4/28/25: Trump 100 Day Approval Tanks, MAGA Cope Over Market Crash, Shein Prices Skyrocket
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It's nostalgia overload as Wilmer Valderrama and Freddy Rodriguez welcome another amigo to their podcast, Dos Amigos. Wilmer's friend and former That 70s Show castmate, Topher Grace, stops by the speakeasy for a two-part interview to discuss his career and reminisce about old times. We were still in that place of like, what will this experience become? And you go, you're having the best time. But it was like such a perfect golden time. Listen to Dos Amigos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What's up, Federation? It's Freddie Prinze Jr. and Wrestling With Freddie is back. And we're going all in on WrestleMania 41. From the unpredictable to jaw-dropping finishes, this year's mania might have just changed everything. By the way, almost all the matches that we saw looked like real fights. I thought, like, they were like, yo, we're going hard today. Tomorrow we're going to hurt, but we're going hard today. Right.

Because it was like beast mode times 10 out there. Listen to this episode of Wrestling with Freddie on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere.

anywhere else. - So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. - We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. - Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have the

incredible Ryan Grimm in this morning for Sagar and Jetty. Great to have you, Ryan. Left-wing populist takeover. That's right. Actually, we are going to have Emily join us, though, so that we can reflect on Trump 100 days and not have total left-wing Trump derangement syndrome over here. Get our snark in now before Emily shows up. Yes. Exactly. And for those of you who are wondering, baby is not coming yet, that we know of at least this morning, but Sagar is having to deal with a few things there. So he'll be in later this week, a

assuming that, you know, things hold in place. A lot of appointments the last week or two. Indeed. Yeah. A lot going on. So also a lot going on in the world. We are going to dig into all of the polling that has come out with regards to where Trump is as he hits 100 days this week, both on the top line numbers, where he is economically, the way things have moved even on issues like immigration, how his own supporters are thinking about the first 100 days. We're going to take a look, of course, at the latest with the trade war. She and prices are up.

and shipping traffic is way, way down. So, you know, Americans starting to feel the pain at places like Timu and Sheehan. See how that reaction goes. We wanted to cover some of the things that have happened with regard to immigration and deportations. That Wisconsin judge was arrested last week. There's also some additional things that we've learned. ICE

having deported several U.S. citizen children as young as one, two, four years old, one of them suffering from cancer. So we'll dig into that. We also have Bernie clapping back at Alyssa Slotkin and Justice Democrats revealing their first candidate this cycle, something Ryan had sort of exclusive access to or early access to. So we'll talk a little bit about that. We also have

a bit of an international flair in the show today. This is also partly because Ryan is here and he has done such incredible reporting in Pakistan, but also this is an incredibly important story for everyone. India and Pakistan inching closer to potentially a war, both of them, of course, nuclear-armed superpowers. That is certainly something we want to keep our eye in on.

and Canadians going to the polls today as well. So we're going to have David Dole join us to break down the twists and turns in that race, which has been really centered around our own president here, Trump. Yeah, and for the India-Pakistan story, we'll have Siddharthi Arroy, who wrote a really prescient investigative piece for us

about Jammu and Kashmir a couple weeks ago at Dropsite. And we'll also have, I pre-interviewed Waqas Ahmed, who a lot of you know as our terrific Pakistani reporter who's here in exile in the United States, just to talk about whether or not we're going to get a nuclear war out of this.

Seems like an important discussion. Yeah, I think that's rather important. Before we start on that, because we won't have time to talk about the latest updates in Israel-Palestine, over the weekend, the murder spree has just gotten out of control.

And people in Gaza are saying that, and it's easy to get cynical about this, but people in Gaza are saying that the amount of slaughter is at a scale unlike it's been previously. Wow. I think 53 people killed on Saturday, more than 50 killed on Sunday, just 17 killed overnight into Monday morning. Wow. Meanwhile, Netanyahu gave a speech where...

He insisted that Israel will not accept an Iran nuclear deal unless there's a complete obliteration of Iran's civilian peaceful nuclear program. It's like this is a U.S.-Iran nuclear deal. Right. So it's so... Well, we'd like to pretend it is anyway. We'd like to imagine that it is. But the question is, can he actually bomb Iran without U.S. support? And according to Tulsi Gabbard and Michael Waltz and all these other

intelligence officials know they can't successfully pull it off. So it actually isn't up to him. Yeah. Well, we were talking before the show, you know, Shia LaBeouf and Ephraim, who we've described as a liberal Zionist and had on this show. He has been slowly sort of evolving in his views. And he even just now came out and said, listen, it's undeniable it's a genocide. And basically what tipped him over. And personally, I think at this point, there's no real serious debate

that you can have about whether or not it's a genocide. And what tipped him over in particular is here they are just outright starving, however many people are left in the Gaza Strip. You now have dozens of people who have already died of starvation. We know Abu Bakr was suffering malnutrition. I'm sure there are so many people in Gaza, potentially basically all of them. - Basically everyone, yeah. - Suffering from malnutrition at this point. The food and the aid remains blocked.

The Trump administration does not appear to be applying any pressure, regardless of what their State Department spokesperson may say, in order to allow that food aid in. And so, I mean, the clock is ticking on, you know, an escalated extermination campaign. And that's where we are right now. Yep.

So, all right. Well, without that grim update, no pun intended, out of the way, I want to go ahead and get to the very latest with regards to where the Trump administration is at this morning. And as we said, we have a special guest joining us to help us understand what has happened in this first 100 days and how the public feels about it. And that is our own Emily Jashinsky.

All right, guys, so Trump administration officially hits 100 days this week. I think we have a fancy graphic we can put up on the screen there with the count up, I guess, through 100 days. I think we're officially at, what, 98 today or something like that. But all of the polling outfits, 99, 100 days, all of the polling outfits have done their official 100 days

Where's he at? Digging into the top line numbers, also where he is on an issue by issue basis. So let's go ahead and put up on the screen this graphic that we made with all of the different outlets and where they see his approval at this point. Just a note, the one on the end there, that's the Harvard Kennedy School. That's just 18 to 29 year olds. So that's why the numbers there look a little different. But very noteworthy among that age demographic,

which had been sold as, you know, really shifting to the right and, of course, voted for Trump in more significant numbers than young people had voted for previous Republican candidates in the past, including Donald Trump himself in 2016. But, I mean, overall, the picture here is not a pretty one if you are the current president of the United States. I think the best

The last ratings you've got there are about 11 points underwater. You've got him dipping into the 30s in at least one of these polls. All of them seem to be clustered around low 40s in terms of the approval rate. Really, effectively, Emily, I think at this point you can say pretty officially the honeymoon is over. This looks very much like Trump polling that we saw in the first term. And he came into this office with, for him,

you know, fairly positive approval rating. It was roughly around 50-50, even had a little bit of an edge, you know, above water in some of the polls early in his term. Now, with a combination of tariffs and even things that had previously been strong points for him, like immigration, going sideways and receiving net negative approval ratings, he is left in a, you know, in a position of unpopularity, which is one that he will be familiar with from the past.

Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, first of all, that graphic is so helpful and incredible. I like that we're now aggregating the poll aggregation. But what's particularly bad news for this administration is that those numbers are not like new dips.

if you go and look at these charts, what they reflect is an X. It's almost, you could map the RealClearPolitics aggregation onto the New York Times aggregation. Somewhere around March 10th, 11th, Trump crosses the 48% approved, disapproved sort of watermark and then keeps moving in the other direction. So he starts above water and is dipping, and then his disapproves start to go up as the approves start to go down. So this is, that sounds very obvious, but the

point is this is a steady trend over the first 100 days of decline. And Crystal, before we got going, you sent a chart, um, that was also really interesting, which aggregated Trump's polling numbers on particular issues. Basically the only one that he is, uh,

remaining at a decent level on is immigration. And even that he is below water. Now, the only other thing I'll add is people in the administration are hearing a lot. And we've talked about this on the show about Ronald Reagan in 1981, that Ronald Reagan was able to weather a recession and all of the political consequences that came with Paul Volcker and the shock and

and win reelection by 1984, even though the economy hadn't arguably quote unquote recovered. That is what this administration, granted Trump doesn't have to run again, although God knows he may,

But he's the second term president. So you expect to see a little bit more thicker skin to public reaction. But in this case, they're also really hoping that they're able to land the plane at some point when it comes to the politics of public opinion, that right now what they're doing is dramatic shock. They had the mandate. And so they're shocking the country, not just on tariffs, but on everything. But the numbers are not reflecting a positive, obviously, political reaction to any of that.

Man, I'm really sorry to hear that because I was wondering too that whether or not they were starting to think of Reagan in his first term and think like, you know what? Okay, yeah, we are actually going to drive the economy into recession, but that's okay because Reagan did it too. Now, of course, in 82, Democrats had this massive wave. And then, yes, then there was a giant landslide that reelected Reagan in 1984. The difference, of course...

is that Reagan was elected, you could argue, to do something about runaway stagflation and inflation. And in combination with Volcker, I don't think he was totally happy with everything Volcker was doing, but in combination with Volcker, that was aimed at addressing something that voters did say that they were upset about.

Now, voters have said that they're upset about the collapse of manufacturing over the last 50 years and the hollowing out of the middle class. And we talk a lot on this show about how at least Trump was acknowledging that concern and the proxy for that acknowledgement was him talking about tariffs. But then when he comes in and does it this way and drives the country into recession, it's not exactly what people were hoping was going to happen. And so a lot of the conversation seems to be like,

Did people vote for this or not? Like, is this what people had in mind? Let's put up Nate Silver. And this is one more chart that suggests, no, like this is not exactly how people felt like this was going to go. So, you know, how are people squaring that? Are they really saying to themselves, no?

eh, all right, we can actually blow the economy up because Reagan did and Reagan was fine. And he was fine. That's right. Like if that's your model, you're like, yeah, you actually can survive. And just before you grab that question, Emily, one thing to add to that is it's the polar opposite. People voted the number one thing they said is we want inflation to come down. And Trump's like, how about price increases? So, you know, I'm sure...

I also think in some ways I find the question of like, you know, is this what people voted for or not to be a little bit silly because, you know, voters like there's a whole basket of things that go into their vote. I think to think of it as like, you know, here's my checklist and this is specifically the issues on which I am voting is just not a realistic idea.

assessment of how most voters go about casting their ballot. So I find the question itself to be a little bit silly. But to the extent that people were casting a ballot on one issue in particular, inflation was certainly among the top, if not the top issue. And instead, not just on tariffs, but on, you know, on the immigration policy as well. These are inflationary policies that are almost certain to raise prices significantly, at least in the short term.

the Ryan Grimm voter checklist is whether the Eagles will actually show up at the white house if they win the super bowl. Um, no, I think that's true. And the other thing I think could be happening here is because the tariffs were such a dramatic, I mean, he, the,

this administration has been doing all kinds of like generational projects of the conservative movement that are dramatic and, you know, conservatives will quibble with the process, even though Trump is sort of finally handing to them on a silver platter, what they've been asking some Republican president to do for decades and decades. Um,

So a lot of this is like dramatic. It is radical. And people would say that. But the tariffs in particular, because the markets and the sort of material effects on people's conditions, they are going to be remembered as the thing that maybe changed the trajectory of public opinion on Trump. But actually what we've seen in these charts and you can you can see it if we put the last one back up again, the Nate Silver one, it's

That's an X. And the X starts to happen before Liberation Day. It's right around like March 10th, March 11th. That's New York Times has it on March 10th. The RealClearPolitics one has it around the same time. So that's before Liberation Day. This trend was happening for Trump very steadily before Liberation Day. But then look at Liberation Day. Yeah. Yeah. And so April 1st behind there. Right.

Right. Yeah. The gap opens up definitely around Liberation Day. But the point I'm trying to make basically is that the group of people who are independents, who aren't hardcore partisans, who showed up and voted for Donald Trump because of inflation or because of immigration, frankly, that's the group of people that probably is looking around and saying, OK,

I voted against Joe Biden. I thought Trump would make the economy better. I thought that he would be the only one who had the sort of political guts to take care of what they saw as a wildly out of control immigration system. And they're looking around now and they're like, OK, so those deportations don't seem to be going well, whether you're from the left or the right. Maybe you even want master deportations. And you're like, well, that doesn't mean sending people to Seacott.

And on top of that, the market has been in flux. There's precarity, uncertainty, layoffs. So you can see how that one-two punch is catching up with Donald Trump, with that group of voters who's not the partisan left or the partisan anti-Trump or the partisan pro-Trump.

I think you make an important point, Emily, which is I do think the tariffs are the least, like the most unpopular and they're so dramatic and they directly impact people's material well-being. And you have huge numbers that say my personal financial situation right now is getting worse and worse.

You have majorities who say, I expect it to get even worse over the coming years. People are expecting price hikes. Like, I do think that probably in terms of the souring of public opinion is the most important thing. But I also do think the fact that he has taken on so much water on what had previously been his most popular issue, which is immigration, because there was so much conversation about these, you know, the horrific deportations to Seacott and the, you know, just total, like,

of any sort of due process, the revelations that they can't really produce evidence that any of these people so far that we've learned about who were sent there were actual hardened gang members. And then specifically, the conversation around Kilmar Abrego Garcia. And if you pull people on the handling there, I mean, it's a landslide in the direction of this should not have been done and this man should not be disappeared and they should bring him back, etc.,

I do think that bringing him underwater on even his most popular issue has also been an important part of the acceleration in his favorability decline. And so, you know, we look at that like April 1 demarcation, that's Liberation Day. But April is also when we start to really focus in on some of these stories around immigration that people are frankly horrified by. Let's put up A5 while Emily answers there. Okay.

