Yikes! Trump Caught Cooking the Books in New Report

Summary

Podcast Summary: Legal AF by MeidasTouch
Episode Title: Yikes! Trump Caught Cooking the Books in New Report
Release Date: August 13, 2025

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Overview

In this episode of Legal AF by MeidasTouch, hosts Ben Meiselas, Michael Popok, and Karen Friedman Agnifilo delve into the latest developments surrounding former President Donald Trump's economic policies. Titled "Yikes! Trump Caught Cooking the Books in New Report," the episode critically examines contrasting economic reports and their implications on American households. The discussion is enriched with expert analyses, media clips, and insightful commentary, providing listeners with a comprehensive understanding of the current economic landscape shaped by Trump's administration.

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Key Discussions

1. Contrasting Economic Reports: Trump's Claims vs. CBO Findings

   The episode opens with Michael Popok challenging President Trump's assertion that his economic policies have improved American households by $2,000. He references the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report, which presents a starkly different picture:

   “The poorest 10% of Americans... are going to be poorer by twelve hundred dollars a year because of Trump policies, and the richest 10% are going to be richer by $13,600 because of the tax cuts Donald Trump has supported.”
   [00:29]

   Popok emphasizes the disparity highlighted by the CBO, questioning the fairness of policies that disproportionately benefit the wealthy while disadvantaging the lower-income groups.

2. Analysis of Trump’s Selective Use of Data

   Delving deeper, Popok critiques Trump's selective presentation of economic data. He narrates an incident where Trump favored a chart from a Heritage Foundation economist over the CBO's independent report:

   “Donald Trump declared real numbers. We just got these, they're just out. Look at this chart. This chart's better than that chart.”
   [00:29]

   This selective endorsement, according to Popok, undermines the credibility of Trump's economic narratives.

3. Economist’s Perspective on Trump’s Economic Performance

   A guest economist presents Trump’s perspective, underscoring the increase in household income during his tenure:

   “Reduced income equality. These numbers just came out... every income group did better under Trump than Biden by a wide margin.”
   [03:57]

   The commentator swiftly counters this by highlighting the CBO's findings, pointing out the negative impact on the poorest Americans juxtaposed against substantial gains for the wealthy.

4. Impact on Consumer Spending and the Broader Economy

   Karen Friedman Agnifilo shifts the focus to consumer behavior and economic indicators, illustrating how Trump's policies have led to decreased consumer and discretionary spending:

   “Consumer spending, discretionary spending which drives the economy... those numbers are down.”
   [09:24]

   She uses Las Vegas as a case study, noting a significant decline in tourism and its correlation with Trump's tariffs and international policies:

   “Las Vegas is down... 400,000 fewer people came this July than last July.”
   [09:24]

   This decline is symptomatic of broader economic challenges, including rising inflation and diminished consumer confidence.

5. Inflation and Its Real-World Impact

   The discussion also covers the latest inflation figures:

   “Core inflation around the basket of goods that matter to you at the Supermarket is up 3.1% from last year to this year...”
   [05:06]

   Friedman Agnifilo explains how inflation erodes purchasing power, forcing families to cut back on essential items, thereby straining household budgets.

6. Future Economic Outlook and Potential Recession

   Concluding the economic analysis, the hosts discuss indicators pointing towards a potential recession:

   “Every aspect of Trump's policies... has hit Vegas. And usually when Vegas is hit six months in a row, it signals we are either in or about to enter a recession.”
   [09:24]

   They caution against relying solely on stock market performance as an economic indicator, emphasizing the importance of fundamental economic health.

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Insights and Analysis

Throughout the episode, the hosts employ a critical lens to examine the veracity of economic claims made by Trump and his administration. By juxtaposing Trump’s selective data presentation with independent reports from the CBO, they highlight the discrepancy between political narratives and empirical evidence. The discussion underscores the importance of considering multiple data sources to gain a holistic understanding of economic policies and their impacts.

