Mmmmm... Fiscal Pie

Summary

Armstrong & Getty On Demand: "Mmmmm... Fiscal Pie" - Detailed Summary

Release Date: March 11, 2025
Host/Authors: Jack Armstrong & Joe Getty
Podcast: Armstrong & Getty On Demand
Description: The official, On-Demand podcast of The Armstrong & Getty Show! Accept no substitutes!

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1. Market Turmoil and Presidential Impact ([02:30] - [06:12])

The episode kicks off with a discussion on the recent volatility in the stock market, attributed to President Trump's ambiguous remarks on a potential US recession. President Trump's refusal to dismiss recession fears led to the Dow closing nearly 900 points lower, marking one of Wall Street's worst days of the year.

Jack Armstrong reflects on the broader public's disengagement from the stock market:

“A lot of Americans aren't in the stock market... the average person watching the evening news is not into the daily ups and downs of the stock market.”
[02:46]

Joe Getty adds context by questioning the inclusion of retirement accounts in market participation metrics:

“Are you including 401ks in that? Maybe, maybe not.”
[03:07]

The hosts emphasize the sensationalist nature of media reporting, which often magnifies market movements to create drama, potentially misleading the general populace about actual economic stability.

---

2. Government Spending and Economic Sustainability ([06:12] - [10:05])

Armstrong and Getty delve into the complexities of government involvement in the economy. They reference Mark Halperin's newsletter, highlighting a significant shift where President Trump’s economic strategies have eroded confidence among key business and economic leaders.

Jack Armstrong discusses the scale of government influence:

“He has proposed cutting government spending with tariffs to rebalance trade, to rebuild American manufacturing... the government now constitutes closer to 50% of the economy.”
[08:01]

This substantial government footprint, combined with tariff impositions, raises concerns about creating a "doom loop" where reduced government spending leads to decreased economic activity, further lowering consumer confidence and spending among the wealthiest segment.

Joe Getty questions the feasibility and clarity of these policies:

“Nobody ever knows on any of this stuff... there's a lot of moving pieces.”
[10:05]

The duo expresses skepticism about the proposed economic restructuring, fearing it may lead to prolonged economic downturns if not communicated effectively to garner public support.

---

3. Tariffs on Canada and Trade Policies ([10:05] - [25:04])

A substantial portion of the episode focuses on President Trump’s decision to double tariffs on Canadian aluminum and other goods, elevating them to 50%. Armstrong and Getty scrutinize the rationale and potential fallout of these measures.

Joe Getty highlights official justifications versus practical outcomes:

“Trump is using the drug issue as an emergency reason to implement these tariffs.”
[30:10]

The hosts critique the interconnectedness of tariffs, government spending, and trade policies, suggesting that without substantial cooperation from Canada on issues like fentanyl trafficking, these tariffs might undermine rather than bolster American manufacturing goals.

Jack Armstrong elaborates on the convoluted nature of fiscal policies:

“The U.S. economy has really just become the U.S. government spending and transfers... a spiral that could catch on.”
[09:30]

They also examine the discrepancies in data reporting regarding drug trafficking, pointing out a significant gap between federal reports and local law enforcement observations, which complicates policy responses.

---

4. Social Issues: Transgender Rally and Political Representation ([34:13] - [44:00])

Shifting gears, Armstrong and Getty discuss contemporary social issues, focusing on Bernie Sanders' recent transgender rally in Milwaukee. They critique the Democratic Party's emphasis on transgender rights despite polling suggesting diminishing support.

Jack Armstrong expresses frustration with the party's focus:

“Bernie Sanders had a trans rally... not for the kids. I will use initials.”
[34:21]

The hosts argue that such focus alienates core demographics like working-class, Hispanic, and Black voters who feel unrepresented by the party's priorities. They assert that conservative policies addressing these communities' concerns could reclaim electoral support.

Joe Getty emphasizes the importance of policy impact over ideological pursuits:

“Policies yield results. Good policies, good results. Bad policies, bad results.”
[43:54]

Armstrong shares a personal anecdote about an Uber driver who openly supports Trump, underscoring the presence of conservative sentiments in unexpected places and the need for greater vocal representation.

---

5. Personal Anecdotes and Political Observations ([25:59] - [43:54])

Throughout the episode, Armstrong and Getty intertwine personal stories with political analysis. Armstrong recounts a conversation with his financial advisor about Social Security, highlighting generational disparities in benefits:

“Your kids won't [receive Social Security], do you think that's the most likely outcome.”
[25:59]

Joe Getty discusses the complexities of Medicaid and Medicare funding, emphasizing the tangled relationship between federal and state responsibilities that make reforming these programs daunting.

The hosts also share experiences illustrating the tangible effects of political decisions on everyday life, such as increased crime rates in California and the resulting public dissatisfaction driving political shifts.