Yeah, this is quite an interesting chart to look at. And I think that's an important point because the this administration is stealing themselves and they sort of know and they went in. They had this totally contradictory narrative. On the one hand, they had a mandate. On the other hand, they.

handling that mandate could be pretty unpopular. And Trump is having historically a shorter honeymoon than other presidents. So some of these trends we're talking about are totally normal. You know, you start pretty high and then steadily decline throughout your presidency. We're talking about a steady decline over the first 100 days, not the entire presidency. And so to some extent, the Trump administration and people involved in this steeled themselves because they knew they were about to do some pretty dramatic

policy changes. And on the other hand, I don't know that the public thought that the drama would go beyond, you know, this kind of common sense policies on immigration or common sense, you know, handling of the economy. And I'm saying that, you know, regardless of whatever particular policy, that Donald Trump is the alternative to Joe Biden because he has this like a

in the minds of some voters, he's not the guy who was responsible or oversaw the inflation or oversaw the big immigration numbers. And so Trump will look around and say, I'm cleaning up Joe Biden's mess. But what happens now is Donald Trump

and Republicans are just consistently betting on Democrats being even less popular than they are. This is a trend of the Trump era, that Donald Trump is so polarizing that they just need basically like a second term Joe Biden, or they need someone who is as uniquely unpopular as Hillary Clinton. That's their only path to the White House in the Trump era, as long as Trump dominates politics because he is so polarizing. And to some extent that becomes a bubble

Right. Because you lose the will to recapture significant swaths of the public.

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It's nostalgia overload as Wilmer Valderrama and Freddy Rodriguez welcome another amigo to their podcast, Dos Amigos. Wilmer's friend and former That 70s Show castmate, Topher Grace, stops by the speakeasy for a two-part interview to discuss his career and reminisce about old times. We were still in that place of like, what will this experience become? And you go, you're having the best time. But it was like such a perfect golden time. Listen to Dos Amigos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I can understand why so much of the public didn't expect Trump to make these kinds of moves when it came to immigration. Because I think back to, Emily, remember that zero hedge debate that we hosted on immigration? It was

Robbie Suave and like the libertarian presidential nominee on one side against what, Jack Posobiec and some other. And Ryan Gerdusky. Ryan Gerdusky. He's like far, far right dudes. And I remember being surprised myself at like how bonkers they were. They were like, they're like, we need to go to war with the cartels. We need to, you know, deploy the army in American cities. Right.

And I knew that those views were out there, but I'm like, oh, these are fairly influential people who will have the ear of even more influential people like Stephen Miller if Trump wins. And so

Despite doing news shows basically every day, I hadn't quite absorbed how committed and how radical they were until, I think, until that debate. And so then seeing them actually execute it, it's not surprising that the public is recoiling. But I'm curious, as you talk to people in that universe,

Do they feel chastened at all or are they more like Stephen Miller was over the weekend giving who I don't know if you guys saw this rant he gave where he's like, we need to get these communists off the court. And if you think that they're going to stand in the way of President Trump getting the terrorists out of your neighborhood, you know, you've got another thing coming. Like he was just like.

full on, like, you know, maniacally we're, we're, we're full steam ahead on this. So it, are they checking themselves at all based on these numbers or is it no, like this is, this is our shot to carry out a revolution and we're going to do it.

The Stephen Miller clip is very representative. The one that you're just referencing is very representative. And Ryan, well, I mean, so this hardened core absolutely is. I remember Ryan walking out of that debate and just like taking a deep breath and being like, holy shit. Even you were surprised by like, yeah.

It was a lot. It was a lot. But, you know, I think that's exactly what we're talking about here is that the Trump administration felt it had the wind at its back with the public on immigration and on the economy to the extent where they said this is a generational opportunity to take dramatic steps, corrective steps in their mind that further the broader conservative politics.

broader conservative project, which is pushing back on a century of, as they see, like Wilsonian administrative sprawl. And so they right now feel as though because the public gave them this permission that this is exactly like that. And to some extent, this is going to be controversial. They're kind of right. Right. Like if the alternative, if the alternative is totally open borders, as people see it, as people see it, or Stephen Miller,

Some people are still going to be siding with Stephen Miller and the public because the other policy is so awful. And that's what gives them this idea that they can keep digging further and further, pushing further and further. And that's obviously where you end up alienating the public, because at some point the policies of the Democrats are not that bad compared to sending people to see caught. So they are like that because that's this is the hardened core who now feels like they have been vindicated.

They are absolutely riding high. They're feeling like they should be dunking on reporters left and right every single day. And they're ready to do battle. And I think that that may come back. And I shouldn't say may that will come back to bite them because the public, you have to be able to sort of absorb violence.

where the public is, if that's part of your goal. Well, I mean, this relates to actually the other conversation we were having before this started, which is this revelation of these, you know, signal chat groups, Chatham House, Ben Smith did the reporting. And you've got, you know, David Sachs and Tucker Carlson and all these like right wing media figures and all these right wing tech billionaires all inside of this chat group. And basically, you know, David Sachs sort of threw a fit about the

Some of them having quote unquote Trump derangement syndrome and like exited the chat. But to me, that's emblematic, first of all, of how captured right wing quote unquote independent media is that they're just like, you know, propagating these narratives that are being fed to them directly by billionaires. But in addition, it's also emblematic to me of what an increasingly tight bubble they are keeping themselves in.

So, and that has been kind of, you know, an intentional project of Trump 2.0 is if there's anyone out there that even may disagree on anything we're doing, we don't want anything to do with that. And you pointed that out, Emily, with regard to the trade agenda. You don't have, uh,

Bob Lighthizer in there anymore. You've got Peter Navarro, right? Because Lighthizer is, you know, yes, he's a protectionist, but this is, you know, someone who has his own ideas about things and is intellectual and would go about this in like some sort of an intentional way, potentially. And instead, you have Navarro, who's fresh out of prison and who is an absolute ideologue

unmovable ideologue driving the train with regard to tariffs alongside Trump himself. That seems to be the one part of the agenda that Trump himself is really taking ownership of. Meanwhile, I think the whole immigration portfolio and foreign policy apparently too has been outsourced to Stephen Miller. So you have these, and then all the Doge piece, whatever that was, of course, outsourced to Elon Musk.

So you have sort of these incredibly ideological off the rails type figures who are completely managing whatever their ideological hobby horse is. And as I said, the whole intent of Trump 2.0 is to make sure that there is no one in the room who's going to say this is a bad idea, this is illegal, this is unconstitutional, I'm not gonna do this, I'm gonna resign. That has been a concerted effort to make sure that's the case.

And so, yeah, they're in a complete and total bubble. And I think they also, you know, they feel like, well, they were the pollsters were wrong about us before and the economists were wrong before. And so we're there's no external feedback that is going to really move us off of whatever our, you know, wild ideological project happens to be. I think that's a really good point that because there's such like

Yeah.

This is really interesting what you said, Crystal, because I think about even the fact that Peter Navarro was in prison and how that changed this second Trump administration after all of the investigations and escalations in the lawfare. It's like they are applying these litmus tests for loyalty that from just a pure management standpoint, if this were not the United States of America, but some type of corporation, you would be like, okay,

What you're doing here, maybe there's some management logic to it because the litmus test is saying you are not countersignaling. This is to the point that they've excluded people from the circle that are critical. They see that as countersignaling.

And their litmus test is total loyalty, because if you don't pass that litmus test, you're a potential vulnerability in the administration. You're a potential squeaky wheel. You're the potential, you know, Cassidy, was it Cassidy Hutchinson? Who or whatever the other girl was who came out in the January 6th hearings. Liz Cheney, by the way, was someone who was really close with Trump circles and Trump 1.0. You're the squeaky wheel that can get us in trouble down the road. And so because of that, they've really purged.

people who are willing to be internal critics because you don't pass the litmus test. And when there's that genuine hesitation to criticize internally even the trajectory, then you end up with a chilling effect and you end up with everyone just hopping on the bandwagon of every idea that a Stephen Miller has or that Donald Trump, frankly, has. I know.

