Raging Moderates: The Art of the Trade War

27:35Because if you wanted to fix the illegal immigration problem, you would just find business owners$10 ,000. You do raids. And for every illegal immigrant, undocumented worker at a business, you charge the business owner$10 ,000. And you would see all of a sudden people would use biometrics and get much more serious about ensuring that people could legally work at their establishment. they would a lot of these jobs the demand would go away and these folks wouldn't come here if they couldn't find work but we're not interested in going after nice americans that own businesses that are wealthy i think you could do the same thing here and that is if you wanted to stop the flow of illegal ip you'd find amazon who who is a platform for all these knockoffs and also quite frankly, Amazon engages in the same type of IP theft.

28:25These are real issues, but I think they're more nuanced and have to be addressed more specifically with specific negotiations. There is a court. We do sue in Chinese courts for IP theft, but I would argue that is a real consideration and a real issue here. But this is just insane. And this notion, this talking point that 75 countries are lining up to negotiate, your point's exactly the right one. When you declare war on everyone all at once. I want to be clear. I'm not comparing Trump to Hitler. I'm using a war analogy. Hitler likely would, you know, people in France are probably speaking German right now if he had not decided to declare war on everyone all at once.

29:08And that is he's declaring war on all of the continental Europe and then said, no, the Russians are a mongrel people. I'm going to declare war on them, even though they were an ally. That was his fatal mistake. And if Trump was serious about tariffs, and sometimes tariffs can work, he would go after specific or try to negotiate with specific countries around specific issues and let pros handle it. But now all he's done is unify a ton of nations against him. You know, the EU is talking to people. And also this notion that we can hurt China. I heard this on Sunday morning from Navarro, who really is an ass.

29:46I mean, it is difficult to stand out as an ass among this clown car, and he manages to do that. But they keep talking about how much we can hurt China, that we can devastate them. And there's really two pieces of calculus, one obvious, one less obvious. The percentage of exports to the America of their total export economy has gone from 24 % to 17. They have been diversifying away from us. We also have been diversifying away from them. We've reduced our exports by 4%. So we're diversifying away from each other because there's a chill and we're not getting along, but they're doing it faster. The three biggest trading partners of China, these guys speak as if we're everything.

30:30We're the one person who shows up every day and you have to be nice to us. No, the biggest trading partner for China is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, ASEAN, at a trillion. The second largest trading partner for China is the EU. at 900 billion. And we come in at third. So the notion that we have all this power over them is a little bit, it's just not true. Now, let's assume we could hurt them more than they can hurt us. The missing part of that calculus is the following. Women are born with a hormone such that they have a much higher tolerance for pain because they have to endure childbirth, which, from what I've heard and witnessed is the real deal in terms of pain.

31:21It's bad. Yeah. Yeah, I've heard that. I've heard that. Yeah. We're the man in this relationship in the sense that Americans, we're innovative, we're generous. We are not good with pain. There is a practical, there are riots in the street when the Jake or Logan Paul or whoever the fuck it was, and Mike Tyson, when it doesn't buffer real time on Netflix. The notion that we would even endure$2 ,000 iPhones before sweeping out a la Congress, China will starve tens of millions of people if it suits their economic or political purposes. It's just so insane that we believe we would endure a fraction of the pain that the Chinese would implement on their people and that their people would endure relative to what Americans— I mean, we left Vietnam after losing 58 ,000 men.

32:18The Viet Cong at that point had lost a million, and we decided to leave. We decided we couldn't take any more. They had lost a million. We had lost 58 ,000. And by the way, it's only gotten worse. Look at Ukraine. We don't like it. It's costing us$60 billion. Haven't lost a single person, no boots on the ground. but that's too much pain for us. These guys, they keep anytime they can't rationalize, my favorite is when they say, don't bet against Donald Trump. First off, he's a great businessman. He's a shitty businessman that has lost his father's money and has left a trail of bankrupt companies and unpaid subcontractors.