---

6. Conclusion: The Need for Transparent and Effective Policies ([43:54] - [44:06])

As the episode wraps up, Armstrong and Getty reiterate the critical need for policies that directly address and reflect the populace's needs. They advocate for greater accountability and clarity in government actions to prevent economic instability and regain public trust.

Jack Armstrong concludes with a call to action:

“And there are actually results from these policies. If you miss a segment under the hour, get the podcast Armstrong and Getty On Demand.”
[43:59]

---

Notable Quotes

• Jack Armstrong: “A lot of Americans aren't in the stock market... the average person watching the evening news is not into the daily ups and downs of the stock market.”
  [02:46]

• Joe Getty: “Are you including 401ks in that? Maybe, maybe not.”
  [03:07]

• Jack Armstrong: “He has proposed cutting government spending with tariffs to rebalance trade, to rebuild American manufacturing... the government now constitutes closer to 50% of the economy.”
  [08:01]

• Joe Getty: “Nobody ever knows on any of this stuff... there's a lot of moving pieces.”
  [10:05]

• Jack Armstrong: “Revenue cuts with tariffs could lead to a doom loop.”
  [09:30]

• Joe Getty: “Policies yield results. Good policies, good results. Bad policies, bad results.”
  [43:54]

---

Key Insights and Conclusions

• Economic Uncertainty: The podcast underscores the fragility of the current economic climate, exacerbated by presidential rhetoric and policy decisions that lack clear communication and public support.

• Government's Role: There's a significant debate on the extent of government involvement in the economy, with concerns that excessive government spending hampers economic growth and sustainability.

• Trade Policies: The implementation of high tariffs aims to protect and revive American manufacturing but may lead to unintended consequences, including strained international relations and economic instability.

• Social Dynamics: The focus on social issues like transgender rights by the Democratic Party may be diverting attention from more pressing economic and community concerns, potentially alienating key voter bases.

• Representation and Policy Impact: Effective representation requires policies that resonate with the average citizen's needs and realities, moving beyond ideological pursuits to address tangible societal challenges.

Armstrong and Getty advocate for policies grounded in practical results and transparent communication to foster economic stability and political trust among Americans.

Transcript

[Ryan Seacrest]

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[Jack Armstrong]

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[Unknown]

Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio studio at the George Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.

[Jack Armstrong]

Armstrong and Getty.

[Joe Getty]

And now here's Armstrong and Getty.

[Unknown]

President Trump out of sight as his words sent the stock market into freefall. Wall street suffering its worst day of the year. The dow closing nearly 900 points down after the President refused to rule out that the US could be heading into a recession.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah, a lot of negative headlines about Wall street yesterday. I'm always interested in that. In that a lot, a lot of Americans aren't in the stock market and it's, it's I'd like to know what percentage of the audience that watches mainstream, even news, is in the stock market other than.

[Joe Getty]

Are you including 401ks in that?

[Jack Armstrong]

Maybe, maybe not. I don't know.

[Joe Getty]

Investments.

[Jack Armstrong]

But certainly the average person watching the evening news is not into the daily ups and downs of the stock market.

[Joe Getty]

True.

[Jack Armstrong]

They're in the long, you know, the long game. And, and, and very little context ever around any of this stuff anytime. And I'm not just like now just always. There's almost no context. Biggest point, drop, whatever. Sometimes they use points because it's more dramatic. Sometimes use percentage, whatever and they go back and forth and it's all very, it's, it's, it's designed to make it sound as great or as awful as possible to make it more exciting. But anyway, New York Post, um, and knowing this has been a big down for the last week and a half or whatever since the tariff announcement. No doubt about that. New York Post headline today. Buckle up. Nasdaq suffers biggest loss in three years. Dow falls 890 after Trump recession Dodge after Trump didn't absolutely just flat out say no to the recession question. It's amazing how much news that made that one answer. And he knew that. Like I said yesterday, he's aware of that.

[Joe Getty]

He, he doubled down on Air Force One. Essentially. The significance of it is he didn't say we will do everything we need to to avoid a recession. That's why that's significant.

[Jack Armstrong]

Right. Which gets to what we were saying last hour. I wish he would give some sort of speech where he explains what his long game is and why I think he could get more people on board or calmed down.

[Joe Getty]

I think that is so obviously a great idea. It is shocking to me. It hasn't happened yet.

[Jack Armstrong]

Drudge hates Trump. But his headlines Economy cracks stocks lose $4 trillion. Oh, that. That's one of the things about the news reporting. I feel like it's for people who don't understand that that money didn't actually disappear never to come back. It's. The stock is down and yeah, it adds up to 4 trillion, but unless you sold yesterday, you didn't actually lose the money and it could be back up in two weeks and nothing happened. I mean, well, and you quote, unquote.

[Joe Getty]

Lost the money from. If you would have sold it three weeks ago. So it's all imaginary. It's not even paper. It's in the ether.