What I also found interesting about this first 100 days is what Trump didn't do, which is basically pass anything through Congress. He did the Lake and Riley Act in the first couple of days, which is Democrats just gave him whatever they wanted when it came to immigration because they're really on their heels. But since then, it's probably been the least productive kind of – it's definitely been the least productive first 100 days ever.

of any new president who controlled Congress in like modern, you know, in memory. Instead, he's focused on executive orders and he's focused on kind of concentrating power in the executive by going after law firms, going after, you know, gutting, trying to gut universities, you know, rounding up the, rounding up students, the trade war, things that he can do

on his own and then having his top administration officials complain that the laws are such that they get in the way of him being able to do it legally, like this J.D. Vance saying, look, what do you want us to do? All these people came in and now it's really cumbersome to get them out. Meanwhile, of course, though,

there is progress being made legislatively. You know, the reconciliation package is moving. The budget, you know, continues to move. Do you, are you impressed by what you've seen moving through Congress? And do you think, do you think he's going to be able to, like in the longer run, get this reconciliation bill, the tax cut bill through and divert, you know, he's trying to divert tens or maybe even hundreds of billions of dollars over to ICE. Their current budget is something like 9 billion. He wants to,

put that up somewhere between 300 and 500, which is like silly. Like they don't have the capacity to spend that amount of money. The point is they would have more money and money would be no object for what they're trying to accomplish. Do you think that they're sufficiently committed to that, that they're gonna get some of these things done?

This is a really quiet source of tension on the right because a lot of people who are sort of architects of unitary executive theory, which is where this administration has spent the bulk of its first 100 days focused, meaning they're trying to retake power that they feel has been wrongly delegated to bureaucrats and the administrative agencies. People who support that also say that's going to require a lot of codification through Congress. You can't just...

do this. We've seen this come up in certain court cases time and again, that this has to be done through Congress. If you want to get rid of USAID or the Department of Education, you can't do it with an executive order. You can't just dismantle the agency. You can dismantle it in certain ways, but ultimately you have to pass an act through Congress. And

They're all pretty I mean, everyone you talk to in Trump circles is pretty sure the midterms are not going to go well for them, that they're probably going to lose the House. And that's where it's sort of 2025 is such a different year than before Congress got sclerotic and did absolutely nothing. That's downstream of our politics. We could probably talk about Newt Gingrich for a long time and how that came to pass. But the point is, I mean, it.

this should be a robust legislative agenda, um, that they should be able to be whipping up bills and getting them through Congress. Uh, not, they don't even have to be big, like omnibus type bills, but they can't because they're stuck on these stupid budget battles. And because so much of the energy right now is in taking power back from the executive branch that they can't even augment that with, uh, you know, article one type of activity. So, um,

I think there's actually going to be a bigger tension in the next 100 days of the Trump administration because a whole lot of the people who are the policy architects here are going to want to see stuff go through Congress before the midterms.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Valley with WGU. WGU is an online accredited university that specializes in personalized learning. With courses available 24/7 and monthly start dates, you can earn your degree on your schedule. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu.

It's nostalgia overload as Wilmer Valderrama and Freddy Rodriguez welcome another amigo to their podcast, Dos Amigos. Wilmer's friend and former That 70s Show castmate, Topher Grace, stops by the speakeasy for a two-part interview to discuss his career and reminisce about old times. We were still in that place of like, what will this experience become? And you go, you're having the best time. But it was like such a perfect golden time. Listen to Dos Amigos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Wrestling fans all over the globe, it's Freddie Prinze Jr. And on Wrestling with Freddie, we're breaking down every damn moment from WrestleMania 41. Two nights, nonstop chaos, legends, surprises, emotions, and some of the best wrestling we've seen coming from WWE.

We've got takes, we've got questions, and we have a whole lot of love for what these men and women pulled off at Mania. Tiffany Stratton, she earned her stripes at WrestleMania. And I don't mean because she won, she bled for her art. And it always felt like, to me, after the Attitude Era, once a wrestler gets cut and you see real blood coming out of their mouth or real blood coming out of their head, the crowd kind of goes, hey, respect.

And they kind of give you that nod, right? You go, wow, every one of these guys is bleeding for the road. Bro, that's literally like blood, sweat, and tears. That's all they got is blood. We're talking Cody. We're talking Rhea, Roman, Seth, Tiffany. The future of the business is bright. And if you watched Mania and you're still buzzing, or if you missed it and want to know what went down, we got you.

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Go ahead and put A4 up on the screen. This shows the historical context of, you know, Trump is the most unpopular. He's actually beat his own record for being the most unpopular president at 100 days in modern history. Now, of course, you know, our politics has changed like these Harry Truman style, almost 90 percent approval rating.

are just not really on the table at this point in time. But, you know, even if you look at Joe Biden at this point, he was in the 50s. You know, Barack Obama was extraordinarily popular in the first term. In the second term, he was, we think of that as being a time when there was a huge backlash against Obama. He's still at 50% there. You see, you know, George W. Bush not doing too well there in the second term.

but obviously very popular in the first term. So in any case, even by modern equivalent standards, Trump is sort of uniquely unpopular. But I want to transition to, we have this great clip from Frank Luntz, one of his focus groups, where he was speaking to Trump supporters and asking them specifically about the tariffs and

and their concerns about the economy, if they have any concerns about the economy. And this has been the consistent source of Trump's power. You know, he's always been, compared to other presidents, relatively unpopular. But he has this group of voters who are ride or die and will never leave him no matter what. And that is certainly evident in this clip that you'll see, where every single one of these Trump voter focus group participants is like,

It's fine if my 401k goes down. I'm not worried about it. I support what he's doing. I think this is a masterclass, et cetera. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that. I need to ask you an issue that no one's brought up and that has crashed your 401ks, most of you, which are tariffs. Stock market is way down. It needed a correction. Oh, so you support it? Yes. You bet. Yep.

And I have to tell you, my 401k wasn't impacted at all. First off, how many of you did not lose any money over the crash of the stock market? One individual, two people. The Biden administration, I lost more money than the Trump administration by far. In 2020, they crashed it by 25%. Yeah.

For the whole year. No one's upset over this? No. Nope. No. Nobody. If people just get in and stay the course, they'll be just fine. Yeah. And I was about to say, I'm not a day trader. I try not to look at it very often, which is, I think, a good thing. But I also trust that...

Trump and all of his advisors that are involved with the tariff issue know what they're doing. So I'm just going to hang on. I know it'll correct at some point. How much do prices have to go up before you say,

This is not that clear. I'd rather not buy from China. I'd rather pay more money and buy American. Same. And prices only go up if demand is inelastic and if there's no alternative supplies. And they're doing a brilliant job. They're surrounding China with countries that want to manufacture stuff as well. And we do need to bring the stuff back, the strategic stuff for sure. But China is going to be in the soup if they don't knock it off.

