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- [00:00]
Chris Cuomo
It is time to grade the Trump administration six months in, and it is not a one man job. I am Chris Cuomo. Welcome to the Chris Cuomo Project. You have me and the inimitable Gregory Ott here. Why? Because grading is subjective. We know this. Even if you're doing it on a curve, it's still subjective. And I may feel a certain way about things that he doesn't. That doesn't match how people in general feel about it. So let's do it together. What do you say? We're gonna go by category now. Do I like this idea? Yes. I like doing things with Greg. He's funny and smart.
- [00:44]
Gregory Ott
Thank you.
- [00:45]
Chris Cuomo
Do I like the idea of grading? No. Why? First of all, the period is irrelevant. Six months. I feel the same way about turning 55. Like, 50 is a thing. 65 is a thing. I'll even give you. Every decade is a thing. 55 is not a thing. Then all of a sudden I'm turning 55 and people like, oh, that's a thing.
- [01:03]
Gregory Ott
It's nice to celebrate milestones in your life. I think 50, it's like a. You know, fives are like a way of counting, you know, Roman numerals.
- [01:10]
Chris Cuomo
You got your V, that's fine.
- [01:11]
Gregory Ott
Viii. I'm not going to celebrate vii, you know, vii.
- [01:15]
Chris Cuomo
I love when you go Roman.
- [01:16]
Gregory Ott
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Roman numerals, like V, X. Like, you want the V's and the X's, the I's, Forget about it.
- [01:21]
Chris Cuomo
Do your people have numbers?
- [01:23]
Gregory Ott
Yeah, one. I don't speak the language, but I speak the English language.
- [01:29]
Chris Cuomo
He's Scandinavian. Here's my problem. Okay.
- [01:33]
Gregory Ott
We should really get into this, by the way.
- [01:34]
Chris Cuomo
Well, but here's my problem with what we're about to get into. Jeez, he's in such a rush.
- [01:38]
Gregory Ott
We had 10 categories get to.
- [01:40]
Chris Cuomo
I mean, you're the one complaining about. You're listening to most of these podcasts. Takes guys 10 minutes to say hello.
- [01:45]
Gregory Ott
All right.
- [01:46]
Chris Cuomo
No.
- [01:46]
Gregory Ott
Okay. We'll do a three hour version of it. I'll get 50 categories.
- [01:48]
Chris Cuomo
Here's what I'm saying is that it puts pressure on evaluation. That puts pressure on creating false urgency, false conclusions, extreme reckonings, hyperbole. The economy's good. It depends on what do you want to look at. He's been. This is a win. You know, these things are subjective and very often they're at best relative and incremental. So with that, let's go through the categories that should matter. And then, you know, when he gives me A category. I'll say. That doesn't matter enough. Let's grade that later. Okay, so we should be grading on the basis of what matters to the many, not just the view. What do you got?
- [02:28]
Gregory Ott
Well, for these grades, just so you know, I'm handing these to you right now. I'm giving you a B, C, D, and F. Before you complain in the comments. Yes, I know there's an A minus. I know there's a B, I know there's a B minus, etc. And I know that E, I had E in school instead of F. But I think this is a better visual so that when I make the YouTube thumbnail, you can see the. You're holding up an F or something now.
- [02:49]
Chris Cuomo
Do you want me to hold them up?
- [02:50]
Gregory Ott
Yeah. Well, when the final. When we give a grade, you will hold up the ultimate grade in front of the camera, which you're so deft at doing. Okay, great. So I have a list of 10 different categories.
- [03:03]
Chris Cuomo
You want me to do my overall grade first or should we do that last?
- [03:05]
Gregory Ott
We should do that last. Okay, so we'll start with.
- [03:08]
Chris Cuomo
Do you want to know what it is?
- [03:09]
Gregory Ott
Well, do you want people to watch the video?
- [03:11]
Chris Cuomo
Boy, he's getting frustrated. I'm saying, did you just notice a little tone change in our boy? Grundle.
