What A Day - Trump's Tariff Tirade Targets Our Friends Up North

Episode Date: August 24, 2026

President Donald Trump is back at it with his nonsensical trade wars, and this time he’s targeting one of our closest allies: Canada. After trade negotiations crumbled at the eleventh hour, Trump��s 50% tariffs on scores of Canadian imports kicked in over the weekend. Meanwhile, Trump is also threatening to make moves that could lead to the U.S. being involved in a trade war with China. Here to break down what, if any, political strategy is in play for the White House is MS NOW’s Eugene Daniels.And in headlines, a new poll has found that more Americans are smoking marijuana than ever before, a sailor aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln says his father has been taken into ICE custody, and the Defense Department said U.S. forces have attacked another vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing two people accused of trafficking drugs.Show Notes: Check out Eugene's podcast – tinyurl.com/u6k8bs63 Call Congress – 202-224-3121 Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/y4y2e9jy What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcast Follow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/ For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail]

When I talk to ambassadors, former ambassadors of different countries, whether they be allies or adversaries, they say the leadership of those countries have Donald Trump's number at this point. He's not a complicated person, right? Donald Trump is kind of a simple-minded and simple operating guy. He has a couple of things that he believes, and everything emanates from that. And once you understand that, which, of course, these leaders of these countries do, then it is much easier to operate. I'm Erin Ryan in for Jane Koston,

and this is What a Day, a show for people who didn't realize that the only qualification for being a member of the U.S. Senate was balancing a checkbook on a weekly basis in 2026. What is your confidence level in Darlene Graham when it comes to national security? She is a great senator,

and she will be a great senator for the next six years. I would turn that around and ask Ralph how much a loaf of bread is or how much a gallon of milk is or how much a gallon of gas is. You know, he's worth $100 million. He doesn't know the answer to any of that. So we need somebody that has middle America, real world experience.

Darlene has to balance her checkbook every week. She knows what it's like going through food lion checkout and wondering if she has enough for everything. I mean, this is silly for us to talk about the South China Sea and Taiwan. The position is very simple. She needs to support the president and she needs to support the military. And she'll learn the rest. as she goes. She balances her checkbook every, every week. Okay, South Carolina Representative William

Timmons, you sure did try something. On today's show, we talk to MS now's Eugene Daniels about what President Donald Trump's trade war endgame could possibly be and new concerns about POTUS's health. Before we get into all that, here's what we're following today, Monday, August 24th. Do you have any picture of the scale of destruction right now, homes and buildings and infrastructure lost? You know, we drove around yesterday, and all I can say is it's just devastating. There'll be multiple. I know yesterday they sent out their teams to start assessing that as the hot spots were cooled off.

So hopefully you'll have some of those reports coming out today. But we drove it yesterday, and it is absolutely devastating. Washoe County Sheriff Darren Baylam spoke to KTVN about the out-of-control wildfire burning in northwest Reno, Nevada. The Hawkfire destroyed homes on Sunday as authorities urged some 90,000 people to evacuate. The fire started over the weekend and grew to more than 23 square miles as it spread across the Peabine Peak area of the humble Toyabi National Forest. Officials said it was, quote, human-caused but did not provide details. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, there were more than 80 large fires currently burning across the country. The Defense Department said U.S. forces have attacked another vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing two people accused of trafficking drugs.

Emphasis on accused. U.S. Southern Command said on Twitter that forces executed a lethal strike on a vessel, quote, operating along established narco-trafficking routes. But as is their want, once again, the military is making these claims without providing any proof, which is absolutely outrageous and unthinkable, considering more than 210 people have been killed on boats bombed for allegedly trafficking drugs over the course of this nearly year-long campaign. A sailor aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln says his father has been taken into ice custody. Reminder, the Lincoln is the aircraft carrier supporting the war with Iran that was stirring up concerns about supply shortages and deteriorating mental health among sailors. While according to the sailor, his father had identification and a work permit and was awaiting his green card approval, but was accused by the Department of Homeland Security of being in the U.S. illegally. DHS said in a statement that border patrol agents arrested the man on Saturday in Key West and that he will remain in ICE custody while the government seeks to deport him. According to the department, quote, having a family member in the military is not a free pass to violate our nation's laws. That is an insane thing to say. Adding that the Trump administration, quote, does not pick and choose which laws to enforce.

More Americans are using marijuana than ever before, or shall we say more Americans are admitting to recreational marijuana use than of ever. before. That's according to a new Gallup poll, which found that 17% of Americans say they smoke, tying the record high from 2023. And it's not just blunts and joints over here in the good old US of A. According to Gallup, 15% of Americans say they consume marijuana edibles. And I don't blame them. There are a lot of reasons why people might want to take the edge off these days. It also probably helps that the price of cannabis keeps dropping. And that's the news. Let's talk about tariffs. Again, it's a day of the week that ends in why, which means that President's a president. President Trump has scored another own goal for America, leaving his surrogates to claim that actually own goals have been part of the game plan all along.