Every article of clothing I have on is probably made in China, Malaysia or somewhere else. OK, retailers, give me something made in America. So, Emily, Trump has definitely lost ground with independent voters. I mean, the numbers there are pretty extraordinary. And he has lost some money.

high profile supporters, or at least not necessarily lost them, but some people are starting to express concern. Joe Rogan has done so. Candace Owens just came out and said, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm siding with Harvard over Donald Trump. So you have a little bit of cracks at the kind of elite level. There's no sign of that in the polling among Republican based voters who still very much trust Donald Trump and very much support whatever it is that he's going to do whenever it is he's going to do it.

Well, and this has always been Trump math, is that you have this base, and it's actually not even a majority of the Republican Party. It never really has been a majority of the Republican Party. It's about 30 to 40 percent of Republicans who are just...

They will leave the Republican Party if Trump leaves the Republican Party. They are just Trump first, and then the party, then conservatism. Trump is their sort of politics. He is the party. And so to that point,

And so, yeah, that's the Trump math is always that group of people who will turn out to the polls. And then you have to put on top of that some group of people that is just plainly voting against the other side. They just think the other side is so awful that they will swallow all of

the sort of stylistic issues that they see with Donald Trump or any of the liabilities that they see with Donald Trump and say, all right, he's less bad. And that's not exactly what happened with Barack Obama. It's not exactly what happened with George W. Bush. You had a big group of people that were

voting of independents who said, I'm actually voting for this person or swing voters who said, I'm actually voting for this person, not just against the other person. And that's how Trump has always been able to get through. It doesn't translate for Republicans after Trump. And that is what they have to reckon with when they see a Joe Rogan as a canary in the coal mine is that this guy is

gravitated towards Donald Trump. As soon as Donald Trump starts to like screw things up, that doesn't mean he's going to ever be around the Republican Party again. So how do you sort of be able to weather the storms of Donald Trump and come out? Like, does that mean you need to start speaking out against what's happening in the universities? And nobody's going to do that. But these are the thoughts that are going to start bubbling up in their heads in the next 100 days for sure.

And if we could put up a that shows how deep in the minority these kind of hardcore Trump supporters are, is 72 percent of people expect a recession. And, you know, the vast majority of them believe that Trump is is doing this, that he's driving us into recession. This is not some external shock to the economy. 34 percent approve of Trump's tariffs.

In this country that is so divided by tribe, by party, it's very hard to get anything under like 45. Like if your side supports it, then at least 45% of the country is going to end up supporting it, even if it's the most idiotic thing ever, until it starts to have a material bite. And I think that's the only thing that can kind of push through.

the partisan divide here. So you kind of wind up with Trump in this trap where if he wants validation, which as we know, that is the thing that he lives on throughout the day, throughout his life, he can find that validation in that focus group and from people like

Frank Luntz was talking to there who were like, yeah, this is all great. There's a plan. Trust the plan. Just don't look. It's all going to be fine. So Trump can find that. So what could shake him out of this? Is it

And it sounds like the bond market. Yeah, yeah. The bond market. Just Wall Street. The Target, Walmart and Home Depot CEOs coming to tell him the shelves are going to be empty, shook him out of it. And he's like, OK, fine, we're not doing 145 percent. And then everybody sighs and they're like, OK, somebody got through to Trump. This is all going to be OK. And then he's like, it's only going to be 50 to 60 percent. And it's like, bro.

That's the same. Once you're over like 10-ish percent, like you're shutting down global shipping, which is maybe fine if you have some plan B for what you're going to do when global shipping shuts down. But moving it from 145 to 60, it's like, oh, he didn't really get it. So he sort of absorbed it when he heard it from those CEOs. Now the shelves are actually potentially going to be empty. So will that –

resonate at all? I mean, it depends because if you've purged internal critics and people are walking on eggshells to say, hey, sir, your own supporters, your working class supporters who paid money to get to another state to go to a Trump rally, like these are the types of people right now who are really unhappy. First of all, does anyone in the circle have the sort of courage to say that, to make that point without being blacklisted? I

I don't know. It seems like the people who did in that case were people outside of Trump's circle that were able to get through to Scott Besant. And then Scott Besant was able to take the message to Donald Trump or that he heard directly from these guys on Wall Street. I mean, Trump is here. If this is hopeful, Trump is a savvy politician to the extent that he knows people's material conditions are a big driver of their politics. And, you know, I...

The whole thing we haven't talked about here that's maybe the biggest elephant in the room is the fact that this guy might want to run for a third term. And I say run. I don't know what that means. There's someone in a Trump 2028 hat over there now.

As Steve Bannon has said, I don't know who Scott Bannon is. It's a combination of Steve Bannon and Scott Besson. That is an interesting hybrid in the like MAGA zoo. But if you want to imagine that, but the Steve Bannon has said there could be different avenues for that.

And I just think that is a really important elephant in the room right now that changes everything we just talked about and the way that they see this internally too. Yeah, and previously they're right. Oh, you libs are Trump derangements. Of course, he's just joking about that. No one's saying that shit this time. No one is saying that this time. They're like, oh, I guess he wants to run again. We'll see how that goes. We can't tell what's a joke or not anymore.

It's not. None of it's a joke. Clearly, none of it is a joke. 28 is more likely to be his approval rating, but still. Yeah, true, true. So one thing I also wanted to not skip over, and actually, can we go back to A5 and put this up on the screen? Because there's a bunch that's really interesting and noteworthy in this New York Times Siena poll of the different issues.

First of all, immigration is his top issue. He's still underwater there. But then if you look at his worst issue, it's the case involving Kilmar Obrego-Garcia, which I think is vindication to people such as myself who have been saying, no, you should be talking about this case because that is going to pull down all of his numbers on immigration, which is his strongest issue. You want to go after his strength, etc.,

Putting that aside, look at what his next worst issues are, the war between Russia and Ukraine and foreign conflicts in general. And Ryan, I don't want to skip over that because I think when we did our focus groups and talked to those AOC Trump voters right after the election, almost all of them cited, hey, I think he's going to be better for peace. I think he's going to be better for ending wars than Biden-Harris.

And now, you know, and Trump makes this outlandish promise, oh, I'm going to resolve the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 24 hours, always preposterous. But, you know, he says it was such, he repeated it so much that I think a lot of people did feel like, okay, maybe not 24 hours, but he's going to be able to bring this thing to a close. Obviously, the Gaza ceasefire completely collapsed. Now you're looking at just complete, you know, extermination campaign and starvation within Gaza. And so, you know, that was another piece that,

I think is, is really important as well. There was this preposterous framing of him in my view as being this like anti-war peace candidate that truly won over, um,

some chunk of independent voters. And that piece has also just completely crumbled, and he has really nothing to show for a foreign policy agenda at this point. Yeah, and Emily, before you answer that, Amir Tabon at Haaretz over the weekend had this really interesting column where he said...

there actually is a war that Trump can end with a tweet. And he's referencing this kind of really pathetic post on either Twitter or social from Trump where he was like, Vladimir, please stop. What are you doing? Vladimir, stop. It was like just humiliating himself. If Trump did that for Netanyahu and said, what Tabonid wrote was, Bibi, stop, get the hostages out. Like if he did that, the next day, the bombing stops.

The talks resume seriously, and within days, probably the hostages are out. Like, there actually is a war that he can end if he chooses to. Instead, he's not ending the one he's focused on, and the one that he promised he would end, which is Israel's assault on Gaza, he ended it on the inauguration day. He got his little headline.

