Will Reciprocal Tariffs work?

Summary

Ruthless Podcast Episode Summary: "Will Reciprocal Tariffs Work?"

Podcast Information:

• Title: Ruthless Podcast
• Hosts: Josh Holmes, Comfortably Smug, Michael Duncan, John Ashbrook
• Episode: Will Reciprocal Tariffs Work?
• Release Date: April 3, 2025

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1. Introduction to Reciprocal Tariffs

The episode opens with a robust discussion on reciprocal tariffs, led by Josh Holmes. He emphasizes the importance of understanding tariffs' reciprocal nature, highlighting former President Trump's approach to balancing trade imbalances. Holmes states:

Josh Holmes [00:00]: "Reciprocal tariffs. I think President Trump did a fantastic job expressing this very important and very critical part of what these tariffs are reciprocal because as he described, there are countries where the US Tariff on a specific good from that country is like two and a half percent. The tariff they put on our goods is like 75%. That's not fair."

This sets the stage for a deeper exploration of how reciprocal tariffs aim to create a fair trading environment by ensuring that tariffs imposed by the U.S. and its trading partners are balanced.

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2. Historical Context and Effectiveness of Tariffs

John Ashbrook provides a historical backdrop, comparing current tariff strategies to those employed during the Marshall Plan post-World War II. He explains how the U.S. used tariffs to help rebuild allied economies, fostering stable and cooperative international relationships.

John Ashbrook [07:00]: "One of the people in this administration who I think did the best job of explaining the history of all of this was Howard Lutnick during the campaign... It was part of that, to get them rolling."

The hosts discuss the success of Trump's initial tariff implementations, citing various headlines that reported positive economic impacts:

• Dave McCormick [05:08]: "Trump trade policies to lift steel worker pay."
• Dave McCormick [05:22]: "Jobs and exports bounce back with the help of Trump tariffs."

These examples illustrate how tariffs under Trump's administration led to the revival of certain industries and job creation.

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3. Current Implementation and Global Responses

The conversation shifts to the present administration's approach to reciprocal tariffs, stressing their strategic use to negotiate fair trade deals. Comfortably Smug commends Trump's method of presenting clear data to the public:

Comfortably Smug [06:32]: "I thought it was really smart that Trump went up there, you know, during that press conference, and he had the chart... it was, hey, go ahead and take a look at what the world's been doing to us."

John Ashbrook underscores the uniqueness of the current tariff strategy by highlighting its reciprocal nature, which differs from the previous administration's approach of unilateral tariffs.

John Ashbrook [25:51]: "When Donald Trump marches up... it says reciprocal."

The podcast delves into reactions from other countries, notably Canada and Israel, showcasing how reciprocal tariffs prompt negotiations rather than resentment. Doug Ford, the Premier of Ontario, is cited as an example of a country willing to reconsider tariffs in light of fair trade negotiations:

John Ashbrook [24:03]: "Doug Ford... said he was going to shut the lights off... because he was so pissed off about the mere suggestion that we are even talking about tariff policy."

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4. Political Implications: Special Elections and Voter Turnout

The hosts analyze recent special elections in Florida and Wisconsin, exploring their significance in the broader political landscape and their connection to tariff policies. They discuss how these elections reflect voter sentiments towards economic policies and the effectiveness of Trump's coalition.

John Ashbrook [37:46]: "Delaware had some... special elections... how Elon and his team spent an inordinate amount of time and resources there."

Comfortably Smug raises concerns about voter turnout, emphasizing the challenge of mobilizing Trump's specific voter base in midterm elections:

Comfortably Smug [41:28]: "These people don't do that unless for Donald Trump. So convince them that there's something in their culture, in their lives, that are at stake."

The discussion highlights the shift from high-propensity voters supporting Trump to lower turnout rates in midterms, posing challenges for maintaining the Republican agenda.

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5. Challenges Ahead: Voter Mobilization and Future Strategies

A critical segment focuses on the difficulties Republicans face in sustaining voter turnout outside of presidential elections. The hosts stress the necessity of innovative strategies to engage and mobilize Trump's base:

Comfortably Smug [46:07]: "The problem is those low propensity Trump voters only have turned out for Donald Trump that we need to turn out in this midterm. And that really is the problem that needs to be solved."

John Ashbrook suggests that replicating Trump's success requires a tailored approach that resonates with voters beyond traditional political messaging:

John Ashbrook [49:41]: "You might have to make it differently."

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6. Guest Segment: Senator Dave McCormick on Tariffs and Economic Policy

The episode features Senator Dave McCormick from Pennsylvania, who shares his insights on reciprocal tariffs and their impact on the American economy. McCormick discusses the economic hardships faced by rural America and the necessity of fair trade policies to revitalize manufacturing and support workers.

Senator Dave McCormick [64:06]: "In Pennsylvania, 60% of Pennsylvanians live paycheck to paycheck... Housing last year alone went up by 11%... inflation was up by 22% over the three years and wages didn't keep up."

McCormick outlines a four-point strategy to bolster economic growth:

1. Deregulation: Implementing the "biggest deregulatory effort since Ronald Reagan."
2. Energy Dominance: Pursuing energy policies crucial for Pennsylvania’s economy.
3. Foreign Direct Investment: Attracting trillions in new investments, citing examples like Apple’s investment in Taiwan Semiconductor.
4. Tax Cuts: Extending tax cuts to maintain economic momentum.

He emphasizes the importance of reciprocity in tariffs to ensure fairness and advocate for American workers.

Senator Dave McCormick [67:32]: "The reciprocal nature of what he's trying to do, I think, is revolutionary."

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7. Leadership and Mentorship: Building Strong Teams

The hosts and McCormick transition to a discussion on leadership and mentorship, highlighting the importance of surrounding oneself with capable individuals to achieve success. McCormick shares personal anecdotes about mentorship and emphasizes its role in personal and professional growth.

Senator Dave McCormick [73:37]: "Everyone who has a chance to have mentors changed their lives... the power of mentoring."

The segment underscores the value of mentorship in political and economic spheres, advocating for intentional efforts to support and guide future leaders.

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8. Conclusion: Evaluating the Future of Reciprocal Tariffs

Wrapping up, the hosts consolidate their perspectives on reciprocal tariffs, acknowledging both their potential and the challenges ahead. They reiterate the importance of fair trade, economic stability, and effective voter mobilization to ensure the success of reciprocal tariffs in revitalizing the American economy.

John Ashbrook [72:10]: "It's a big part of leadership and policy making."

Michael Duncan [72:12]: "The economy to grow. We want to do good things for US Workers."

The episode closes with encouragement for listeners to engage with the podcast and participate in ongoing discussions about economic policies and political strategies.

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Notable Quotes:

• Josh Holmes [00:00]: "Reciprocal tariffs... that's not fair."
• John Ashbrook [07:00]: "Marshall Plan... ensure that places... were able to rebuild."
• Dave McCormick [05:08]: "Trump trade policies to lift steel worker pay."
• Comfortably Smug [06:32]: "Trump went up there... take a look at what the world's been doing to us."
• Senator Dave McCormick [64:06]: "60% of Pennsylvanians live paycheck to paycheck."
• Senator Dave McCormick [67:32]: "The reciprocal nature... is revolutionary."

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Key Takeaways:

• Reciprocal Tariffs: Aimed at creating fair trade by balancing tariffs imposed by the U.S. and its trading partners.
• Historical Success: Trump’s initial tariff policies reportedly led to job creation and industry revival.
• Global Reactions: Countries like Canada and Israel are re-evaluating their trade policies in response to reciprocal tariffs.
• Political Challenges: Maintaining voter turnout in midterms is critical for sustaining the Republican agenda and economic policies.
• Leadership Importance: Effective mentorship and strong leadership teams are essential for navigating complex economic and political landscapes.
• Future Outlook: Reciprocal tariffs hold potential for economic revitalization, but their success depends on strategic implementation and voter engagement.

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the multifaceted discussions of the Ruthless Podcast episode, providing listeners with a clear understanding of the debate surrounding reciprocal tariffs and their implications for the American economy and political landscape.

Transcript

[Josh Holmes]

Reciprocal tariffs. I think President Trump did a fantastic job expressing this very important and very critical part of what these tariffs are reciprocal because as he described, there are countries where the US Tariff on a specific good from that country is like two and a half percent. The tariff they put on our goods is like 75%. That's not fair.

[Michael Duncan]

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[John Ashbrook]

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[Michael Duncan]

Only President Trump can fix it.

[Dave McCormick]

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[John Ashbrook]

Tell Congress, end the Biden pill penalty.

[Dave McCormick]

Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please.

[Comfortably Smug]

Just a catching strays over here.

[John Ashbrook]

You're in for a hell of a show.

[Josh Holmes]

Keep the faith, hold the line and own the lids.

[Dave McCormick]

It's time for our main event.

[John Ashbrook]

Well, we are Liberation Day plus one here in the nation's capital. Welcome to the Back to the Ruthless Variety program. I'm Josh Holmes along with comfortably smug Michael Duncan. John Ashbrook, left to right across your radio dial. We're going to dive deeply into tariffs where the Trump administration has framed this. What we think is sort of the underlying things that people are trying to accomplish here. Know that there's a lot of nervousness, particularly in the corporate sector, about what all of this means. There's some market imbalance that, of course, all the critics are going to point to. We're going to put all of that in context for you and discuss it at some great length. So if you want to learn a little something, do it. But we're going to have some yucks while we do. The second thing we're going to talk about, Tuesday had some big elections. You don't typically get those on the first day of April, but we do a couple of special elections in Florida, which it just gives, you know, 20 million raised by Democrats to try to take out two Republican held seats of members of Congress, one Matt Gaetz and one Waltz, Mike Waltz. They came up shy on those after a lot of sound and fury about how they were gonna take those things over. And then there was a big one in Wisconsin where we did come up short. And we're gonna talk about the significance of that because we're not gonna do the rose colored glasses thing. We're gonna give you some real analysis of people who've done this for a long time.

[Comfortably Smug]

So some, some Say many people are saying it's what we do best.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah. Some people are saying it's just, it's a vegetable component.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

You know, and you never know what you're going to get out of the ruthless Friday program. Yes. Maybe you get some, you know, something off talking points.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yes.

[John Ashbrook]

Some people have.