[Jack Armstrong]

Anywho, so getting to Mark Halperin's newsletter today, who I think he is a fair arbiter of these sorts of things. And he, and he gets a lot of, he has a lot of connections in, in left and right, Republican and Democrat. He wrote this Monday when jawboning by all Trump economic advisers could not stop a market sell off or deter business leaders, economic analysts, analysts, Paul's and Trump supporters from calling, texting and emailing me to say the sky is falling and it is in their collective view, explicitly and unambiguously Trump's fault. In my career, I don't recall anything quite like Monday as whoosh, Team Trump lost the confidence of a bunch of key actors in one fell swoop. Thought that was interesting that behind the scenes, a lot of people that normally really, really big on Trump were calling Mark Albert and saying what the hell is he doing?

[Joe Getty]

The business world, the American business world, was absolutely confident that Trump would slash regulations and make permanent tax cuts and that would be his main thrust. This whole, call it protectionism, you know, seeking a new global norm for trade, whatever you want to call it, is surprising to them and it's led to a great deal of uncertainty. Business hates uncertainty.

[Jack Armstrong]

Right. And then got to get to what I was talking about yesterday, which I fully, fully believe. You know, don't, don't feel like the Wall Street Journal crowd has your best interest in mind. They have the best interest of like, what's going to make the Dow close higher today for a lot of the crowd who actually does day trade or certainly this quarter, not what's best for America long term. Un, you know, fortunately or unfortunately, I guess. And Ryan would say that's the way it's supposed to work. You know, they're looking out for themselves. That's what drives the whole thing.

[Joe Getty]

But yeah, I would say as a guy who reads practically cover to cover the Journal every single day, they have a wide range of opinions and writers there. Not all of them are merely chasing quarterly profits.

[Jack Armstrong]

But I wanted to get to this and I didn't know this. So Mark Halpern has a bunch of links to a whole bunch of different newspaper articles talking about how much damage has been done, whether it's temporary, long term, blah, blah, blah, than this. Team Trump came in with the theory of the case that they could rebalance the economy by shifting economic activity back to the private sector from the public sector. It's part of the whole DOGE thing. And tariffs together. Trump advisers have said they think the government is now 25% of the economy. Mark Halperin said in, in reality, it's way higher, maybe closer to 50%.

[Joe Getty]

Wow.

[Jack Armstrong]

What 50% of the economy is the government with Medicare and Medicaid. No one wants to admit it, but to a large extent, the U.S. economy has really just become the U.S. government spending and transfers. This is evidenced by the fact that we've been running huge fiscal deficits during strong economic times. And the new Treasury Secretary has proposed fixing this by cutting government spending with musk combined with tariffs to rebalance trade, to rebuild American manufacturing. But to bring it home, he gets into. We live in a. The top 10%. Studies have shown there's a very high correlation between their propensity to spend with spending being, you know, two thirds of our economy is people going out and spending money and where the stock prices are. For whatever reason. When the top 10% are feeling wealthy, they buy stuff, but if they're not feeling wealthy, they don't. And this especially is true now. And this could get us into a real doom loop of tariffs, negative feelings, stock market going down, people pulling back, et cetera, et cetera. Cutting the government, which is half the economy. You see, there's the spiral. If, if Doge is laying off people and cutting the government, and it's 50% of the economy, the government, that automatically is going to drop the economy, which makes the rich 10% spend less, which drops the economy. And it's just, you see, it's a cycle that could catch on.

[Joe Getty]

Yeah, my, my only objection to that theory, or a question I have about it, is that what Doge is doing is nibbling around the edges of the actual fiscal pie. I don't appreciate it because I like the edges of the pie.

[Jack Armstrong]

Ooh, fiscal pie.

[Joe Getty]

Delicious. And it's funny because you have conservatives, they're, they're, they're not attacking entitlements, and that's most of the budget, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But at the same time, it might cause a doom loop. I just, I don't, I don't know.

[Jack Armstrong]

Well, nobody, nobody ever knows on any of this stuff, as we've said for years, because if you were the old thing, if you ask, you know, 10 economists, you'll get 11 opinions, or there's only two people that understand the global economy and they don't agree or, you know, any of those sayings. And, but, you know, if you could predict this stuff, well, you'd be the richest person on planet Earth, you know, immediately. So, you know, there's a lot of moving pieces in theory and everything like that. But I do find that very troubling.

[Joe Getty]

Yeah, all of it's troubling. I find myself Imagining if Trump were to craft the sort of message you've suggested, explaining exactly what his goals are, why it's going to be worth enduring a bit of pain or upheaval for a while, be it two years or more likely five or 10 or 15 or 20 years, because that would get the popular support. Doing something difficult would require. Because there's one thing democracies are terrible at, that's doing what is difficult. Like in your family, you could say, hey, we are going to severely restrict spending for this year to get a down payment together to buy the house or make the investment or open the business we've long dreamed of.

