word police, the true thought police in America. Yeah, I know, I know, right wingers, you make a joke and someone on Twitter calls you a racist and that's really inconvenient. Have you been deported for your jokes? That's what the true cancel culture looks like. When you get sent to Syria or Algeria, they haven't even decided where, just one of those two countries. They're not even close to each other. just send him to one of them or whatever because he held a position that the government doesn't think is politically correct. And so I think of this is a particularly dark day for America. And by the way, if the only allegation you need to be made is their mere existence here hurts

our abstract goal of combating anti-Semitism worldwide, well then why would that only be undocumented migrants or green card holders? What about a US citizen that was advocating for Palestinian lives? Why would that not in the same way hurt this pressing international campaign that Marco Rubio is so passionate about? Yeah. And so today it's a green card holder that a judge's agreeing can be deported. It can very well be a U.S. citizen tomorrow. Yeah, and actually U.S. citizens have started to get stopped at the airports, including lawyers for some of the peace protesters. Total American citizens, they're like, all right, give me your phone.

We want to see if you criticized Israel or if any of your clients criticized Israel. So that's it. Now you're under investigation. Okay, so this is the Israeli thought police running our government. There's no question about it. I could prove it definitively in one second. First of all, though you have to know there's two different issues in this case. So the one is whether Mahmoud Halil is guilty of anything. The other is, is this law constitutional? So on the issue whether he's guilty of anything, that jury has come in.

Absolutely not, because the government came in and had an opportunity to present evidence. And their evidence was literally nothing, just Rubio's statement saying, I think he's hurting national security by being quote unquote anti-semitic. By the way, and the government admitted he has committed no crime. And remember, he's not, he's not on a visa. He's a legal resident alien, okay? Meaning that he's on his step way to becoming a U.S. citizen, and he's supposed to have almost every right a U.S. citizen has other than voting, okay? And so he's fully, should be fully protected by the U.S. Constitution.

And whatever laws apply to him, when it comes to freedom of speech, also apply to American citizens. So if you say, oh, yeah, whatever, foreigner, man, I don't care that there's no evidence, just kick him out. Okay, but you're taking away your own rights, and you're signing them away so that no one is allowed to criticize Israel. Is it worth it? Is that the big goal? Like, oh my God, we stop criticism of Israel. America is safe and first, is it? Okay, so, and now at some point, the lawyer for the government comically says, well, yeah, but we also submitted some evidence to the court that is not public. And Haleel's lawyer is like, really? Where is it? Because obviously his lawyer can see it. Like, it's somewhere. There's been any evidence. They admit he committed no crime.

They have, oh, by the way, they were saying in the beginning, well, you know, aligned with Hamas, by, by, by, ideological, or something. Now, this time I'm rather asked, hey, is he aligned with Hamas? You have evidence? Because that would be, you know, really, really important. Like, no, he's not. They don't mention it at all, not aligned with Hamas, not aligned with terrorism. They made up everything. And they said, oh, no, no, no, but he's an anti-Semite.

He literally went on TV and spoke out against anti-Semitism. So like 100% because he spoke out against Israel, having nothing to do with any other issue. Now, it connected to things. So the judge says, look, I get it. This guy who presented no evidence at all, but the law, this 1952 law says if the secretary of state thinks that someone's a national security threat just because of any reason, any reason at all because they had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and Marco Rubio thought, you know what, that bothers me. That's a natural security threat. I don't have a choice.

Maybe he's allergic. And she said, especially because she's an immigration judge. So this gets to the silver lining, right? No silver lining, just like hope that it can be reversed. So she's like, it's not, I literally can't decide if this law is unconstitutional. You have to go to the regular courts, right? Not the immigration courts decide that. As an immigration judge, All I'm saying is, you're right, that 1952 law exists. You're right, in that law, the secretary state can say, he looked at my wife funny. I think he's a national security threat, he's out of the country, right? So, oh, he's running against me in Florida, that's it, he's out of the country, for any reason.

So she, her hand is tied, I don't blame her for the decision. But in the regular courts, and it's in New Jersey now, because he was picked up in that area, And that then transferred to Louisiana. And so that's going through the federal court system. That's where they have to decide, is this law unconstitutional? Because if you allow this law to continue and say it is constitutional, then there goes freedom of speech. Because the courts have said that legal resident aliens, green card holders,

have the same exact freedom of speech rights as US citizens. So if they say, okay, according to this law, Secretary of State can make up any reason at all, and you're a goner. Well, that means you, the Secretary of State can throw out anyone he wants from the country for any reason. And yes, because they're using their constitutionally protected speech. And so, and if you're, again, if you're on the right wing and you say, well, I don't care about no stinking evidence and that law exists. And I just want to throw them all out. He looks Muslim or whatever that he does.