[Dave McCormick]

You can't just lie to people.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, you sure. Certainly cannot.

[Comfortably Smug]

This is going to be a great episode.

[John Ashbrook]

It is.

[Michael Duncan]

It is.

[John Ashbrook]

It's going to be a great episode. We're going to do all that with some variety, including Hack Madness update, which Smug is thrilled to be able to provide. It's final Four.

[Josh Holmes]

Final four. We are past the elitist 8. It is the final four.

[John Ashbrook]

The final four. And then we have a fantastic guest for you, Senator McCormick. Senator from the great state of Pennsylvania. He's been in here two or three times. Absolutely terrific new member of the United States Senate. This is one of the smarter guys that you'll find anywhere on earth, let alone under the dome at the Capitol. A wide range of things. He's got a great personality, too. Some yucks are gonna be involved in that too. No question about it. All of that coming up for you. But we're gonna start with the tariffs. Listen, Liberation Day as the way the Trump administration has framed it is according to Fox News who's quoted the White House here will go down as one of the most important days in modern American history. The White House has said President Donald Trump declared Wednesday will serve as the nation's liberation day as is anticipated to enact trade policies emphasizing his America first mission. Worth noting, he discussed this throughout the course of the campaign.

[Dave McCormick]

Right.

[John Ashbrook]

This is not a mystery to the American people. It's not the typical thing you get from an administration when they walk in and they're like, oh, yeah, we didn't talk about this component of our agenda. We're going to do that. I hope everybody okay with it. They discussed it at great length. Furthermore, he did a lot of this in the first four years.

[Dave McCormick]

I'm glad you raised that because there's so much dishonesty out there from the mainstream media. And I do think there's value in revisiting what happened when he was president the first time. And he did some tariffs. I just want to read a few headlines for you guys. This one from Fox Business, Trump trade policies to lift steel worker pay. Here's another one.

[John Ashbrook]

This is this. Give me a timeframe for all of these.

[Dave McCormick]

This is like 2018. Okay, okay, here's CNN. Tariffs prompt US steel to restart work on Alabama Mill. That is in cnn.

[Comfortably Smug]

Good story.

[Dave McCormick]

Here's a paper close to your heart, Josh. Minnesota Star Tribune.

[John Ashbrook]

Oh, the old Red Star Iron Range.

[Dave McCormick]

Jobs and exports bounce back with the help of Trump tariffs.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yes.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Dave McCormick]

So there is a track record of success here that this president ironed in in his first term. And I don't have any reason to think that it'll be different this time.

[Josh Holmes]

Can I say, this is a very critical thing, reciprocal tariffs. I think President Trump did a fantastic job expressing this very important and very critical part of what these tariffs are reciprocal because as he described, there are countries where the US Tariff on a specific good from that country is like two and a half percent. The tariff they put on our goods is like 75%. That's not fair.

[Comfortably Smug]

I thought it was really smart that Trump went up there, you know, during that press conference, and he had the chart. Yeah, right. Like we're not talking abstract terms or we're just going to go ahead and put a tariff on the world. It was, hey, go ahead and take a look at what the world's been doing to us.

[Dave McCormick]

Exactly. People don't know this. All they get is, like, from the mainstream press who's like, oh, it's gonna be terrible, blah, blah, blah. They don't know the actual facts because the mainstream press will never tell you the facts.

[Josh Holmes]

And that's the thing. And that's why I really want to stress reciprocal, because the argument that the mainstream media has put out there and the information that they've bombarded the public with is that, like, boy, Canada are our great friends who would just be like, bring in all American goods.

[Comfortably Smug]

They just want to trade with us. Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

They would never tell the truth about how other countries have these massive tariffs on our goods. And this has been happening for decades. It's not just, well, there's a random occurrence that America shut down. Reciprocal tariffs is what they deserve. If you're going to. If you're going to try to dock America, you'll get docked. And all it will lead to is they're going to realize, okay, we can't play these people anymore.

[John Ashbrook]

One of the people in this administration who I think did the best job of explaining the history of all of this was Howard Lutnick during the campaign, went on CNBC and told viewers, I learned something from this interview. You know, rarely you do. There's not much new information, but he was basically saying, like, this trade imbalance, the imbalance of tariffs is all a through line from a Marshall Plan in a post World War II America when there was a significant, not only obligation at some level, but an American interest, both from a commerce standpoint and a national security standpoint, to ensure that places in the world, Germany, namely, everything in the region of Europe and then Japan and elsewhere, were able to rebuild and able to reconstitute an economy that could service the people. Because you just have a destitute, bombed out place that inevitably would have destability, would create more problems over the long run. And so the, you know, Marshall Plan was part of that, and there were these tariffs in place. They try to encourage manufacturing, all these things that you could import into the world's largest new economy, which is America, in order to get them rolling.

[Josh Holmes]

That's such important context, really important.

[John Ashbrook]

Over 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 years, it worked. And all of these economies started to come back. They started to reconstitute government, governments that were interested in doing business with the United States, appreciative of the United States, appreciative of the market force that the United States had. But somewhere between then and 50 years later, you still have those things in place. And of course, if you're going to go to a world leader and say, can we revisit these kind of things? They're going to take a look at a couple of things. One, they're going to understand that any sort of revisitation has a impact on their own economic situation, where they got a free ride and there is a destabilization effect, so they're not going to be interested in that conversation. Second, they're going to look at your own political free will here and say, can that person actually force me to revisit this? And for 50 years, the answer is no. And part of the reason the answer was no is because so much of American politics is a derivation of how people feel about the economy. And how people feel about the economy, whether or not you're invested in the stock market or not, the downturn of the market itself gives people a sense of fear, right? Go back to like just modern times for those of you who are a little bit older, like 1986, for those of you who are, you know, in our generation, 2008, 2009, 2020, briefly, those are moments where everybody sort of panicked, you know, not that they're. Everybody's invested in the stock market. When you see all of that, you understand that there is an economic ramification that hits your household at some point. And so there's been a tendency for administrations never to do anything that rocks the boat. Because the one thing that markets like the best is stability and certainty.

[Josh Holmes]

This is almost like another manifestation of kicking the can down the road. Like, yeah, I mean, we know that the time has passed for us to have to help stimulate the economies of these allies post World War II. But I don't want to rock the boat, because if it's slowing down, let's just kick the can.

[John Ashbrook]

It's great insulation to even good friends around the world, allies of the United States, to know that we. I'm not sure I'm ever going to have to revisit this because the political wherewithal in doing so, it could be a real hazard for anybody who's in a democratically elected system of government.

[Dave McCormick]

Right. And I think there's a very high likelihood that today, when you go about your daily life, some Democrat you encounter is going to attack what President Trump is doing. And so we want to arm you with this. Did you know that just last year Joe Biden did tariffs on China? And here's what his, his treasury secretary said about those tariffs. Quote, I don't believe that American consumers will see any meaningful increase in the prices that they face. This is what Democrats said last year when Joe Biden had tariffs. So don't let your Democrat friends tell you the opposite today.

[John Ashbrook]

So, look, I don't want to give the impression that we are like a, a pro tariff isolationist crowd. I mean, you guys can speak for yourselves. I know I'm not. I think it's a blunt instrument that frankly, a global economy operates with some sort of free trade and open markets and ability to sell outside of the borders of the United States. Because frankly, the only way you grow, it's the only way you can grow economy, is if you're exporting things that you make here in the United States and reaping the benefit within it. So I'm not that, but this is the way I kind of tried to put it on, on Brett Baer's show. One special report the other night. You know, in your neighborhood, if your neighbor was stealing 20% of your shit every day and your neighborhood's looking at all this and you, you not rocking the boat and going up to their door and say, what the hell are you doing? Stealing 20% of your shit would make for a much more stable neighborhood environment. Everybody would appreciate the camaraderie of you not making this a problem. They would. And they react as though there's no problem. Right. Even the fact that 20% of your shit's being stolen. So, like Canada, Mexico, the whole Western Hemisphere, it's like, don't rock the boat. We're in the neighborhood here. Like, let's not discuss this whole thing.

[Josh Holmes]

We don't want uncomfortable HOA meetings.

[John Ashbrook]

But the reality. Yeah, no, but seriously, seriously, but seriously.

[Dave McCormick]

I mean everyone defund the hoa.

[John Ashbrook]

But if you look at it from your own neighborhood standpoint, there's no way you'd ever stand for that.

[Dave McCormick]

Right.

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[Comfortably Smug]

Well, yeah, and so that to my point, like the instability in the neighborhood, like I don't think we should stop doing difficult things policy wise in this administration because it's going to make Wall street uncomfortable. I just don't think that. And I believe in free trade too, but I think like the era of COVID changed my thinking on this in so many ways and that there are things that are in the national security interest of this country to be able to do ourselves. They just are.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah. I mean for example, medical treatment should, we should figure out an insourcing way to handle things.

[Comfortably Smug]

And I just don't think we should like mortgage the future of the American worker for an uptick in the gdp. I just, I just don't think.

[John Ashbrook]

And that's the fundamental, that's the fundamental.

[Comfortably Smug]

Like we just can't be held hostage by what Wall street thinks is the most important thing and that stops us from doing important things. And that is, you know, the reciprocity of these tariffs that force people back to the bargaining table for us to be able to sell our goods to the rest of the world. It's crazy. I guess. Can I just pivot this for one second outside of the policy discussion, which I think has been great here thus far, to the political side of this and I've worried about this a little bit, is like I go back to you mentioned the financial crisis and Barack Obama becomes president and people are super pissed at Wall street and they're super pissed about the recession and the housing crisis and all this sort of things. I worry in the political context with the tariffs and all of this sort of stuff, are we over reading our mandate to the American voter like that, that the American voter said, I don't know, let's close down this border. Let's deport all these people that Joe Biden led to realign the global economy. Yeah, I just, I'm just throwing that out there because I worry about that is like the same mistake the Democrats did after a huge election in 08 where they were like, yeah, we're going to remake a fifth of the American economy. Obamacare, you know what I'm saying? Like something that people didn't really vote for in 2008.

[John Ashbrook]

I think that's. Look, that's a very valid concern. I think there's a couple of things that mitigate that in comparison to like an Obamacare, for example, and like Barack Obama didn't campaign on taking your health care away, which is ultimately what Obamacare did and reformatted, reded. Donald Trump had four years explaining exactly what he intended to do on the tariff.

