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- [00:00]
Rocket Money Advertiser
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- [01:00]
Ben Parker
Most people would rather remove a nest of irate hornets than search for auto and home insurance. That's why the zebra searches for you. Comparing over 100 insurance companies to find savings no one else can compare. Today@the zebra.com I think I'll wait inside. Hi, everybody. Ben Parker from the Bulwark here with Katherine Rampel. Because it's finally happened, the thing we've all been waiting for. Donald Trump received the Peace Prize from FIFA. This was the stupidest thing I've seen in a long time.
- [01:33]
Katherine Rampel
Totally unexpected. From the moment that the FIFA president announced that there was a Peace Prize coming, we were all waiting with bated breath to see who was going to get it. Not relevant at all that the FIFA president had previously said that Donald Trump totally deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. And this is of course not a consolation prize in lieu of the Nobel Peace Prize. Totally separate, very prestigious and completely unexpected. Clearly.
- [02:04]
Ben Parker
Yeah. I mean, when you think of some of the previous winners of the FIFA Peace Prize, there are none.
- [02:10]
Katherine Rampel
Exactly. But it's the first annual. It's the first annual, so there will be many more to come. All.
- [02:19]
Ben Parker
Right, let's. Oh God, I can't wait for next year when he wins it again. The first back to back winner in its history, if you can imagine. Okay, that's. That's next year. We'll do that video in a year from now. Let's. Let's. Let's just watch some of this video so we can. We can't accurately describe how stupid this is. You have to see it for yourself.
- [02:35]
Katherine Rampel
Thank you.
- [02:36]
FIFA Official
Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President. This is your prize. This is your Peace Prize. There is also a beautiful medal for you that you can wear everywhere you want to go.
- [02:53]
Donald Trump
Right now.
- [02:54]
FIFA Official
Okay, let me. Fantastic. Excellent.
- [03:03]
And you will receive also, of course, a certificate which reads out. And I would read it out with your permission. What are the reasons for you receiving this?
- [03:16]
Ben Parker
This is going to be framed in the Roosevelt Room by, like, tomorrow.
- [03:19]
FIFA Official
Football unites the world. So the FIFA Peace Prize is presented annually on behalf of the billions of football people from around the world to a distinguished individual.
- [03:30]
Katherine Rampel
English isn't his first language.
- [03:32]
FIFA Official
Delivering commitment to advancing communities throughout the world through their notable leadership.
- [03:38]
Katherine Rampel
Do you think there's chocolate inside of that thing?
- [03:40]
FIFA Official
And therefore, FIFA, the Federation International, the football association, awards the 2025 FIFA Peace Prize. Football unites the world To Donald J. Trump, President of the United States of America, in recognition of his exceptional and extraordinary actions to promote peace and unity around the world Friday.
- [04:04]
Ben Parker
He's known for promoting unity.
- [04:05]
FIFA Official
2025.
- [04:07]
Katherine Rampel
This is a certificate, just like football is known for using your hands, as was evident in that trophy. Yeah.
- [04:15]
Ben Parker
Okay. I'm so glad you noticed that, too. They give him this trophy, which is a bunch of hands reaching for the ball, which I'm pretty sure is like the main thing you're not allowed to do in soccer. Right, Sorry. In football.
- [04:26]
Rocket Money Advertiser Duplicate
Right.
- [04:26]
Ben Parker
So it is actually unintentionally kind of fitting, but that the, the prize they're giving him is a literal physical representation of breaking the most basic rules. They probably had no idea how on the nose it actually was. That's excellent.
- [04:39]
Katherine Rampel
Yes. Just like the, The. The Peace Prize itself is given to someone who is really good at. At. At breaking the peace. Totally fitting analogy. Exactly.
- [04:51]
Ben Parker
Before. Before we get into more of that, because, oh, my God, there's so much more that's Talk about.
- [04:57]
I want to ask you about the corruption angle on this because, you know, as I was watching this, I was thinking, which way is this going? I mean, obviously it's FIFA ingratiating themselves to Trump. Right. Right. Before we're about to have the. The World cup in the United States. But also, is it like FIFA using the opportunity of having a Peace Prize to sort of, like, launder their own image as being super corrupt and not.