[Jack Armstrong]

Maybe you put a picture on the wall of a house with a pool and say, this is doing it.

[Joe Getty]

Yeah. You know, I've always been a fan of the, like, the thermometer thing where you actually track your savings because it gives you enthusiasm for it. Judy and I used to do that when we were young, anyway, as a family, you can do that. But democracies are famously horrible at, at saying, all right, we're all going to endure some pain for a while. An austerity plan. It happens.

[Jack Armstrong]

I don't think we're.

[Joe Getty]

But it's hard to get going.

[Jack Armstrong]

I don't think we're grown up enough for this.

[Joe Getty]

I think we're too used to easy sailing, smooth sailing. But even if Trump were to do that, though, Wall street would probably freak out for a while and then people would see, would check their 401ks and freak out. And I just, I don't know if we have the right stuff to institute what Trump's talking about before it's a horrible emergency.

[Jack Armstrong]

Well, imagine if Trump or somebody representing Trump came out and gave a speech, says, look, half the economy is the government. Do you know that? Half the economy is the government. And that can't be. That's not sustainable. And our debt is this and our deficit is this and, you know, our payments are this and blah, blah, blah.

[Joe Getty]

And if that wasn't. Go ahead. Sorry, there's more.

[Jack Armstrong]

No, that's fine.

[Joe Getty]

I was going to say, and if, if that wasn't bad enough, folks, here's the chunk of the economy that would collapse and you would starve if China dec. Jump ugly. So, A, we got a reign in the government. B, we've got to wean ourselves from being China junkies. Their economic heroin is, is they're going to pull it back on us and we're going to be on our hands and knees and our economy is going to be puking and Turning green and pooping on itself.

[Jack Armstrong]

Wow.

[Joe Getty]

Because they're going to pull it out cold turkey. Do you want that? Do you want that? Huh? Okay. We're going to restructure the economy.

[Jack Armstrong]

You would be a disgusting economics teacher.

[Joe Getty]

Yeah. But compelling.

[Jack Armstrong]

There's no way this works because we have an election every two years. We're already like a year away from constantly talking about the midterms. And, and, and the Democrats are gonna run on. He says we can't. Blah, blah, blah. We say you, we can. Who's with me? Everybody says, yeah, I want everything for nothing. And. And there you go.

[Joe Getty]

So to summarize, we're doomed. Moving along.

[Jack Armstrong]

Aren't you glad you tuned in?

[Joe Getty]

Oh, boy.

[Jack Armstrong]

Well, but everybody should. Me and everyone. We should realize we're not retiring today. What the stock market does today, unless you are retiring today. Somebody listening somewhere you would have restructured.

[Joe Getty]

Your, you know, your investments.

[Jack Armstrong]

If somebody somewhere on our 70 stations is listening, is retiring today or yesterday? He retired yesterday.

[Joe Getty]

I understand why you're upset. Sorry. Sorry.

[Jack Armstrong]

Oh, man, that's something I wanted to tease.

[Joe Getty]

Well, yeah, there's. Yeah, my golly, there are a couple of stories that are the classic. If it was. If the shoe was on the other foot, they would be enormous, enormous stories. We will bring them to you so you get a better rounded perspective on life in America.

[Jack Armstrong]

Well, yeah. And the arrest of that so called terrorist, Columbia student kid. That's pretty interesting from a whole free speech, free speech standpoint. We need to talk a little more about that.

[Joe Getty]

Yeah. I will not, and I'm sure most of you will not trade the principles that made this country great to keep it great. That's fascism and it's ugly. On the other hand, I want the jihadis thrown out on their ears. So let's strike a good balance, can we?

[Jack Armstrong]

I also want to tell you about Bernie Sanders trans rally he had over the weekend that didn't get enough attention.

[Joe Getty]

He had a penis. No, he does not. He is a woman.

[Jack Armstrong]

And what did it cost to cut off his penis? $27. Stay with us.

[Unknown]

Armstrong and Getty.

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[Jack Armstrong]

I hate spring forward so much. And this to me, this is Donald Trump's big opportunity.

[Joe Getty]

You want to make America great again.

[Jack Armstrong]

And this daylight SA madness forever.

[Joe Getty]

Mr. President, I dare you. Thank you.

[Jack Armstrong]

And by the way, we'll do this all over again next year. Six months. But. So we want whatever we got now, right? Permanently? Is that what we want? Yeah.

[Joe Getty]

There are some problems with the kids having to get up in the dark. Scientists say is really like I keep.

[Jack Armstrong]

Saying, let's try it once let's try it once and, and whatever he says.

[Joe Getty]

So he's choosing golfers, playing in the afternoon. Me and I'm happ over America's children. You must.

[Jack Armstrong]

Let's see if it's true. Let's try it once and see. Oh, that was horrible. My kid couldn't get out of bed and he got run over by the bus. Whatever.