[Comfortably Smug]

He's been doing it since 1980s.

[John Ashbrook]

And then he spent four years running for president afterwards telling you exactly what his view on that is. And then now here we are. And it also is. This is the second point that is relevant. I grew up in a political environment where the Democrat, the base of the Democratic Party made this argument. Yeah. This was the argument that, like the Sherrod Browns.

[Dave McCormick]

I was just going to say what would happen in Minnesota is the same as Ohio.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah. And like the northern, you know, the Iron.

[Comfortably Smug]

Iron Range.

[John Ashbrook]

Iron Range part of Minnesota, we picked.

[Comfortably Smug]

Up a congressional district there because of this sort of problem.

[John Ashbrook]

So I think there is an expectation at some level with that message that we're going to do something on this. I think if you ignore it at some level, it doesn't work. If you're gonna do it, you gotta kinda do it at the front end because there's gonna be these bumps in the road and the market hates the instability of it. But to your point about like, that's no way to run a railroad here is like whether or not Wall street is comfortable. These are smart people. They'll figure it out. They're gonna figure it out one way or another. Whole lot of companies have just gone marching to the Oval Office over the last two months to say, hey, good news, we're bringing 20,000 new jobs back to the United States. That's one way to settle it. Another way to settle it, which I've seen now on three separate occasions, four separate occasions, that I think is gonna be the most important part of the reciprocal part that you're talking about 100%, which is a very different way of talking about this. This Time around. Fairly novel with the Trump administration is you've now forced these people to have the discussion for the first time in modern history since the Marshall Plan, where they have to make a discussion, have to have an internal debate about whether or not they are reliant enough on an American economy to have a negotiation about what a fair deal looks like. Because up till now, they never had to have the conversation. They're like, they'll never force us to do this shit. We won't do it. You know, yeah, we'll tear up your stuff at 150%, you can tariff us at 6%. And what are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do about it? Like, are you really gonna have that conversation? So your market gets all imbalanced and the American people are all outraged. And the answer was always no. But this guy said, yes, like, we're going to have that conversation. My guess is that there is a number of countries we've already seen Canada. We'll play a clip of that after we come back from the break of people saying, okay, this is the way we approached it, because we actually didn't think you were going to do it. But now that we're having the conversation, maybe we have more to talk about here.

[Comfortably Smug]

And that, like, this is how we should approach it, thing bleeds into Wall street and stuff. Like, I. I talked to some financial advisers this morning because I was just sort of curious. I called around to people to see, like, get their take on this and like, how is, you know, Wall street absorbing this today, you know, with. With all this? And what was very interesting, and this should maybe be obvious, is like, Wall street or like the Mercantile Exchange in Chicago. It's. It's still just people. It's still just people. And the environment in which they reside, liberal cities, does inform a lot of their logic of how this will go down.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Comfortably Smug]

So I guess what I would say is, like, don't get shaky on it. If, like, if we're gonna do it, let's do it.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, if we're gonna do it, let's do it. Because there's no way to halfway do this. If you're gonna try to reset a global economy as it pertains to American trade, you're gonna have to see it through.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

Which I get the impression that's what they're doing. But I think another important distinction between this and the initial way that Donald Trump sold this is what you were talking about smug. It's the reciprocal nature of it. I mean, when they first came in he had Peter Navarro and others who are big proponents of tariffs. Tariffs are gonna make a lot of money. They're the only way to do things like we love tariffs, we love tariffs. And you never got to the point where you turn the corner as like, well, we love tariffs unless they want to deal. And the reciprocal point of this is the distinction between what Donald Trump has talked about and what is happening now and we've seen play out on four separate occasions.

[Dave McCormick]

Such a good point in that, look.

[John Ashbrook]

You'Re not going to tariff people to tariff people. You're gonna tariff people to try to get a fair deal and have a first negotiation on behalf of the American worker that we've had since a very.

[Dave McCormick]

Long time, World War II.

[John Ashbrook]

Right. And I'm sympathetic to that argument. Now if you just continue. I am not sympathetic to the idea that tariffs make a bunch of money and they're good for, for America. I don't, I just don't think that's true. But if the fear of what an American tariff does to your own economy makes you come back to the table to give those American workers a fair deal, that I buy. That I buy.

[Dave McCormick]

Well said.

[John Ashbrook]

I think that's, I think, anyway. So what's the global reaction to all of this stuff that will tell you more about the direction this is headed than anything you're gonna read in the New York Times or the Washington Post or anything that's like Wall street says, Democrats say so therefore, you know, catastrophe is upon us. Canada, which as you recall, had a fairly fulsome rejoinder when we first started talking about the trade imbalance between Canada and the United States and said that they were going to shut off the lights essentially in the northern part of this country in places where they provided energy, because of course that's transient neck of the woods. And they were literally going to shut it down. They're so mad they're going to shut it down and force this guy to just sort of cave. Yeah, it's not a great strategy for Donald Trump. It's just not now sounds a little different. CLIP 1 Please guess let's, let's sit down and discuss this because it's just going to hurt American jobs. I can't stress it enough. And you know, again, he believes he's supporting Americans. He said he was going to create jobs, create wealth, reduce inflation. It's worked the total opposite inflation.

[Comfortably Smug]

Do you think it's fair that you.

[Dave McCormick]

Have tariffs on a whole number of products?

[Comfortably Smug]

That's right.

[Michael Duncan]

And we'd be willing to take those.

[John Ashbrook]

Off tomorrow if he took all the tariffs off.

[Comfortably Smug]

Oh, look at that.

[Dave McCormick]

How about that?

[John Ashbrook]

Oh, wait a minute. So that's Doug Ford, who's the premier of Ontario, who came out and said he was going to shut the lights off in Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, like places on the northern border, because he was so pissed off about the mere suggestion that we are even talking about tariff policy. He's asked whether or not the tariffs that he applies to us would go away if you could have a negotiation about that. And he says, huh, indeed.

[Josh Holmes]

And good for Sorkin for pointing. He's like, but you've got tariffs on the US because that's, that's what it's all about.

[Dave McCormick]

Yeah, that's exactly what you expect from Canada is backing down. They're America's hat. Okay. And so when America is ready to take.

[John Ashbrook]

You're making it harder.

[Dave McCormick]

Yeah, I'm not. When America's ready, take the W. Ashburn. When America's ready to take their hat off, they put it on the rack, you know, like Ontario, for crying out loud. The best baseball player, Joe Carter, who ever played in Toronto, he's from Oklahoma. The Maple Leafs haven't won a Stanley cup since the 60s. We don't need to take anything from this guy. And finally we have a president who's willing to look at him eye to eye and be like, get out of here, pal. I'm in charge.

[John Ashbrook]

Look, this is an important part of what you see happening. There are guys who four weeks ago said, we're going to shut your lights off and give you the middle finger.

[Dave McCormick]

Right.

[John Ashbrook]

Today, would you take your tariffs off? Yeah, yeah, no, we do that. We do that. No problem. It was like a passing. It was like a throwaway sentence.

[Dave McCormick]

Exactly.

[John Ashbrook]

Well, when Donald Trump marches up, as you saw yesterday in a press conference with a big billboard at the top, it says reciprocal.

[Josh Holmes]

Yep, reciprocal. Huge.

[Dave McCormick]

Right? It goes to your point about like, is it terrorists for the sake of doing a tariff or is it a tariff for the sake of getting our other countries to react the way they're supposed to reshuffle the power dynamic and around the world. And what Trump is doing is actually executing on that.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yeah, it's like the, it's like the saying, name and shame. Yeah, name and shame. And like that's what he did. And like he folded immediately. When confronted with the fact that Canada also has all these tariffs, they immediately fold. It's just, we've just given. And this is what I love about Donald Trump is like, there is so much low hanging fruit where America's gotten screwed around this country. You know, like, the Panama situation is one of them, where, like, he points out these just obvious things. For whatever reason, the morass of politics in America we've never really cared about. And we should fucking care.

[John Ashbrook]

We should care because it makes a tangible difference. I mean, look, for those of you who didn't grow up in the Midwest, there's an awful lot of factories that folks like us grew up with that shuddered. And the reason they shuddered is because a hell of a lot cheaper to make those goods overseas and ship them back in. And corporate America is agnostic to that. They are responsible to their shareholders. They are not ideological. They're not interested in anything other than providing shareholder value and increasing the breadth of their product. That's it. And, like, don't. Don't get hung up on, like, the morality of it. That's what free market economics is about. But if you create a condition where they have to care about it, like this one, well, it makes it easier to bring those jobs back home. And that is the historical relevance to this discussion is you've got a whole bunch of people who are saying, okay, we're gonna bring jobs back home because this is a discussion that we don't wanna be a part of, but we're fundamentally an American company. And then you have allies, like in this case, Canada, where it's like, all right, we'll revisit for the first time Since World War II, this trade imbalance that we've had. Okay, that's great. What are our other allies? Israel. Yeah, Israel, according to the J Post, removes all remaining tariffs on US Imports.

[Michael Duncan]

All. All.

[John Ashbrook]

Like, you might ask yourself, why is it that Israel, who's, like, very dependent upon security from the United States, international diplomacy from the United States, would ever have a tariff on an American?

[Michael Duncan]

Good.

[John Ashbrook]

That would be a good question. And the answer is, because nobody's fucking ever said anything.

[Comfortably Smug]

Nobody cared. Can I tell you a funny story about this?

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Comfortably Smug]

So I actually have some experience with this. When I was working over there in that election in 2015, and I came back home for Valentine's Day to see my then girlfriend, now my wife, everyone on the Netanyahu campaign, that was the campaign I was working on, tried to get me to buy them an iPhone because.

[John Ashbrook]

Wow.

[Comfortably Smug]

To buy them an iPhone because they couldn't get one. They wanted to give me cash.

[Josh Holmes]

So it's not at the. You don't have to pay that.

[Comfortably Smug]

You don't have to pay it.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Comfortably Smug]

They were like, all right, I will give you cash when you get back to the United States. If you buy me an iPhone and smuggle, essentially smuggle it back into Israel, of course I did not do that.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, but that's, but that's goes to that point.

[Comfortably Smug]

But the color they wanted it is, is how badly people wanted America's goods. And those sorts of imbalances create this crazy situation where someone was like trying to hand me $800, you know, when I go back to America to buy an iPhone here in the United States and bring it back with me when I came back onto the campaign. How funny is that?