33:00This notion that he is a good business person is a myth and a lie. He's a fantastic reality talk show person. He built probably the best reality talk show. He made a lot of money. You got to give him that. But the notion that he's some sort of great business mind is not true. And my favorite go-to when they can't rationalize the irrational is they say, well, he's playing 4D chess. You just don't see the Matrix the way he does. We're too dumb to understand, didn't you know? This guy is not only not playing chess, at this point, we're worried he's going to start eating the fucking pieces. this guy seems to be so irrational and stupid and unpredictable.

33:39Bissent said over 70 countries want to talk. That is such bullshit. 70 countries are working with each other to figure out a way to excise this tumor called indecision and toxic uncertainty of America right now. Consumer sentiment also just dropped 11 % this month, its second lowest point since the 50s. and now the EU is floating taxes on U.S. tech companies if these talks fall apart. Just insane here. Jess, when you look at that, plus Trump's isolationist policies, what does it all tell you about where the U.S. economy is headed? It's heading into the toilet, and the American public knows it.

34:19His economic approval has dropped 20 points since he was inaugurated. He's in historically bad territory, and he's only matched by himself during the first administration. Everybody knows that a tariff is a tax on the consumer. And when I say everybody, I mean from the small business owner to the big business owner to Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. Ben Shapiro is out there saying this is likely unconstitutional or may end up in the courts with all of this. Holman Jenkins had an interesting op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about Trump actually, it's seemingly that he would be on his way to another impeachment over this because you would want to remove him in the same way that you would want to remove a negligent CEO that was running a company in this manner.

35:08The American people are along for a right now it's at forty seven hundred extra dollars as a result of the tariffs. It was just twenty one hundred when we recorded last Monday. That's how quickly this is going and the level of whiplash. But I just want to double tap and then I know that we have to go on to the next topic. But what you were saying about the fact that he's not a good dealmaker and he's not a good businessman, he is railing against deals that he built himself. He's saying, you know, Canada and Mexico are taking advantage of us. You did USMCA yourself, my friend. Or he's saying, oh, the first people are at the table of the 75 countries that are begging to hang out.

35:45Vietnam, India, South Korea and Japan. Guess what? You canceled the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which had three of those four countries in it. You would have been able to be in a pack-rim alliance that would be saving our butt right now. But no, you had to because a Democrat put it into place. You had to cancel it. And I was thinking about whether this comp makes sense to what happened with Biden on the border. Now, Biden and Harris got in and they inexplicably just stopped doing everything that worked in stemming illegal immigration. And I wonder if Trump has just walked in and is saying, I don't want anything that Joe Biden did.

36:26So I'm getting rid of chips and science. I'm going with, you know, 145 percent tariffs on China, 10 percent on the globe. And I thought maybe he's petty enough that he is happy to tank a thriving envy of the world. That was the cover of Time magazine. Right. Isn't that what they called it? Economy because he hates Joe Biden that much. So that's kind of where I've ended up. So people say, well, and their other kind of go-to is that Biden kept the Trump tariffs. Let's just talk about that. In 2018. Well, he tripled them. Yeah. He put in place a 30 % tariff. They estimate it cost the U.S. 300 ,000 jobs and a loss of 0.3 to 0.7 % of GDP.

37:11U.S. companies lost$1.7 trillion in stock value. Manufacturing and freight transportation sectors were hit lows not seen since the Great Financial Recession. the trump administration ended up bailing out over uh about spending about 28 billion dollars uh bailing out american farmers trump china promised trump that they'd buy 200 billion dollars of extra u.s goods and negotiations they that didn't happen they never did that in addition uh so much of this just leads to corruption whether it's tim cook flying down and getting an exemption or not getting an exemption and small businesses don't have those contacts without money to give to the inauguration campaign.