Furthermore, the episode sheds light on the broader ramifications of Trump's economic strategies, such as the implementation of tariffs and their unintended consequences on international relations and domestic industries like tourism. The analysis extends to the microeconomic level, detailing how inflation affects everyday consumers and contributes to decreased discretionary spending.

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Conclusions

The Legal AF hosts conclude that while Trump touts certain economic achievements, a deeper dive into independent analyses reveals significant drawbacks, particularly for lower-income households. The episode serves as a call to critically assess political claims and emphasizes the necessity for policies that promote equitable economic growth. By presenting contrasting viewpoints and detailed economic data, Legal AF equips listeners with the insights needed to navigate the complex interplay between law, politics, and economics in contemporary America.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Michael Popok:

  “The poorest 10% of Americans... are going to be poorer by twelve hundred dollars a year because of Trump policies...”
  [00:29]

• Political Commentator:

  “So consumer spending, discretionary spending which drives the economy... those numbers are down.”
  [09:24]

• Economist/Analyst:

  “Every income group did better under Trump than Biden by a wide margin.”
  [03:57]

• Karen Friedman Agnifilo:

  “Core inflation around the basket of goods that matter to you at the Supermarket is up 3.1%...”
  [05:06]

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Additional Resources

Listeners interested in further exploring the topics discussed can visit the Legal AF YouTube channel and subscribe for more in-depth analyses and updates on the intersection of law and politics.

Transcript

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[Political Commentator]

See that it take long for the lie to be put to Donald Trump's own financial victory lap about American households being improved by $2,000. And those are real numbers that were being hidden by the Democrats. Not so fast, Trump. The office, the Congressional Budget Office, which is a is independent from the executive branch, ran its own numbers and determined that the poorest 10% of Americans because of the loss of their benefits, mainly Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP benefits and disability payments, are going to be poorer by twelve hundred dollars a year because of Trump policies and that the richest 10% are going to be richer or enriched by $13,600 because of the tax cut cuts that Donald Trump has supported. So if you are a MAGA supporter that happens to be poor, middle class to poor, there's supposed to be dignity and hard work and it's okay of course that you, you have not been able to become an oligarch under Donald Trump. But why should you suffer and have a $1200 worse off household pocketbook when you're already on the low end of the spectrum. Why? And that's what Democrats are demanding answers to. I mean, we just had Donald Trump trot out a, an economist that he liked from the Heritage foundation who happened to be roaming around for a meeting with Donald Trump bringing some big graphs. And Donald Trump, he brought two charts, one based on, on the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports about Joe Biden. Donald Trump didn't love that as much because he, he's been criticizing the Bureau of Labor Statistics as being rigged against him because they reduced the amount of job creation. But he loved the chart that this guy created based on Bureau of Labor Statistics statistics that show that there was an increase in household income by up by about $2,000. And Donald Trump declared real numbers. We just got these, they're just out. Look at this chart. This chart's better than that chart. And now we've got the real independent Congressional Budget Office report. I'm here on Midas Touch and Legal af. Let's try to get through this together. We got to speak truth to each other first. In fact, the director of the CBO wrote, as only a geek in the economics language can say it and I'll translate it, resources will decrease for households toward the bottom of the income distribution, whereas resources will increase for households in the middle and towards the top of the income distribution. The poor got poorer and the rich got richer under Donald Trump and his policies. There. I did it. I did it. Let me, while you're here, take a moment, hit the Midas Touch subscribe button. Come over to Legal YouTube. Hit the Legal AF YouTube subscribe button as well. Now, let me show you a clip, just for the last 72 hours, of Donald Trump taking a victory lap about some new charts while he kept Purple Heart recipients and their families cooling their heels because that's what they were all together for. But as long as he had the press and he had the phony charts, let's put two and two together. I like charts that go up, up, up, not ones that are true and real, that go down, down, down. Let's play the clip.