- [03:18]
Gregory Ott
Grundle, okay. If people don't skip the ad you read for some sort of product. What was the product about? Like cleaning your bowl walls or something?
- [03:26]
Chris Cuomo
Yeah, it was mando.
- [03:27]
Gregory Ott
Oh, mando. Okay. Yeah. The grundle is like the taint, right? Yeah, it's the same. It says synonym antonym. What is that on the outside? Cinema. So the grundle is the taint, and this is the content that people have come here to see.
- [03:40]
Chris Cuomo
Content.
- [03:41]
Gregory Ott
Yeah, that's right.
- [03:41]
Chris Cuomo
Continent.
- [03:42]
Gregory Ott
Continent.
- [03:43]
Chris Cuomo
Yeah. As an incontinent.
- [03:45]
Gregory Ott
Oh, oh, great. I thought you meant, like, Asia. Okay, now this is. We're starting with the. Okay, let's. I said Asia. Let's start with foreign policy. Asia is a continent than the one that we're on right now. I have some general. Just some bullet points of things that have happened since the beginning of the Trump second term. You had the Greenland shit. You had the Panama Canal stuff go down. You had the Gulf of America, you had the Iran bombing, everything going on in Israel and Gaza. You've got everything with Ukraine and Putin. So this is not a timid time to be overseeing foreign policy. There's a lot of stuff going on. So what. What do you take from all this stuff?
- [04:28]
Chris Cuomo
I Just said to you, Trump has done too much. Obviously you get an incomplete because there are too many things that are still extant.
- [04:36]
Gregory Ott
I didn't print that one.
- [04:37]
Chris Cuomo
That's okay. But you are an incomplete right now because you have too many things that are ongoing. However, I will give him a B. Wow. Okay. I will give Trump a B. On foreign policy and here's why. Iran alone was a great stopgap measure as long as that regime is in place. It's an extreme Islamist terroristic regime. It oppresses its own people. They are death to us, death to Israel. As long as they exist and are not replaced by something that approximates better, we have an active threat. That said, there's no question that the bombing sent a very strong message to the regime. Their proxies have been beaten down, thanks mostly to Israel, but also American intervention and their nuclear program has been slowed. Is there more to be done? Of course. Now, what about everything else? Well, he's thrown so much shit up in the air or against the wall or whatever metaphor you want. The Ukraine war is still going on, Right? But he hasn't made it worse. The Middle east thing is still going on. Yeah, but he hasn't made it worse. And I think that. Is he benefiting from a low bar? Yeah. Has he hurt or helped our perspective or how people regard us around the world? Depends who you ask. I depend most on Ian Bremmer when it comes to this because of his exposure, his excellence, his acuity, and because I know him. And he would say that we're not as on good terms because of this strong arm tactics with the tariffs and the tariffs kind of overlap domestic and foreign. But given the low expectations that he was going to screw everything up and get us in a lot of trouble, he hasn't really. And I give him a B.
- [06:30]
Gregory Ott
What do you say about Donald the Dove, as some people refer to him with the Iran bombing? You know, he's the one saying it's completely obliterated, destroyed, they'll never do this again. And then of course, the reports that come out and say, nah, they still got the stuff. Like what? I mean, that it seems like he was trying to be definitive. I'm not the war guy, I'm going to end this. And now it's like, all right, you set him back a little bit. Like, did you need to make this decision right now?
- [06:53]
Chris Cuomo
Like, look, you can always choose to do nothing. And he has done this before. He bombed inside Syria first time he was there. And I think that non population centers and going at Things versus people is much more saleable to him. And Syria. Assad was doing bad shit to his people. They're still doing bad shit to their people in Syria, and nobody gives a damn in America. The Druze situation, this ethnic minority, they're technically derivative of Islam, but they're not Muslims anymore. They're being cleansed, and nobody gives a shit because it's not Gaza. So is he a dove? No, he's a pretty hostile guy and an aggressive guy in general.
- [07:38]
Gregory Ott
Just his aura.