This time, Trump has started a nonsensical trade war with one of our closest allies, Canada, while also threatening to make moves that could lead to us being involved in a trade war with China. Now, it's been a while since I took macroeconomics, but that sounds like a bad idea. Here to break down what, if any, political strategy is at play for the White House is MS now's Eugene Daniels. Gene, welcome back to What a Day. Hello, thank you so much for having me. All right, so since Friday, President Trump has engaged in a game of trade war chicken with two wildly divergent foes, Iran and Canada. Let's start with our overly polite neighbors to the north. What the hell is Trump doing starting a trade war with Canada?

He will start a trade war with anyone, it appears, whether they be enemy or ally. I think what's so important for folks to remember or understand for the first time is that tariffs or something Donald Trump has actually, has been a part of who he is and how he thinks of the war for a very long time. So, like, almost all of the other policies that are operating without the Trump White House, this is one that he truly believes. And so that's why they're never going anywhere. He feels like folks have been ripping off the United States for a long time.

He feels like you should just be able to raise them. And then for whatever reason, he thinks these benevolent businesses that operate within our capitalistic society would take on all of those prices. when we know that that trickles down to actual folks. And so what you have here is Donald Trump, one, allowing the USMCA, which was the United States, Mexico and Canada, a trade agreement between the countries that he signed and operated within his first administration. He let that lapse, and he's trying to do a back and forth with Canada. It didn't work out. So he's doing the thing that he always does, which is threatened tariffs after saying that they were almost close to a deal. and then kind of calling the bluff of the Canadians.

And the Canadians said, you know what, we're not the little sister anymore. We actually are a whole country. We're not going to let the United States dictate to us how things actually are going to operate. It actually reminds me of like being in old, I'm the oldest of my siblings. It's like for a long time, your siblings listen to you forever. No matter what you do or tell them to do, like, okay, the one day they grow up. And they're like, you can't actually boss me around anymore. I think that's what you're seeing with Canada.

Well, it's funny, you mentioned trickle-down, and I realized, as you were saying, you're answering, I was like, oh, this is trickle-down economics. This is the only way it works is when businesses are charged tariffs and then they just, it trickles down to consumers. But like, what is Trump trying to accomplish here? As with most things with Trump, it's unclear. I think he wants there to be a different trade relationship with Canada. and he sees the tariffs as both carrot and stick. And that often doesn't work because anyone with eyes, a brain, you know what I mean, who understands even a little bit about how geopolitics works, knows that nowadays you can't

be a leader of a country, whether it's Canada or Iran or China or France, and just let the United States push you around. They have their own internal politics. And so that is what he's barreling against. He does want a different trade agreement, one that's more. beneficial to us. But you have to kind of give a little to get a little when it comes to trade. And it doesn't seem like, according to the Canadians, at least, we don't want to give enough to what they actually want. And I was actually kind of surprised to see their leader like stand in front of a camera and say they felt attacked, right? And talking about this as a warrant, it's a

completely new way of operating in our relationship with the Canadians. Okay, let's head over to Iran, which is a little bit more of an expected foe, I guess. Trump has threatened to ratchet up sanctions against them, but aren't we already sanctioning them? Like, is there anything left to sanction? Not really. And when you talk to experts about this, this is what they'll say. They'll say, you know, sanctions work sometimes and sanctions only work if folks are actually scared of them. And what we know about the leadership of Iran is that they don't really care about the people. Because sanctions actually, you know, like the leadership is going to get around it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's true. Like it is like it's dark gallows humor funny, right? It's like, oh, damn. Yeah. But like that is where Iran is a little bit different than a lot of other countries. If you sanction a lot of other countries, they understand that the people on the ground, the actual people of the country are going to be hurt. And then they kind of maybe change their tact a little bit.

But what you have with Iranians, in the leadership of Iran, is that they don't care about if the people are hurting. Like, you know what I mean? People in Iran are having to basically. buy everything on a type of credit, like a store credit because of how expensive everything is and the lack of money that is operating within the country. Let's not forget the Iranian leadership, which is, you know, they killed a couple people, but largely the folks that are operating are pretty similar, at least think the same. They were killing people in the streets who are protesting. So they don't really care about their people. And that's one reason why these

these new sanctions aren't going to work. And frankly, they have been able to get around. The difference in these sanctions is also trying to figure out, okay, are there other governments that we can sanction who are trying to get around the sanctions that we put in Iran? And one thing, when you talk to folks who have done this work, right, have put actual sanctions on different countries, sometimes Iran as well, is they would say it also works better if there are multiple entities working together, multiple countries doing this together, signing up together and say, okay, we're all going to sanction, or we're all going to say no. And right now, with this entire world, we've been doing it on our own.

