The Power Brokers and Palace Intrigue of Trump's Rollercoaster Week, with Stephanie Ruhle

Summary

Podcast Summary: Pablo Torre Finds Out

Episode: "The Power Brokers and Palace Intrigue of Trump's Rollercoaster Week"

Guest: Stephanie Ruhle (Host of The 11th Hour on MSNBC)
Release Date: April 11, 2025

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Overview

In this episode, Pablo Torre sits down with Stephanie Ruhle, former Wall Street executive and decorated journalist, to unpack an extraordinarily tumultuous week for the American economy. Amid wild stock market swings tied to Trump’s mercurial trade policy announcements, the conversation explores the complex networks of influence wielding power behind the scenes in Trump’s White House, the interplay between economic policy and personal relationships, and the existential trust crisis confronting American markets and institutions. The discussion blends lived anecdotes, insider commentary, and acute critiques, illuminating both the high-stakes drama and personal foibles coursing beneath the headlines.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Anecdotes as Introduction: From Wall Street to White House Whispers

• Stephanie starts with a humorous story of being outshone by Alex Rodriguez and JLo at a post-Met Gala Mexican restaurant, segueing into her background on Wall Street and her unique access to major players throughout finance and politics.
  • Quote: “She is so repulsed and disgusted by us and this restaurant... She just sat there and drank hot water with lemon as I probably have, like, taco sauce, like, pouring down my face.” – Stephanie Ruhle (02:10)
• Pablo frames Stephanie’s story as illustrative of her knack for being “plugged in” to exclusive circles.
  • Quote: “That story is the best possible introductory Mad Lib to who you are.” – Pablo Torre (02:54)
• Stephanie details her rise from a New Jersey commuter to high-performing credit derivatives salesperson, underlining how relationships and insider access underpin both finance and media.
  • Quote: “If you can build a relationship... that’s going to breed success.” – Stephanie Ruhle (07:29)

2. The “Palace Intrigue” of Trump’s Economic Policy

• The week saw unprecedented volatility: $7 trillion in market cap vanished in 30 minutes due to Trump’s tariffs, then rebounded after an ambiguous 90-day pause announcement.
  • Quote: “There is rampant chaos.” – Stephanie Ruhle (05:50)
  • Market Recap: [05:50]–[07:00]
• Pablo and Stephanie highlight that what moves markets is often not policy itself, but uncertainty about who has Trump’s ear.
  • Quote: “Who does a person listen to is kind of the story of this administration.” – Pablo Torre (07:08)
• The focus shifts to Peter Navarro — his sudden rise to power, fringe trade views, and newfound influence after others like Gary Cohn and Jared Kushner distanced themselves.
  • Quote: “By Wall Street standards, [Navarro] is a complete out of the box kook.” – Stephanie Ruhle (10:27)
• Notably, Navarro’s “trade expert” alter ego, Ron Vara (an anagram of his name), is lampooned.
  • Quote: “In 2019… Navarro referenced an expert… Ron Vara… Not a real person.” – Stephanie Ruhle (12:51)
  • Memorable Moment: The surreal revelation that Navarro invented an expert for credibility, echoing Trump’s “John Barron” faux persona. [13:57–14:23]

3. The Influence Game: Who’s Really Shaping Policy?

• Conversation moves to other key figures:
  • Howard Lutnick (Commerce Secretary): Under fire for being out of touch and possibly trading on insider information.
    • Quote: “You have to have people… who understand the American people. Howard Lutnick’s mother in law might not be worried about her Social Security check, but millions of other Americans are.” – Stephanie Ruhle (15:28)
  • Scott Besant (Treasury Secretary): Seen as dismissive of everyday American concerns.
• The market’s whipsawing is explained as much by trust—or the lack thereof—as by actual economic fundamentals.
  • Quote: "Trust is gained in droplets and lost in buckets.” – Stephanie Ruhle (24:23)

4. Wall Street’s Desperation & “Poster’s Heart”

• Stephanie describes major investors frantically seeking to understand who’s close to Trump, often reduced to lobbying him on social media.
  • Example: Bill Ackman’s Twitter threads pleading with Trump to reverse course on tariffs.
    • Quote: “The fact that you gotta hide the medicine in peanut butter like you’re feeding a dog.” – Pablo Torre (22:38)
• Pablo lampoons Ackman’s compulsive posting.
  • Quote: “He has a poster’s heart.” – Pablo Torre (20:22)
• Stephanie observes that even the sharpest investors are compelled to flatter Trump publicly before critiquing policy, underscoring a dangerous dependency on personal whim and ego.
  • Quote: “Almost every person… starts their criticism with ‘Dear Mr. President, I know… your golf game is the best. However…’” – Stephanie Ruhle (21:58)

5. Systemic Consequences: Trust, Uncertainty, and Manipulation

• The guests argue that the real costs are the erosion of trust in America’s institutions and the unpredictability that paralyzes actual businesses and global partners.
  • Quote: “When you have the likes of a Howard Lutnick saying all the jobs are coming back… why are you going to believe that?” – Stephanie Ruhle (25:20)
• Trump's business reputation is dissected: not as a successful mogul, but as a masterful political operator who capitalizes on spectacle, crypto, and meme-driven business models.
  • Quote: “Don’t say he’s a business guy… What he is is a really skilled politician taking dicey business acumen to the world order.” – Stephanie Ruhle (27:08)
• The parallels between meme stocks, crypto, and the way Trump manipulates both markets and narrative are drawn directly.
  • Quote: “It just feels like crypto. It feels like the US Economy is being meme stocked.” – Pablo Torre (28:04)