[John Ashbrook]

It's amazing.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, you see like even in New York, like you go to the apple store on 5th.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

You'll see people like from China or wherever, they're just like buying them by the boatload because that country has put such tariffs on American goods that it's, it's like they can come back with a boatload of them that they buy here because they don't have to pay the tariff that China's put on America.

[Comfortably Smug]

Exactly.

[Dave McCormick]

And they're just moving it from a cart.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yeah, we're talking.

[Josh Holmes]

They're going suitcases full.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, it's really something. Now look, this is something to watch. Right. Because these negotiations will start and we'll have a discussion. Some of it will resolve itself. How quickly it resolves itself is going to be entirely downstream of where the economic condition finds itself itself. We reserve the right to just monitor this as it goes because I think there is, there, there are pieces of this that are part of a broader economic agenda that includes tax reform that Congress has to deal with. Where you're resetting an economic environment in this country that's driven in large part over the last four years on false economic conditions. Overspending by a federal government that's just like flushing cash. It's a reason why you have inflation. It's the reason why the markets have not had a dip, despite the fact that consumer confidence had a problem. And we see like wage growth stagnate and all of those things like that. It's artificial.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

Part, this is part and parcel of a larger plan that you don't turn the Titanic overnight, but will try to reconstitute a market based economy in a way that, that works for the middle class in this country.

[Comfortably Smug]

That was sort of my point before the break on are we overeating our mandate? I just don't think tariffs or reciprocal tariffs and all of this sort of thing is enough. I think it's part of this larger plan that has to get done. It just has to get.

[John Ashbrook]

If you did one without the other, we're talking about potential disaster. That's a memo. Yes, to you in Congress who are thinking about like, because there's one or two vote majority that you're going to like finagle around for your little pet project and there's an army of lobbyists downtown that are trying to get you to do that, to withhold your vote until you get this nonsense. Get it done, dude.

[Dave McCormick]

Yep, yep.

[John Ashbrook]

Get it done.

[Josh Holmes]

There's no time for that.

[John Ashbrook]

We have no time for that. So that is our question of the day on this segment. After you've heard all of this, will reciprocal tariffs work? Will they work? A lot of different opinions on that. I mean, look, I've got a lot of good friends who have fundamentally different view of all of this than I do, and they explain it quite eloquently. I imagine that all of you do too. You see it from your own neighborhoods and from your own communities, maybe your own businesses. And I'd love to know more about that. So like and subscribe to the Ruthless Variety program. Put those comments in. We'll read them all and we'll give you a little taste of that next Tuesday. And when we come back, we're going to get to our question of the day from last Thursday, which is like, what, what is the wildest thing that you've heard about Doge and Elon? That is just like fundamentally untrue. And these are hilarious. We'll get to it right after this.

[Michael Duncan]

Hardworking Americans know when it's time to.

[John Ashbrook]

Roll up our sleeves and get the job done.

[Michael Duncan]

Now is the time to unleash our nation's energy, to create jobs, secure our future, and make life better, more affordable and full of opportunity for all Americans. That's the power of America's oil and natural gas. Learn [e-mail] paid for by the American Petroleum Institute.

[John Ashbrook]

Okay, when we left you on Tuesday, we had a good question for you. We had a big topic of conversation about Doge Elon. What's the dumbest shit that you've heard? You know, what's the best thing that they've presented that you sort of stuck with you? We threw it open to you all and not surprisingly, incredibly smart takes to do this. We already start with a voice and.

[Dave McCormick]

What we always say is like. And subscribe if you wish to opine. First comment comes from Hurlson. And Hurlson writes, the most bonkers thing I saw was someone bitching about The Nazi Elon Tesla car. And they were driving a Volkswagen.

[Josh Holmes]

Incredible.

[Dave McCormick]

When I told them that VW was literally quote, the people's car from the Hitler regime, they said, oh, shut up, liar.

[John Ashbrook]

Oh, so good.

[Comfortably Smug]

It's literally called Volkswagen, the car of the Volk. Oh, idiot.

[John Ashbrook]

Oh, you dumb bastards.

[Dave McCormick]

You can't, you can't beat our audience. You can't beat them.

[John Ashbrook]

It's so good. All right, comment too dunks.

[Comfortably Smug]

This is Kristen Thomas. Kristen Wright. Crazy Doge Maga cuts. My neighbor told me that Social Security checks are being cut by 65% next month. Huh. Thinking that would be a bigger story than signal gate even in my crazy right wing media sources.

[John Ashbrook]

Oh my God, what a perfect example.

[Comfortably Smug]

It's hilarious.

[John Ashbrook]

This is what, this is the information. Silence these crazy people.

[Comfortably Smug]

We say it all the time.

[John Ashbrook]

We do. All right, what do we got from comment three?

[Josh Holmes]

It's from Lisa McGough, longtime minion Lisa McGough. Most bonkers take I've heard about Elon Doge was someone saying that Elon will have Trump default on government bonds because they have to come up with the trillion dollar savings they promised and they aren't going to find enough waste or fraud so they will completely tank the economy to come up with the savings.

[John Ashbrook]

Oh my God.

[Josh Holmes]

Just absurd. Love you guys. Keep owning the lives. My commute feels so much shorter on Tuesday and Thursdays. Thank you, Lisa.

[Michael Duncan]

Great.

[John Ashbrook]

Take place. So that's exactly the kind of thing that you do. I mean, can you imagine? I imagine all of these things. You know, it could be your neighbor saying something crazy, but they always like the fwd. Fwd, FWD version of the old email chain that your grandparents, their parents got.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

You know.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yeah. If you don't forward this email about Elon Musk ruining our economy, you're. Yeah, you're going to die. You got to for seven people or Elon Musk wins.

[John Ashbrook]

Oh, it's so good. All right, so we're gonna get to a little bit of more of a serious topic. We preface this by saying Tuesday was a big day for special elections. Florida had two congressional elections which had an imminent impact on whether or not you were gonna get the economic agenda that the Trump administration has outlined. And that has everything to do with the very slim majority that they have in the House of Representatives. Democrats talked a big game. They raised $20 million to try to knock off two seats that were held by Republicans that were vacated. And you know, I think the last 30 days of it, anyway, there was. Papers were filled with the idea that Republicans are going to win, they're going to lose at least one of these things. Turns out both were 15 point affairs, sort of sleepy. So Democrats have to figure out basically how to reconstitute that argument after they told everybody they could shock the world and win these things. And they were like, well, it wasn't the margin by which we've lost it to six term incumbents the previous cycle. Okay, wins. A win, loss is a loss. I think Florida is pretty self explanatory, but it does tie into the larger issue that we're going to talk about with Wisconsin Supreme Court. We talked about this. We had some folks who were on the ground who came in and discussed it. We know that Elon and his team spent an inordinate amount of time and resources there trying to turn out folks. And in the end of the day, there was a Supreme court race in 2023 that had exactly the same margin that we had in 2025. Now obviously that wasn't a precursor for either Wisconsin or the nation in 2024, but there was a, there was resources invested here. It was a nationalized deal. Democrats have gotten pretty good at nationalizing Supreme Court races in Wisconsin of all things, which is like.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

Feels small ball if not for their ability in the state of Wisconsin to redraw congressional district lines and things like that, which is why it has national impact. They've done this and they've done it successfully. They've now done it twice in a row. And honestly, during my lifetime, they've done it more times than they haven't. Like they've been pretty good at this.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

So you look at it from two perspectives. One, it's kind of a status quo where the last election was no precursor whatsoever on Republican success in a general election in 2024. On the other hand, there's this other piece of the Trump coalition that should give every Republican some pause and that the truth is like, look, we don't just give you everything you want to hear on this program. The truth is, every midterm and off year election, Republicans have had an extremely difficult time reconstituting a Trump coalition if his name's not on the ballot. Extremely difficult. Whether it was 1822 and all of these various special elections and local elections, Republicans have had problems with it. Democrats want to say it's all an indictment of Trump and that's not true. Republicans want to say, well, you know, these are low turnout things. They're hard for us to historically compete on. That's also not true. We've done pretty well on a lot of these things historically. I remember a Scott Brown race in January of 2010.

[Dave McCormick]

Oh, yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

Where he won in Massachusetts, a state that no Republican ever carries.

[Comfortably Smug]

And then we followed up by winning a Senate race in Illinois with Mark Kirk.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah. You know, it also preceded a 15 seat pickup in the United States Senate over the next two cycles. A 69 seat pickup in the House of Representatives over the next two cycles. Yes. Yeah, I like that. I like that you pointed that out. That's good. We got to have an edge here.

[Dave McCormick]

Numbers matter.

[John Ashbrook]

Numbers matter. 69 is one of them. Anyway, the point is, is, is you can read into these things. You don't necessarily have to read into these things, but if you're a Republican and you look at that, the message that Donald Trump has sold the electorate writ large, whether you're Republican, Democrat or independent, has worked two out of three times. It has worked to extraordinary success. And he's brought the Republican down ticket with him as he's done it two of the three times, actually. 18:22 in all these various specials. It's not, it hasn't. Somebody else selling his message otherwise has not worked for Republicans. Now you can say a whole bunch of things, but we've, we've done some in depth stuff that we've talked to you all before about why that might be the case. Let's just throw it open and see what you all think about this.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, because it is kind of like flipping the conventional wisdom because for so long it was almost like a rule of thumb, like it's a midterm, Republicans are going to dominate. This was like the conventional thinking like 10, 12 years ago, special elections, like, oh boy, Republicans.

[John Ashbrook]

Because we did 10, 14 domination.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. And it used to be also the same mindset that like, well, low turnout is great for Republicans, but that has shifted as the Republican Party, as the Trump coalition has changed from the coalition that we had that was winning in midterms.

[John Ashbrook]

More of a Bush coalition, sort of your lack of a better term. It's a country club, Republican, suburban based base of support during not only general elections for presidential, but general elections for midterms.

[Josh Holmes]

Those coalitions have different propensities. So you have a huge turn up among rural voters for Trump, who would be low propensity voters in midterms. But they show up in presidential elections and help Trump get that W. Yeah.

[Comfortably Smug]

I guess what I would say is I think it's the talking heads. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.

[Josh Holmes]

Great song.

[Comfortably Smug]

We have nine years. Now, I think of proof of this issue is like when we have traded, you know, suburban voters who turn out 80, 80, 90% in a midterm vote for rural working class voters who turn out at a 50, 57%. Yeah, that's about the average in a, in a midterm. It's going to be difficult, just always going to be difficult. And if you've listened to the show for a number of years, and I know for a lot of new people, welcome to this conversation, but this has been an issue and we have highlighted it numerous times, is that like, if Donald Trump is going to be successful, it can't be that he's successful for 18 months. He has four years to change America. And that means that coalition that elected him has to also turn out in this midterm. And if it doesn't, it's really going to put a hamper on his ability to deliver his entire agenda.

[John Ashbrook]

Not to mention, look, I don't want to rain on the whole parade of what it is that we're doing now, but last time they had power in either House, they impeached him twice. Yeah, right. Like, don't think for a second that that's not what they want to do. Again, if they had their hands on the House of Representatives or the United States Senate, like they would, they would, that's what they want, they want to do. And they came up with a phone call that he made to Ukraine last time as the, as the precursor to impeachment here. So it doesn't take a lot of ingenuity on the Democratic side to run that play. That's what they want to do. I think the larger political piece of this is is it possible? And honestly, I can tell you I don't know because I think there are, there were errors. There were in 22, there were bad candidates, there was bad management. And that I think is the primary reason why Republicans weren't able to over perform expectations for taking over both chambers in the House and Senate and adding seats to that map. Because typically you don't do well with an unpopular president and a horrible economy. But we didn't do well. But we had candidates that couldn't win statewide elections. And that takes some management. That's some infrastructure stuff. That thing can change. If that was all it was, I wouldn't be worried about it. But you look back at 18, I don't think we had that problem. In fact, we picked up seats in the United States Senate because we had good seats that were open and took advantage of those we lost historical numbers in the House of Representatives and overall down ticket state legislative stuff wasn't great for us. And so the question is, what can you do differently to ensure that a Trump message permeates beyond him on the ballot himself? We know that this is the best political athlete of our lifetimes. This is a guy who can make an argument to camera that people like, they believe they trust and they want him there and they want his team there and they're ready to go put every. It's happened two of the last three times.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, that's no one has ever seen. We will never see anything like this again in our lifetimes. This phenomenon of like over the course of over a year, the opposition party's trying to put this guy in jail, they try to kill him live on stage, and he gets elected president again. Like, yep, no one's seen that in their life.

[Comfortably Smug]

In 18, there were people who would make the argument, well, you know, the reason why Republicans underperformed in that midterm is there was too much daylight between Donald Trump and congressional Republicans. We don't actually have that problem anymore. I mean, if you look at the United States Senate has confirmed his cabinet in the fastest clip since like 2000. You know, we, we, we averted a government shutdown past Donald Trump's budget in the House. Like, there is no daylight between congressional Republicans and Donald Trump. So you can't really make the argument that, well, you know, we're going to underperform in some of these special elections or these midterm elections because there's some daylight between Donald Trump's agenda and what Republicans are doing. And that's really the problem. That's not the problem.

[John Ashbrook]

Not anymore.

[Comfortably Smug]

The problem is those low propensity Trump voters only have turned out for Donald Trump that we need to turn out in this midterm. And that really is the problem that needs to be solved.

[John Ashbrook]

They turned out in 16, they turned out in 20. They turned out in 24. They did not turn out in any of those specials or midterm.

[Comfortably Smug]

In my recommendation to every outside group or people doing field work or get out the vote, absentee by mail or early vote or any of these sorts of things. Is he also had. You got to reconfigure your understanding the electorate to reflect what Donald Trump did in 2024. For it was the podcast election. It was reaching people in different places and culture outside of politics. If you're going to motivate these people to turn out into a midterm, you damn well better go Back to that space.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Comfortably Smug]

You damn well have to find them outside of politics, out of political news and motivate them, give them a reason. It's not going to be the same playbook again. It's not going to be a million SMS messages about how important is you turn out, because these people don't do that unless for Donald Trump. So convince them that there's something in their culture, in their lives, that are at stake. That's the only way we're going to change this.

[John Ashbrook]

No, I think it's a good point. Smash, you have anything?

[Dave McCormick]

No, I don't really have anything to add to that. I think what you guys are saying is exactly right on. We have to focus on that if we want to win.

[Josh Holmes]

You have to meet the voters where they are, and we've seen it work.

[John Ashbrook]

The only other piece that I will say, and I think Trump actually did a pretty good job of this, I mean, he added new pieces of the coalition, like massive increases in African American turnout, massive increases in Hispanic share of vote.

[Josh Holmes]

That was terrific.

[John Ashbrook]

Maha moms. That kind of thing. And that works for Trump. We've not seen that work for everybody. You got to continue that work. But it's an all of the above proposition, because the thing that we've come back to and talked about is the historical midterm turnout of a base Republican electorate in the early 2000s was made up of a whole bunch of people who had a 76% capability of showing up in a midterm election. And we traded that out for 57. As you said, we have spent an awful lot of money. And I don't think it's for a lack of work, particularly in this Wisconsin Supreme Court race where you had the Elon turnout machine that was so successful in 24.

[Dave McCormick]

Yeah, pressure up there, doing the same.

[John Ashbrook]

Thing in Wisconsin, but losing by the exact same margin. I don't think it's for a lack of effort. You have to negate the margins with the 76 as a hedge against not being able to make your 57 80. Yes. You have to do it. And I know that, like, you know, now you'll get from some folks within the base of this party, it's the old party. We've renovated all this stuff. We're doing something. Well, people are people, votes are votes. And if you've given a population no reason to support what it is that you're doing, but even worse, giving them a reason to hate you, they're still turning out at 76. They're still turning out.

[Josh Holmes]

They're just not voting for you.

[John Ashbrook]

They're just not voting for you. So you've gotta look at that a little bit more critically from these campaigns point of view. I think there's a million ways to do it. I think there's nothing about the Trump agenda that is not entirely complimentary to being able to make a case to that. But you might have to make it differently.

[Michael Duncan]

Right.

[John Ashbrook]

You know, you might have to make it differently.

[Dave McCormick]

Listen, I agree, and I have a feeling that this is a conversation that will continue over and over again over the next year and a half.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

Because what works for Donald Trump, he is a unicorn. This is the best showman that this country has ever seen. This is like, it's a special time, special, special stuff. You, I don't care how talented you are, you're not that. You're not that. You know, you're not a universally known famous person, for starters. For second, you don't just instinctively have a grasp like Donald Trump does. You got to figure it out. And that's fine. It's doable. But everybody's got to be eyes wide open about it. Anyway, that's our rundown on that hack madness. There are some special brackets here.

[Josh Holmes]

That's right, folks. Thank you all for voting. The numbers keep going up for how many people vote in each round. We just finished the elitist eight, as I like to call it. And I mean, this is shaping up to be one hell of a final four that we have. So the first one we want to go over is. Can I get that graphic one up? This was Nicole Wallace versus Rachel Maddow. That's. That's pretty close. This is showing you that these are now, you know, you've got the best of the best facing off, each against each other.

[John Ashbrook]

I'm so good.

[Josh Holmes]

Nicole Wallace at 56.8%. Maddow at 43.2. Wallace is in the final four.

[John Ashbrook]

Amazing.

[Josh Holmes]

What else we have so graphic? Two, please, could we get that? We have Jake Tapper, Brian Stelter. Stelter goes down, folks.

[John Ashbrook]

Well, the Cinderella story is over. His big comeback lasted to the elitist eight, but ultimately came up a little short.

[Josh Holmes]

Honestly. He's happy to be just working again. So, you know, good for him on that. And, you know, people are finally recognizing Tapper for the hack that he is and also for him, like, jumping aboard that book. That's like, wow, Biden, he was a zombie. He'll say that and get a book deal after Biden's loss. But while he was running, everyone knows Tapper's A hypocrite. So that, for me explains the surge. Graphic 3 is a special one. Can we get that one, folks? That's Margaret Brennan just demolishing, guys.

[John Ashbrook]

This was something we talked about on day one. She had a special season, a special formula going. She has not let up. It's 80 or above, no matter who she faces.

[Dave McCormick]

Dude, you think of the greatest in history, Lu Alcindor, the Fab Five, Christian Laettner, Margaret Brenner is better than all of them. We are witnessing history and I just want everybody to take a moment and watch and understand what they're living through.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, 80%.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah. It's wild.

[Josh Holmes]

Incredible. And the last matchup we had was Anna Navaro and Joy Reed. And folks, of course, Joy Reed, I think, took that one. So we've got.

[John Ashbrook]

It's a body of work advancement.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, yeah. And it's could be her last year since she was let go. So Joy Reid is making a run for it while she can. That. That's the Final Four, folks. You're going to have Nicole Wallace facing off against Joy Reid.

[John Ashbrook]

When can people vote?

[Josh Holmes]

The Final Four starts on Monday. Correct. In ncaa. So that's when the Final Four in Hack madness is going to go up again. Vote on my profile on X. That's at comfortably smug. And you're going to have Margaret Brennan going against Jake Tapper.

[John Ashbrook]

That's.

[Josh Holmes]

That's the Final Four right there.

[John Ashbrook]

I love it. I love it. We've got a new little thing that we're trying to do here on the program.

[Dave McCormick]

Yeah, I think it's about time. You know, there's so many great moments that happen on Twitter through the week. And what I would really like for us to do is pick a goat of the week. Somebody who stood out and made a big difference in some way that's caught everybody's attention. And I have a nominee for this week's go to the week.

[John Ashbrook]

What do you got?

[Dave McCormick]

Jim Banks.

[John Ashbrook]

I don't know.

[Dave McCormick]

I don't know if you guys caught that. Yeah, yeah, you saw it, Josh. You guys caught this video of Jim Banks absolutely owning this lib, trying to, like, jump ugly on him. I don't know if we have this video. Do we have. Can we play clip two.

[John Ashbrook]

Hi. I was a worker at HHS. I was fired illegally on February 14th. There are many people who are not getting social service programs, especially people with disabilities. Are you going to do anything to stop what's happening?

[Josh Holmes]

You probably deserved it.

[John Ashbrook]

I deserved it. Wow.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

That's great to hear here why? Why did I deserve it?

[Comfortably Smug]

Because you seem like a clown.

[Josh Holmes]

And.

[John Ashbrook]

The timing of the elevator door is everything.

[Comfortably Smug]

It's everything.

[Dave McCormick]

You just can't beat it.

[Josh Holmes]

Can I just say, okay to get owned like that and then put the footage up of it? Why would this dude put it online of like, I just got owned by Jim Banks, folks?

[Comfortably Smug]

Because the reason why is because they're living in the politics of the past. Like, they really do believe if they put up some found footage shit like it's Blair Witch Project, and they can, you know, basically bully Republicans into doing what they want. I just think that the world has fundamentally changed. I think the moment that it actually happened was Kavanaugh. Yeah, I think it was Kavanaugh.

[John Ashbrook]

I agree.

[Josh Holmes]

We're not playing those games.

[Comfortably Smug]

You know what I'm saying?

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah. No, I mean, look, these guys, fundamentally, this is a guy who you would have sympathy for in a normal world who lost his job. Except for the fact that people who lose their jobs, whether they find it unjust or not, start about the work of trying to get another job, trying to take care of their family, whatever. This dude gets a camcorder and rolls out to Capitol Hill and accosts senators. By the way, there's an executive action, nothing to do with the legislative branch and begins trying to embarrass people with questions that are absolutely absurd. Like the way you framed it. Illegally fired. First of all, there's no such thing as that.

[Comfortably Smug]

Right.

[John Ashbrook]

That doesn't exist.

[Dave McCormick]

Right.

[John Ashbrook]

Illegally fired is not a vocabulary sentence that we have in America.

[Josh Holmes]

But it also explains the mindset. He's like, I'm entitled to that job.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

The taxpayers, they should be giving me the money.

[Comfortably Smug]

This is the currency of the realm when it comes to the left. It's just emotional blackmail. None of it is actually true.

[Dave McCormick]

That's exactly right. And Jim Banks, United States senator from the state of Indiana, fired back with a tweet in graphic number four. He said, I have no sympathy for left wing activists who have been let go from overpaid positions that should have never existed. I do have sympathy for hard working Hoosiers whose tax dollars have been wasted on bankrolling these positions.

[Michael Duncan]

There it is.

[John Ashbrook]

Go to the frame.

[Dave McCormick]

That's exactly frame.

[John Ashbrook]

That's why the goat of the week.

[Dave McCormick]

That's right. Jim Banks from Fort Wayne, Indiana. Goat of the Week.

[Josh Holmes]

Excellent.

[John Ashbrook]

Listen, if you've listened to any of our interviews, listen to this one. Dave McCormick, senator from Pennsylvania. You've heard him here a few times. We always have a good time. We always have some laughs. We find him to be amongst the most insightful people that you can listen to. His lessons in leadership and commentary on tariffs and everything you gotta listen to, because you're gonna be at a deficit of knowledge that is available to you right now if you don't. Dave McCormick. Listen, this guy has been not only a tremendous candidate, a tremendous success throughout his entire life. He's a good friend of the pro quote room. I think you've been here like three times now, maybe more.

[Michael Duncan]

An honor every time.

[John Ashbrook]

We're going to have to get him a jacket, Wolf.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, you know, did I earn the jacket?

[John Ashbrook]

We're starting to get out jackets for people who come back enough and enough. But. But the only reason that we have him back is because he's got insightful analysis about the world at large and has a good idea not only about how things are done in Washington, what he's up to, but also just leadership. And you got a book. I want to talk about that in a minute. Dave McCormick. How are you?

[Michael Duncan]

Hey. Good to be with you. I'm great. Thank you. Thanks for having me, guys.

[John Ashbrook]

How is the Senate treating you?

[Michael Duncan]

So far, so good.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

You know, honestly, I mean, I think about it. I know we'll tell a lot of jokes in this thing, but the thing that I want to say is I really feel like it's a privilege. I honestly do. When I stand in that chamber, you guys all know it well. It's tiny.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

You look up at those marble statues, that strikes you. Tiny.

[John Ashbrook]

It's. It. I felt the same way about, you know, when the State of the Union's happening, you're like, God, is this small? I thought it was a stadium.

[Michael Duncan]

Exactly.

[John Ashbrook]

And the Senate chamber is even smaller.

[Michael Duncan]

And you walk out and you see Thomas Jefferson and you see Abraham Lincoln, you see Ronald Reagan. And so to be the senator from Pennsylvania at any moment is a big deal because there's only been about a thousand elected senators in history. I'm the 54th from Pennsylvania. I'm the 9th in history from West Point. Point. But then to be the senator for Pennsylvania at this moment, so much going on. So I feel. Feel honored to be there. And I'm. I'm learning a lot and trying to keep up.

[John Ashbrook]

We got some plum committee assignments, too. Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

Now I'm on foreign relations and the chairman of the subcommittee in the Middle east and counterterrorism. I'm on energy, which was my first choice. And I'm chairman of the subcommittee on on Energy. And then I'm on banking, which has everything to do with affordable housing and capital availability of capital for small businesses. And then I'm on the Committee on Aging because we got a lot of aging population.

[John Ashbrook]

You had to have one bad one.

[Michael Duncan]

Those aging people vote, too.

[John Ashbrook]

No, no, I'm almost kidding. But I mean, the rest of those committee assignments, they don't give those away. Like, you know, I mean, there's a couple of us, at least, that worked in the leadership offices, where you'd kind of, you know, you put these things together, and then you'd come to a realization about mid December, after you see who is elected and what your membership looks like, where you're like, who can actually do this job? Right.

[Dave McCormick]

Well, that's the point I was going to make. There aren't too many new guys who show up with the expertise you bring to the chamber. I mean, what you've done in your career has delivered so much for Pennsylvania, delivers so much for America. And, I mean, I got to think that everybody stops talking when you open your mouth.

[Michael Duncan]

And not in my house. I got six dogs and my wife, who, you know, so when I open my mouth, they say, shut up in the sense. You know how that feels. But listen, I mean, I feel like I bring some things to the table, but, man, I'm learning. And in good ways and bad, like the way we conduct business.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

I mean, it's. So just give me an example. You'll know. You'll know what this is like. For the first 12 weeks now, I've been mostly showing up to things on time.

[Dave McCormick]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

I'm the first guy there every time. I mean, nobody's on time. It's like the most ridiculous thing. But, But. And that the path to actually getting anything done, and we're in the majority. Yeah, but the path. Just the. The other night, the, you know, the. The 24 hours. Cory. Cory Booker.

[John Ashbrook]

Oh, yeah, that's.

[Michael Duncan]

I'm literally presiding. I'll tell you a funny story about that in a minute. But I'm presiding over the Senate from 2:00am to 4:00am you know, watching Cory talk about Social Security and, you know, just. This is a hell of a.

[John Ashbrook]

There's a debate.

[Michael Duncan]

It's a hell of a way to get things done. But let me tell you a funny story. You guys will get a kick out of this because, you know, the Senate, but because you're the junior guy, you get the worst assignments for presiding. Yeah. Right. So about two weeks ago, around the Voterama, I had the 6am slot. Then I had the 9pm slot and the 9pm slot was just when all the action was happening. It was like 10 votes in a row. I'm presiding. Everybody's in the chamber. I got the gavel. Order, order. You know, all over C, span, all over cnn.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

So I go back to my hotel room that night, and my phone rings. My dad's 87, mom's 85. My dad says, we. We saw you on CNN.

[Dave McCormick]

Did.

[Michael Duncan]

Did you get promoted President of the Senate?

[Comfortably Smug]

Isn't that the funniest thing about parents is, like, you can literally be a United States senator. And they're like, you're not doing enough. You need a promotion.

[Josh Holmes]

So.

[Michael Duncan]

But they said, did you get promoted? And I said, no, no, dad, it's like this. It's like. It's like the assignment. Like, you don't want to get this, and you don't want that slide. And my mom pipes in with the confidence that only a mother kept. She says, they wouldn't put you up there unless you were doing very well.

[John Ashbrook]

So good.

[Michael Duncan]

So good. I don't know what Pennsylvania's like, but my mom, mom and dad think I'm killing it.

[John Ashbrook]

If you're 95th or above in seniority with a pulse, that's your job. Oh, it's great. Listen, you've been doing absolutely terrific work. We follow what you do and what your staff does more closely than most because we know your background, we know you personally, we know that you have some understanding about not only markets, but all kinds, a range of things that in your resume. And we've covered it before. I mean, it's like 10 miles long.

[Josh Holmes]

Serving in the military, then in the private sector, and then I guess you also have expertise in aging.

[Michael Duncan]

Unfortunately, more than I'd like.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, there's some of that, too. So I'm curious. Look, this is an incredibly consequential time, as you have said, and there's an element of sort of realigning the American economy and everything. You've heard what President Trump had to say about Liberation Day and his idea of reciprocal tariffs. Clearly, as this airs, there's going to be a lot of different opinions about that. I just want your take on where we sit with all of it.

[Michael Duncan]

Well, it starts for me. You know, I grew up in this rural Pennsylvania, Bloomsburg, in my town, when I was a kid in high school, was the. Was the McGee carpet mill, 2,000 workers. Today we have. The family farm is right outside that town. There's 200. So when I was growing up, most of the, you know, kids in high school, their folks were involved with A mill or involved in some way. What's happened to America, rural America, the manufacturing base and so forth, is the consequence of wide open free trade policies, which 20 years ago, I was much more supportive of the 500 stops I did on the campaign trail over the last 24. Last year, 2024, you basically see this sense that for most Americans, the economy is not working. So in Pennsylvania, 60% of Pennsylvanians live paycheck to paycheck. Right. If you have a transmission goes, that goes down, it's like an existential event, right?

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

Housing last year alone went up by 11%. Right. Inflation was up by 22% over the three years and wages didn't keep up. So this is the part of America that was clamoring for change. We got to change. This is the America that primarily voted for President Trump. This is the America that primarily voted for me. You know, it's a coalition that is at least unlike any in recent years in, in Pennsylvania. So in my case, both President Trump and I won more than 20% of African Americans, more than 40% of Hispanics, 2/3 of the trade unions. At the national level, they endorsed Casey, they endorsed Harris. On the ground, the rank and file, they supported me and President Trump. The reason I start with that is that's who we have to be focused on, I think, both as a political matter, but as a substantive matter. Because for them, the American dream that I've had been the beneficiary of. Deena, all of you, that's not available for them. So that's where I'm coming from, from a policy perspective. So that's the first thing I want to ask.

[John Ashbrook]

And it also speaks to look, when you do a realignment in American politics, it has to be for a reason. It's not easy to get huge numbers of people like trade unions to shift out of 50 year patterns of voting for one party to do that, they have to know that you're going to do something different.

[Michael Duncan]

It's a change mandate. Yeah, it's a change mandate. And it, and it comes from, you know, I want to give President Trump all the credit in the world for seeing it and laying out a vision. But it also is a byproduct of failure. It's a failure of both parties. It's a failure of the old Republican Party to address that. And it's certainly a failure of the Democratic Party, which has truly become just in the last certainly decade, the party of the elite focused on a set of issues that are out of touch with at least most Pennsylvanians where I have expertise. So that's the first framing. I want to say, who are we working for? Yeah, that's the first thing. Second thing, you know, I was a CEO of a couple of different companies. The thing you hate most if you're a CEO is uncertainty. Yeah, it's the thing you hate most. And so, so that's what's framing what's going on right now. There's a lot of uncertainty, but let's start with where there's certainty. If you're a business person, if you're a consumer, here's what we have certainty on. We have certainty on. We're going to have the biggest deregulatory effort since Ronald Reagan. I remember when he was elected, 1980, since that time where you had a huge growth splurt because of deregulation. Huge. Number two, we are going to pursue energy dominance. It's hugely important for Pennsylvania. Unlocking energy deregulation, permitting reform. That's coming.

[John Ashbrook]

Also a national security issue.

[Michael Duncan]

National security issue. And that's a huge wind in our sails. Third thing, we've already had President Trump's announce another company. There's multiple trillions of new investment, foreign direct investment coming to the United States. It's Apple investing as Taiwan Semiconductor. It's Saudi Arabia. Huge inflow of capital. Big deal. Trillions. And the fourth thing is we are going to get an extension, I think a permanent extension of the tax cut. So we're not going to raise taxes, which would have happened on the Democrats. So if you're a business person, those are the four wins at your sale. And then the concern is the uncertainty around tariffs, which we now see a lot more, and tariffs that are reciprocal in pursuit of giving a fair shake to American workers are going to be effective.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, I want to nail down on that and then we can move on. Look, I think there's a tremendous difference between how the Trump administration the first four years sort of framed the tariff. Discussion about, well, this is good, we'll make a lot of money basically taxing international trade and how they're framing it now and what we've seen over the last couple of months and how they're dealing with different countries who have this sort of thing looming. And they're talking reciprocal. Right. And they're laying out to the American people about, you know, basically Since World War II, we've had these massive imbalances in, in our tariffs as opposed to what they're tariffing upon us. And the idea of some sort of fairness clearly is never going to happen. If you don't force them to have it. Am I reading too much into that or is that this is like we're talking negotiations for the first time in 80 years here?

[Michael Duncan]

Absolutely. No, absolutely. Well, first of all, the fairness principle is NATO defense spending. It's trade, it's investment. There's a fairness across the board. But in the trade realm, you know, we intentionally, we intentionally, it was in America's interest Post World War II to help rebuild Europe, rebuild Japan. We gave the best deal in the world. We basically said, rebuild your economy and have access, unfettered access to the American economy. Then over time, that solidified, particularly in the Republican Party, which free trade's good for you no matter what the other side does. Right, because you're gonna get cheaper goods. And you know, they'll eventually see the error of their ways.

[John Ashbrook]

And they never did.

[Michael Duncan]

They never did. China continued to screw us with subsidies, with lowering the cost of capital, with non tariff barriers, with intellectual property theft. The Europeans are, you know, huge tariffs. I was at the famous dinner with Trudeau and Mar A Lago, and Trudeau sat there right across the table and said, Mr. President, we don't have tariffs. And I absolutely studied this a little bit. And I said, what are you talking about? I mean, what are you talking about? Like my, my state, Pennsylvania has a huge dairy industry. We can't sell a quart of milk in Canada. What are you, what are you talking about? So we have not gotten a fair deal. And the effort to get a fair deal. I agree with the important thing with the tariffs, and I haven't studied this closely. I've seen the initial chart. You're trying to, you're trying to either create fairness by slapping a tariff on that's commensurate with what the other side's doing, or you're trying to get them to eliminate their bears. In an ideal world, everybody lowers their tariffs, lowers their tariffs, and you're in an open, fair relationship. So the important thing is that the people on the other side understand what they need to do to get the tariffs lowered. And is it a currency problem? Are they manipulating the currency? Are they subsidizing like they do in China? There's huge government subsidies for the steel industry as an example. Do they actually have a tariff? Are they blocking entry for US Beef into Japan? What is the thing you're trying to solve? That's what I think the next step in this will be.

[John Ashbrook]

Fascinating, fellas.

[Dave McCormick]

Yeah, I mean, I think the point that you were just making is the right one. And there are so many people in this country who actually have no idea the level of tariffs other countries are charging on us. And hearing President Trump just tick through the list of this country's charging us X, this country's charging us Y, it's illuminating to people because. Because nobody's ever been told until now. Right. You wouldn't know. You wouldn't know. And so the reciprocal nature of what he's trying to do, I think is. Is. It's revolutionary.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, I agree with you. I agree with you. And listen, the other thing I would say is just being around this long enough. I served in the treasury and the President Bush administration think of the US Economy as an aircraft carrier. You got a bunch of dials, right? You got a dial on regulation, you got a dial on government spending, you got a dial on foreign investment, you got to dial on interest rates that the Fed has. You got to dial on tariffs. So what we want to do is get the aircraft carrier zeroed in on a path where it's starting to pick up speed. And some of those things may. May slow growth a little bit. So the tariffs, President Trump said they're going to be a little bumpy. We're not exactly sure what the impact is going to be. He's very forthright about that. But you got the other dials that are moving in the right direction. And, and listen, he's a business guy, so if, if there's some second or third order consequence that wasn't fully envisioned, which there may very well be, who adjust.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, right.

[Michael Duncan]

Like, let's not be ideological about this. We want the economy to grow. We want to do good things for US Workers.

[John Ashbrook]

So the point is to point due north with a little less rudder.

[Michael Duncan]

Exactly right. Exactly.

[John Ashbrook]

I mean. No, I get it. Listen, I've not seen that world the same way over a period of time, but I've come around on this. I understand what they're trying to accomplish. Part of doing that, however, is something you're also an expert on, basically, since you were like a football player in high school, which is this leadership. And you wrote a book that you and your wife that I find absolutely fascinating. Let me grab a copy of this. Who believed in you? And I just, I want to know the concept. You have incredible voices. Most accomplished Americans.

[Josh Holmes]

What a lineup. You can put together a team, huh?

[Michael Duncan]

You got a good lineup.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, it's wild to me. I mean, look, you're connected. Did more than anybody else. But give me the concept and how you.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, it didn't start as a book, you know, We. And the book's been written for a couple years. So what happened was during COVID we, you know, we had our six kids with us. We have six daughters, 24 to 18. They were younger then, obviously.

[Dave McCormick]

What a blessing.

[Michael Duncan]

And they were, you know, they weren't able to see their coaches, their teachers. They were just. We were all disconnected from human connectivity. Dean and I started talking about how a couple mentors had changed our lives. In my case, it was a high school football coach. He was like, I was a bench warmer in my sophomore year. The coach got fired. A new coach came in. He watched all the films, and I'd come in in the fourth quarter when we were losing big or winning big, and he saw something in me, and he pulled me aside and said, listen, you got a shot starting. He made me the co captain. My junior year changed my life. I ended up being an all state football player. Got me into West Point. It was like a critical pivot point. For Dina, it was Kay Bailey Hutchison, the senator, who saw her. She was a waitress in Austin, Texas, working in a restaurant, working in the state senate, and going to. Going to school at University of Texas. Kay Bailey said, why don't you come to Washington, be an intern and get an opportunity? Those kinds of mentorship relationships can literally change everything. So we had that in our mind, and we started to talk to some of our friends who were very successful people. There's generals in here, captains of industry. There's Brian Grazier, who won the Oscar for A Beautiful Mind. There's David Chang, who is the famous chef. There's Tory Burch. There's Sarah Huckabee. There's Wes Moore. Not political at all. Just, hey, who believed in you? Who changed your life? And the stories are just incredible. And so the book is not about the famous people. The book is about the people you've never heard of, who made the famous people famous. And it's trying to reinforce the power of mentoring. I'll say one more word, which is the idea we're gonna. We're donating all the proceeds to veterans groups and mentorship groups. But the idea of this is to get every one of us, and I hope you guys will do this. Who believed in you? Yeah, right. Number one. Number two, if you said thanks, because you're talking to these people that are, you know, bigger than ever. Big, big, sometimes big egos, and almost brings them to tears sometimes when they say, you know what? I never said thanks. They never knew how much they meant to me. And then the third question is, what are you doing to pay it forward? What are you doing to help somebody find their purpose and make a difference? Because by doing that, you can literally change that person's life, change your community, change the world by those people, that next generation leading us forward.

[John Ashbrook]

Oh, it's fascinating.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

Right. I mean, we all have our own.

[Josh Holmes]

That's the thing.

[John Ashbrook]

Stories and our own sort of pathways where there are pivotal moments like that. It doesn't matter if you're, you know, these people who've, like, conquered the world or whether you're just a successful part of your community. It all goes back to a central root of we. You believed in yourself.

[Michael Duncan]

Right?

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah. It's a great concept. That's why I wanted to ask you about the framework of it, because you have to be a certain point in your life, and I think you ran for public office at an absolutely perfect time in your life where you can have that perspective.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, well, and the thing. Yeah, Mark. We were on Mark Levin the other night, and Mark Levin, as you know, is like a. Is a hardcore voice, conservative, pushing the, you know, the strong conservative agenda. And he stopped. He said, this is, you know, at the end of the day, when you're looking back on your life, you're going to look back on the relationships that mattered most, that where you made the biggest difference. And so the books, it's kind of meant to be something bigger than the moment, and it's almost spiritual about how we can each contribute. And one of the key lessons here, referring back to my race, is the first race, is that everybody, the titans of the universe, they've all failed. Failure is part of success. In fact, I'd argue that failure is a thing that happens before success because failure is key to learning. And mentors are often the people that help you take the risk and help you dust yourselves off when you failed. And so helping people have the confidence to jump into the arena that's political life or business or whatever it is, is a big part of. A big part of mentorship.