- [05:24]
Katherine Rampel
Great and whatever I Think there are quids and qu in both directions here. So FIFA has plenty on the line. In fact, that ceremony that was hosted today was at the Kennedy center. And FIFA will be commandeering the Kennedy center in D.C. for the next three weeks completely for free. Rent of zero. I'm not sure what the precedent is for that, but at the very least, you know, that would have been quite a big chunk of change. And they've actually ejected all of the previously scheduled holiday programming, you know, the holiday concerts and the National Symphony and folks like that from the Kennedy center to do it. So, like, they're getting that for free. I'm sure that they're going to get some other goodies along the way. And of course, they're going to be all of these games around the country, around the U.S. canada, Mexico. There'll be plenty of opportunities there for some favor trading as well. And again, probably in both directions. Whatever it is, FIFA is getting out of this, presumably Donald Trump is going to co opt these games for his own political agenda as well on immigration, among other objectives. So, yeah, I think this is a match made in heaven.
- [06:44]
Ben Parker
I think it's a match made somewhere else. Let's.
- [06:49]
Katherine Rampel
I was also going to point out that this is not actually the first peace prize that Trump has been awarded this year. That might be a little suspect. Yeah, the Nixon foundation gave them their Peace prize, I think, back in October. So he, he lost out on the Nobel. I know he's, he's hoping for that, but he has gotten a few other participation awards.
- [07:13]
Ben Parker
Yeah, you know, the, the next one actually seems pretty fitting. Okay, you, you mentioned, you mentioned the actual lack of peace that Trump has achieved. So let's, let's watch the next little bit we have. We have a clip, I think, where he's asked about, you know, the possible American war crimes off the coast of Venezuela. Let's see what he said.
- [07:32]
Katherine Rampel
You're expected to get the FIFA Peace Prize, Mr. President, what would you say to people who say that prize might conflict with your pledge to strike Venezuela?
- [07:41]
Donald Trump
Well, I think the Peace Prize, I mean, I settled eight wars. I don't know that I'm getting it. I haven't been officially noticed. I've been hearing about a Peace Prize and I'm here to represent our country in a different sense. But I can tell you I did settle eight wars and we have a ninth coming, but which nobody's ever done before. But I want to really save lives. I don't need prizes. I need to save lives. And we're saving a lot of lives. I've saved millions and millions of lives, and that's really what I want to do. And I also want to run a great country. And the United States right now is the hottest country anywhere in the world. And one year ago was dead. We had a dead country, and now we have the hottest country anywhere in the world.
- [08:19]
Ben Parker
Yeah. So maybe if really wanted to save millions of lives, he didn't have to, you know, cut all American foreign aid.
- [08:25]
Katherine Rampel
Yeah. The Gates Foundation. Yeah, the Gates foundation just said that this will be the first year in decades that child deaths around the world will rise, and that's largely because of our cuts to foreign aid.
- [08:38]
Ben Parker
Oh, God, that's awful. Yeah. So thanks for saving all those lives. President Trump, he also claimed, in addition to saying he stopped eight or nine wars or resolved eight or nine wars, actually, I don't think he can reach for the word resolved anymore. He probably said something like, I ended. I don't know. He also claimed at a different moment that there were some wars that he started, quote, a little bit before they started.
- [09:05]
Okay. I don't know how you're supposed to measure that. You know, I'm old enough to remember back when the Obama administration came into office at the end of the financial crisis, they started saying that there were so many jobs they had created or saved or saved. And a bunch of, you know, more conservative economists criticizing them, saying, you can't really know that. You can't really know if a job would have been lost if not for the government intervention. It's sort of, you know, an unknowable thing. You shouldn't say that. But, wow, to say that you stopped a war before it started, that's. That's a doozy. That's like something out of the end of a James Bond film.
- [09:40]
Katherine Rampel
Yeah, look, counterfactuals are hard in economics or anything else, but I do think that we can see him ginning up.
- [09:50]
Additional aggression around the world anyway. I mean, like, we did bomb Iran, for example. We are continuing to do these extra legal, extra judicial, possible war crimes or murder in the Caribbean, as he was asked about there. So I don't know how those are counted in the tally here, but probably not in the peace column. Not in the war stopping column. But look, this is all made up anyway. So of course he's going to say he stopped wars before they started because, like, it's all pretend.
- [10:31]
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- [10:35]
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- [11:40]
Ben Parker
The fact that he, at least for now, has not decided to invade Greenland and Panama as he talked about a few months ago. Maybe those that count in Canada.
- [11:50]
Katherine Rampel
In Canada.
- [11:50]
Ben Parker
Remember there's three. Three right now.
- [11:53]
Katherine Rampel
You know what? I think you're right. I think those are the wars he did not start.