37:52But also, April 9th will go down in history, and this will come out. It just might not come out for another three and a half years as the greatest example or the greatest violation of insider trading laws in history. You saw, I follow Apple options, the calls on the 200s were at 40 cents and popped to$4 11 minutes before he made the announcement. The market started running 11 minutes before his announcement. So one of two things happened. Either his team doesn't have the skill or the competence to keep a secret, and it leaked, or he was calling people or someone in the administration was calling and saying, wink, wink, I think this would be a good time to buy stocks that are specifically highly levered options.

38:39There was more trading on non-public material information on that day than in history. and you saw some people, and they'll be able to figure this out. They'll be able to go, okay, so you don't trade options. And then seven minutes before this announcement, you decided to lever up 50 % of your net worth to go by calls on the NASDAQ or the SPY. All of this kind of leads to several places, a decline in US prosperity, but also we really are becoming known is sort of corruption central. And Democratic senators Adam Schiff of California and Ruben Gallego of Arizona said in a letter, the sequence of events raised grave legal and ethics concerns, noting the posting propelled financial markets to huge gains and boosted the stock of carmaker Tesla, partly owned by Trump ally Elon Musk, by 18%.

39:37You know, who knows what's going to happen in the next few days, but I am comfortable. I mean, a couple of things. One, this guy's going to blink over and over. And there's even a chance they might come up with a trade deal that reduces tariffs because they're going to have to figure out a way to turn chicken salad out of chicken shit here. I mean, every business leader in the world is calling and going, you realize you're risking depression. And this could end really badly. As much as you have a cult. People like money more than they like you. And you're about to immolate potentially trillions of dollars in value.

40:16The other thing is I get a lot of emails, Jess, on what to do specifically in the markets right now. And I don't give a financial advice, but I tell them what I'm doing. In the short term, I'm doing nothing. I don't like to act out of emotion. Generally, when I act out of emotion, it ends up poorly for me as it does for most people because the emotion you're feeling is similar to the emotion everyone else is feeling. So people panic and think, I don't want more pain. I'm just going to sell. Well, that means a lot of people are just selling. And you don't want to be a panic seller. That almost never ends well.

40:48You also want to be thoughtful about the tax implications of selling if you have stocks that are up. What I'm doing is the following, and I've been doing this for four months now. The S &P trades at a multiple of 26 or 27, the German market, 22, Japan 18, China 14. So every dollar in earnings our companies make, U.S. companies get about double the market cap or value or trade about double the valuation. I think that's going to normalize and change. The markets in the U.S. are trading at 98%, meaning only 2 % of the time in economic history if they traded lower. So I'm transitioning out of U.S.

41:24stocks. My biggest holdings are Apple and Amazon. And I'm going into European, Latin American, and Asian index, low-cost ETF and index funds. Because one, look at your taxes, see where you can harvest some tax losses. But also, you're probably not, even if you're wrong, you're probably not selling low and buying high because all of these markets have been somewhat roiled. So they're even cheaper than they were. Now, they're not any cheaper relative because the U.S. market has come down. But what I'm telling people is that if you just have SPY or the NASDAQ in an index fund, you'd like to think you're diversified.

42:02You're not because you're not diversified across geographies. And I think that these wounds, that while he has pulled the knife out of the back of the U.S. economy halfway, the injury is going to take years to heal. And I think companies and countries are basically rerouting their supply chains. And that's just going to have dramatic economic consequences, and you're going to see a re-rating down of a PE of 26 more to like the high teens. And in that instance, even if a company performs well, its stock will be flattered down. Anyways, diversification is the key here. Oh, it's very uplifting. I feel a lot better.

42:40Right? We have been through worse is what I would say. Okay, let's take a quick break. Stay with us. Not all journalism is the same. Take The Guardian. Our coverage has something unique. Fierce independence. Nobody owns us or tells us what we can and can't say. So we're free to report the whole picture. We connect what's happening in Washington to the rest of the globe. Expose corruption wherever we find it. And give fresh perspective on everything. From wellness and soccer to culture, the climate and more. Read, watch, and listen to The Guardian for free at theguardian.com. From Pushkin Industries, I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and Heavyweight is back.

