The Intersection with Michael Popok Full Episode - 8/12/2025

26:36Michael Popok:That's enough. That's enough. And in the name of the victims, that's enough. To have her transferred was a poke in the eye to all of the victims that could only be perpetrated by a misogynist in chief, by a judge, sex abuser in chief who occupies the Oval Office. So I'm going to, when I come back from a short break, we're going to talk about the economy, Trumponomics, and the rest so that you have what you need around your kitchen table, around your social media to set the record straight. I just said recently, I watched Marc Maron, great comedian, but really a social commentator, political commentator in his new show.

27:23Michael Popok:He said, we're not watching with the Trump administration speaking truth to power. We're watching power to truth. Donald Trump is trying to use his power to crush truth. We see it with the Smithsonian Museum and eight different museums being terrorized by the Trump administration just today in ordering them to rewrite history, literally, to remove Donald Trump from an impeachment exhibit at the Smithsonian, to remove any references to what, slavery at the African American Experience Museum? But this is what a dictator wants to do. He has the power to control, right? The history is written by the winner.

28:10Michael Popok:And that's what we're watching Donald Trump do. But we can't let him do it. We can't let him use power to bend the truth. We've got to continue to speak truth to each other. And that's what we do every week here on The Intersection. Number of ways to support us. comments flying away here. I love those. This podcast is also audio. Pick us up on Spotify and Apple and leave a five-star review and notes. Tell your friends about us. We could use more audio downloads or video downloads on YouTube so we can end up in the top rankings of the YouTube podcast. That's important as well. Follow me and all of our other contributors on Legal AF, the YouTube channel, Legal AF MTN, and free subscribe there.

28:56Michael Popok:10 new videos every day at the intersection of law and politics. And we've got a sub stack, Legal AF sub stack, where we post all of these filings and orders, just like the one I just talked about, right there for you to read as well. So you can get the truth yourself. So we also have sponsors. So now a word from our pro-democracy sponsor. Are you sick of drinking your calories, of waking up hungover? Having some drinks can be fun, but I'm glad I found an alternative that lets me feel great in the moment and the next morning. Out of office gummies from Soul. The perfect buzz strength is a game changer.

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32:16Michael Popok:Thank you, Miracle Made, for sponsoring this episode. Welcome back to The Intersection, and thank you for our sponsors. One more sponsor of The Intersection is the Popok firm. As many of you know, I formed a firm really based on the demands and the requests of our audience. And so we're helping legal AF-ers and the Midas Mighty and those that support the intersection in all of their legal matters related to catastrophic injury. It's where I can do the most good with my team of plaintiff's lawyers around the country. So if you've been injured in a catastrophic accident or somebody in your family or a loved one has, we're talking car accident, truck accident, rideshare, Uber, Lyft accident, some sort of medical malpractice injury and other things.

33:07Michael Popok:We do other things as well, but we're really focused on that type. I've got an airplane crash, God forbid. We're representing people in some recent airplane crashes. then call the Popak firm and we'll have somebody talk to you about evaluating your case. And if we end up taking the case, there's no charge. You won't be paid until we are. In other words, we're contingency fee case. So contact us at 1-877-POPAKAF, or you can go to the website, read all about the firm and me and the rest at thepopakfirm.com. All right, let's get back to Trumponomics. I've been doing one video, the first video every day on Legal AF about Trumponomics.

33:49Michael Popok:And I think it's been a success because people are so interested to hear about how the policies that Donald Trump BS is about and defrauds the American people about how they actually impact your everyday life. And we've got some new developments here that I want to tie together in one economic evaluation. Data all against the Trump administration. First of all, we now have the final numbers for inflation, and they're terrible. And they're all under Donald Trump's watch. He can't blame anybody else. Or as his commerce secretary recently said, this is now the Trump economy. He owns it. I agree. Inflation.

34:25Michael Popok:I thought the reason most people voted for Donald Trump is because they thought the prices were going in the wrong direction. Well, they're going in the wrong direction even more. The core inflation, which covers food and transportation, things that you need to live, that's up 3.1 % year over year. So as I've said, if you went to the supermarket, you had a basket of things last year, identical basket of things you need to live for you and your family, your loved ones and seniors in your life, you're 3.1 % short now with the exact same money in your wallet. That's it. And the Federal Reserve, which is our central banker about monetary policy.