- [11:57]
Ben Parker
He stops the wars that he decided not to start. Great.
- [12:00]
Katherine Rampel
Yes, exactly. Exactly. You know, it's, it's effective. It is effective at not having a war is just not, not this, not threatening it in the first place.
- [12:08]
Ben Parker
Now I, I gotta say this next clip, this is the last clip we're gonna share. And then I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to, I'm gonna try out a hot take on you. But this next clip, I am so glad we have because I, I was genuinely curious if he had won the Nobel Peace Prize, the actual piece. Well, the quasi, actual peace prize, what his Nobel lecture would have been. And now, now we get to see what words of wisdom he has to share with the world. And. Oh boy.
- [12:34]
Donald Trump
But when you look at what has happened to football in the United States again, soccer in the United States, we seem to never call it that because we have a little bit of a conflict with another thing that's called football. But when you think about it, it's a great point. Shouldn't it really be called. I mean, this is football. There's no question about. We have to come up with another name for the. Yeah, it really doesn't make sense when you think about it. It's really football.
- [13:00]
Katherine Rampel
But you know, Trump the Globalist, man, that's what this is about. He's, he's trying to give us the same terms that the rest of the world uses. I don't know, is this really America First? It's a good question.
- [13:13]
Ben Parker
We didn't have it in the, in the video here, but I'm pretty sure that his speech went on to say, asked the audience, why was six afraid of seven? What, what is he doing up there? Like, this is why he's just, look.
- [13:26]
Katherine Rampel
He'S got this material he's been saving up. He's waiting for his Nobel Peace Prize. By the way, there are at least a dozen countries and, or U.S. lawmakers who have nominated him for that Peace prize. They missed the deadline this year, but he's up for it next year and he's just, you know, he's, he, he's trying out his material.
- [13:49]
Ben Parker
Yeah, well, needs a little more workshopping and I, Yeah, yes, yes I can. Okay, so here's my hot take. This is a very good thing. I am glad this happened. I want this to happen more every day. I want the NFL Players association to give him album of the year. I want Ms. Magazine to give him best new air conditioning unit. All the made up prizes I want them to give him because it took a bunch of time. He spent an inordinate amount of time standing there dancing to ymca.
- [14:30]
Like you know when they sing Happy Birthday and you don't know what to do? He spent like four and a half minutes doing that. He wasn't focused on trying to break democracy. He's collecting little gold baubles that like, honestly don't matter that much. And, and actually he had some very friendly things to say about our neighbors to the north and south, who as you mentioned, are also hosting the World cup next year. Mark Carney, the Prime Minister of Canada and Claudia Scheinbaum from Mexico were both there and he talked about how friendly we are and how much we get along. So yeah, more made up BS Prizes that waste this guy's time. Please. Every day. Like let's just do one of these every day.
- [15:06]
Katherine Rampel
So I have, I have multiple reactions to that one. Yes. Any minute that he is spending doing nonsense like this, a harmless, effectively nonsense like this is a minute he is not spending doing something much worse. That's totally fair. And he's good at the performative stuff. He really wants to be more of a figurehead than an actual person who has to govern. So sure. However, a lot of these prizes, these like fake trophies and other baubles that he's being given are not necessarily a good use of the time of the gift giver. Right. So like FIFA, I don't know, they're not exactly the most pristine organization. They've been known for all sorts of gotten tied up in all sorts of corruption scandals in the past. So like I don't know what their outside option is. Maybe it's better, maybe it's worse. But like Apple, Apple spent a lot of time coming up with that gold in glass 24 karat gold trophy that they gave to Donald Trump. A plaque. That is time that their brightest minds should have spent coming up with better products and customers and investments and other things that businesses are supposed to do. The more time that they spend on this kind of bullshit, the less time that they spend actually trying to make money and do things that are profitable beyond just avoiding the, you know, the retribution of President. Likewise for Diet Coke which gave him the first inaugural Diet Coke award. Likewise for a McDonald's franchise franchisee that gave him the fry cook pin. There's a whole list of these kinds of trophies and fake awards that companies have spent inordinate time planning. Not just awards, there's also like Rush Hour 4 which I wrote about recently, which is a film that would not have been made. Isn't what you know was unsellable until Donald Trump leaned on Paramount amount to distribute it and eventually get it done. These kinds of things are not a good investment of companies time. And this is part of the reason why in parts of the world where there is less rule of law and more corruption, they have worse economic growth because businesses are trying to navigate the corruption and figure out who's palm to Greece rather than doing the thing that you know, built, you know, that is more efficient, a more efficient allocate allocation of resources like coming up with new products and sales and all of that. So we have models in other, in other parts of the world where businesses are also wasting their time with bullshit of various kinds or bribes or other kinds of corruption. And besides the fact that you end up with worse outcomes for democracy, you also end up with worse economic outcomes. So I don't know. I take your point, go both ways on this one counterpoint.