43:25The new season is bigger than ever. Bigger hopes. I keep waiting for this moment when he says, Mom, I get it. I'm sorry. Bigger dreams. Tom Hanks wants to meet with you. This is a real chance. And bigger heartbreaks. I thought it would be my movie moment. And maybe he would even whisper in my ear, I've always been in love with you. Check out new episodes of Heavyweight on Apple Podcasts.

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44:39Welcome back. Last week, Republicans barely passed their budget resolution with a 216 to 214 vote after Speaker Mike Johnson had to delay the vote because far-right members wanted deeper cuts. What finally got them on board, according to Rep Chip Roy, was a verbal promise from Senate GOP leaders to go big,$1.5 trillion in cuts, including$1 trillion from Medicaid and clean energy tax credits. That's already sparking pushback. Senator Suzanne Collins said Medicaid cuts are a non-starter. Meanwhile, Republicans are still trying to extend the Trump tax cuts, which the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates could cost up to$7 trillion over the next decade.

45:16Democrats are calling it a reverse Robinhood scheme. And even some Republicans are warning that this kind of budget could backfire in districts that rely on safety net programs. Jess, what do you—Trump loves the tax cuts and border security focus, but cuts to Medicaid and clean energy hit rural red state voters hard. Are Republicans eating their own to make this budget work? Yes, they're eating them voraciously and they don't care or they don't care until they lose bigly in the midterms or they're not able to actually get the bill in this incarnation or is it just a carnation in this version? The latest incarnation, yeah.

46:00That they aren't going to be able to get it through if that does happen. I, you know, Susan Collins is always upset or deeply concerned about things, and she usually ends up going along with it. I think she will probably hold her ground on this front. Josh Hawley from Missouri has said something similar in particular about the Medicaid cuts. And Senator Jerry Moran from Kansas has spoken out about the cuts to rural health care, that these hospitals are going to end up closing as a result of the bill as structured from the House side. So there are definitely loud voices on the right that are saying, hold up, wait a minute, you can't do this, including Tony Fabrizio, who's Donald Trump's pollster.

46:48And he has been out front and center. He did a big survey for a company that supports Medicaid that found that 75 percent of Americans have a positive view of Medicaid. And then when asked specifically voter support or oppose cutting Medicaid to pay for tax cut, they oppose it by a 50 point margin. And we talk a lot about issues that are 70-30, 80-20, like the trans women in women's sports, right? That's one that's about the same proportion of split, right? A 70-30 issue. And you just think, are you really going to go ahead with something that is so obviously suicidal for a political party? Now, they love money enough that perhaps that is what they're going to do.

47:33But my hope is that some cooler heads prevail and they find a way to find somewhere else to cut from. I mean, originally they said, oh, yeah, of course, we're going to be looking at the Pentagon the same as everything else. And it's a travesty that they never had to have a complete audit of the Pentagon. Pete Hegsteth promised us this, and now apparently they're adding to the Pentagon budget instead of going in the opposite direction. But I found this pretty hysterical. There is an ad out from the Democratic side targeting a Republican congressman who is supporting this bill and is from a district that has a lot of folks who are on Medicaid in it.

48:10And the ad starts with a clip of me from The Five talking about this$880 billion that's going to be cut for Medicaid. And it finishes with Steve Bannon saying, you cannot come for Medicaid. Lots of MAGA is on Medicaid. You've got to be careful. And I mean, definitely the first time and probably last time that I appear in an ad together with Steve Bannon. But there are a lot of folks that are going to be united on this and just some numbers to throw out there. Representatives like David Valadejo in California's 22nd District. He has 530 ,000 people in his district on Medicaid. He won by 11 ,000 votes.