[Joe Getty]

Or find a way to move school back by a little bit of time. And employers would say, oh, you got to come in at 9:30 instead of 9 for a while. Okay, that's fine. Yeah, it's not like it'll cause, you know, cataclysms, rains of fire from the sky, a plague of frogs.

[Jack Armstrong]

The fact that Arizona doesn't do it and there aren't stacks of dead children. I mean, I don't, I don't get. Why are there the states around Arizona in the same, you know, time zone of when the sun comes up and comes down? They, I don't get it.

[Joe Getty]

We've got it.

[Jack Armstrong]

We've got one state that does it. And it's not like hell there. They don't everybody. I wanted to live in Arizona. I had to move because they don't change the clocks.

[Joe Getty]

I gotta call my dad to make sure he's still alive after the non time change in Arizona. Oh my, you're so right. These stories would be ginormous if the shoe was on the other foot. And you know, the fun has gone out of beating up the media. Honestly, I think everybody's gotten the word. They're wildly ideological, they're uniformly left. They're just click bait driven, sensationalist cranks and should be mostly ignored. But the stories they ignore are also worth hearing. For instance, a leftist UCLA law professor. This is not some sort of gender studies dope. This is. A law professor at UCLA has called for a military insurrection against President Trump.

[Jack Armstrong]

Oh my God. How do you keep your job after that?

[Joe Getty]

Professor Peter Aranella at this point, my only hope for the US to avoid becoming an ally to Russia is a violent resistance by our military. Tragic to say that because the military trained to avoid any political motivated intervention. Yes, firing all the joint chiefs and.

[Jack Armstrong]

Military leaders, blah, blah, blah, and for good reason.

[Joe Getty]

Ultimately, we will get what we deserve by giving Trump a second chance to destroy our democracy. Armed insurrection. All right, crackpot. America's law schools are absolutely as bad as any other province of the educational system right now in terms of being wildly woke up.

[Jack Armstrong]

God, your kid got into UCLA law school. You're paying a ridiculous amount of money. And that guy is teaching your kid.

[Joe Getty]

Right? Right. And except in some really, really good law schools where they point out, hey, now, this is my opinion on this. A conservative scholar would tell you this is the way to interpret these laws. And where that happens, it's great. But that is far from universal. An adult male brandishing a firearm was shot by U.S. secret Service officers near the White House shortly after midnight on Sunday.

[Jack Armstrong]

I saw that.

[Joe Getty]

Yeah. Local police had earlier reported a suicidal individual possibly traveling to D.C. from Indiana. You're in Indiana, you're suicidal. And so what is your plan exactly?

[Jack Armstrong]

They knew about this guy, too.

[Joe Getty]

Suicide by cop.

[Jack Armstrong]

They'd picked up his social media or something, so they were aware of him before he even got there.

[Joe Getty]

Yeah. Trump was at Mar a Lago, by the way, so was never at risk, even though he wouldn't be much at risk. Don't have time for this, but Kristi Noem has figured out a couple of the leakers leaking the ice operations.

[Jack Armstrong]

More on that to come. Hope it wasn't dogs.

[Unknown]

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[Unknown]

Every day, our world gets a little more connected, but a little further apart. But then there are moments that remind us to be more human.

[Jack Armstrong]

Thank you for calling Amica Insurance. Hey, I was just in an accident. Don't worry. We'll get you taken care of.

[Unknown]

At Ameca, we understand that looking out for each other isn't new, new or groundbreaking, it's human. Amica empathy is our best policy.

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[Jack Armstrong]

Musk in a long ranging interview said this yesterday and we just did a bunch of economic stuff. Going to give you a short version of some breaking news here and then we'll fill in all the blanks, maybe an hour three. But Elon Musk said this yesterday.

[Joe Getty]

I mean the way it's important in entitlement spending, you know, which is all of the, which is most of the federal spending is entitlements. So that, that's, that's like the big one to eliminate because that's the so there you go.

[Jack Armstrong]

That's all you need to hear there. Elon Musk touched the has been the third rail of government my whole life. You can't talk about cutting entitlements. Speaker Johnson just came out with the big bill, the big tax cut giant, everything thrown into one bill bill. Speaker Johnson just said and there's no entitlement cuts on the table, zero. So you wanted to make that very, very clear with Elon having said that yesterday. Then the other news is Trump has doubled the tariffs on Canada, aluminum and something else, 25% in addition to the previous 25%. It's now 50%. So more on that later.

[Joe Getty]

Yeah, a couple of things. First of all, I came across a really informative but really complicated analysis of how Medicaid and Medicare work and how they're funded by the states and the federal government. And what the states do determines the amount of federal government support. But the states have flexibility that the federal government is responding to, blah, blah, blah. And the long and short of it is it's so intertwined, so expensive and there are so many people dependent on it now that undoing and Obamacare is a huge factor in it too. And compensation rates for doctors. I mean, it's all in medical procedures. It's all just a complex stew of oh my Lord, how do we untangle this? And I was trying to figure out if it was even conceivable to bring present it to you all if you don't like have the charts in front of you. And I decided probably not. But I'm Telling you, it is truly a Gordian knot.