- [18:08]
Ben Parker
Trump's tastes are incredibly cheap and you can delete, delete.
- [18:12]
Katherine Rampel
That's true.
- [18:14]
Ben Parker
It's a three step process. Step one, go on Etsy. Step two, buy literally anything. Step three, spray paint it gold colored and then give it to him. That's it. That's all he like loves gold colored stuff. It'll show up in the oval office the next day and. Okay, no, I want to, I want to ask you a little bit more of a.
- [18:32]
Katherine Rampel
Well, Switzerland. Switzerland put a little more time and effort into it. You know, they gave him a gold bar, they gave him a Rolex clock. Those are not things that you could just pick up on Etsy now, maybe they could have spray painted a brick and he wouldn't have been able to tell.
- [18:48]
They went way out of the way.
- [18:49]
Ben Parker
It was effective.
- [18:50]
Katherine Rampel
Yeah, exactly. It was effective. They got tariffs reduced. However, there's now a big corruption investigation in Switzerland because the public was so aghast at this like clear effort at, you know, tit for tat bribery. Essentially the thing that the United States used to police around the world via the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Now other countries are effectively having to enforce against us whatever their equivalent version is because now we are the corrupt government that is effectively soliciting bribes of various kinds or something tantamount to bribes. So I don't know. Not a good deal for Switzerland, I guess.
- [19:34]
Ben Parker
Well, merci and the Dankoshen to the Swiss for standing up for traditional American values. Okay, yeah, that's right. And I'm not even going to try Romach. The other ones I don't even know. But your latest newsletter, receipts. If you're not reading receipts, you got to go read receipts at the Bulwark. Catherine Rampel, your latest newsletter is all about how Trump is trying to turn affordability into a hoax. It's a Democrat scam, he says. And I gotta, I gotta wonder, is him collecting gold trophies and medals and decorating the White House with everything gold a good look when he A, ran on the fact that there was an affordability crisis and out of control inflation, B promised to bring prices down on things like groceries and energy that have not come down and C is now pretending that there is no affordability crisis. It's a hoax. Is this a good look for him at all?
- [20:24]
Katherine Rampel
Probably not. Neither is having a Great Gatsby themed party the night before a whole bunch of Americans were about to lose their food stamps. I mean, there are lots of tone deaf things that he has done here.
- [20:40]
That turning the White House into the Cheesecake Factory with all of the gold everywhere. Yeah. And yet somehow it doesn't seem to affect him that much. I don't know. It's puzzling to me. This is a guy who has run on having really tacky 80s style tastes for a very long time, who has called himself a billionaire for a very long time, even when he likely wasn't. Now you know, he's getting all sorts, besides getting gold gifts, he's also getting a bunch of gifts via crypto. So probably he is a billionaire now.
- [21:14]
Ben Parker
And the Qatari plane is worth those half a bill right there. Right?
- [21:17]
Katherine Rampel
So, yeah, Exactly. I think 400 million, but yes, close enough, close enough.
- [21:23]
So he's run on basically being a version of the elites, but also a common. The common man. Right. He's there looking out for the common man. He represents the tastes of the common man. So I don't know, it's. To me, all this stuff feels super tone deaf and seems really offensive, particularly as he's saying affordability is a hoax and a con job and all of that, that people should be happier with their law, effectively. Because he's fixed inflation, even though he obviously hasn't. It seems like this should be damaging to him. And maybe in some ways it has. I mean, his economic approval numbers are quite low or pretty bad, so maybe it is. But it doesn't seem to have been quite as deflating as I would have expected given that split screen.
- [22:19]
Ben Parker
Yeah, well, let's give it time. And when he wins next year's FIFA Peace Prize, check in and see where we are.
- [22:26]
Katherine Rampel
And the Nobel. And the Nobel.
- [22:29]
Ben Parker
I'm not holding my brother for that one. Katherine Rampel, thank you so much. And hey, remember, we do this all the time. We like to have fun. Sometimes we cry. So like the video, subscribe to the page and become a Bullwork plus member at thebullwork.com you really want to be.
- [22:45]
Rocket Money Advertiser Duplicate
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