48:50Or Mike Lawler here in New York, who has aspirations to run for the governorship on the Republican side, 239 ,000 people on Medicaid, and he won by 23 ,000 votes. These numbers could end up sinking a lot of these vulnerable Republicans. Yeah. Yeah. So first off, just something you mentioned that totally chased me. I think Senator Susan Collins, who tries to position herself as a moderate, she's just a raging fucking narcissist and uses all this bullshit faux concern to just, you know, so she can stand in front of cameras and then ultimately every time vote exactly the way Trump wants her to vote.

49:28I mean, if the only barrier between Medicaid cuts and Senator Collins, then we're going to have Medicaid cut. And also Medicaid and Medicare are very successful programs. As a matter of fact, I think one of the big ideas the Democrat needs to adopt is to have Medicare eligibility cut by two years a year for the next 30 years until everyone's covered by it. It does a better job. 45 cents on the dollar for insurance goes to provinces and administrations. So if you nationalize health care, which every other modern nation does, 40 % of Americans have some sort of medical or dental debt. Imagine the stress that puts on people's emotional and mental well-being.

50:10These programs actually do a pretty good job and they're going after them. I mean, it's just insane. The Republican Party's jujitsu move is their ability to convince people to vote against their own interests. It's just staggering. And just because I want to bring this back to me, Jess, guess who was supposed to be on Bill Maher with Steve Bannon on this past Friday? Was it you, Scott? Was it you? Well, Jess, I'm glad you asked. And I don't like to talk about these things kind of out of school. But yeah, by the way, I love Bill Maher. That's where I met you. I think he gets a lot of shit, but he's actually a hero of mine.

50:46I think the guy is fearless and just doesn't, you know, zero fucks given, just says what he thinks. And I think he represents sort of, I don't want to call it the silent majority, but the people who actually see some license or some reason on both sides and try to just call it as it is. I absolutely love going on that show. I go to LA, I stay at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I love the executive producers. They're these like really smart, intelligent, and attractive people. And the handwritten thank you notes. It's just - Oh my God. My future ex-wife is one of those ex-producers. She's awesome. Anyways, I love that show.

51:26I look forward to it. And then the woman who's kind of my Sherpa, who I absolutely love, called me and said, okay, da-da-da, the guest, the upfront guest is Stephen Bannon. And I just couldn't reconcile with how do I in any way normalize, associate, and in a small way legitimize a guy who's given Nazi salutes? I just can't do it. And then I called my contact there and I said, look, I don't know how, I feel as if I would have to confront him. And I don't know how to do it. I don't have the skills to do it elegantly without grandstanding or ruining the flow of the show. And I love the show. I'm just really digesting and having a tough time with this.

52:08And that guy, Naval, kind of the modern day philosopher, says, if you're thinking about something too much, the answer is probably no. And so I backed out and I was totally fucking heartbroken because I would love to have talked about the tariffs. But anyways, that's my Steve Bannon story. It's a good one because they have rebooked you. They've given you a different day, right? So. Yeah, but not for a while. Yeah. America or the world will get to see you in that. Thank God. I know. Thank God. I was losing sleep over it for sure. But something on the Steve Bannon front that is important to what we're discussing happened that night because I think that very clearly Bill expected the Steve Bannon of the Gavin Newsom interview to show up and he got Stephen Bannon the evil that was not conciliatory at all, would probably not have even talked about the importance of preserving Medicaid if pushed about that.

53:04That wasn't their theme. But he spent most of his time talking about how Trump is going to run and be able to serve a third term. Bill was great, though. Did you see he pulled out the constitution and write them to the 21st amendment yeah yeah it's like maybe you should take a look at this it's good to have those kinds of things handy when you have a lunatic and insurrectionist or at least someone who fomented the idea of an insurrection i don't know if he was actually there that day but i feel as though the trump folks are transitioning into warrior mode all of them and they know that you have to batten down the hatches that what they're doing is hugely unpopular that it's going to be really bad for the vast majority of people that they so-called want to protect.