Or, you know what, I love Israel. And I don't think any American or any legal resident of America should be allowed to criticize Israel. It hurts my feelings slightly. So that's it. Throw them out. Okay, but you can't say you're for free speech. That's it. Period.

Period. There's no argument for even if you think, oh, the Supreme Court's been wrong for 200 years straight, the Constitution shouldn't apply to American citizens. I know better than the Supreme Court. Okay, all right. Even so, what you're saying is, I don't want him to have speech rights. I don't like freedom of speech. I don't like anyone having the ability to criticize this foreign government.

So I hate free speech, that's why I want this guy kicked out. Be honest about it. It is literally impossible to be in favor of free speech and say that he should be kicked out for his speech against Israel. Literally impossible. Okay, so you gotta make up your mind. Do you hate free speech, or do you want to be kicked out? him to stay. This law is obviously unconstitutional, obviously. Now, whether the Supreme Court

thinks it's as obvious as we do is going to be an open question, because Clarence Thomas and Alito are gonna wanna kick him out, right? And so, but they did, the Supreme Court just did rule nine to nothing on the El Salvador case saying, no, you gotta bring him back. So there's nuance to that, but overall, they just said unanimously, even Clarence Thomas, is saying, no, he's innocent, you really got to bring him back, right? You had no legal authority to send him. So will the courts hold in that regard? Well, that's everything, because if they don't hold on this, they're basically saying

that's it, you can round them out. Now, for those of you who are Israeli supporters and any critic criticism of Israel, including what we've just said here, ruffles your feathers, and you're like, the 50,000 dead people are not that, 15,000 dead children are not that important. But my feather is very important, right? and this is ruffling my feathers, and you shouldn't be allowed to do that. And, you know, Jank, you're saying that this is just about Israel and the Israeli thought police. Well, that's very anti-Semitic to say that, right?

Okay, but Rubio could have put literally anything in that letter as justification to kick him out. He could have put, and remember, it's all invented, the guy's actually against anti-Semitism. So he could have put, this guy hates America. That's why I'm kicking him out. This guy hates Norway. That's why I'm kicking him out. This guy is, you know, hurting our national security because he once looked at a military facility. He could have written anything. What was the one thing he wrote? Anti-Semitism! Okay, that's it. No one should be allowed to criticize Israel. And I'm gonna call it anti-semitism, even though the guy's the opposite.

So that if you're like, if you're still pretending that Israel doesn't control our politicians, I mean, you can pretend all you like. But the jury's in. Everyone knows. Literally everyone knows that Israel controls America. So Biden gave him a blank check, let them do whatever the hell they wanted. Kamala Harris could have won Michigan, could have at least picked up a lot of votes if she just disagreed with Israel an inch, an inch. Nope, nope, nope, nope, bow down to Israel.

Now Trump comes in and he's like, you think you guys are Israeli ass kissers. Hold my beer, okay? Watch me now. Hey, and Rubio, what did I tell you about Rubio? The minute he was announced as the Secretary of State, I said that's a Miriam Edelson pick. He's a neocan and his only job is to protect Israel, not America, and boom, right here in that letter, don't give a damn about America or anything else. Israel, Israel, Israel, they're the kings and this guy dared to criticize them, get them out of the country even though it destroys freedom of speech in America.

Man, I just, the hypocrisy is not lost on me that the party that calls themselves, you know, extinguishing DEI all over the country and then the government realistically just switched out the I and DEI with Israel where, you know, the same people that used to cry about safe spaces on campus, used to cry about trigger warnings, used to cry about, you know, all the free speech that's being stifled on campus are lining up right now to see this kid get deported, this dude get deported, because he opposes the Israeli regime and their management of the conflict in Gaza. It's really quite stunning. And just the idea, like just think about it. Like let's just say, you know, some immigrants stood on the corner and protested

the drone war in Yemen or, you know, or the drone war in places in East Africa, the like Somali and stuff like that that we're carrying out, right? Would they be deported? No. No. And what they would be doing is opposing, you know, the way that the U.S. military is conducting a war. nobody would ever say that the U.S. military and their actions and every single thing that they do is somehow a perfect representation of every single American and therefore condemning the U.S. military and its actions, like if you condemned, you know, Abu Ghraib, or if you condemned Milai, or if you condemned any of the atrocities, countless atrocities that the American military has ever committed, that you were somehow condemning every single American citizen. Nobody said that because it's ridiculous. Nobody would buy that. Nobody would go for that. And the only thing that I'm heartened by is like, their time is running out.