[Economist or Analyst]

Reduced income equality. These numbers just came out, by the way. And then finally, these are the numbers just. And I just showed you in percentage terms, Mr. President, these are the numbers in dollar terms. So even the lowest income, 25th percent, gained about $4,000. Income, that's a lot for a lower income family. $6,400 for the middle class and almost 10,000 for the richest. So you can see every income group did better under Trump than Biden by a wide version. That's the story. I think when you look at them, they're all something. But this one chart really says it better than anything. If you look at this, this is great. But this chart is pretty amazing. All new numbers. Okay, so we're going to go now over to East Room and we're going to celebrate some very brave people with the Purple Hearts. Yeah, please.

[Political Commentator]

Did you notice the switcheroo? Oh, I don't like the chart over here. I like the chart over here. This is really the chart. These are actual numbers. These are real. This just came out. These are. I don't like the ones from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that show that I've only made 35, 000 jobs in the last two months instead of the hundreds of thousands of jobs that I told everybody I made. I don't like those. I only like those when those go up. I like Numbers that only go up. It reminds me, there used to be an ad campaign for a recruiting agency for a recruiting company. It was like one of those places you send your resume like resume builders.com or one of them, I forget which one. But the series of ads were chimpanzees. I got a thing since I was a child for acting chimpanzees. So the chimpanzees were business people and they had a human who was presenting charts. I'm going to show a picture of this. We're presenting charts to the chimpanzee bosses. And he put up the chart and it showed the true fact that the businesses, the businesses economics were going down, down, down. And the monkeys went crazy. And they got very, very upset and angry with, with the human who was presenting the chart until he flipped the chart around and showed it the other way. Going up, up, up. And then they went crazy. They were so happy, they were lighting their cigars with, with hundred dollar bills. That's Donald Trump. He just wants numbers that go up even if they're not true and they're not accurate. But now the Congressional Budget Office has analyzed, taken that big beautiful bill bullshit and run it through the grinder and seen how the waterfall falls and not mainly on everybody equally, right? Rising tide may be lifting all boats, but some boats are sinking in this economy that Donald Trump has designed. He doesn't care about it. He doesn't care about you. He doesn't care about your pocketbook, kitchen table checkbook issues. He really doesn't. If he did, the other numbers would scare the crap out of him this week and he'd do something about it. We just got the final numbers for inflation. Core inflation around the basket of goods that matter to you at the Supermarket is up 3.1% from last year to this year and is already up 0.3% just June to July. That means if you go to the supermarket and you've got all the things you need to survive in your basket, you know, everything you need for your children, for the seniors, in your life, for you that you need, you now go to the exact same basket you buy every week, the basket you bought last year to this year, you pull out the same Money you're short 3.1%. So what are you going to do? You don't have the money, the government's not giving you any support any longer. The supermarket's not going to float you alone and let you walk out the door 3.1% short. So you got to put something back that mattered to you, that mattered to your family. Maybe the milk goes back, maybe the orange juice goes back, maybe the eggs go back. And that's the Trump economics.

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[Political Commentator]