6. Profit, Self-Dealing, and the “Oligarch” Playbook

• Discussion of allegations and optics of self-dealing within Trump’s circle: Cabinet members’ trades, Eric Trump touting crypto, Democrats’ failure to close loopholes after promising to do so.
  • Quote: “All of these things that are absolutely bananas are happening. And… they are ripped open [loopholes], and it is a frenzy.” – Stephanie Ruhle (30:47)
• Pablo draws comparison to the Russian oligarch model:
  • Quote: “You say you’re not an oligarch, but this is more or less what Vladimir Putin did in Russia. He took percentages of all deals…” – Pablo Torre (31:12)

7. The Real-Life Stakes: Everyday Americans, Business Paralysis, and the Thin Safety Net

• Stephanie warns that with policy unpredictability, both large and small businesses freeze investment, leaving workers and vulnerable Americans exposed.
  • Quote: “Businesses are grinding to a halt when they don’t know what to plan for… There’s not a corporate board… that would sign off on a multi-billion-dollar investment on anything.” – Stephanie Ruhle (33:01)
• The cutbacks in agencies and services hit those least equipped to navigate tech-driven bureaucracy, like retirees relying on Social Security.
  • Quote: “Imagine… at Social Security, we don’t have a phone number for people to call… Some of them don’t use the Internet.” – Stephanie Ruhle (35:20)

8. Reflection and Broader Implications

• Stephanie cautions against dismissing the effectiveness of “the art of the deal,” stressing how Trump and his inner circle have enriched and empowered themselves even amid apparent chaos.
  • Quote: “He won the presidency a second time. He… became wealthier than he ever imagined. So has his whole entire family. The people suffering… is the United States of America.” – Stephanie Ruhle (37:12)
• The episode closes with bemused speculation about how Stephen A. Smith might handle tariffs, underscoring the sheer surreality of the current landscape.
  • Quote: “I think I know that [Stephen A. as president] would be less chaotic than what we have now.” – Pablo Torre (42:09)

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Notable Quotes & Moments with Timestamps

• JLo at the Mexican restaurant story (02:10)
  “She just sat there and drank hot water with lemon as I probably have, like, taco sauce, like, pouring down my face.” – Stephanie Ruhle

• Peter Navarro’s Ron Vara alter ego (12:51)
  “He referenced an expert… Ron Vara… Not a real person.”

• On Trump’s manipulation of business and politics (27:08)
  “Don’t say he’s a business guy… What he is is a really skilled politician taking dicey business acumen to the world order.”

• On the economic trust crisis (24:23)
  “Trust is gained in droplets and lost in buckets.”

• On meme-stock politics (28:04)
  “It just feels like crypto. It feels like the US Economy is being meme stocked.”

• Dissecting Ackman’s public pleas (20:22)
  “He has a poster’s heart.”

• On systemic self-dealing (31:12)
  “This is more or less what Vladimir Putin did in Russia…”

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Key Timestamps

• 02:10 – Stephanie's JLo story (personal access as metaphor)
• 07:08 – “Who does the president listen to?” sets up power dynamic theme
• 10:27 – Introduction of Peter Navarro and Wall Street’s aversion
• 12:51 – Navarro’s invented expert Ron Vara anecdote
• 15:28 – Lutnick’s out-of-touch Social Security remarks dissected
• 21:58 – Ackman (and others) bow-and-scrape to Trump in public
• 24:23 – Link between loss of trust and market jump post-Trump announcement
• 27:08 – Trump as skilled politician, not a Tycoon
• 28:04 – US economy compared to meme stock/crypto manipulation
• 31:12 – Oligarch playbook parallels
• 33:01 – Economic uncertainty paralyzing actual businesses
• 35:20 – Hardships imposed on seniors and workers by cuts, chaos
• 37:12 – “The art of the deal” working to enrich the few
• 42:09 – Stephen A. Smith as hypothetical president seen as less chaotic

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Tone and Language

Throughout, the conversation is incisive, irreverent, and richly anecdotal—blending the gravitas of economic analysis with sharp humor and cultural references. Stephanie’s transparency about her own career and personal contacts humanizes the high-level finance and politics discussed, while Pablo’s curiosity and wit keep the tone lively and accessible.

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Summary Statement

This episode exposes how, amid an unprecedentedly chaotic week in US markets, the fate of the American—indeed global—economy rests on a handful of personal relationships, opaque motives, meme-driven narratives, and a profound, growing deficit of public trust. “Palace intrigue” and spectacle now move markets as much as fundamentals, and the consequences are far-reaching for investors, workers, and citizens alike.

Transcript

[Pablo Torre]

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out I am Pablo Torre. And today we're gonna find out what this sound is.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Donald Trump was not a super successful businessman. What he's super successful at is politics.

[Pablo Torre]

Right after this ad, you're listening to DraftKings Network.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Is this Alex Rodriguez as a centaur?

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

He's a complicated guy.