35:07Michael Popok:The reason they haven't lowered rates is their target inflation rate is 2%. By the time the tariffs come in, it'll be close to 4%. And that's not a good thing. And that is a reflection where Donald Trump is collecting lots of money to try to plug a hole in the amount of money he's not collecting on the Internal Revenue Service side because of the cut in taxes. He'll never be able to plug this hole with the amount of tariffs that he's collecting. He keeps bragging. 26 billion came in, 58 billion came in. First of all, less and less is going to come in on tariff payments because countries are going to adjust, turn away from the United States like Canada is and turn towards Europe and other places.

35:48Michael Popok:And they're going to start using modified behavior to avoid the tariffs. So Donald Trump's theory is, see, we sold this many goods last year, times my tariff rate will be this much dollars. No, because you'll have less goods come in because people will work to avoid your tariff. Tariff avoidance policies are kicking in already. So that's the first problem. So prices up. Now, Donald Trump a few days ago made a big show. I did a couple of videos about this on bringing in some Heritage Foundation economists. Hold that thought because he just named the Heritage Foundation economist to a major position.

36:28Michael Popok:This is a different one. Guy was wandering around. He had a visit with Donald Trump, came with a couple of homemade charts based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics. You know, the one where he just fired the commissioner based on their data. He had two charts. One showed that under the Bureau of Labor Statistics that he used it to make a point that the Biden administration didn't do well in the last economy. and should have been reported more based on Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers, which is a tough place to be when you're Donald Trump because he says all the numbers from the BLS are rigged, which was the reason he fired the commissioner.

37:09Michael Popok:So it's hard to say, hey, I like the numbers when they're over here and they show Biden had a terrible economy, but I don't like them over here. So Donald Trump fell in love with another chart and that chart, this guy made up using, wait for it, Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers to show that the average American household got an extra$1 ,800 since Trump's been in office? And I said at the time, that's a lie. That it may be even on average, but that means somebody's getting a million dollars and lots of people are getting zero. And it may average out to$1 ,800 or$2 ,000. And now it's out because you can't rely on any economic data coming out of the Trump administration, controlled by the Trump administration, because they've either defunded it out of existence, fired all the experts and the statisticians because they've been cooking the books since day one.

38:03Michael Popok:They announced it. The Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, said the February of the beginning of the term, we're going to get rid of the statistics. We're going to change how gross domestic product is measured. We're going to come up with new numbers. We're cooking the books. They told us this on the way in. So they had to get rid of the people that weren't willing to cook the books, like the economist commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So we can't rely anymore on their numbers. We have to look to the Congressional Budget Office. We have to look to outside data points produced by the industry, tourism boards, supply chain organizations, manufacturing organizations, labor unions, industry-specific organizations create their own data, which they get from their members.

39:00Michael Popok:That's what we're going to have to rely on. And Donald Trump can't cook all those books because he's not in control of it. So we're starting to get data from these other sources. So one is the Congressional Budget Office. They said, and their direction was, take Donald Trump's new budget that was just approved and run it through and show how it impacts Americans. And here's what they came up with today. The average American's not getting $1 ,800 in their pocketbook. The average American runs this way in this Congressional Budget Office report. One, the bottom 10 % of America, the poorest 10%, are now, wait for it,$1 ,200 poorer because they just lost benefits that are part of their life package, like Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment, food stamps, SNAP benefits.

39:57Michael Popok:To duck those, you, the poorer, the poor are now$1 ,200 poor. Top 10%, the richest got richer, and not by a little, by a lot. According to the CBO, they got richer by$13 ,600 a household. What do you need to know about how Trumponomics works that's not already proven by that CBO report? If you're poor, especially if you're poor, middle class to poor, and I'm not here to undermine the poor or the middle class or those that don't have enough money that have to work three jobs. I have family members that fall into that category. I had grandparents, great-grandparents who first came to this country that fell into that category.

40:43Michael Popok:Dignity in work, I believe it. But if you voted for Donald Trump, that was against your interests. because it's the red states that are getting nailed with the cut in federal funding. And it's the blue states where a lot of wealthy people live that aren't. And the Republican Country Club Republicans that live in wealthier states, they're not the ones that are getting screwed. It's the MAGA base that's getting screwed. Wake up. When are the scales going to drop from your eyes? I know there's a few that watch our shows here on the Midas Touch Network, like The Intersection, and I'm appealing to them.

41:19Michael Popok:Back to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. We've got a new development. Dr. E.J. Antony has been nominated to be your new commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Who's that guy? Well, from what I can tell, he owns a lot of three-piece suits with ties that are out of style and fashion. He wears a lot of three-piece suits. I think it's because he looks like he's about 22. He has allegedly a doctorate in economics from some Illinois university. I apologize in advance. I never heard of. He runs some sort of Texas economic group. And he's MAGA MAGA MAGA to the core. And he's been critiquing the Bureau of Labor Statistics, except when he's not critiquing it.

42:00Michael Popok:I caught clips, and I've done videos about it on Legal AF YouTube, in which Dr. Antony, actually using the Bureau of Labor Statistics data that he's now crapping all over, said, see, Biden didn't do well using the same data that we're now for Trump saying was rigged. Right. And that's the problem. What you want in a Bureau of Labor Statistics, which used to be the gold standard, the jobs report used to be the gold standard used around the world. What you want to lead that office, everybody agrees, except for Trump and those around him, is a nonpartisan, nonpartisan person who can be relied upon.

42:43Michael Popok:It's not going to be the water carrier for the president. We just got the opposite. Bannon said at first, we need a right-wing MAGA person running our numbers. Correct. So they reached out to E.J. Antony, self-proclaimed expert on labor economics. Here's the problem. He's not a statistician. He doesn't understand how the Bureau of Labor Statistics works. And let me just explain it so everybody gets it. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, like any statistical modeling entity, has to balance between immediacy and accuracy, immediacy and accuracy. So on the immediacy side, the economy and the stakeholders of the economy need data that's reasonably accurate.

43:29Michael Popok:Now, they understand when the Bureau of Labor Statistics issues a jobs report that it's subject to change. Because first of all, the inputs for the job report come from states and other municipalities and governmental entities, and it's voluntary. They don't have to fill out their reports. And since COVID, only like 43 % fill out the reports, maybe because they don't have the funds to fund the statistics and give the raw data. That's Trump's fault. So you have that. So they have to run it through a model. They have to do statistical modeling with limits. And then they get more data and more data.

44:06Michael Popok:They do a look back and they revise up, down or the same. Sometimes Donald Trump in the first term was the beneficiary of that. Sometimes he wasn't. The biggest revision that was ever done was actually not for Donald Trump or Joe Biden. It was done for a prior president back in the 1990s. It was almost a one million job revision. It's how hard it is to get this. But it's not rigged. And the economy and the stakeholders of the economy on Wall Street, financial services, and our global trading partners understand that those numbers can go up and down, that they're tentative. So the fact that Donald Trump lost 280 ,000 jobs that he never really had based on a modeling, it happens.

44:44Michael Popok:Shit happens. Get over it. Instead of firing the numbers, so to speak, why don't you work on the failed economic policy that generated the numbers. Maybe that should say to you, crap, I didn't make 300 ,000 jobs in May and June. I only made 38 ,000. Maybe I should make some adjustments to my policy. That's what a rational person running our economy would do. But we don't have a rational person running our economy. Marc Maron called it best when I watched the standup. He said, we have a clown king running our economy. And now the clown king is getting in business with the Chinese in violation of our national, and undermining our national security.

45:24Michael Popok:Yes, I know it's at the end of the intersection, but you heard me right. The clown king is violating and undermining our national security because NVIDIA, one of three chip manufacturers in America, came and cut a deal with Donald Trump. Let us get out from under export controls to our enemy, China. Technology that goes to the Chinese military to allow it to upgrade itself, to allow it to modernize itself. I know people are like, well, they got chips too. Somebody wrote me that. Oh, you're showing your American bias, Popak. They have chips. Yeah, but they don't have our chips. They don't have our AI chips.

46:03Michael Popok:They don't have NVIDIA's Blackwell chips, which are the industry leaders. They don't have AMD's chips. Now, these chip manufacturers, very interesting. Donald Trump's always like, I'm bringing chip manufacturing back to the United States. No, that was Joe Biden. In fact, NVIDIA and AMD, and to a certain extent Intel, are what they call fabless. Not fabulous. Fabless, meaning they don't manufacture, they don't fabricate. You know, they fab other places. Taiwan, primarily. South Korea. That's where the actual chips are made. So Donald Trump's not bringing jobs back in chip manufacturing because the jobs aren't even here.

46:45Michael Popok:And he's cutting deals with NVIDIA. Now he's going to let them sell to the Chinese and let them modernize their army in return for a 15 percent tribute payment to the to the U.S. government. Are you effing out of your mind? I mean, I know the NFL is allowing smelling salts again. Donald Trump needs to take a whiff of the smelling salt. You don't sell our high tech AI and other chips to the effectively to the Chinese military. That's why we have export controls that are supposed to be controlled by the Commerce Department. That's why we got rid of TikTok under the Biden administration with Congress in bipartisan fashion.

47:25Michael Popok:Because it's a weapon of the Chinese government and military. My friends out there that are leaders on TikTok, God love you. More power to you. But that's what it is. Donald Trump just cut a deal to let NVIDIA, for effectively$3 billion payment, sell hundreds of billions of dollars to chips and flood the market in China. There goes our national security. That was the reason for the export control. That was the reason to ban TikTok, to protect our national security. Because the people around Donald Trump are not national security experts. Marco Rubio, little Marco down in Florida. I know Marco Rubio.

48:02Michael Popok:He was a partner in one of my law firms. Never met the guy, although I'm pretty sure he picked up a paycheck. Yeah. that Marco? Because he's the Secretary of State, but he's not really the Secretary of State. We know that's Steve Witkoff. Who else? Howard Lutnick, Commerce Secretary. He ran a family office. Had no national security concerns about any of his products because his products were brokering and broking and commissions and volume and turnover and velocity of trade. What's that have to do with national security? So Donald Trump doesn't have anybody around him. that will say to him, speaking truth to power, no, don't sell the chips.

48:43Michael Popok:The extra dollars to the American public to try to plug the hole you've made from your tax cuts isn't worth it. It's not the first time Donald Trump's gotten into bed with one of our allies or enemies. We own as an American people, effectively, a controlling interest in U.S. steel because Donald Trump sold it to the Japanese. U.S. steel is not owned by U.S. steel or American interest. It's owned by Japanese interest. Donald Trump says, yeah, but I got a cover story for that. We own a golden share. We got the golden share. We allow, yeah. You're now in business with Japan against actual American steel companies.

49:26Michael Popok:Well, I got 15 % from our chip manufacturers. A, that's not going to help bring jobs back because it's made in Taiwan effectively. Secondly, you just sold out our national security for effectively$3 billion. I thought it would be worth more, honestly. Rest in peace, national security. It's now dead under Donald Trump. So domestic security, undermined. Foreign security, undermined. National security, undermined. And we're only seven, eight months into this administration. What can you do about it? Let's leave on a hopeful note. Not the Grim Reaper. What do you do about it? Well, many of the things that we talk about would not be happening if we had Democrats running Congress, running the House, because they would be checks and balance.

50:16Michael Popok:There would be investigations. There would be impeachment proceedings over most of what Donald Trump is doing. That's what you have to focus on. That's why we talk about congressional maps. That's why we talk about the census. That's why we talk about voter, voting rights being taken away and why it's important to fight that fight now and voter registration now. And we do it together, right? Because we're joined at the hip. We vibrate at the same frequency here on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF. And together, together, I assure you, we will overcome the Trump administration. May take one step at a time, but we see the runway and we're going to do it together.

51:00Michael Popok:I'm glad you're here on The Intersection. Every Tuesday night, join me here on YouTube, on audio podcast platforms, on Legal AF YouTube channel, on Legal AF The Podcast, which I do on Wednesdays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern time. Also about law and politics. I have a co-anchor, Karen Freeman-Nignifolo on Wednesdays. Sometimes we have a guest host. Or Saturdays with Ben Maisalas. So until my next The Intersection, this is Michael Popok, and I am reporting. I'm Michael Popok, and I got some big news for our audience. Most of you know me as the co-founder of Midas Touches Legal AF and the Legal AF YouTube channel, or as a 35-year national trial lawyer.

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