Only number that that's down consumer spending, discretionary spending which drives the economy, economy. No matter what you're being told by Trump, those numbers are down. People aren't spending because they don't feel confident in the economy. So that sputtering sound you hear is the economy. So consumer spending down, manufacturing down, goods down, services down, everything down in the economy. Now let me, let me put it in sharp relief for you. One of the indicia of how we do as a nation in the economy are places like Las Vegas. Hard to believe and in Las Vegas is sort of a petri dish for all of Trump's insane policies all coming to hit at one place, right? The number one group that would visit Las Vegas, which is now down in tourism. Based on independent numbers from the Las Vegas Tourism board. Six months in a row, Vegas, down, down, down, down, down, down. 400,000 less people came this July than last July. Now what's the thing that goes along with the last six months, right? The Trump administration. So what's hitting there all at the same time? Trump's attack on Canada and Tariffs. Canadians were the number one group, foreign group, that came to Las Vegas no longer because they turned their back on Trump and therefore on the American economy. And it's 35% tariff against Canadian goods. Take Canadian dollars out. Other tourists don't want to come to Vegas or the United States either. Maybe because of their own immigration status, maybe because that of a loved one, maybe because they don't have enough pages in their passport, whatever it is, or as. Or as a taking a stand against a corrupt government. They're not coming either. That's why I get ready for the World cup and get ready for the Olympics, because not only is it being run by Rudy Giuliani's son, God help us all. But think of the foreign people, the international people that are not going to come to the United States because they don't want to see Marines with rifles up and down the streets of major cities where these games are being played. So now we're in Vegas. What I said earlier, consumer spending, discretionary spending, people feel like they don't have extra money to spend. There goes Vegas in gaming and gambling, right? And so that hits the bottom line. So every aspect of Trump's policies, rising inflation, unemployment up, manufacturing and service down, consumer confidence way down, tariffs down, international travel and tourism down, has hit Vegas. And usually when Vegas is hit six months in a row, it signals we are either in or about to enter a recession. Forget the stock market. That is the plaything of magical thinkers who are brokers and traders who are trying to make a buck regardless of what earnings say, regardless of what debt ratio says, regardless of what different metrics to measure the health of companies and corporations. And earnings say it might as well be a casino at the current rate. So that's not sure. Everybody that has a stock or any kind of portfolio likes to see it up. But this is a bubble because the underlying fundamentals of the economics of this country are not strong and they're not healthy. And Donald Trump doesn't care about it because he's got a depraved view of who should win and who should lose in this culture, in this country. Right? He says Jay Powell of the Federal Reserve hates America, wants to see it punished because he's not lowering rates and making borrowing cheaper again. He's watching as the other Fed governors are watching. He's watching the inflation rate, which he wants to be at about 2%, and it's currently heading towards 4%. Wrong direction, Donald. Work on your inflation rate and your economic policies and maybe you'll get more and Cheaper Fed funding. Fed funds from a lowering of the interest rate. But until then, you won't. I'm going to continue to follow it. I do it in a couple of places. I do it here on the Midas Touch network. Do about 14, 15 videos a week. And then I've got the legal AF YouTube channel. I do in collaboration with the brothers that I'm the. What do I call it? Editor in chief curator of the Legal AF YouTube channel. We do 10 new videos a day. I do a fair number of them, but then I've got about a dozen other contributors at the intersection of law and politics. I got Adam Klassfeld of All Rise News. I've got Sidney Blumenthal and Sean Wallentz of Court of History. I've got Tiara Mack, senator from Rhode island and Rachel Cohen joined together a pragmatic optimists. I've got the Court Accountability Action People, Shan Wu, Dina Doll, Dave Aron Berg, you name it. Sorry, Shant and Brian of Civil Action. I've got the It's Complicated Asha and Renato podcast. Come to Legal AF Behind One Glass. You get not only all those commentators and contributors, but you get people in the trenches, the, the difference makers, right, the newsmakers, the lawyers. Democracy Forward is with us, talking about their 80 cases they filed against the Trump administration ACLU. We have U.S. senators and congresspeople. I just did an interview of Rob Bonta, the Attorney General of California, about all the work that attorney generals, attorneys general are doing. We've got historians, we've got journalists, all under one pane of glass called legal af YouTube channel. Come over there. Hit the free subscribe button. So until my next report, this is Michael Popak. Can't get your fill of Legal af? Me neither. That's why we formed the Legal AF substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the substack. You'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do called Wait for it Morning af. What else? All the other contributors from ligalayoff are there as well. We got some new reporting, we got interviews, we got ad free versions of the podcast and hot takes where Legal AF on substack. Come over now to free subscribe warning the following ZipRecruiter radio spot you are about to hear is going to be filled with F words when you're hiring.

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