We'll get back to my conversation with Eugene Daniels in a moment. If you've been going out of your way to apologize to the Canadians in your life, make sure you subscribe, leave a five-star review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. What a day is brought to you by Casper. There are a few things in life you should never cheap out on, and the thing you spend eight hours a night on is definitely one of them.

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Crooked on MS Now airs every Saturday at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific. Let's get back to my conversation with Eugene Daniels. Well, let's talk a little bit about the kind of new layer to these sanctions because an idea that has been bandied about has been targeting any country that does business with Iran. And one big customer of Iranian oil is China. So could this accidentally get us in a trade war with China? What would have to then? Another one, yeah.

Another one. Yeah, it could get us in another one. And this is when you have a president who, doesn't seem to understand or frankly seem to care about how decisions that emanate from his gut, his instincts, will actually land because you can try to convince him, you know, in the book by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, regime change, you have folks who actually do this work, Howard Lutnik, the Commerce Secretary, talking to the president about the tariff war that he was starting then in that first year and saying like, so this is bad, like this isn't.

going to work and him just basically ignoring that advice from Howard Lutnik. And that's what you're seeing here is Donald Trump believes deeply that this is going to be fine. And that's not true. The enemy always gets a choice, right? Your opponent always gets a choice that has been true in this Iranian war that he launched single-handedly with Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is also true of these trade wars. And it's true of any other decisions that he makes.

And I think the difference between the first term and the second term, when I talk to ambassadors, former ambassadors of different countries, whether they be allies or adversaries, they say the leadership of those countries have Donald Trump's number at this point. He's not a complicated person, right? Donald Trump is kind of a simple-minded and simple operating guy. He has a couple of things that he believes, and everything emanates from that. And once you understand that, which, of course, these leaders of these countries do, then it is much easier to operate.

So if we go and have another trade war with China, China's a huge country and a lot and we get a lot of stuff from China, okay? Like, folks may not go go look on every shirt they get, but look at how many things say made in China. Look at the kinds of soybeans. Let's go back, you know, think about the farmers who are dealing with this and whether or not they can trade with China and how that's working out. So all of those things are layered. Donald Trump doesn't seem to understand them. He doesn't seem to care. And so the blowback is a huge possibility here.

I mean, this is actually happening at around, I'm not a manufacturing expert, but this is around the time in the calendar year when manufacturers are placing orders for holiday delivery. So, like, given how many goods purchased by American consumers are made in China, especially around the holidays, is Trump going to ruin Christmas this year? Is he the Grinch? Well, it was like, yes, yes. Think about last year, right? We had the same conversation around this time last year was when he was doing the trade war and there was going to be, you know, Liberation Day. which kind of kept getting moved and wasn't real. And everyone started saying, you know, taco, Trump always chickens out.

And the question was the same thing. Okay, people, not us, right? I don't shop until December for Christmas. I'm buried. Oh, no, I start in June. Right. I have, like, I've got two little kids and an extended family that lives, like, halfway across the country. I got to have a plan.

And this is important. I only have a dog and husband. So, like, people who do have children are planning farther out. And more importantly, the companies, like you said, who are manufacturing and or ordering things are also figuring it out already. And when you talk to them and the leaders of their organizations and their companies, they don't always say this in front of cameras, but what they will tell us is that every single time he causes issues for them. So he may ruin Christmas. Remember what he said last year, you don't need, you know, $43 or whatever it was that he said, you know, just need a couple of dollars. I don't know who's getting that many dollars.

But like trying to dictate to the American people, they have to sacrifice because he has a gut feeling about something is not working politically for them. Well, it seems like one of the only economic metrics that Trump cares about is the stock market, which it's lately kind of behaved in a manner that's disconnected from the economic realities faced by ordinary Americans. If the market starts behaving in a way that's less disconnected from reality, aka we get a bear market. it starts going down. Would Trump start moving with more urgency around economic issues that voters say are top of mind? Maybe you would hope, right?

I think the problem is, the question is how, what real information is getting to the president of the United States? And this is kind of, Donald Trump has always been someone who's tried to force other people to operate in a reality

that he's created, right? When he was doing real estate in New York City saying, like, you know, we have the biggest and the best and I'm the best at this, and he wasn't. And that was like, not true. But he was able to convince people in New York and then, through the apprentice, convinced the country and the world that he was the best at this.

And that is the same way he operates right now. And so if folks aren't giving him real information or if he doesn't even believe it, that is when you don't see the change, right? The folks that he talks to are not always telling him the truth. And when they do, he just ignores them. And so you would hope that the president of the United States, who has more, access to information than literally any person on the planet.