53:47All of this rhetoric about, you know, this is Main Street over Wall Street is absolute bullshit, right? I mean, you look at the breakdown of the GOP bill, 70 percent of the bill's tax benefits to the richest five to the richest five percent. Costs will go up for the bottom 40 percent. We already talked about the extra forty seven hundred dollars that Americans are going to have to be paying for this global trade war that we're having for shits and giggles. And I think you were absolutely right to not want to be on with him. And it's going to be a really tough time in democratic or I shouldn't even say democratic, insane messaging that you're going to have to be pushing back so hard and at every single moment on the stuff that's coming out of their side, because this is really serious.

54:3350 % of Americans' kids, America's kids are on Medicaid. 50 or 15? 50. 50 % of American children are on Medicaid? Yes. 50 % of coverage for kids is through Medicaid. Wow. That's insane. That really is. In these programs, I would argue, I would want to cut Social Security first. Social Security is an effective program. It's reduced senior poverty, but it needs to be updated to reflect the fact that seniors now have made a shit ton of bank and a lot of them don't need it and people aren't retiring. But anyways, it'll be really interesting to see what happens if they try to come. Because the reality is all this stuff, this doge stuff was just a bunch of jazz hands.

55:15If they're serious about cutting the deficit, they've got to do one or two things. They've got to raise taxes substantially or they've got a lower entitlement spending? And the answer is yes, they probably need to do both. Because I do think that what happened in the bond market this week has probably sent a pretty serious chill around the White House. Countries don't go out of business because they get invaded. They disappear because they go broke. And we're sort of headed that way. And when you look at other nations, whether it's Japan or Italy, that end up at close to 200 % ratio of debt to GDP, Their economies just go flat and their citizenry gets really pissed off.

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58:41Welcome back. Before we go, the Trump administration's crackdown on undocumented immigrants is getting more extreme. Late last week, a federal judge allowed a rule to take effect requiring undocumented immigrants to self-report to the government, a policy rooted in a 1952 law. That same day, the Social Security Administration, at the request of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, added over 6 ,000 undocumented immigrants to its Deathmaster file, effectively declaring them dead. Being listed cuts off access to work and benefits. The administration claims those listed have ties to criminal or terrorist activity, but has provided no evidence.

59:21Many reportedly had valid Social Security numbers but lost legal status when temporary work programs ended, and most are Latino. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court weighed in on a separate case where the administration admitted it wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador and ordered them to return him. But on Sunday, the administration insisted that it is not required to work with officials in El Salvador to secure his return. On Monday, Trump welcomed the president of El Salvador to talk about their partnership amid their deportation push. Jess, give us kind of a big picture view of the state of his mass deportation operation.

59:58Well, I want to start by saying this is handling of immigration is still the only area where Trump has a positive rating. and 55 to 58 percent approval. And when you think of how far he's sinking on the economy and his individual popularity, which is now down in the low 40s, he has taken a big dive. That's meaningful. And I want to make sure that we're giving credence to that, that there are a lot of people out there who feel like it is a good thing that we are deporting people, that also these self-deportations are taking place, that people are seeing what's going on, And whether it's fair or not, and certainly not fair, and I want to talk about the innocent people that have been sent to this El Salvadorian prison camp, but people are getting the message that this administration gives no Fs.

1:00:46And if you're illegal, they're not going to be kind to you. And Trump, in his cabinet meeting at the end of last week, said, oh, well, I've spoken to the farmers and the guys who own hotels. And, you know, if you're a good worker, we're going to make sure that you can stay. Do not believe them. You cannot take their word at all. It is worth nothing. Nothing. There are no assurances whatsoever that you are going to be OK in this country if you are here undocumented. And you're seeing that at labor sites in the mornings, right, where typically you could show up to pick up day workers. Folks aren't showing up.