[Pablo Torre]

He is.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

One time, Alex and I, it was a charity day on a trading floor when, like, all their, you know, a piece of their commissions all goes to a charity, so they invite all these people to come. So, like, that morning, Alex, I guess, didn't want to show up alone. And he sees me on the list and he's like, oh, hey, you going? I'm like, yeah, yeah. He's like, well, let's go in together. So me, like, the dope that I am, like, sits in my car on a corner for, like, 35 minutes. I wait for Alex. He gets there. I see him for a second. Then, of course, as soon as we walk in, the whole place surrounds him. It's Alex Rodriguez. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They have me, you know, in the corner holding a watermelon. And I go, I do my thing. And then it's basically over. And I'm like, okay, Alex. So I'm leaving, and Gary Cohn, who used to be the economic advisor to Trump, was also there. And we're both like, hey, let's go get lunch. So I text Alex. I'm like, yo, I'm not going to wait for you. We're. We're going to go get lunch next door. Never thinking he's going to come meet us. So me and Gary go to this Mexican restaurant, like, this dump right next door. It's in a basement. And of course, it's just the two of us. And he's been living in Washington. So we proceed to order every single thing on the menu, just like human pigs. And Alex texts me. He's like, oh, I'm going to meet you guys. And I'm assuming he's alone. And so I'm like, yeah, we're at this place next door, and all of a sudden I'm shoveling guacamole in my face. Like, there's burritos, there's tacos, there's. And who walks in? Alex with JLo. Okay, so it's. It's the day after the Met Gala. She is so glowing. She is so beautiful. She's just radiating through the restaurant. The restaurant is like, what in the. Like, Jennifer. Okay, so she sits down. She is so.

[Pablo Torre]

Okay, she sits down.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Okay. She sits down. But she is so repulsed and disgusted by us and this restaurant. Like, she didn't exactly put a napkin down before she sat down, but she might as well have. So the waiters all come over and they're like, oh, my God, what can we get you? What can we get you? And I'm just like, oh, my God. And literally she's like, I'll have hot water with lemon. And she just sat there and drank hot water with lemon as I probably have, like, taco sauce, like, pouring down my face. Like, it was just the absolute worst. Yeah, she was beautiful and smart and interesting, but it was my. My notion that, like, oh, my gosh, if I meet some unbelievable superstar, they're gonna wanna make best friends with me. And it didn't come true.

[Pablo Torre]

I feel like that story is the best possible introductory Mad Lib to who you are.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Yeah, it's a sad one for me, but totally true. But totally true.

[Pablo Torre]

So the whole reason I am sitting here talking to my friend Stephanie Rule, the host of the 11th Hour on MSNBC, is not because we have a coaster in our studio with a photoshopped image of our old friend Alex Rodriguez as a centaur. Although we do.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Yeah. I mean, listen, when that's your coaster. You thought I was going to start with Trump? You are incorrect.

[Pablo Torre]

The whole reason I called Steph is because in her former life, and this was long before she became the senior business analyst for NBC News, she decided that she wanted to work on Wall Street.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

When I was a student, I was studying in Italy. I wanted to stay living abroad. I had no money left. And I thought, oh, I'm gonna go work for a bank. They have banks all over the world. I ended up working for Merrill Lynch.

[Pablo Torre]

I'm sorry, your logic was there are lots of banks?

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

I should work for one of those.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Sure. Right? They have banks. They have banks all over the world. Oh, and the other thing, I needed money. I didn't have any, and I needed to make a lot of it. I grew up in New Jersey. I wanted to live on the other side of the bridge. And being a New Jersey commuter and taking that ferry boat every day, especially when you take the ferry back at 6:30 at night. When you take it back and you see all the girls from New Jersey getting on the ferry to meet the guys downstairs from Merrill lynch and the World Financial center at happy hour, I can distinctly remember feeling like maybe I'd like to meet a guy at a happy hour, but I definitely don't want to need to meet A guy at happy hour. I'm going to keep working at this bank.

[Pablo Torre]

And she did. She worked there until she eventually joined Credit Suisse where she then became the highest producing credit derivatives salesperson in the entire United States. And then Steph became a managing director at Deutsche bank where she worked in global markets senior relationship management for years. All of which now basically means that Steph is the sort of extremely plugged in finance person who will get tacos with aforementioned trust Trump advisor Gary Cohn, who used to be the president of Goldman Sachs. And it also means that Steph has a particularly special insight into the hidden dynamics behind one of the most insane weeks in the history of the American economy. Good afternoon from New York. We're coming on the air with breaking news about an exceptionally brutal day on Wall Street. The economic fallout from President Trump's tariffs has heightened concerns of a recession and a global trade war. The Dow Jones industrials fell more than 2200 points, erasing more than a year of stock market gains.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

$7 trillion worth of market cap just traded in 30 minutes. There is rampant chaos.

[Pablo Torre]

President Trump just truthed out saying, quote, I have authorized a 90 day pause. The President here announcing a 90 day pause on tariffs, though it's not clear specifically which countries this pause is going to apply to. The Dow right now shooting up over 2000 points. Look at that. The president posted on Truth Social. Everything is going to work out well. And if you're listening to that, thinking to yourself that you still don't totally understand all of the terminology involved in this, it is incredibly complicated. Of course, what I want to assure you is that what I'm trying to find out today has as much to do with inner circles and inside information and questions of influence as it does the actual economic policy. Which brings us back now to the mad lib that is Stephanie Rule's life. Your network of people that you talk to is a weird one, is my favorite one, which is, I think, the highest compliment I can pay a person as somebody who is deeply curious always about like what's in other people's cell phones, like who are they talking?