He could get any human being on the phone who is an expert on how to operate within the economy. And he's just choosing not to. I think the part of the issue also is a lot of folks that are around him that work within the administration are millionaires and billionaires with a B. And so, and in his cabinet. And so what that tells you is the folks around him are also disconnected. So even as the American people suffer and are telling him that they are suffering, he's saying it's, you know, short-term pain for long-term gain. But the American people don't have that much time to waste, hoping that things are going to get better. Are Republicans in Washington getting nervous?

Oh, they've been nervous. They've been nervous for months. They have been nervous for months, both in these primaries where he's, you know, throwing his weight behind folks like Michael Lindale to run for governor. in a swing state, but also because he is talking about things that aren't true, or talking about the Save America Act, right, this voter suppression bill that he wants passed that doesn't have the numbers and only, that's the only way he talks about it. Republicans are scared. They're scared behind closed doors. It's unclear to me still how much of that gets to him, right? He has a close relationship with Mike Johnson. I assume Mike Johnson, like, you know, tiptoes around the,

you know, how scared people are. But what he tells folks when they tell that to him, it's like, they'll have to get over it, basically. Like, at the end of the day, like, this is going to work out. Just follow my lead. And speaking of Donald Trump throwing his weight around, I have a quick catty. Oh, no. I knew. Very good segue.

Thank you. I have a quick caddy pivot. Donald Trump has gained more than 20 pounds since 2023. According to his latest physical, which would put him 1.6 pounds shy of being considered obese. Now, White House aides tell the Washington Post that he's gained less than that. But pictures don't lie. Like, the president has put on some weight and he's old. Right. And his favorite food is deep fried trash dipped in gravy. Do you think that Trump will heed doctors warnings to eat healthier and increase his physical activity?

I doubt it. I don't think so. Like, he is, this is, Donald Trump has always, that I can remember, been like a bigger guy, right? He is tall, but he's also bigger. And I'm trying to be to keep my job here. He's thick. He's thick, right? And part of the issue is that doctors have, it seems like have tried. But again, he's like, no, I'm going to be fine. And up until now, yeah, but as you get older, things change. And I think what's most concerning, I think that, you know, online, everyone has lots of thoughts about what the president looks like. But I think what is most important, actually impacts the lives of the American people is that the health of the president is like a black hole right now. We don't actually have a clear understanding of what's going on. It's both his weight and then like the swelling of his feet and the, you know, the bruising that's on his hands that they keep trying to hide with makeup that doesn't match his skin tone. Like, please get someone to get the makeup that matches. It's not like go to Sephora, get a match. But the – and so, like, that is the biggest concern.

The American people should be able to hope and see that their president is operating at peak condition. It's a very hard job. Donald Trump also doesn't sleep a lot. So there's a lot of questions about what the job is doing to him and what he's doing to himself while having the job. But a doctor convincing Donald Trump that he needs to do things is going to be very difficult. Because, again, the folks around him don't operate that way. So that is something that is, it is who he is. Think about the older people in your life. My grandmother's 89.

For decades, she has been unchangeable. And so like the idea that all of a sudden some random doctor is going to convince him to get on a treadmill or a peloton is I don't think that that's going to happen. All right, Eugene, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much for having me. That was my conversation with MS Now's Eugene Daniels. Before we go, with the midterms less than 80 days away, the path to victory runs through the South. But to win in the South, we have to understand it. That's where Crooked's limited series long play comes in.

Jennifer Palmieri, Aaron Haynes, and Mitch Landrie are road-tripping across six southern states to explore the issues driving voters and learn what the rest of the country is missing about the American South. You can binge the whole series right now by heading to Long Play Series on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review. Don't you dare ask Senator Darlene Graham unfair questions about things like geopolitics and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just about how Senator Darline, Arlene Graham sometimes has staffers standing off to the side of her interviews, mouthing her the answers, like me. What Today is also a nightly newsletter.

Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Erin Ryan, and congratulations to Tommy Tuberville for no longer being the dumbest U.S. Senator. What a day is a production of Crooked Media. Our show is produced by Caitlin Plummer, Emily Ford, Erica Morrison, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Haley Jones, Greg Walters, Matt Berg, Joseph Dutra, Johanna Case, and Desmond Taylor. Our music is by Kyle Murdoch and Jordan Cantor.

We had helped today from the Associated Press. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. If you miss some of your favorite crooked pods this week, don't worry. You can now catch up on the week's best moments on MS Now on Saturday nights. MS Now is streaming an episode of highlights from your favorite crooked pods, packing as much analysis, funny moments, and 100% correct opinions into 40 minutes as humanly possible. Crooked on MS Now airs every Saturday at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific.