Trump gets nightmare economic news

20:12Brian Tyler Cohen:Yeah, the least popular war at its outset in American history. But look, the Trump administration is nothing if not adept at managing the media, managing like how it promotes the optics of everything that they do. They're pretty savvy operators in that respect. Normally, yes. Normally. And so what do you think is the upside for Trump as we head toward midterms? Midterms are only six months away and it already doesn't look like, you know, even if they ended this thing tomorrow, It already seems to be unraveled enough that they wouldn't be able to put the pieces back together where people wouldn't be feeling this, you know, come November.

20:47Brian Tyler Cohen:What do you think the upside is? What do you think the rationale for them is? Because I'm assuming you don't believe that it's that there was an imminent threat from Iran. So what do you think? Why did he do this? I mean, I think what the reason he started the war is because, look, last June there was the midnight hammer operation where they bombed a couple of Iran's nuclear sites. No one was hurt. Everyone told him he was an amazing, tough, historic figure. Then there was the Venezuela operation earlier this year where special forces were able to swoop in, capture Nicolas Maduro, the president of Venezuela, yank him out, install the vice president.

21:20And now Trump feels like he's running Venezuela as this vassal state. So he has decided that he has almost godlike powers via the U.S. military, especially special forces, that there is no cost. There is no downside, that he can do literally whatever he wants. And he had lunatics like Lindsey fucking Graham talking into this war and say, sir, if you take out Maduro and the Ayatollah is in Iran and the Cuban government is next, you're the greatest president in history. And that was just an insane thing to argue, given what we know about Iran and the capability of their military and how they would fight.

21:54And also, I mean, just to talk about the communications piece of this a bit. Normally, Donald Trump is an excellent communicator. Like we don't like him. He's crazy. But like he is able to drive a narrative, control the media, right? Like get people to talk about what he wants to talk about. He has utterly failed to do that on Iran. He never gave a major speech explaining his rationale. He's doing like random little toppers about Iran. At the same time, he's like welcoming the MLS soccer team champion to the White House, right?

22:21Brian Tyler Cohen:Like he just looks like he's still golfing on the weekends. Yeah, he's golfing on the weekends. like reporters are like drunk dialing him and he's doing like 40 mini interviews where he's saying different things like he has created a lot of the communications problems that have fed into the political problems behind the war itself. OK, so you're actually really well positioned to be able to answer this because you were a spokesman for the National Security Council. But I'm curious what the options are in terms of moving forward. Like if Trump extracts the United States right now, what does that look like?

22:52Brian Tyler Cohen:Best case scenario and worst case scenario. And I ask that because it doesn't feel like even if we ended this today, it would be as neat as I think he anticipates. Like we're now seeing Iran bomb other countries in the region and those countries begin to retaliate. So it feels like it's already gotten out of our hands a little bit out of control. And so just give me give me a sense of best case scenario and worst case scenario, even if we were able to leave tomorrow. Yeah. Look, I think if Trump decided he woke up tomorrow and he thought, OK, this is not going well, like we're done, we're done hitting targets.

23:23I think the Israelis keep going, which means the Iranians keep going, which means the Strait of Hormuz stays closed. And the Iranians probably also retaliate against U.S. interests in the region because they think that putting pressure on the U.S. will be the only way to get Netanyahu and the Israelis to stop. Now, I think what's most likely to happen is Trump is going to keep going for several weeks, if not longer. There's a lot of concern. You know, there's reports that are sending like thousands of Marines to the Middle East right now to do maybe ground operations. Those could include going in and getting highly enriched uranium and pulling it out of Iran.

23:56Those were the sites that we bombed last June. That we supposedly obliterated. Yes, supposedly obliterated last June. It could mean taking oil and gas infrastructure on this place called Karg Island. It could mean God knows what. And so I just fear that we are getting slowly sucked into this war deeper and deeper. And as more of these energy insulations get targeted, you could see the price of a barrel of oil go to like 150, 200. I mean, God knows.

24:20Brian Tyler Cohen:was that not even a concern for this administration? It's crazy. Like they knew. I mean, it was something that Trump was hammering on a daily basis that he'd gotten the price of gas down. And now he seems to have relinquished his last saving grace because obviously the price of housing has continued to rise, the price of groceries, the price of utilities, all of these things that he promised he would bring down and the things that he exploited when he was on the campaign trail, those have all gone up. But he at least had this last vestige, this last silver lining, which was low gas prices, He had to know, I mean, you know, that that one of the weapons that Iran could deploy was closing or even mining the Strait of Hormuz.

24:57Brian Tyler Cohen:And so was there nobody there to tell them like, hey, you might want to you might want to hold on to this last thing that you have as we especially enter midterms? Yeah. I mean, look, every expert would have told you that a war game with Iran ends with them mining or closing the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranians told us as much basically like if you attack us again, we're going to regionalize this war, meaning attack your interests in the region. but attack other countries. You're right, though. Trump has had, like, this man is completely out of touch with every normal American, right? He lives at a country club half the time.

25:28But he does know that people care about gas prices. It's like a thing he's internalized since the 80s. He used to brag about it all the time. But now the national average for gas in the U.S. has reached$3.90 per gallon. It could hit$4 a gallon next week. That's basically up a buck in, like, a month. And diesel has already exceeded$5. Diesel's way up. And on top of that, I mean, one third of the world's fertilizer passes through the Strait of Hormuz. That's not getting through. Other critical minerals and elements like sulfur or helium that like you need in manufacturing, they're not getting out.

26:01So this is going to hammer prices in the U.S., but also like really poor countries are going to get especially fucked by this.

26:07Brian Tyler Cohen:Is this the kind of thing that best case scenario could go away in a couple of weeks? Like there's a world where Trump gets bored, you know, and see something else that's shiny. if things tamp down? What is like, what's the tail on this thing? I think the tail is like months at a minimum. I think gas prices are elevated through the summer, even if things like calm down right now, just because it takes a while to get these supply chains back revved up. And then it's Republicans that have to shoulder this stuff because they're going on the campaign trail and they have to somehow say, the president that we have refused every single step of the way to serve as a check on has engaged in this whole process that's raised the cost of everything.

26:44Brian Tyler Cohen:we were we were instrumental in cutting medicaid and cutting ACA subsidies and cutting food assistance like i mean i'm not i kind of have to ask you to get in the head of these republicans what do you say on the campaign trail other than we had to do it because a threat from iran was imminent like against the homeland like how do you how do you go on the campaign trail when you have nothing to point to yeah i think you have to try to regurgitate this lie that there was some sort of imminent threat, but voters aren't buying it. After 20 years and$2 trillion being spent on the war in Iraq, now you think the voters have an app?

27:18Brian Tyler Cohen:I mean, they voted expressly for him because he promised he wouldn't do this. Yep. And by the way, there was a YouGov poll out on Thursday that found 24 % of 2024 Trump voters disapprove of his handling of Iran. Which is pretty enormous considering these people, this is the kind of thing. Normally North Korea numbers. Correct. Correct. Even within his own within his own conference, we always see like, you know, 96 percent support for the craziest fucking thing. Like Trump shoots puppy point blank on the side of the road. It's like 96 percent support this guy. Yeah. And it like and it's it's just not going to get better.

27:50I mean, if I were a member of Congress, I think your only prayer is like, is my district gerrymandered enough? Well, I don't know what else we got.

27:57Brian Tyler Cohen:Yeah. I mean, that that should be kind of a blinking red light because we've already seen just on the affordability stuff unto itself, some staggering numbers in terms of the swings that we're seeing 12, 14, 16 points to the left. And these are not even in, you know, purple districts. Like we're seeing some districts in Arkansas, you know, some like some Florida districts. We're seeing districts where, or jurisdictions where the population is primarily Latino swing like 40, 50 points to the left. It's crazy numbers. And if you look - And that was before the war. That was before the war, which is only going to exacerbate the affordability problems.

28:33Brian Tyler Cohen:And now add war on top of that, a war that, by the way, costs a billion dollars a day that we presumably, you know, apparently didn't have any money for, you know, American priorities before this. But now we've come up with all of this funding for for the war. But we have some Senate seats that are that are pretty close. Oh, yeah. We're talking Senate seats in in Maine and North Carolina, Ohio, Alaska, Iowa, Texas. Yeah. And so like that puts these states in play in a big way. You know, in a way that may not have happened if Donald Trump didn't engage in all of this voluntarily, because this didn't have to happen.

29:11That's the thing. It's like, look, by the end of four years, voters blamed Joe Biden for inflation, even if it wasn't necessarily his fault. Because the buck stops with the president. The buck stops with the president. In this case, like if you ask the majority voters, I think if you'd asked in 2024, why'd you vote for Trump? It would be to get inflation and get prices down because things are too expensive and they were pissed. He already had not solved that problem. Yeah.

29:33Brian Tyler Cohen:Inflation was basically 2.9 percent, 3 percent. Biden left office with inflation at 3 percent. Yes. So that was not solved. It was not handled. And then Trump did this thing that is obvious to everyone. He started a war that single handedly ramped up like one of their biggest costs, which is gasoline. Yeah. I mean, that was that was the hard thing for Democrats to reconcile is like, you know, that Biden's going to take the blame for high gas prices, even though the economy was opening up after COVID had shut everything down, it takes a little bit of time to get some of these oil wells back online that had been offline prior to that.

30:08Brian Tyler Cohen:There was obviously global inflation. Russia had invaded Ukraine. That had some impact on the war. And so whether it was Joe Biden in office or any other president, those high prices would have been there regardless. And so you can make that argument. People are still going to blame the president. But but, you know, that was the kind of thing where, you know, if you were acting in good faith, it doesn't really matter who the president was or what his policies were. That was going to happen. This is an instance where Donald Trump is unilaterally and directly responsible because had he not done that Friday night a couple of weeks ago, we would have woken up Saturday and there would be no war.

30:41Brian Tyler Cohen:The Shade of Hormuz would still be open. A barrel of oil would still be like 60 bucks or whatever it was. And like his interviews about this, he's like, well, it's a small price to pay to eliminate the threat from Iran. It's like, no, no one agrees with that. Yeah. Well, I think that that the part that was funny about that is like this. OK, we have to be like patriotic and accept and accept like, you know, some some temporary pain. This is an entire political party that railed against the the concept of wearing masks during COVID because it's like I'm not going to allow a single inch of sacrifice in my life.

31:14Brian Tyler Cohen:even if they made fun of stay inside to stop the spread for a week or whatever it was, like a pretty small sacrifice for a global pandemic. And that was a bridge too far. But now everybody has to pay higher gas prices because Donald Trump has decided that he needed to do regime change in the Middle East. Without telling anyone. Without telling anybody or making any case for any of this. Yeah, it's a nightmare. Yeah. I'm curious too, one of the things that I've seen as we look toward some tenuous justification, and I think you're exactly right, in terms of Trump looking at how he can build up his legacy.

31:47Brian Tyler Cohen:There is kind of the beneficial consequence, as far as he's concerned, of less talk about the Epstein files. To what extent do you think that this did serve a dual purpose in that talk about the Epstein files is obviously a little bit subdued relative to where it was before? I mean, I guess the reason I struggle with that theory is like he might have found something nearly as unpopular as Jeffrey Epstein. But he didn't intend for it to be unpopular. I think that you're exactly right, that he thought this would be easy. Yeah, but look, it's something he overtly ran against. And so it hurts him in two different ways.

32:27One, there's a lot of people who are like, no, I don't want to go to war in the Middle East. There's a lot of veterans or young people who want to spend money elsewhere. Our buddy Peter Hamby did a big polling project where they looked at, they did quantitative and qualitative research with all these young men, like 18 to 29 of all political persuasions. And the thing that pissed them off the most was why are we spending money on bombs and not here when my life sucks and I don't feel like things are getting better. And also they were worried about getting drafted. And then they're, which by the way, Caroline Levitt refused to rule out.

32:57She refused to rule out. And then also mostly there's like, it's another thing he lied about, right? Like there's a group of people who are new voters, maybe like sporadic voters who voted for Trump because they were pissed off at the status quo and pissed off at the system. And they believed Trump when he said he would release the Epstein files, care about cost of living and not get us into dumb wars. And now that he's overtly lied to their face about all those things, it's really like cracking something, I think, in his political support.

33:21Brian Tyler Cohen:Yeah. I mean, the reality is like his entire presidency has been a graveyard of broken promises. He promised free IVF didn't happen. He promised lower cost instead engaged in a trade war that raised costs. He promised an end to the Russia-Ukraine war. That's still raging a year and a half later. All the Maha people are pissed off at him because despite like Bobby Kennedy releasing videos with Kid Rock and like a, you know. Working out in airports. Yeah, like driving a scooter and then getting in like the cold plunge. They've refused to ban Roundup, this weed killer that is linked to all this cancer that was a huge priority for the Maha world.

33:53So like breaking promises left and right. Yeah. And there's corporate interest behind it.

33:56Brian Tyler Cohen:There are a lot of studies that show that Roundup is actually healthy for you if you drink one shot of it per day. Post-workout. that was honestly pretty good that was really good well so look i think uh i think to that end if you want to see more rfk impressions i do take that show on the road yeah i think we're gonna i think we're gonna do exactly that you you you in you in tommy see you in boston die the river what that is a reference to is i recently did a live event in boston and confused boston and Chicago. Who were you talking to? I was talking to the governor of Massachusetts and asked how much green dye they put in the Boston Harbor because I forgot that it was Chicago whose river they die.

34:43Brian Tyler Cohen:Anyway, only the real ones will have watched this deep into the video to even know that. All Irish people look alike to this guy. For those who haven't yet subscribed to Pod Save America's YouTube channel, I'm going to put the link right here on the screen. You're fine. Give it a pass. It is completely free to subscribe. If you want to help build up this progressive media ecosystem, Please make sure to subscribe, and this way you can see more from Tommy.

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36:34Brian Tyler Cohen:Go to Shopify dot com slash BTC. That's Shopify dot com slash BTC. I'm joined now by the Democratic minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries. Thanks so much for joining me to be with you. So I want to talk about the number one issue that the right is pushing right now, which is the lack of funding for TSA. Obviously, we're seeing massive amounts of TSA agents call out of work because DHS hasn't been funded. The right is claiming that this is all the result of the Democrats. They're waging this big disinformation campaign where every time there's a delay in some airport and we're seeing massive delays, they're saying thank a Democrat.

37:11Brian Tyler Cohen:Can you talk to me about the effort being put forward by Democrats to get TSA funded? Thanks for asking, because there are a few things that are important here. One, listen, Republicans control the House, the Senate and the presidency. And from the very beginning of this president's term, they've taken a my way of the highway approach. The reason why TSA is not being paid is because Republicans have made the decision to hold TSA agents hostage and to create chaos in airports all across the country because they don't want to get ICE under control. And if you go back to the one big ugly bill,$191 billion was given to the Department of Homeland Security, including$75 billion in the slush fund to ICE.

37:54They have more than enough money to make sure that every single TSA agent is paid. They've made an affirmative decision not to do so, which is why we've launched this discharge petition to force an up or down vote to ensure that we can pay TSA agents and reopen the other parts of the Department of Homeland Security, like FEMA and the Coast Guard and our cybersecurity professionals that don't have to do with ICE or don't have to do with Donald Trump's extreme and violent mass deportation machine.

38:25Brian Tyler Cohen:So if they're saying right now that it's the Democrats' fault for not funding TSA and the Democrats have standalone bills to fund TSA, then what is the excuse for TSA not being funded? Yeah, it's just Republicans, again, engaging in massive disinformation and lying, straight up lying to the American people. These are pathological liars over on the other side of the aisle in terms of what many of them just do. And certainly we see that on the extreme far right. They know they're on the run. They know that the American people recognize that Donald Trump and Republican policies have been a complete and total failure.

39:01This guy promised to lower costs on day one. Costs have been gone down. Costs have gone up. Republicans are losing elections all across the country, up and down the ballot. We've seen that now happening for about 15 consecutive months. Donald Trump is deeply unpopular. The one big ugly bill is unpopular. This reckless war of choice that Donald Trump has gotten us into in the Middle East is deeply unpopular. And the American people want to see taxpayer dollars being spent to improve their quality of life. And that's what Democrats have been fighting hard to achieve, whereas Republicans are spending billions of dollars to do things like drop bombs in Iran or to unleash violent, untrained and mass ICE agents to brutalize or in some cases kill American citizens and violently target law-abiding immigrant families.

39:53And so, of course, they're trying to distract the American people, but we're not going to let them do it.

39:59Brian Tyler Cohen:To that end, there is reporting that the White House is now asking or considering asking for $200 billion as a supplemental aid package for the ongoing Iran war. Can I have your reaction to that news? I mean, it's the craziest thing in the world that the White House might potentially be floating. Coming to Congress for an additional$200 billion when they haven't justified a dime that has already been spent and have no view as to how to actually get us out of the situation that they recklessly got us into and simply want taxpayers to be on the hook for tens of billions of dollars more when there's no justification for the billions of dollars per day that they're spending right now.

40:47They've not made the case in any compelling way as to how actually the American people have been made safer by this conflict, of course. And we're seeing as a result of this reckless war of choice, costs go up, particularly gasoline prices, which are through the roof right now. By the way, this all happened when Donald Trump came to the House floor bragging about the fact that in his view, gasoline prices were down. The guy has been a complete and total failure. And so while we haven't been presented with any requests for additional funding, they don't have any ability, in my view, to justify additional funding at this point in time when they haven't made the case to the American people, to the Congress, or even to our NATO allies as to why we're in this situation in the first place.

41:40Brian Tyler Cohen:Well, we've already seen a few instances where that spending for this war is already out of control. The first couple of days cost roughly five to six billion dollars. The first six days of this conflict or war or incursion or excursion or whatever they're going with today cost over 11 billion dollars. And now, as I mentioned, there's that reporting that suggests that they're looking for$200 billion. What could that money be used for if not dropping bombs in the Middle East at the hands of a president who swore up and down that there would be no new wars? Yeah, it's a very important point. Candidate Trump said that he's not going to get America into another reckless war of choice in the Middle East.

42:18President Trump has done the exact opposite, gotten us into a reckless war of choice in Middle East, spending billions and billions of dollars already, perhaps up to$30 billion have already been spent, if not more. And now he wants to come to us potentially for an additional$200 billion. Listen, this is the same group of people who enacted the largest cut to Medicaid in American history, ripping healthcare away from millions of people, including children, women, and seniors. They also enacted the largest cut to nutritional assistance in American history,$186 billion in their one big ugly bill.

42:56They've literally stole food from the mouths of hungry children and veterans. And so that money could and should be used to restore as many of the Medicaid cuts as possible. That money should be used to make sure that no one in America goes hungry. That money should be used to make sure that the money that was stolen from consumers as a result of the Trump tariffs, which have cost them thousands of dollars in additional expense per year and have now been declared illegal and unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, the American people should have their money refunded to them. And of course, that money could be used to make sure that we extend the Affordable Care Iraq tax credits.

43:45So more than 20 million Americans aren't put in the situation that they're in right now because of Donald Trump, where they can't afford to go see a doctor when they need one.