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Nothing. Naughty naughtiness.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

This one.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

But just the idea of who does a person listen to is kind of the story of this administration right now. It's the story of tariffs and the economy. And it's kind of the story of your life because you originated in a world of business. You're from Wall Street.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Well, I am and I can tell you how I got from there to here. But I actually think in terms of both careers. So I spent 14 years working in investment banking, covering hedge funds, selling them structured credit derivatives. It doesn't get nerdier than that. But that business to me is not that dissimilar to the business that I'm in. It's all about relationships. If you can build a relationship, if you can build trust either on the other side of that phone, because it's your client, or the other side of that camera, which is your viewer or your listener, that's going to breed success. Right, so even in banking, was the salesperson Stephanie Rule, Was she the person responsible for hedge funds hitting their mark? No, but I was a person who could help them get from point A to point B and they could trust me. But even early on, I didn't have a finance background. And as embarrassing as this is, sort of my early days, I figured out, what do these guys need that I can provide? And when you're a 21 year old, for me, girl on a trading floor that did not have a lot of experience in derivatives, I'm like, these guys want to go out every night. They need to go to hot restaurants, they need to go to hot bars, they need to go to hot nightclubs. So I would study Timeout magazine. I would meet every mater d, I would meet every doorman.

[Pablo Torre]

That's just smart.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

That is smart. No, no, no. I was such a loser that sometimes I would pretend to have an English accent on the phone to make reservations, like I was as desperate as they come.

[Pablo Torre]

Wait, how?

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Okay, I'm not doing that now, but I'm saying no, of course not. I would do anything at wherever it is, Moomba, Jetline. I mean, a hundred years ago, Joe's pub, you can't have a table of 42 year old guys. You have to have a girl at the table too. So then there I was, 22, 23 years old, three nights a week out with hedge fund managers and the dudes that I worked with. Because I'm like, well, you're gonna have to have a girl at the table. And it's how I sort of built my business in banking. Pathetic, but it worked well.

[Pablo Torre]

But that's just something that I hope people understand. And I want to get, of course, to this week and the day that we're taping this and everything that's happening in the and what it's doing to your job and our country, but just the very basic premise that behind all of the math is actually a bunch of dudes who are scrambling around fumbling in what feels like, if not total blackout darkness, then certainly a dimly lit. Just sort of like, I don't know if they really know what they're looking at, kind of a vibe. And it's all about who you trust in your innermost sanctum, 100%.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

And so that's, to me, that's what's been extraordinary this week. So in the last five days, I can tell you I have never had so many private conversations with C suite executives, Wall street investors who have huge amounts of money and businesses at stake all around this tariff issue who are desperate to know who's near the President.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Okay. And this is so crazy because we're not talking about people just betting on the ponies. We're talking about people that move markets, people who are running major businesses and the fact that they're trying to figure this out. Let's just talk about the palace intrigue happening, because all of this has been about, well, who's near the President, right? Is it Peter Navarro? Who by Wall street standards, they consider to be a complete out of the box kook, who, if you don't know.

[Pablo Torre]

I need you to tell this story, okay?

[Stephanie Ruhle]

If you don't know. The way Peter Navarro ended up in the first Trump administration is because Jared Kushner was desperate to find someone whose trade views aligned with President Trump because Steve Mnuchin, the first Treasury Secretaries didn't. Gary Cohn certainly didn't. Jared's didn't. And so it's so funny, cuz right now everyone's going, man, I miss Jared and Gary Cohn. They were blocking the President. And so Jared said, I have to find somebody whose views align with my father in law's. And it was Navarro. He brings Navarro in. Gary Cohen wouldn't even let Navarro be part of the National Economic Council. He sent him over to Commerce to work with Wilbur Ross.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. Gary's not inviting him to the Mexican place with you?

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Absolutely not. So that's who Navarro was, is. And remember a year ago he went to jail. We are following breaking news. Peter Navarro has been sentenced to four months in prison on two charges of contempt of Congress. These charges stem from his refusal to comply with a subpoena related to his actions after the 2020 presidential election. So he is a true Trump loyalist. Right? He's a big Trump loyalist and he shares his trade views. And in Peter Navarro's mind, we should have all manufacturing in the United States. China and all other countries are basically the enemy. Tariffs should be sky high, and we're gonna bring in a huge billions and Billions of dollars to because of those tariffs.

[Pablo Torre]

I always say tariffs is the most.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Beautiful word to me in the dictionary.

[Pablo Torre]

Then I was reprimanded by the fake news. They said, what about love, religion, and God? I said, I agree. Let's put God number one. Let's put religion number two. Love. I don't know. We got to put that number three, I guess, right? And then it's tariff, because tariffs are going to make us rich as hell. It's going to bring our country's businesses back. That left us.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

So put him in one corner. Wall street wants nothing to do with him. And the fact that Wall street, so many investors just this week only woke up to who Peter Navarro was. I just saw it last night, right? Business people, investors whose job it is to study businesses, to study how they work, who runs them, suddenly realize, who's this guy Peter Navarro? Suddenly they realized. In 2019, it was reported that in one or multiple of Peter Navarro's books, he referenced an expert, a finance expert whose name was Ron Vara. Okay, Ron Vara. Do you know who Ron Vara is? No one. He's an invented Persona that later the publisher had to put an asterisk like, this is not a real person. And so suddenly this week, people are like, we have to get this kook away from the president. You got Elon Musk, Argu. Peter Navarro. And my argument is, we told you this. Musk calling Navarro, quote, dumber than a sack of bricks, end quote. And a quote, moron. And by the way, you're surprised that Donald Trump picked him. Remember, Donald Trump is John Barron, the.

[Pablo Torre]

Guy who created a Persona to call.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

People magazine and others and say, you know, let me tell you who the sexiest, most successful man alive is. What's your first name, daddy?

[Pablo Torre]

John. John Baron. Well, let me, let me tell you what the deal is, just so you understand.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

So why are you surprised that Donald Trump chose him?

[Pablo Torre]

Well, the fact also that Ron Vara is, of course, the letters of Peter Navarro basically scrambled up.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

I know, it's very.

[Pablo Torre]

It's so on the. Like this as a subplot in HBO series gets laughed out of the room because it's too on the nose. That's the guy who's had the ear of the most powerful, if nothing else, manipulator of the stock market we have ever seen.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

It's why Donald Trump calls him my Peter. But now all blame should not fall on Peter Navarro. Let's keep breaking it up. Now you have the commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick. Okay, Howard Lutnick. This week is quietly not getting blame. He's trying to. He's going look over here, Peter Navarro. But let's be clear. Howard Lutnick, and it's just been reported this week, right, there's some trouble in paradise. People in the White House don't like him. Don't think that was an accident that the White House is leaking that out. Because in the last week, I believe the President can't be happy with many of Howard Lutnick's media appearances.

[Pablo Torre]

Let's say Social Security didn't send out their checks this month. My mother in law, who's 94, she wouldn't call and complain. She just wouldn't. She thinks something got messed up and she'll get it next month.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

You're right, Howard, she's not. Her son in law is worth $2 billion. And what's important about that isn't if we have a hugely successful Cabinet. Great. I'm not saying this as an anti wealth or an anti capitalism thing at all, but you have to have people in the highest levels and lowest levels of government who understand the American people. So Howard Lutnick's mother in law might not be worried about her Social Security check, but millions and millions of other Americans aren't. Just like it's easy for Scott Besant to say, you know, don't look at your 401k right now. Sure, Scott, you don't have to. It's easy for Scott to say, you know, all these manufacturing jobs are coming into the country. The fired federal workers could go get those jobs. And that's what begs the question to both of those men where you want to say, do you know what manufacturing looks like? We have manufacturing in the United States. We're the second largest manufacturer in the world. What we don't manufacture are things that don't make sense for us. And when they talk about bringing all this manufacturing back, like apparel, like sportswear, like electronics, you mean to tell me a fired federal worker, a climate scientist, an IRS worker is going to leave the IRS to go work in a factory screwing in screws in an iPhone that's now going to cost three grand that now we're going to, we're going to get rid of worker protection so you can leave the IRS to sew socks 15 hours a day.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, by the way, until the robots come and take all of those jobs off the assembly line from humans anyway.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

And the thing that blows my mind this week is all of these people who in theory can reach out to the President, who are basically Pleading with him, lobbying to him on Twitter. Right, Right. Bill Ackman, who I know really well. Right, Right.

[Pablo Torre]

Steph, I just need to tell you that I don't think I've been madder at my phone than when I read a 10,000 word Bill Ackman tweet.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Well, don't throw that phone. That iPhone might cost three grand in a couple of years, so don't you throw that phone.

[Pablo Torre]

I have read so many of them and just for people who don't know him, he was regarded as one of these. And you tell me if he still is. But as a gen and all these guys have the computing horsepower, the intellectual, super talented investor, incredibly smart and savvy.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Very, very well known short seller. Right. He goes all in betting against a company.

[Pablo Torre]

But to see him tweet and grovel and try to spin, it's gross. And the fact that you know him makes me so curious about your read of how he is this avatar for a type of person who threw his money and his reputation behind Donald Trump and has been since navigating this EKG chart of a stock market.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Listen, on the positive, one could say Bill was willing to swallow his pride and publicly say, Mr. Trump, please don't do this. You're causing a nuclear economic winter. So if you want to give him credit, right? So if you want to give him credit, you could say, you know, lots of other people out there who went all in. Trump would never, ever speak against him.

[Pablo Torre]

They would never say, quote, the global economy is being taken down because of bad math.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

He has definitely fallen in love with fame. Now, short sellers are well known in their community. But about a year and a half ago, when all the speech issues started in the Ivy League universities, Bill Ackman went hard after Claudine Gay and Harvard, your alma mater. And I can tell you I actually called him on the phone on a Friday night. I've definitely not told this story. I called him on the phone on a Friday night. It's when he really started to get in this Twitter war. And I don't remember all the details. And it was his wife and plagiarism and business. And I remember calling him and just saying, bill. And I didn't even know the details of who was right or who was wrong. But I said, let me tell you somebody who's been in the barrel, don't do this to yourself. Like you're this unbelievable investor and you have this great reputation. You get in a Twitter war, like, you won't win. These are the dregs of society. These are the worst of the worst people, like, don't do it. He, like, took a breath, he responded, and then his wife was on the phone with him, and all of a sudden he's like, oh, we're good, we're good. And at this moment, I realized I'm like, oh, my God, he likes this. Like, I thought, I'm like, yo, yo, yo, Bill me to you. Like, I'm in the media. I'm gonna tell you, nothing good happens on the Twitter. Nada, zero, zippo, zilch. And he's like, oh, oh, oh, I'm good.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, no. Steph, Steph. He has a poster's heart. He has the. The endorphins that get released when you cross that 5,000 word Twitter.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

This shows how naive I am that I'm like, yo, yo, yo, let me help you out. And me not realizing he's about to cross over and is now like, he, he, he, he. He's in the musk space of no question, let me have all these bros love and worship me. And he thought he was going to build a huge retail platform with all those day, you know, day trading, bro. Not work out for him. Listen, he's still an extraordinary investor. I'm not arguing that. But watching Bill, who is. Who does have this great reputation on the street, weigh in on anything and everything. I mean, it was a couple of months ago. It was just an hour after the horrible plane and chopper crash in D.C. bill's, I can't remember, but this is either an inside job or blah, blah. I'm like, yo, dude. I don't remember what it was that he claimed it was, but it was so far from the truth. And it was like, I'm not saying shut up and dribble or stay in your lane, but you have an enormous reputation. You have an enormous following before you just let it rip. Make sure you've got your T's crossed and your I's dotted. So on one hand, you could say, I'm gonna give Bill credit this week. I'm gonna give Bill credit that he said, Mr. President, please stop this. This is really bad for all of us, like, on behalf of all Americans. But I think the most interesting thing about Bill's tweet, or almost anybody else, almost every person who's criticized the president for the tariffs and the math and all of it, almost all of them that come from the business world or the politics world, start their criticism with, Dear Mr. President, I know we need to get our trade. We need to get our trade Relationships in order to. Your hair looks great today. We know you just want to do great for America. Blah, blah, blah. You're so strong. You're so smart. Your golf game is the best. However, this is about to cause a recession. And the reason I bring up the first part is because it's not something to joke about, it's something to worry about.

[Pablo Torre]

The fact that you gotta hide the medicine in peanut butter like you're feeding a dog.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

We're going to get rid of these trade deficits. Trade deficits are a problem. No, they're not. We've had trade deficits in the United States for 50 years. 48 years. Over the course of those decades, our economy has grown 255%. Do we have a trade deficit with Madagascar? You're right, because they produce vanilla. We need vanilla. And they don't need all of our stuff because it's Madagascar. But to watch scores of other people actually play into this false narrative because it suits the President's incorrect belief about trade policy, that's a huge problem. And that is when we start to lose our brand of American exceptionalism.

[Pablo Torre]

But it's exactly the through line, which is, we are watching people. We're watching people show their ass all of the time. And you're like, there used to be something not merely to the exceptionalism of America as the brand, but to the mystique of it. And all we're seeing over and over again is a bunch of people debase themselves intentionally or unintentionally. And the only real question left, which may be the most irrelevant question, is whether it's actually intentional or not. Because we're dealing with the consequences of what happens when the world not merely laughs at us, but actually doesn't have confidence in us as a thing they want to be in business with.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Okay? So that's the whole ball game. And first of all, if there was an ask we were gonna see in this podcast, we'll go back to the beginning. We'd like it to be JLo. And that's not being offered. We are now with the likes of Peter Navarro, Howard Lutnick, Bill Attenborough.

[Pablo Torre]

Ron Vera's ass is remarkably less appealing to me.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Yes, so. So no, thank you to all of them. But what you're talking about, this loss of trust, that's the biggest issue. Because right now, now that the President has said we're gonna have a 90 day pause, except for China, we're seeing the markets shoot back up. And the markets are shooting back up because underneath the tariff problem we have a strong economy, and that's why everybody's been hanging on every word, and they're saying, if he's gonna have a pause, let me step back in and buy. But the real problem here is the loss of trust. Right? Trust is gained in droplets, and it's lost in buckets. And when you've got the rest of the world looking at us as the United States, the superpower, a trusted partner. Right. The last trade deal that was negotiated was usmca. That was between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Donald Trump did it. I think Jared Kushner is the one who focused on it. And all that really was was NAFTA 2.0. They tweaked it. If you're those two countries, our closest allies, and four years later, Trump's in office, and the first thing he wants to do before deregulation, before tax cuts for everything else, is launch a trade war with you, how are you gonna trust him again? Right. When you think about all these countries around the world, that if you're Vietnam, if you're a US Corporation, who the government told you for years and years, stop producing your apparel in China, move it to Vietnam. So now you moved it to Vietnam, and now you're sitting here facing a 39% plus plus plus tariff, you're saying, I don't trust you. So when you have the likes of a Howard Lutnick saying all the jobs are coming back and the manufacturing here, why are you going to believe that? Because if you own any sort of big corporation here, it's gonna take you three to five years to build a factory. Three to five years from now, Donald Trump's not gonna be in office. You have a Scott Bessant in the Treasury Secretary who says, well, the tariffs are just a negotiating tactic. And then you've got Navarro and Howard Lutnick who are potentially saying tariffs are here to stay. So which is it? So if you're any of these countries around the world, how do I trust the word, the reputation of this country? Because you have a president who, as a business person, did not have a good reputation.

[Pablo Torre]

No.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Didn't stand. Right. Right. Didn't stand up to his negotiations, didn't pay his contractors, was not trusted, would enter into deals, and then would say to his counterparty, listen, I know I didn't make that much money off of it, but can we BS The New York Post so I get the good headline? And his counterparty would be like, yeah, I don't give a hoot about the headline. You take it. I Just want the money. Donald Trump was not a super successful businessman. What he's super successful at is politics.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Right. He's, he's a brilliant, skilled politician. And now he's a really successful businessman in what two arenas, Crypto and truth. Social, a company he's taken public that's actual earnings are light years away from the multiple in which the stock trades. So both his, his social media company and his crypto exchange and meme coin can be used as a vehicle for people to basically pay him because they potentially want a political favor. So don't say he's a business guy. Let the businessman do his thing. What he is is a really skilled politician taking dicey business acumen to the world order.

[Pablo Torre]

But even those two specific businesses, which is exactly where I wanted to go next, share something in common. It's an enterprise where you turn your bull, your words into money. That is crypto. That is social media. And it's no coincidence that when I'm watching the stock market effectively feel like it's being manipulated because yes, on Wednesday, There was a 90 day pause. A truth post. A truth. We're pausing this for 90 days. It just feels like crypto. It feels like the US Economy is being meme stocked. It makes you wonder who was benefiting from this on the way down and who's benefiting now on the way up.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Okay. Well, on Sunday night, Bill Ackman said, I know why Lutnick is pushing this and it's crashing the stock market because his own firm is long bonds. They're long treasuries. They're betting against the economy. Okay. And he said, we should never have someone in a cabinet position that's this conflicted. He posted that Sunday night, Monday morning, Bill says sorry. So. Oh my goodness. Sorry I said that. Now who called Bill? Why did that happen? Unclear. But what no one has now answered. So were they long bonds? Were they betting against Morgan? Exactly. That somehow has been erased. And so I for years have railed against congressional stock trading because it is actual insider trading.