[Jack Armstrong]

So my financial advisor said to me the other day, we were just having a, just kind of sitting around shooting the bull, as they say, talking about Social Security. And I said, you know, if I ever get my Social Security. And he had presented to me what I was going to get in Social Security, which is more than I thought it was going to be. But what I said, well, if I ever get it. And he said, you'll get it, but your kids won't. Do you, do you think that's the.

[Joe Getty]

Yeah.

[Jack Armstrong]

Most likely outcome.

[Joe Getty]

That's pretty, pretty good prediction. And he's a smart guy, too, so I, I know him as well and yeah, that sounds about right. Yep. Wow. So, yeah, I know. Wow. It's just, hey, it's too depressing. I'm going to stop myself for once.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Joe Getty]

A little self restraint. So that was the first point I want to make the second point re. I really, truly don't get what Trump is trying to accomplish with Canada specifically, which is one of our closest allies, and he set the trade deal with them last time around, which was, you know, four and a half short years ago. Well, I guess the trade deal itself was, was more than that. But anyway, I'm, I'm confused and so are the Canadians. And I don't think this is going to help us in the long term.

[Jack Armstrong]

We're going to build an igloo and.

[Joe Getty]

Canada is going to pay for it. It. All right. Well, that's a plan anyway. Oh. Oh. The part of the tariffs thing that I don't quite get is the tariffs are super important to rebuild American manufacturing and steel and aluminum capacity and the rest of it to forge the future. And they're going to go away as soon as Canada helps us with the fentanyl. Or Mexico, as soon as they give in to. It's like, it's like a circular argument and I just, I honestly don't get it. On the other hand, this, I thought this was very, very informative on the issue of Canada and the drug trade. Why don't you say you understand from a former senior law enforcement official in Northwest Montana that the numbers that are being reported regarding drug trafficking across the Canadian border are off by at least an order of magnitude. It's more like 20% versus the 2% that's being reported. I met, writes the former senior law enforcement official in Northwest Montana. I met with the local DEA folks regarding fentanyl precursors and finished products being sent across the border and being manufactured and distributed across the millions of acres of tribal reservation land as the staging area. He claimed to have no knowledge of this. A year later, it was a major priority for the DEA in Montana. What this indicates is a massive disconnect between what the federal law enforcement folks are hearing and the local sheriffs are observing in their counties. This may account for the differential in what the feds now know and how those percentages are being reported in the news, likely sourced from old data that is misleading. On the street, sheriff's deputies and detectives are seeing a massive increase in the quantity of fentanyl and other drugs that are definitely not coming up from the southern border. Thought that was an interesting perspective. So. And I had. I had repeated the oft cited. You know, it's 2 or 3% figure. That person seems to be in the know. I know who it is. Has no ax to grind. Well, interesting perspective.

[Jack Armstrong]

Just from a logical standpoint, if you really crack down on the cartel's business coming across the southern border, they're not dumb. Well, what's a different way to get our drugs into the United States? How about the longest undefended border in the world?

[Joe Getty]

Right, right. And vast tribal areas that are effectively not under the control of most law enforcement other than the tribal police, depending on what country you're talking about.

[Jack Armstrong]

Although, while all that I think is 100% true, that's not why Trump is doing the tariffs. It's part of his restructuring the world economic plan. He's got to use the drug thing as an emergency reason to do it, right?

[Joe Getty]

Oh, right. That's just the legal pretext. How soon till the Supreme Court rules on that? Whether his use of the emergency tariff powers is a legitimate use of executive.

[Jack Armstrong]

Power, I don't know. I'm always amazed how much leeway governors and presidents are given re emergency powers.

[Joe Getty]

It way, way freaking too much, in my opinion.

[Jack Armstrong]

Not.

[Joe Getty]

Not this specifically, but if you want to talk about one principle that we all ought to be rallying around, it's that when the other guy's in office, they will cite often imaginary emergencies and do things we abhor. So we can't let our guy do it.

[Jack Armstrong]

I was hearing about fentanyl. What news story did I hear today about fentanyl addicts? I never thought about a fentanyl addict because I just always assumed he died pretty quickly. So it's. It's not like, you know, RFK Jr. Was a heroin addict for, what do you say, 17 years or something like that?

[Joe Getty]

12. Whatever it was, it was long, ridiculously.

[Jack Armstrong]

Long time to be around you can't be a fentanyl addict for that long, can you?