And then six weeks, eight weeks later, allowed Israel to start it up again. And he's also saying that Netanyahu needs to be kind to the people in Gaza. That was roughly his quote on Air Force One. Meanwhile, Netanyahu is not allowing any food in and hasn't since March 2nd, which if your stated preference as Trump is not the one that Netanyahu is following through on, doesn't that make you look weaker than Joe Biden?

Like Joe Biden, when he would tell them, you got to start letting aid in, they'd go from like, you know, 300 trucks to 350 trucks. Like he could at least move the needle. Right. Trump is claiming that he wants food to get into Israel and Netanyahu's telling him to F off. Like, is there any point at which this is embarrassing to him?

It's because the people who are making the policy itself, who are executing the policy itself, are not with Trump on those points about how Israel needs to be kind to the people in Gaza. Trump, at the very least, I guess you could say, has maybe more...

more of a realist perspective than the Mike Huckabee. Huckabee on his first night as ambassador posted a picture with Netanyahu. I mean, Trump himself obviously posted on True Social a couple weeks that they are on the same side of every issue he and Netanyahu after they had a phone call. But

But this was everything we were talking about with Dan Caldwell being purged from the Pentagon, from Pete Hegseth's circles. Yes, that sort of exasperation with the Israel hawks in the Republican Party is real in Trump's circles, but it's not nearly as powerful as the holdovers, the policy or the buildup, the residue

of decades and decades of GOP, uh, bear hug Israel, uh, bear hugging of Israel at every turn. And so even if Trump, I, I, as you were saying that if Trump, uh, posted just BB stop in all caps, like he did to Putin, um, I was imagining him being subverted, like what would happen immediately after he sent that to social people would, uh, people who are in the administration doing sort of like daily policy would immediately, if he even did that hypothetically, um,

would immediately be trying to find ways to support Netanyahu that are like under the radar. So that's not conspiratorial. It's just that there's an internal war between people who thought, like even people here in D.C. who look at Donald Trump and say, well, maybe this is the best chance to sort of end the dead foreign policy consensus in a good way. You know, they're constantly being

Their efforts are constantly being like frustrated and thwarted by the majority of people in professional Washington foreign policy circles who have learned that they can, you know, get continue to have jobs by saying nice things about Donald Trump. I'm thinking specifically of like a Mike Waltz here, by the way, and be in positions of power. And then they can all they had to do was like sort of take that pill of swallow the pill of take the medicine of saying, oh, yeah, Donald Trump is great. Make America great again.

again. So yeah, it does look weak. It absolutely looks weak, but it doesn't really get framed that way among his supporters. It also imperils the negotiations with Iran as well. So I mean, there's, you know, the coddling of Israel has reverberating impacts that don't just

just stay limited to the horrors that are unfolding in Gaza with our taxpayer dollars, which is increasingly wildly unpopular with almost the entire population, with the exception of boomer Republicans effectively at this point. The whole nation has turned on this project of perpetual war crimes. I do want to touch on immigration again really quickly, just because we have some really interesting numbers there that show people can evaluate how

things are going and change their minds. On the Democratic side in particular, there seems to be this assumption that like, well, if a poll says people think this, that's it. There's no changing their minds. It's over. We better just not talk about that topic or we better totally, you know, adopt a different view on that topic, et cetera. And immigration is like the primary case in point.

Take a look at A9. So this is just on how people feel about whether or not immigrants benefit the population. And you can see this huge surge in the number of people who now say immigrants

make the country better off and a dramatic decline in those who say that immigrants make the country worse off and relatively flat on the ones that say it doesn't make much of a difference. If you go back and look at the numbers on immigration during Trump 1.0, you have almost never in history had a more pro-immigrant population than we did at that time.

because they were looking at what Trump was doing and they were saying, I don't support this. I don't like this. And that's how you end up with Democrats, you know, reading those polls and then, you know, doing their high school Spanish at the debates and, you know, positioning themselves in that way. So we're seeing a similar runoff

radical shift in terms of people's views on immigration. And go ahead and put a 10 up on the screen. You can see independents in particular who have shifted quite dramatically. The 56% overall disapprove of Trump's handling of the issue. 62% of independents oppose removing foreign students. 52% oppose renditions to El Salvador. I would personally like that number to be a lot higher than that. But anyway, and only 21% want Kilmar Abrego Garcia left the

in this prison. So, you know, to me, this was predictable that, you know, in theory, people say, yeah, okay, let's, you know, Trump's saying these people are all criminals. Yes, let's get the criminals down, et cetera. When you're actually met with the reality of, oh, these are human beings

who many times they are not the caricature that they've been made out to be. And then you also have the Trump administration engaging in these outrageous tactics, which they themselves, you'll clearly paint a picture of, hey, today it's Kilmar Abrego Garcia, tomorrow it can be you.

We want to go after the homegrowns next. So immediately they're helping to make the connection between the loss of rights for this immigrant population and the loss of rights for the entire population. You know, it's not surprising to me to see that immigration, even on the issue of immigration, he's now underwater and independents are really flipping their views in real time.

Not surprising, and gets to a point that you made earlier, which is that they don't even necessarily trust public opinion anymore because they saw that happen in the first term and then saw him get reelected several years later because...

the Biden administration's policies were so unpopular. And again, you can make the mistake of misreading that mandate as an embrace of your policy rather than a rejection of your predecessor's policy. And I think there's some of that happening. And the other part of it is that because they feel they have the mandate, they are sort of isolating themselves or insulating themselves from even critics on the right who say you're going to hurt

your ability to do quote unquote mass deportations. If you're focusing on these cases where you actually made a mistake and doubling down in the case of Kilmer, Abrego Garcia, obviously the man who admitted the Trump administration made a mistake was fired, but the administration doubled down on it and didn't concede that there was any error whatsoever. And it became a public spectacle that resulted in public opinion

shifting, just as you showed, Crystal. And so it's sort of from both sides. There's this criticism that people, because of those litmus tests in the administration, are basically insulated from. And it will not make their policies more popular, that's for sure. I think it's Stephen Miller. I think the public sees Stephen Miller on TV.

And they're like, whatever that guy's for, I'm against. He is a relatively repulsive figure. And he's single-handedly driving an entire country's views on immigration. He fades and people are like, yeah, I don't like immigrants anymore. He comes back in like, God, I love immigrants.

Like, if it's immigrants or this dude, I'm with the immigrants. Team immigrant all day long. Well, I mean, he just reads. He is an extremist. Trump thinks he's an extremist. There's that amazing anecdote where he's making fun of Miller for being a racist, saying that, like, if it was up to you, Stephen, you know, everyone in this country would look exactly like you. Yeah, yeah. Like, too racist for Trump. I mean, which relates to— Well, not too racist because he's happy to have him around, but.

Right, exactly. Yeah, I'm happy to give him control of the entire portfolio. And it relates to, you know, they've been tracking the stock market performance when it's Peter Navarro and Howard Lutnick, whose name is mentioned more in the news, versus Scott Besant. So, Ryan, you may be on to something there in terms of the spokespeople for the Trump policies.