[Pablo Torre]

It's definitional corruption.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Correct. On both sides of the aisle. Right. Like Nancy Pelosi is no stranger to it. And scores of Republicans are no stranger. Absolutely. I mean, like, they all trade stocks and not all. Many, many. Absolutely.

[Pablo Torre]

They will find a way to not get in trouble. At best.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Yes.

[Pablo Torre]

While knowing the incentives.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

They're legally allowed to do it. They're legally allowed to do it. And it seems that the incentive to change the rules is tiny, tiny, tiny. So all of this is happening right under Our eyes, right? You've got Eric Trump who says, I have nothing to do with government. You know, I'm in private business saying like things are going to, you know, buy the dips, things are going to look great in crypto. And then Trump says, maybe we're going to do a crypto reserve. So all of these things that are absolutely bananas are happening. And I guess they're thinly loopholed legal. And I will say, hey, Democrats, one of the reason people voted for Joe Biden is that Democrats promised not only will we never have a Donald Trump in office again, we're going to change the rules. So the self dealing, none of that can ever happen again. Because lots of the rules that Congress has to adhere to, or even cabinet members have to adhere to, the President doesn't. Because they always thought the President would be above it. Right. And instead he's like, no, no, no, no, no. We're gonna throw everything at Mar A Lago. If we don't do it at Mar A Lago, it'll be at Doral and I own a Hotel in D.C. he did the first term. And everybody who wants anything from me should book all your events and parties there. And Democrats said, we are gonna close these loopholes so this can never happen again. They didn't close the loopholes. And now they're not just open, they are ripped open. And it is a frenzy.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes. The whole idea of who profited off of this, who got rich, Right. It's not merely a fascinating exercise in which I want to examine all of those dudes phones, right? Which is like, I want to know, okay, you say you're not an oligarch, but my understanding is that this is more or less what Vladimir Putin did in Russia. He took percentages of all of the deals, secretly held the money, and maybe, or maybe not became the richest man in the world at one point.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

He was once potentially a KGB agent, moved up and up and up and up to become one of the richest people in the world. It's one of the reasons Donald Trump admires him. And what you see happening with Doge, which is basically breaking down our government, our agencies, down to its studs. What's the next move? Privatize. And that's what happened in Russia, which served oligarchs in them becoming the richest people in the world and crushed the Russian people and the Russian economy for decades.

[Pablo Torre]

And so to now connect all of the dots here when it comes to what's worrisome about the US economy, which again has never been as you know, as I know, as anybody knows, has never been a lily white, pure haven of integrity, to be clear.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Of course not. No one, none, none are.

[Pablo Torre]

None, none of these people as, as a category are. But when it comes to what's such a problem about that, feeling like crypto unregulated, social media driven and totally impossible to inspect, what are you supposed to do? Like as, as a normal person who's deciding what do I put my money into? And even more pressingly, I guess what does that do to the economy that seems often disconnected from people who are beneath the line?

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Businesses are grinding to a halt when they don't know what to plan for, when they don't know, when they don't know what is ahead, they're not going to do anything. There's not a corporate board in this country that would sign off on a multi billion dollar investment on anything. When you have a president who on Monday is all in tariffs and on Tuesday says I'm off. Listen, I'm not going to say I'm not grateful for this 90 days, not just for big business, but for small business, right? Every politician out there loves to say this country was built on the back of small businesses. Small businesses and big businesses are reliant on the global supply chain, Right? Building out the global supply chain unleashed prosperity around the world. We don't build cars here that go from here to Mexico, here to Mexico, China to Mexico. We don't do that to be silly. We don't do that because we don't want American workers to work. We actually do it because it's the most efficient, they improved supply chain mechanics and now you have a president who's saying let's tear that up. So if you run a small business, a big business, a medium business, you're simply saying, I don't know what's to come. So I'm just gonna hold on and try to get through this. And for the everyday American who's looking at their investments honestly, this is a moment of just hold tight because he could change on a dime. And the person you feel the worst for is the person we always do. It's a person who was planning on retiring this year.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

It's the person who's depending on that Social Security check because we didn't even get to DOGE and the IRS and what they're doing in all those places. Right? Because when everyone says listen, there may be a short term recession, well, if there is a short term recession, what are we doing about SNAP benefits? What are we doing about Food stamps. Because when the country takes a downturn, triggers are enacted to make sure the safety net gets bigger and broader and picks the people up on the bottom. So we're doing something from a tariff policy perspective, a monetary policy perspective that could hurt the people on the bottom. And then in the left hand, you've got Doge just cutting, cutting, cutting these agencies and the workforce. I mean, imagine the idea, you know, at Social Security, we don't have to have a phone number for people to call. We don't have to have an office for people to call senior citizens. And I'm not being ageist, I'm being the daughter of two senior citizens. Some of them don't use the Internet.