[Joe Getty]

No, you're on a tightrope because it's so easy to overdose. Yeah. Hey, by the way, back to the tariff thing. And that wasn't an argument against the tariffs per se, but just emergency powers. If the tariffs are such a good idea, and as Jack said, Trump needs to make this speech. We need to restructure the American economy because the global economy is changing so fast and not for our good. And China, we're addicted to the heroin of Chinese manufacturing and blah, blah, blah. That screed I unleashed earlier. Have Congress passed the laws, have those useless cowards who are in the article, one branch of government, not, as Nixon said, a co. Equal branch. They're in the main branch of government. Have those lazy, rotten fundraising bastards do something if it's such a good idea. Click baiting, Instagram abusing fundraising bastards. I stand by those words.

[Jack Armstrong]

One thing we do on the Armstrong and Getty radio show, if you're new to it because we've added new stations, is we try to remember what things like are actually going to matter to you in your real life today. I mean, like the whole tariff thing in economy, obviously that matters, but like getting a good night's sleep. And that sounded like a, that sounded like a transition into an ad. That's why we suggest.

[Joe Getty]

I don't, I don't have this, I don't have this ad.

[Jack Armstrong]

It really sounded like a transition to a live ad, but that's not what I was doing. I mentioned earlier, I slept the last two nights, all night long for the first time in I don't know how long. Many, many, many months, maybe a year. Because I took valerian root and magnesium and, and, and I really think that's why we got this text. Magnesium is, is vital for sleep and also regulates melatonin production and release. And studies show this valerian root currently has no strong clinical evidence of being useful for sleep. Just FYI from a fellow insomnia suffer. So I don't know that both have kept me asleep and I don't know which one might be keeping me asleep, but I'm just telling you, I've taken them both and I've slept all night long, two nights in a row.

[Joe Getty]

And then we run into the, the ever present question, if you're taking like a multivitamin, are you getting plenty of magnesium? And if you take a supplement, you're just going to secrete it right in the way that humans get rid of extra stuff.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah, yeah.

[Joe Getty]

Peeing. I'm sorry, what am I tap dancing around this? You're gonna urinate it out or not? I would like to know that because I take your standard older guy multivitamin.

[Jack Armstrong]

Then you probably get plenty of magnesium. I don't get. I don't think I get any valerian root in my diet though. So if this, if this turns out to work away did this is one of the best pieces of news I've had in my life in a long time. If I've stumbled upon something that is going to help me sleep all night long, this is freaking awesome. So I'm just passing it along. I tried it. It worked.

[Joe Getty]

Right? Right. Good luck. Let us say your results may vary. Let us know.

[Jack Armstrong]

So Bernie Sanders had a trans rally over the weekend in Milwaukee, of all places.

[Joe Getty]

He was a she, now she is a he. And we must respect that.

[Jack Armstrong]

The Democratic Party doubling down on an issue that is like 9010. Trump said the other day. I think it's more like 80, 20, but still.

[Joe Getty]

Millionaires and billionaires should not be the only people to remove their gen.

[Jack Armstrong]

Anyway, got that and a bunch of other stuff on the way. Stay here.

[Unknown]

Armstrong and Getty.

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[Joe Getty]

The Internet was all abuzz because at the speech Elon Musk was there and he was sitting next to an attract but turns out that they were just seated together. Never met her. There's no connection. And her due date is in December. That's pretty funny.

[Jack Armstrong]

I knew where he was going, but his wording was still surprising. Very, very good joke. I wondered that myself too. Probably a lot of people did. Okay, who's the hot blonde sitting next to Elon? What's going on there? But just happened to be sitting there. Had to at least cross her mind. Man, if I could just get pregnant real quick. I wonder how I could do that.

[Joe Getty]

I wonder how that's. What's the monthly support? I don't know Grimes.

[Jack Armstrong]

I was talking to somebody about that the other day. That would be someday we'll that'll be written. What is the financial deal he makes with these women? How much is it? Is it. Is it reasonably rich? Like $10 million flat fee. Which would be awesome. Obviously that's a ton of money. Or is it crazy Elon money? I don't know. Know.

[Joe Getty]

I don't know either. Does he. You know if before you get married you gotta sign a prenup. Does he have them sign a pre stup.

[Jack Armstrong]

Hey now those rhyme. Hey.

[Joe Getty]

Oh there's a little vaudeville humor there for you. Little Catskills 1960s humor.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah. Sort of thing Bernie Sanders would have enjoyed as a Bernard Sanders. So a fair amount has been said and written includes set on this show of it's shocking that the left Swift is continuing to hang on to the trans issue despite all the polling and the fact that their party got drubbed and everybody considers the most successful ad of the entire presidential election there for they them he's for you. You know that sort of thing, but they at least the Twitter left continues to go down that road. Bernie Sanders had a trans rally over the weekend in Milwaukee for some reason, and I just wanted to mention this part. The octogenarian lawmaker opened the rally in Milwaukee with a performance by a trans gesture transgender musician named Laura Jane Grace, who belted out the lyrics. And this is kind of rough. This is not for the kids. I will use initials.

[Joe Getty]

Does it rhyme with between us singing?