1:01:19They're not sitting outside of Home Depot getting ready to be rounded up. And you could be plucked out of your home, let alone if you're out there advertising the fact that you can work under the table and do outside hard labor. So that's kind of like the overhead of it. And there are a few cases, though, that I wanted to highlight that I think signify that the tide could be changing. I think it's a very big deal that the Supreme Court rebuked the Trump administration nine to zero, that there was no one on that panel, most of which was hand selected by Donald Trump, who said, no, actually, maybe it's OK that this innocent guy from Maryland who has three special needs kids, has a good, steady job, should have been sent to this prison camp.

1:02:06And you see that the administration, they don't care. They're pushing back. They're showing up for court appointments and saying, at first, you know, we don't know where he is. Then they show up and say, we do know where he is. And then they had no new information. They haven't been facilitating or effectuating, however you want to say, at his return. That ruling is very much in the American consciousness. CBS did a big 60 Minutes piece last week on the folks that were on that plane that ended up in the El Salvadorian camp. They said that 75 percent of them, they could find no evidence of a criminal record.

1:02:38That's a really important stat. People thought that we were going to be getting out the bad hombres, not just the people who were here undocumented. And the gay makeup artists, that case in particular, is one that is also sitting in the national consciousness. And then there are these two others, and I want to—one of them I know that you know about and have spoken about. the Tufts PhD student from Turkey who was taken off the street by masked ICE officials and told that it was about an op-ed that she wrote. And it was just came out of the Washington Post last night that the State Department, a few days before ICE came and took her, determined that there was no evidence showing that she engaged in anti-Semitic activities or made any public statements supporting a terrorist organization.

1:03:28She's due in federal court today in Vermont. She's been in custody since March 25th. It will be very interesting to see what goes on there, because now you have the State Department rebuking their secretary of state and certainly DHS. And I'm very curious to how that plays out. And lastly, I realize this is a ton of stuff, but I've been thinking about these cases that maybe we can start talking about to make this issue feel more real to people, that it's not just about, you know, there was an open border and we've got to fix it, that innocent people are being affected. In Sacketts Harbor, New York, which is Derry country, a mother and her three children, a third grader, a 10th grader, and an 11th grader were taken from their home.

1:04:08These are people, no record, here undocumented, but no record whatsoever. The town, which is a big Trump town, and Tom Homan actually has a house there, rallied in defense of them, there was a thousand people. There were a thousand people that turned out to make sure that it was known. All the press that was there, this got to Kathy Ockel, who made a statement about it, that these people need to be returned. And they were returned. And if that kind of activity is going on in a Trump area, and by the way, they were, quote unquote, guilty of living in the same Wi-Fi zone as somebody that there was actually a warrant to pick up.

1:04:45That's how Tom Homan defended it at first before he was pushed and had to release them. But if you see a thousand people turning up in Trump country to make sure that an undocumented family is returned, I think that that might be a harbinger of good things to come, that people are paying attention and that there's a lot more unity than we think on what should be happening on immigration versus what this administration is doing. Yeah, there's just, I mean, there's incompetence and then there's depraved. And they take the crown for both these things. They are rounding up the wrong people with no criminal record.

1:05:23And then when it comes to their attention that they spent a quarter of a million dollars per flight to have their kind of right-wing snuff film on camera. And then they find out that they deported people who are just undocumented workers who should not be deported to a hellscape prison in a different country than they're originally from. And then they have the gall to say they can't bring them back. Bill Maher summarized it perfectly. We can bring a man back from space, but you can't get a man back from El Salvador. Of course, they could get those people back on one call. So this is just not—and these are the same people that hold up a Bible.

1:06:01I mean, it's just so—it's a different level of a lack of humanity, a total lack of comedy of man. And then what people don't want to admit is that immigration is the secret sauce of America, but the most profitable part of the secret sauce is illegal immigration. Because while they pay Social Security taxes, while they pay payroll taxes, while they pay consumption taxes, while they pay rent, they tax our society at a lower rate. Few of them stick around for Social Security benefits, which they're not eligible for as undocumented workers, but they get to pay them. They call on our services. They're much less likely to either call the police or engage in criminal activity versus citizens.