[Dave McCormick]

Yeah, it's huge. You know, and on this show, we always talk about just a bevy of people who have influenced us in media, and some of them we know better than others. You know, there's this guy who some people may have heard of, Rush Limbaugh.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Dave McCormick]

Who some of us interacted with a little bit personally, but never to the mentorship level. But we like to say that his blood runs through our microphones and his song is in our soul. And we. We absolutely adore the guy and everything that he did in his career, whether he knew it or not, laid the foundation for people like us to try our best to imitate what he's doing or what he did, you know, and so I think. I think this topic is so important in society. It's. It, It's. It's about, you know, because you don't. You. You're working every day. You're putting in every. Everything you have. You don't necessarily think about who's younger than you and what's going to happen when they're coming up.

[John Ashbrook]

Well, and almost so much of it is about taking the risk.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, right.

[John Ashbrook]

As you said.

[Michael Duncan]

Right.

[John Ashbrook]

You know, I mean, life. Life is complicated.

[Michael Duncan]

Right.

[John Ashbrook]

But at some point, you've got. If you're going to be truly successful like the people you have in this book, there's got to be a moment there where somebody inspires you to take a risk that you wouldn't ordinarily take on your realm.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, no doubt. And, you know, in a funny twist of fate, Dean and I had a number of interviews with people beyond the book. And so Clay Travis.

[Dave McCormick]

Oh, yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

Who has Rush's spot.

[Dave McCormick]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

Clay and Buck have Rush's spot and said some version of the same thing. And how Rush, as well as other others, has sort of inspired him. And Byron Donalds talks about, in his. Early in his business career, a woman who. Who saw some real promise in him and it helped. So it's very rare that someone didn't help you become you. And the thing we're trying to create here is intentionality around all of us to both be great mentors, but also as a gift to our children, to try to encourage them to find mentors that help them. Some of the mentors in the book are parents, but at least we found it's hard to be a great mentor as a parent because.

[John Ashbrook]

Because you get your own stuff.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah. And it hears diff. It sounds different. The feedback, the tough love. It sounds different coming from someone who's not in your immediate family. So somebody you can really be vulnerable with, someone who shares your values, someone who is going to devote the time and someone who's going to give you the confidence. Those are the four building blocks of a strong mentorship relationship.

[Comfortably Smug]

Well, listen, you didn't just bring us the books, though. You also brought the beer.

[Michael Duncan]

I did bring the beer, and I.

[Comfortably Smug]

Want to drink it, so I need you to tell me about it.

[Michael Duncan]

So I have been to this. I have been to this brewery. This is Iron City, which is the. It's the key beer in Western Pennsylvania. It's beloved. There's Iron City and Iron City Light. I brought the. I brought the whole milk version for. For you guys. And. And I want to show the milk version. I want to show you this because this was my best day in the Senate since I came when I was on the campaign trail. I was in Butler the day of the shooting, man. And I was up on the stage, actually, in prison Trump. So I literally missed being right in the line of. Of the bullet by a minute. And right before that rally, I met with Mark Fogle's mother. She's 95. So did President Trump. We both promised her that, you know, the moment we got in office, we do our best.

[Dave McCormick]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

And. And she came and visited Dean and me in Pittsburgh. She sat on our couch, she cried, said, I don't think I'm ever going to see my son again. So I become. I joined the Senate. President Trump's obviously elected. Mark, Mark.

[Josh Holmes]

Mark.

[Michael Duncan]

Marco Rubio comes before my committee. My first question is, what are we to do about Mark Fogle? What are we doing? He said, we're working on it.

[John Ashbrook]

I mean, this is the funniest thing. So we've sort of internally joked about this, about how everything you touch turns to gold. Guys in the Senate for, like, all of two weeks, three weeks, and then next thing, you know, the priority that you talked about during the campaign trail, where you sat down, like, it's happening, and obviously, President Trump and his administration deserve enormous amount of credit, but he's sitting there and he's like, yeah, no, I guess we got it done.

[Michael Duncan]

It's a little forced gump. Like, you know, I accept this. I accept the dumb luck associated with it. But. So 22 days in markets released, and President Trump kindly invites us to the White House when he arrives. And so I had never met him. I had talked to his mom. Obviously, she had come to our house in Squirrel Hill. So he walks in, he walks in the White House, he says. And I say, I'm Dave McCormick, and Dino's there with me. And he says, Mr. Squirrel Hill. My mom told me about visiting both of you. It was gave, you know, gave me hope. And Chris D'Aluzio, who's the congressman from. From Pittsburgh, right outside of Pittsburgh, a Democrat and a Navy man, but I'm not holding that against him. Had the good wisdom, either one, had the good wisdom to bring Iron City light with him and handed Mark a bottle. And so, Mark. This is Mark in the Oval Office.

[Dave McCormick]

What a great story.

[Michael Duncan]

Not the Oval Office, but the White House, rather. And it was really, honestly my best day.

[John Ashbrook]

It's so cool.

[Michael Duncan]

And then to talk to his mom and to talk to him, and there was so many great things about it, which is you. You see all the effort come to fruition, but it was also for him to be back to know America stood with him.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

I mean, it. It was really.

[Dave McCormick]

I mean, it's such. It's such a great story because when Obama was president, we all remember when Brittney Griner was brought back and Mark Fogle was just sitting there by himself like, hey, wait a minute, I'm a teacher. What am I, chopped liver?

[Michael Duncan]

Right.

[Dave McCormick]

You know, like, nobody.

[John Ashbrook]

Sorry, I can't dunk.

[Michael Duncan]

Right.

[Dave McCormick]

And then Trump gets in and you're working for it, and he comes back and it was a triumph. It was such a great moment for our country.

[Michael Duncan]

President Trump. Witkoff. Marco. I mean, it was. It was a huge team effort. They. They led the charge.

[Comfortably Smug]

It was.

[Michael Duncan]

It was great to be.

[John Ashbrook]

Oh, it's so great. Listen, Pennsylvania, you made a hell of a choice.

[Josh Holmes]

Outstanding work.

[John Ashbrook]

We're going to be watching everything you're up to, because it's not only with heart, it's with purpose. And you actually have a resume and a background to be able to do it smartly. I mean this sincerely. We watch your stuff in a different way than we watch everybody else's stuff, because we. We feel like it's kind of a pretty.

[Michael Duncan]

Because of Azakowitz.

[John Ashbrook]

Let's spend a minute talking about his chief of staff.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, let's spend a minute. He's trying not to be, but.

[John Ashbrook]

But all of us feel like we've worked for a second.

[Michael Duncan]

We've all worked for a standpoint, so. But the thing that is the lesson of life, and this is the lesson over and over again, is if you can surround yourself with people who are. You're incredibly capable and better than you, you will succeed.

[Comfortably Smug]

It's the theory of the show.

[Michael Duncan]

Right. Honestly, this is it. And so in business, that's. That was in the military. And so one of the great blessings is Mark agreeing to join the effort with me. We're both the same age. We both want to give back.

[John Ashbrook]

Did you have, like, blackmail on him?

[Michael Duncan]

No, apparently. Maybe Dina did. Dina's known him for 25 years. And we had dinner, and we're asking what a good chief of staff would look like, not thinking.

[John Ashbrook]

You did the Dick Cheney move.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, we did the Dick chicken. He did.

[Josh Holmes]

He didn't do it.

[Michael Duncan]

I would say he did not do the Dick Cheney. We did the Dick Cheney move. So we then went back to the hotel room, and I said, is there any chance you think she goes long shot, but I'll ask him. And so I called him, and he said, well, let me think about it, and God bless. Two weeks later, he said he was going to join the effort, and there is nothing better than to walk down the hall on Congress, and people say, you won that one good job. And they said, you hired Mike Ozakow. Oh, my God, I can't believe it. It's a much bigger thing than actually winning the Senate seat in Pennsylvania. But Mark and a great team.

[John Ashbrook]

Dave McCormick, an absolute gentleman, somebody who's in this for all the right reasons. A lot of lessons of leadership. Watch this guy, folks. Just watch what he does. I'm telling you, you're gonna learn a lot about what the future looks like.

[Michael Duncan]

Thanks.

[John Ashbrook]

Appreciate you coming by.

[Michael Duncan]

Thank you, guys. Thanks for making this work.

[Dave McCormick]

Good to see y'all, man. I just absolutely love that guy. He's so smart. He does such a good job for Pennsylvania. They're so lucky to have his point of view representing them in the Senate. And we're lucky that we could have him on the show today.

[John Ashbrook]

He's a pal, friend of the program.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, I paused right there. I mean, I'm gonna go back and see the video of it. But, like, when he said, have you said thank you to that person? I was like, I have not. I got a phone call to make.

[John Ashbrook]

I thought about it deeply.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

Like, it's still. It's sort of, like, affects me.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yeah. It was like a pay it forward sort of mentality to life that I really appreciate.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah. Talk about a guy who got into this line of work. Exactly the right time in life with.

[Josh Holmes]

Perspective and for the right reasons, clearly.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah. It's so good. Thank you to Dave McCormick, your entire staff, for making this happen. Fellas, I think we did it.

[Josh Holmes]

I think so. Absolute banger of an episode. Gentlemen, thank you so much. Minions. Remember, like. And subscribe to the YouTube if you have not yet already. Thank you so much to Senator McCormick. Thank you to the Minions voting in Hack Madness. Go to my profile and vote. So until next time, Minions, Keep the faith. Hold the line on the Libs. We'll see you Tuesday. Stay ruthless.

[John Ashbrook]

Beautiful.

[Michael Duncan]

Anonymous changes each week. It defies genres and expectations.

[John Ashbrook]

For example, our most recent episode, I talked to a woman who survived a murder attempt by her own son. But just the week before that, we just talked the whole time about Star Trek. We've had other recent episodes about sexting in languages that are not your first language or what it's like to get weight loss surgery. It's unpredictable, it's real, it's honest, it's raw. Get beautiful anonymous Wherever you listen to podcasts.