[Jack Armstrong]

No, it rhymes with Rick. Oh, boy. Does your God have a big fat D because it feels like he's effing me. Were the lyrics to the song to open the rally that Bernie Sanders was leading?

[Joe Getty]

You really think keep, keep going down the road.

[Jack Armstrong]

Keep going that good job of getting the working class back and Hispanic males and black males particularly. Back on your side with that, you morons.

[Joe Getty]

Wow. It's astounding.

[Jack Armstrong]

It is.

[Joe Getty]

I mean, it's. It's good for conservatism.

[Jack Armstrong]

You could be an auto worker, union member, blue collar Democrat your whole life. Your parents were Democrats. You never considered voting Republican in your whole life. And you see that and think, I'm voting Republican.

[Joe Getty]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Remarkable. One of my favorite writers with a headline, don't be fooled. Gavin Newsom is no moderate on trans issues. Worth looking into that next hour maybe.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah. So speaking of that sort of thing, reminding me of. I was in bumper on Los Angeles over the weekend with my son and his friends on their birthday, and we took a. An Uber to the Peterson Car Museum. For where? From Burbank. And so decent ride, like a half an hour. And I don't remember how we got in this. Oh. So the guy, the Uber driver, he said, yeah, I'm born and raised in Los Angeles. He was English speaking, which was awesome. And I'm sitting in the front because the three kids in their back, and he said, I'm born and raised in Los Angeles. I said, wow. He said, yeah, you know, there aren't that many natives anymore. A lot of the natives have left. And I said, have you been here the whole time? He said, I was briefly up in the Bay Area because he asked me where I was living. And I said, why'd you leave there? And he said, the jobs just dropped. There just wasn't enough driving and everything like that between Covid and the crime. I said, oh, yeah, yeah. I said, I was in downtown San Francisco and I'm talking about how dead it is and everything like that. He said, well, if you let crime run rampant like that, you know, and I'm always Surprised to hear that sort of thing anywhere in California really, but certainly in Los Angeles or San Francisco or something like that. So I mean, he kind of hinted toward where his thinking was on this sort of stuff. And I said, yeah, I know, between the homeless and the crime. He said, oh, don't get me started on the homeless. And anyway, we ended up at a place where we both, if, you know, it's probably, I never, I've never was a pot smoker, but it's probably like the way you weed heads back in the day sussed out whether somebody was, you know, on your side or not.

[Joe Getty]

With code words or why I ought.

[Jack Armstrong]

To, with code words or whatever to figure out, okay, we're aware together. We're, we're both okay on this. So then we, he and I could both talk openly about how we felt about the politics of California. And he said, I never talk about this. Given Uber rides for obvious reasons. He said, but you'd be surprised. He said, I voted for Trump three times. Three times. This born and raised Los Angeles Uber driver voted for Trump three times. And he said, I never talk about politics. He said, but you'd be surprised how many secret conservatives I drive around this town, just nobody has the courage to say it out loud. And I feel like if more people said it out loud, we'd all, you know, we'd all feel like, oh yeah, there's more of us than I realized. Let's, let's start saying it out loud. Loud.

[Joe Getty]

Right, yeah, well, that's, I remember there are a couple of big articles right after the election or the inauguration about how the culture was changing and people were wearing their mega hats and you know, coming out as either pro Trump or conservative, which is not necessarily the same thing. And I'd love to see more of that.

[Jack Armstrong]

Definitely.

[Joe Getty]

We're just not as mean as the woke left. That's part of it. As I pointed out a thousand times, if it's 55, 45, liberal to conservative, that's a landslide in every single election. But you got almost half the population utterly unrepresented represented unrepresented and bullied.

[Jack Armstrong]

But what drove his thinking was what drives a lot of people that, you know, voted for Trump who might not otherwise. He's got a couple of kids, he's got a six year old and an eight year old. And he said, I look around the city and it's too dangerous for him to walk down the streets that I used to walk down. There's homeless crazy people everywhere. And I got my kids in private school, which I gotta pay for because the public schools are insane and teach them all kinds of crazy stuff. It's just I don't see this changing anytime real soon. Unless, you know, you got Bernie Sanders and Gavin Newsom scared to say that dudes shouldn't be in girls sports and all this sort of stuff. Until you recognize like that Uber driver's needs, you're gonna lose a lot of elections.

[Joe Getty]

I need to design a T shirt or a meme or something that says policies yield results. Good policies, good results. Bad policies, bad results. If you are seeing bad results around you, you it's probably because of bad policies. Because it's shocking to me the number of people for whom that little calculation is just. They never even think about it.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah. As opposed to supporting whatever seems the nicest or coolest or whatever.

[Joe Getty]

Precisely.

[Jack Armstrong]

And there are actually results from these policies. If you miss a segment under the hour, get the podcast Armstrong and Getty on demand.

[Unknown]

Armstrong and Getty.

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[Unknown]

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