[Pablo Torre]

Of course not.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Okay. Some of them don't know how to type into something to see their statement. They need to call that person on the phone. And so to, to make cuts that really attack our most vulnerable. That's where the disconnect is, right? It's easy for Scott Besant to say short term pain for long term gain. You and I just established it's hard for us to exactly see the long term gain in manufacturing because nobody's building a giant plant here. But in the short term, are they really thinking about the people who it could hurt in the short term?

[Pablo Torre]

All of this is now spinning, of course, towards this idea that we have just witnessed. Steph is the art of the deal. This is all worked out exactly as the chess master has planned.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Well, for him. It has. Like, let's just be clear. Donald Trump was elected President of the United States once. He was then convicted of 34 felonies, and he was elected twice. And now he is spending his weekends at Mar A Lago. What did he do this weekend? He was at the LIV Golf tournament. What is this, the fifth Giant live golf tournament held at one of Donald Trump's properties. An enormous amount of money he's made right down at Mar A Lago. On the weekends, you can pay $1 million to go to a candlelit dinner with Trump, or you can pay $5 million for a one on one meeting with him. When the Trump administration was the first one was coming to an end, people said, Jared, Ivanka, they can't come back to New York. These people, you know what he's done, what he's done with COVID They're disgraced. No, they're not. Jared Kushner left the White House and though he had never managed money before, he worked in his family business, he was able to get $2 billion. I think it might be 4 billion now from MBS, from the Saudis to manage. He manages that amount of money.

[Pablo Torre]

Just a coincidence.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Just a coincidence. There was not a journalist that had a murder or we're not even gonna go.

[Pablo Torre]

There was.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

There was no. So he left the White House and no, he didn't come back to New York. He moved to Miami. He's in la. He's made an extraordinary amount of money. He's hugely successful. So we do have to be careful when everybody laughs at the Art of the Deal and saying, oh my goodness, it's clownish. No, he won. He won the presidency a second time. He obviously did not go to jail. He's doing everything he wants in this administration. He's surrounded by loyalists and who knows what's going to happen from here. But he's also become wealthier than he ever imagined. And so has his whole entire family. The people who are suffering the consequences of the Art of the deal is the United States of America.

[Pablo Torre]

I was talking to somebody in my phone who's this longtime mergers and acquisitions guy, M and a guy, one of these investment bankers has been doing it for four decades. And the way he characterized it as looking for a way to just like, explain this. He texted me. It's a bit of an economic Cuban missile crisis with China being the USSR of the day. And I don't know what to do with that, except to infer from what the Cuban Missile crisis felt like, that doing what you do, Steph, monitoring tariffs every day of your life. Now with everything feeling like it's on the brink, like we are taping this and in the hour before we started, everything changed. And we're just all, we're just perpetually trying to keep up with the social media platform that so many of the men that you have been talking to, that we've been covering are obsessed with.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

When you think about all of this, it's easier for Wall street guys to play this game and play the game with the tariffs because many, many hedge funds have 10 employees, have five employees, maybe they have 50 employees. If they're really big, they don't even have holding periods of how long they have to hold a stock. They can be in and out and in and out. They can buy a derivative on it. They could be hedging themselves. If you run a giant business, if you run an actual company, if you run an apparel company, if you run a restaurant business, how do you do that? How do you make long term hiring, firing, growth, purchasing decisions? When we're dealing with this, it's so crazy. It just might work. Right? And the whole idea is. But I just have to have the inside track and know what the president's really doing and think about how unsettling that is. And I would say this about banking, because I remember six, nine months ago talking to a CEO of a company here. He. An American company, but he was Canadian. And he was like, listen, I hear everything you're saying about Trump, blah, blah, blah. But he's a business guy. And Kamala doesn't know anything about business. She didn't do a great job telling her business story. I'm not arguing that. But this notion that, like, Donald Trump's a business guy, he's going to be really good for business. Couple that with the exhaustion. The business community all seem to feel about wokeness. They felt like DEI and the DEI officers and their companies were strangling their ability to hire more Princeton lacrosse players because that's who they really needed. Or I'm. I'm. I just say that because that's my husband. But. But, you know, this, this. Oh, my. You know.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. When can men be men again?

[Stephanie Ruhle]

All these DEI hires we have to make are standing in the way of. Of progress and profitability. And it was right after. It was in January. The FT had this article with an anonymous banker. I love how tough he is. So anonymous. I think he was at UBS or something. Who said, finally, liberation, a new dawn. Okay? Not strangled by dei, you know, no worry that we're gonna get canceled if we use the P word or the R word at work. It's a new dawn. It's liberation. And I wish I knew that guy. Cause I'd love to call him on the phone and say, how's liberation feeling for you? Right. I get that there was an exhaustion that they felt like they were talking about DEI all day, every day. I. I actually get that I'm holding space for it, sure. But the idea that that was crippling to your business. But this ride that we're on this week, this ride of insanity, was a good idea. That one. I need someone smarter than me to explain.

[Pablo Torre]

Stephanie Rule, I am very grateful that you came to our studio and that you are in my phone.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

I'm glad to be in your phone. My question to you.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

If Stephen A. Were the president, how would he handle tariffs?

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, God.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

I know. I knew.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, God. You know what? I think I know that it would be less chaotic than what we have now.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

And that's saying something.

[Pablo Torre]

It's saying so much that it makes my head hurt.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Yes.

[Pablo Torre]

Pablo Torre Finds out is produced by Walter Averroma, Ryan Cortez, Sam Dawig, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, neely Loman, Rob McRae, Rachel Miller, Howard Carl Scott, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, Chris Tominiello and Juliet Warren. RStudio Engineering by RG Systems. Our sound design by NGW Post. Our theme song, as always, is by John Bravo. We will talk to you next time.