1:06:51That's a trope. There's some very bad hombres, but on average, there's more bad men who are citizens than bad hombres because they don't want to get deported. And have we let it get out of control? Do we need borders? Yes. But be clear, folks, about a quarter of all food service workers are undocumented. If you went to the 10 biggest fast food companies and said, we're going to perform raids on a statistically significant sample of your franchise base, and we're going to estimate what percentage of your workers are undocumented because clearly you're not checking. It's not that hard to check. It's not that hard to validate.

1:07:30And if it's a quarter of your workers, for every percentage of your workforce that's undocumented workers, we're fining you a quarter of a million dollars a month. And before you know it, McDonald's will make sure all their workers are domestic for all those great jobs that Americans want. And once the jobs dry up, boom, your problem is solved. But we're not really serious about this problem because, wink, wink, while we want to demonize them, incarcerate them, ship them off to internment camps, essentially, or prisons, we aren't really serious about solving the problem because we're making money off these undocumented workers.

1:08:10Has it gotten out of control? A quarter of a million people in one month in December of 23? Yeah, it's gotten out of control. But be clear, we invited this. We invited this. 90 % of the undocumented population are working age. See above, six open jobs for every one person looking for a job. 36 % are agricultural workers. Do you realize what's going to happen to the cost of all your food if we actually figure out a way to discourage all of these folks? The other thing that kind of, let's talk about the most legal immigration that we love. The most profitable immigration we love are people who immigrate here for two weeks and go to Disneyland.

1:08:55Do you know what has happened to tourism in the last 60 days? Nobody wants to fucking come here. No one wants to put up with this bullshit or worry that the ICE is going to ask for their phone or their immigration status might be up for risk. Or in general, they're just like, I don't need to spend my money on assholes with assholes. I love that picture showing the Toronto International Airport last year before spring break packed. This year, it's empty. And all of that is going to ripple through. You're going to start to see that in all sorts of earnings calls over the next 8 to 12 weeks. Undocumented immigrants have generated a surplus of$100 billion in the Social Security program in the last decade.

1:09:37So, folks, be clear. Illegal immigration may be wrong, but we have purposely opted for wrong. Because in this case, wrong means money. We've known what's going on here, and we have enabled it. Yeah. 9 % of our GDP is tourism. 9 %? As a country. Wow. Wow. Yeah. What's your favorite city to visit in the U.S.? You know, I love Chicago. Really? Chicago in the summer. And this is because I loved living in London in the summer so much. I feel like it's same vibes where everyone is just so happy. I like lake life. And I feel like Chicago has everything. It has a great food scene. It has a great art scene.

1:10:24It's smaller than New York, obviously. It's just too cold in the summer. But every time I go to Chicago, I'm elated. What about you? I love that. I totally see you. That makes a lot of sense. I can totally see that Jess Tarloff would love Chicago. I describe Chicago as the old navy of cities. It's 80 % of New York for 50 % of the price. All right, that's all for this episode. Thank you for listening to Raging Moderates. Our producers are David Toledo and Chinenye Onike. Our technical director is Drew Burrows. Jess, I'm going to see you in New York in a few days. You can find— Yeah, I'm so excited.

1:10:57I'm really nervous, though. Are you nervous? I'm a little nervous. Yeah, I don't know how this crowd's going to react. because you have sort of a progressive, like, hip crowd. I'm more just like the unwashed masses. So it's going to be... I'm sorry, you're the unwashed tech bro masses? That's your demo? It's going to be very interesting to see how these crowds get along when they're in one place. By the way, you can now find Raging Moderates on its own feed every Tuesday and Friday. That's right, its own feed. That means exclusive interviews with sharp political minds you won't hear anywhere else.

1:11:26By the way, I am interviewing the Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, this afternoon. Make sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss an episode.

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