43:57Brian Tyler Cohen:I would also add that, you know, TSA's budget, I checked their 2025 full year budget. It was like$11.8 billion, meaning TSA could have been funded three times over for the amount of money that Donald Trump has spent dropping bombs in the Middle East, again, which would be bad enough, but even more egregious given the fact that he campaigned expressly on never doing this. I want to switch gears here to a different topic, and that is Pam Bondi. Do you think that what Pam Bondi is attempting to do in the aftermath of the subpoena being issued to her to come testify before for a private deposition in April, that by holding a a briefing and this was just this just took place yesterday, that she's looking to basically satisfy her requirements in her own mind so that she doesn't have to fulfill any obligations to appear for that private deposition per the subpoena that she received?

44:50Pam Bondi is a partisan, petulant, petty fogger. She is a political hack. She's deeply unqualified. And we saw how she performed when she came before the House Judiciary Committee, before the American people, performing for Donald Trump and no one else, acting like she's his personal lawyer as opposed to the people's lawyer, which is the job of the attorney general. And she's engaging in a massive cover-up as it relates to the Epstein files, which is why, led by House Democrats, we have forced the Oversight Committee to subpoena her. And now, Brian, as you've indicated, she's trying to get around that.

45:30by holding a briefing, this is unheard of as far as I'm concerned. There was no deposition transcript. There was no recordings. And there was no swearing her under oath. And so she can say all manner of things without fear of being prosecuted at some point later on for perjury. And so Summer Lee was exactly right, that Pam Bondi needs to testify under oath before the American people so we can talk about the massive cover-up that the Department of Justice has undertaken. There are about 3 million files connected to the Jeffrey Epstein situation that Epstein survivors have firmly and appropriately and passionately demanded be released so we can achieve transparency and full accountability.

46:29Brian Tyler Cohen:You know, the problem as it relates to Pam Bondi and and her failing to comply with a congressional subpoena is that the the agency that would normally be tasked with with enforcing that subpoena is the one that she herself leads. And so I spoke with Congressman Raskin and he brought up the fact that Congress does have inherent contempt powers. Is that something that you think Congress would be in the right to wield in the event that Democrats took control of the House in the aftermath of the 2026 election? And we still have an attorney general who refuses to comply with the law. Absolutely. Congress has inherent contempt powers, and it's going to be one of the tools that we will have to use when Democrats take back control of the House of Representatives in order to make clear that there will be consequences if congressional subpoenas are violated or the Department of Justice continues to try to conduct itself like it's above the law.

47:28in addition to a wide variety of other tools that we'll need to utilize. Listen, there's going to have to be accountability. And my view about how we move forward, our promise to the American people, is that we're going to relentlessly focus on the affordability crisis that Donald Trump thinks is a hoax. We're committed to driving down the high cost of living. We're committed to fixing our broken health care system. At the same period of time, we're also committed to cleaning up corruption. And we know there's a lot of it that has taken place in the White House and with the Trump cartel. And the Department of Justice is front and center in that regard, particularly as it relates to the active cover-up that many people have correctly concluded is taking place right now.

48:11And so, yes, it certainly is the case that inherent contempt is something that should be under consideration right now. But James Comer, who continues to behave like a malignant buffoon, is someone who is actively participating in the effort to shield the White House. He's leading the cover-up caucus as opposed to leading the oversight committee.

48:35Brian Tyler Cohen:We'll leave it there. Leader Jeffries, I appreciate your time. Thank you much. Hey, it's Howie Mandel, and I am inviting you to witness history as me and my Howie Do It gaming team take on Gilly DeKing and Wallow 267's Million Dollars Gaming in an epic Global Gaming League video game showdown. Four rounds, multiple games, one winner, plus a halftime performance by multi-platinum artist Travi McCoy. Watch all the action and see who wins and advances to the championship match against Nioh right now at GlobalGamingLeague.com. That's GlobalGamingLeague.com. Everybody games.