The Democrats, the base have completely, completely turned against the Israeli regime and their war in Gaza. And I would say, shoot, man, I'd be surprised if most Republicans even support what the Israelis are doing in Gaza. Yeah. No, look, that's what I keep saying and everybody's skeptical about it. And I get it like in the beginning, the truth. Trump guys, especially the loud ones that are MAGA online, come in roaring. Ah, who cares? Kick him out of the country.

He's an immigrant, blah, right? But no, I see tons and tons of right wings. In fact, there's a great example of that today, the Dave Smith, Douglas Murray debate on Joe Rogan, right? I don't know if you guys have seen this, but Douglas Murray's an Israeli propagandist, and he's like a smug prick, and he goes around and goes, did you know, I've been in Israel? I went in on IDF marketing tour in Israel. So I'm the only expert. I'm the only expert, right?

And he went and tried that crap on Joe Rogan and Dave Smith batted him around a little bit. And the entire right wing internet, other than the Israeli supporters, are like, yeah, that wasn't close. Dave Smith is definitely right. And Douglas Murray is a giant D-back. Okay. And so they're losing the right guys. I know, like, for those of you, look, that's great news. because, and remember the left, God, we need more power.

We can, the populist left never actually gets into power and it's so frustrating. But unfortunately, in this country, the right wing has infinite power. So Israel is playing with fire. So they keep antagonizing the right wing. America's second, America second. Israel first, Israel first, right? Poked a bear. Poked a bear and see how it turns out for you.

Because when you lose the right wing in America, you're in a world of hurt. And especially to his point, the left is already gone. Look, I don't know anyone who wasn't already an Israeli supporter, who now thinks, oh, Israel's right. I mean, they just haven't killed enough, Palestine. I just wanted one quick thing, and this is maybe about the poke and the bear thing. And toaz's point, like, there's all these people that are like, oh, I deeply love free speech. Also deport him for his beliefs. Okay, well, let's say that this stands on the Supreme Court.

doesn't overturn it and establishes that if the Secretary of State thinks that we need to combat anti-Semitism, then we just start shipping out anti-Semites. I think the right might want to think twice about that because while they point to like saying don't kill Palestinian kids is anti-Semitism, you want to start talking about actual anti-Semitism in this country? You think the right is clean on that? Maybe the next time they start chanting the Jews shall not replace us, we gas up the plane. John, I promise. I'll point them out. by name, I'll start snitching quick. Oh yeah, no, it's not hard.

They march in the streets, ship them out of here. Glenn Beck with his blackboard of Jewish billionaires, the cabal. Seems anti-Semitic, get him out of here. Alex Jones is probably spreading an anti-Semitic conspiracy or theory, literally as we're recording this. Marjorie Green with her Jewish space lasers, that is materially combating our ability to fight anti-Semitism worldwide. Deport her ass, get her out of here, ship her Moscow, or El Salvador, or whatever. If it turns out that this is totally cool, totally constitutional, then let's learn lessons from this and start combating anti-Semitism by shipping out all these actual

anti-Semites. Yeah. I'm mostly sarcastic there. Look, we've been principled and consistent throughout. We actually believe in the First Amendment, we believe in freedom of speech, and we believe in America, and we believe that we believe that we should not be controlled by any foreign government. And this one is brazen. Anyone saying, no, it's not about Israel. Who is it about? Peru? Sweden? I mean, what, you're joking, right? So here it is. All right. Oh, by the way, last thing, Marco Rubio was considered the uncontroversial nominee. And I said at the time, no, he's actually one of the worst people that Trump put up. Oh, they're like, oh, yes, but he's part of the establishment, so he's fine. No, he's not. He was handpicked by Trump's

largest donor, the Adelson family. They've given him $337 million over three election cycles, and they said, you will pick our boy, Marco Rubio, put him at Secretary of State, and he will serve Israel, and you'll shut up about it. Trump, and I guess they took his speech rights away as well, because Trump has been muted. The one time that Trump is muted is when he's sitting next to Netanyahu. And then he's like, oh, yes, yes, we will control Gaza. And we will the unexploded bombs, dear sir. You precious IDF shouldn't lose their lives. Americans, you go in and lose your lives for the unexploded bombs in Gaza, okay?

And we're going to strive out to Palestinians ourselves. But I don't dare say anything against that, you know. Can I speak now, Bibi? Boss, can I speak? Right wing, that's your tough guy? Alpha male. Yeah, come get your boy. All right, guys, we've got to go.

Check out Waz at the ringer, John, damage report. Love you guys. When we come back, more huge stories, including, of course, Kennedy getting himself in trouble and a donor telling on himself in a hilarious way. So don't miss that. We'll be right back.