Em, thank you so much for joining us this morning. We appreciate you and great to have your views on this first very, very consequential, very fast-paced, momentous, we'll certainly say extraordinary first 100 days of this administration. Thanks for having me, guys. Yeah, our pleasure.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Valley with WGU. With courses available online 24-7 and monthly start dates, WGU offers maximum flexibility so you can focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu.

It's nostalgia overload as Wilmer Valderrama and Freddy Rodriguez welcome another amigo to their podcast, Dos Amigos. Wilmer's friend and former That 70s Show castmate, Topher Grace, stops by the speakeasy for a two-part interview to discuss his career and reminisce about old times. We were still in that place of like, what will this experience become? And you go, you're having the best time you've ever been in. But it was like such a perfect golden time. Listen to Dos Amigos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Wrestling fans all over the globe, it's Freddie Prinze Jr. And on Wrestling with Freddie, we're breaking down every damn moment from WrestleMania 41. Two nights, nonstop chaos, legends, surprises, emotions, and some of the best wrestling we've seen coming from WWE.

We've got takes, we've got questions, and we have a whole lot of love for what these men and women pulled off at Mania. Tiffany Stratton, she earned her stripes at WrestleMania. And I don't mean because she won, she bled for her art. And it always felt like, to me, after the Attitude Era, once a wrestler gets cut and you see real blood coming out of their mouth or real blood coming out of their head, the crowd kind of goes, hey, respect.

And they kind of give you that nod, right? You go, wow, every one of these guys is bleeding for the road. Bro, that's literally like blood, sweat, and tears. That's all they got is blood. We're talking Cody. We're talking Rhea, Roman, Seth, Tiffany. The future of the business is bright. And if you watched Mania and you're still buzzing, or if you missed it and want to know what went down, we got you.

Listen to this episode of Wrestling with Freddie on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We now have the Trump trade war officially showing up in numbers in terms of shipping and news media starting to cover it. Let's take a listen to MSNBC talking about a 50% year-over-year drop at West Coast ports. You are looking at a 44% decrease in vessels year-over-year coming in.

And what's really key here, Alex, are the people that move the containers. You need people to move trade. If you have 40 percent less containers coming in, that is going to impact the

the people that are the truckers, the railroads, the warehousing. This is more than just us consuming and us bringing in orders. There's an entire supply chain here that is connected to jobs. And so the longer this goes, Alex, we're going to see some significant impact here in terms of

In terms of employment, in fact, the Port of Oakland, which is a huge, huge port that relies on both imports and exports, are very, very balanced. They've got a 50-50 split. They already started warning on Friday about the detriment when it comes to jobs and the exposure with this.

even if a deal is reached soon, are we in for at least some troubling times ahead? I believe we are. And the reason why is that trade takes time to move and you also have to order it. The fact that we've had a pause in all of these manufacturing plants, I have had sources tell me in China that there are factories that have literally shut down because they're not making any products for the United States. So if you think about it, remember with COVID,

Everything shut down and then everything ramped back up.

And so what happens is once you hit that unpause button, it's going to be that rush to make the materials and then get the product on the vessels and back here, which causes congestion and raises freight prices. And the West Coast ports are not only gigantic, they're also the first places where these massive disruptions would show up. I think we all got a real lesson in supply chain logistics during COVID and how, you know, once these things start to unravel. Apparently not all of us. Apparently not all of us. There are cascading effects.

that you cannot just snap your fingers and things go back to normal. Even if Trump today comes out and says, guess what? Trade war over. We're back to, you know, wherever the previous tariffs were with regard to China. If you could put B2 up on the screen, because I thought this was a remarkable, visible representation of just how screwed the supply chain is at this point.

So this is a map. You can see China on one side. You can see L.A. on the other side. And the blue dots are all of the ships. Now, normally there should be roughly even distribution across this map. And you can see because so many companies in the U.S. that were planning on importing goods from China said, I can't pay this 145 percent tariff. This is an impossibility. You have all of these ships and this cargo just stuck together.

sitting in China right now. And, you know, that's the state of affairs that Walmart and Home Depot were warning Trump about that, hey, we are weeks away, days away from

from starting to have our shelves be light, starting to have things that are just out of stock. And also many people have been taking note. Ryan, B1B, you guys put this up on the screen. We are also now officially at the point where Shein, the low-cost retailer that many Americans appreciate, is massively hiking their prices. So up to 377% price hikes

Over at Sheehan, not everything is at that level, but the thick kitchen cleaning towels have now gone up from $1.28, which is unbelievable they cost that, to $6.10. Whatever, blinds, air conditioning, gap brush, that's gone up 219%. So the price hikes are starting to hit. I can tell you, I personally have seen prices jump at Amazon just over the past couple of weeks as well. And I know there were reports, Ryan, about Amazon sellers starting to take into account these price hikes.

Yeah, and the risk for the world is that all of those ships that you saw kind of hanging out off the Chinese coast, they got to go somewhere at some point. And so there are other countries...

are afraid that now there's going to be a bunch of Chinese dumping. Like, okay, well, we made this stuff. It's sitting in the ship. Can't sell it to the United States because they're doing their thing. You know, who wants a towel for, you know, $2? And Colombia would be like, all right, we'll take, you know, a million towels for $2 or whatever, or a Colombian company. And then the company in Colombia that makes the towels, they go under. So like there's a risk

Everybody's kind of holding their breath over how this is going to play out. Meanwhile, this Ken Griffin, Trump supporting Ken Griffin, this answer that he gave at a recent conference, I thought kind of nailed the problem that the U.S.,

what would you call it, the U.S. political economy faces coming out of this? Because the thing that really nailed Biden, like you said, was inflation from when the supply chains restarted. Because you can't, because of all of the bankruptcies and all of the clogging, it takes a very long time for that to start running smoothly again. Now, you've also implicated inflation

Treasury Treasury bonds and the dollar so what is that going to do when it if and when that starts flowing again? Let's roll Griffin markets are you know, obviously not liking what they're hearing treasuries in particular have have seen a lot of volatility and worries about Dysfunction in the market. What is that doing to the American brand? Well, okay, you actually picked exactly the right word. I

the American brand, right? The United States was more than just a nation. It's a brand. It's a universal brand, whether it's our culture, our financial strength, our military strength. America rose beyond just being a country. It was like an aspiration for most of the world. And we're eroding that brand right now. And if you think of your behavior as a consumer, how many times do you buy a product with a brand on it because you trust that brand?

You know you could buy like a similar dress with no name for less money, but you want the dress that you think is going to not fall apart in two weeks. You want the handbag that you think is well made. You want the television that you know that when you turn it on, it's going to work perfectly. You want the car that when you turn the engine on, it's going to run.

And when it comes to money management, for example, there are many great American institutions whose the power of their brand, that they will deliver a fair service at a fair price, that they'll do well by their investors and put their investors' interests first, whether it's a BlackRock or Fidelity. These are global brands of immense power. But in the financial markets, no brand compared to the brand of the U.S. Treasuries. U.S. Treasury market, the strength of the U.S. dollar and the strength...

The creditworthiness of U.S. Treasuries, no brand came close. We put that brand at risk. And as you and I both know, it can take a very long time, very long time to remove the tarnish on a brand. And the U.S. being the kind of reserve currency and this kind of global empire has a lot of downsides, also has upsides for Americans. You could imagine a world in which the strength that comes from that

could be the basis for reform and revitalizing the country. Instead, you're kind of getting rid of it without replacing it with anything else. Right. And also destroying tourism. Yeah. Like just, you know, which is, you know, nine plus percent of GDP, which is just an absolutely huge number. And much more significant for certain places, many of the red states like Florida and the Gulf Coast in particular. Nevada's like...

reliving 2010 and 2011. Yeah. I'm seeing lots of TikToks about that. And for no reason. Like the amount of pain that ripped through Vegas in the wake of the financial crisis is hard to bear. And to see it now happening for no reason, just because, is hard to watch. And was part of a shift to the right in Nevada,

because of the carnage from COVID and the perception of Democratic handling of that. And in spite of the fact that you have a very strong union organization there, you still saw a significant shift to the right in Nevada as a consequence of the shutdowns and the COVID fallout.

So, you know, you can only imagine with this where the blame is 100% with Donald Trump, like there's no argument otherwise what the fallout could be. That's a good point. They suffered through the COVID lockdowns. So first they suffered through the financial crisis and the real estate collapse. Oh, that was brutal. Then a nice recovery for a while and then you got a couple good years and then whacked by COVID. Then everybody's coming back to Vegas and partying and things are looking good and then boom.

Yep. You know, the Ken Griffin thing is could require a longer exploration that maybe we don't want to get into today. But as he's talking about America as a brand, I'm just thinking like many of the people on the Trump team that, you know, he supported and he backs Republicans to the tune of many millions of dollars. They don't agree with that. Like Stephen Miller sees America as blood and soil.

So they don't see America as a quote unquote brand. And I think there is something to be said for a critique of the America is a brand posture. But I also think that his comments about the way that that branding, and no one would understand this better than Donald Trump himself, the way that that branding impacts our status as the global reserve currency and the flight to safety to treasury bonds, et cetera, it is quite paramount. So the way that the financial system is structured right now. And so if you are going to disrupt

that and move to something else. You better have a damn good plan. And there's one thing that we have definitely learned. There was no damn good plan here. There was barely a plan. I mean, they were crafting that chart using chat GPT or however they decided to do it leading up to the hours before it's revealed and turns the entire global economic system utterly on its head. We got a couple more pieces here that just show the beginnings of the economic fallout. We've got B5, an Intel plant has now been delayed years

And, you know, at the cost of quite a number of jobs, it's now delayed until 2031. And in part, the uncertainty over the tariffs is playing into this. We also, something that Sager had brought up before is, you know, some of these specific parts of our economy are ultra, ultra dependent on China. The, you know, for new parents buying strollers, like basically every stroller is 98% or something made in China and many other countries.

You know, goods that you sort of essentially have to buy when you are bringing a child into this world. And toys are disproportionately made in China as well. I can put B6 up on the screen. So these are impacts already on the U.S. toy industry. And you have to think, like, you know, for in...

our terms, Christmas is a long way off. If you are a toy importer, if you're a toy store, you're thinking about this and you're planning for it now. You already have some 80 to almost 90% of toy companies that are delaying orders. You got 64% of small toy companies and 80% of mid-sized toy companies canceling orders. And you have almost half that say, Ryan, they will go out of business in weeks or months. Yeah. Weeks or months. Right.

Right. And a lot of them are going out of business as we speak. China, meanwhile, has announced that they're going to try to help their companies, these factories that are completely shut down. They're going to try to help those companies, help those workers to get through this because they can do that. They have like a unified system, whereas we don't. Donald Trump would have to go to Congress and apparently doesn't feel any interest in doing that. Real quickly on that Intel point, to preempt or –

a counter argument that you're going to hear from Trump supporters over this plant. Let's say, well, this plant was, it was delayed previously. First, it was supposed to be 2020 whatever, and then it was supposed to be 2030. Now it's 2031. And this is, you know, a representative of the failures of the CHIPS Act and of the underlying kind of capacity in the United States to build up our high-tech manufacturing base. Okay, true. But if that's the case,

and you already understand that, is that the foundation on which you would launch a trade war? Think about that. So according to you, and I'm talking to you Trump supporters who are going to make this exact point about this Intel plant, that this had nothing to do with the tariffs, that we just simply are not able to build these manufacturing facilities in a competent way. If that's true, and it is, we have a lot of work to do.

When it comes to labor force and when it comes to cracking down on these multinational corporations who would much rather do stock buybacks than actual investments. That's true. We've got to get our house in order. If that's true, then why did you just take a wrecking ball to our ability to do that? Why not fix our own problems?

manufacturing capacity problems here in the United States first and then launch a trade war so that when market conditions are made better domestically by tariffs, we have the capacity to respond to those conditions and build manufacturing capacity. That would be how you could potentially successfully do that. And the irony is we actually were doing some of that under Biden. The charts are like skyrocketing.

Shooting straight up under Biden. If you if you go and look at manufacturing, investment and spending and jobs and, you know, these factories. Yeah. These factories were coming online. We were actually, you know, for the first time in a long time, the recovery out of covid included more manufacturing spending. You know, the history of economic crises in modern American economic history.

history has been that when you come out of the crisis, some of the manufacturing losses, they're just gone. They don't come back. And they were able to buck that trend through the Infrastructure Act and through the CHIPS Act in particular, and through the Inflation Reduction Act, which is the dumbest ever name. But anyway- And some of Trump and Biden's tariffs.

Yes. Like targeted tariffs. Putting all of those things together, you actually did have a positive trend in terms of rebuilding American manufacturing in some really key sectors for the future. And all of that, they're taking a sledgehammer to. And Trump thought all of that was stupid, Ryan. I mean, he said this. Right. His...

view was you didn't have to do this industrial policy. You didn't have to give these subsidies and create these incentives for companies to build. You could just do tariffs and force them into it. And jawbone them. Call them up and yell at them. Yeah. And you know what? The jawboning, like with a company here or there, that may work. But if you're trying to have a nationwide manufacturing renaissance in certain key sectors, you're

you are not going to be able to jawbone your way into that. And you're certainly not going to be able to just tariff your way into that. And we know that because in Trump's first term, he did just tariffs, much more limited, but just tariffs without corresponding industrial policy. And it didn't work. Manufacturing continues to decline. Companies continue to offshore jobs. And the only way that we turned that around was through the industrial policy that was, you know, inherent in the Biden administration that the Trump

The Trump people and the Doge people are now completely like decimating, taking a wrecking ball too.

It's nostalgia overload as Wilmer Valderrama and Freddy Rodriguez welcome another amigo to their podcast, Dos Amigos. Wilmer's friend and former That 70s Show castmate, Topher Grace, stops by the speakeasy for a two-part interview to discuss his career and reminisce about old times. We were still in that place of like, what will this experience become? And you go, you're having the best time. But it was like such a perfect golden time. Listen to Dos Amigos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What's up, Federation? It's Freddie Prinze Jr. and Wrestling With Freddie is back. And we're going all in on WrestleMania 41. From the unpredictable to jaw-dropping finishes, this year's mania might have just changed everything. By the way, almost all the matches that we saw looked like real fights. I thought, like, they were like, yo, we're going hard today. Tomorrow we're going to hurt, but we're going hard today. Yeah.

Because it was like beast mode times 10 out there. Listen to this episode of Wrestling with Freddie on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.