- [07:39]
Chris Cuomo
Yeah, I don't think he's a dove, but I think he finds foreign intervention low percentage. And what he did is, was a high percentage move. No boots on the ground, not a lot of money relatively in terms of, you know, the investment over time. And it got done what he needed to get done. I think it was a minimalist approach. Now, you could say, oh, you should have just negotiated. There's no negotiating with the despotic regime. What he just did with the equipment that's going to Ukraine and having the surrounding countries pay for it.
- [08:13]
Gregory Ott
Yeah, that's very interesting.
- [08:15]
Chris Cuomo
Good move getting NATO in. Yeah, good move.
- [08:17]
Gregory Ott
It seems like he and Mark Ruta have a really good or not a good, but like a pretty working relationship.
- [08:23]
Chris Cuomo
Productive at this point. Look, NATO is exactly what Putin doesn't want. The only high ground that Putin has, and I don't think he has any high ground. But the only suggestion of rationale for any type of use of force would be that he's getting surrounded by NATO and they're gonna try to come at him. Now, I don't believe that that's true. I don't think it's plau. But Trump just brought NATO in in a way that Biden never did. So he just stuck a thumb in Putin's eye in a way that also goes into my grade of a B.
- [08:57]
Gregory Ott
Okay, you said this is already kind of related, so we'll move on to economy. We have the on again, off again tariffs that seem to change pretty routinely. Then you have the big, beautiful bill, which had these giant tax breaks for rich people and all, all sorts. You've talked about that before many times in the show, about how it's benefiting you, not the average person across the board. Then you got all the CRYP stuff, not only just like Trump's personal family, but the legislation in Congress. They're incredibly crypto friendly. And Trump himself with a crypto coin, as you, as we all know. So what's, what's your economic rating? Oh, a D. That's a. He's holding up a D. It's a.
- [09:31]
Chris Cuomo
One away from F. And here's why. He inherited an economy that was going the right way. Tariffs are a legitimate negotiating tactic. He did not use them effectively or well. He was too heavy handed. He had to pull back. He created a freneticism in the markets, chaos in the markets that maybe some people around him cashed in on. Gas prices are down. Not for the right reasons. And don't say it doesn't matter. It does. Why they're down matters because they're reflecting less demand and they're reflecting how much we're bringing in and they're reflecting an overall drop around the world. We don't know how the tariffs are going to settle in terms of our cost structure. There's a lot of uncertainty. There are a lot of people who are selling the US Dollar. He did a lot of things in ways that he didn't have to. His fight with Jerome Powell is counterproductive. I give him a D. He could have done a lot better in this regard and he still can.
- [10:32]
Gregory Ott
Well, the biggest issue so many people talked about going into the election was, you know, the price of eggs, the everyday stuff. You know, I'm, I'm gas and groceries. Gas and groceries. As somebody who's like, wants to buy a co op here in New York City, I'm looking at, you know, interest rates all the time and all this stuff and nothing has really materially improved since the Biden administration at least the last few years.
- [10:53]
Chris Cuomo
And he'll say blame Powell because he didn't lower it, but that's not fair. We've put so much money into the economy, we've made so much money. And the Fed has to be worried about inflation. Oh, we have inflation under control. We do not know that. And by the way, has moved in the wrong direction. Not a lot, but there's so much money in the system. Trump has added to that and he did it in his last one also. And the bill blows our budget.
- [11:25]
Gregory Ott
Yeah, Trillions.
- [11:26]
Chris Cuomo
Blows the debt and blows the deficit to reward people with a tax cut. That is magical thinking in terms of trickle down economics. He gets a D all day long.
- [11:36]
Gregory Ott
If Trump were to fire Powell, would that change your grade at all from a D to A? Because I asked. Because if you look at the stock market, whenever he talks about doing this, it drops and he's like, I'm not going to do it. Then it goes back up and it would be a huge deal.
- [11:47]
Chris Cuomo
I mean, I don't count it as an economy move. It's a leadership move. And I think that his chaotic approach and his statements and how people around him have monetized his up and downs, I think are horrible leadership tactics. And I think getting rid of Powell this way would be a horrible leadership tactic. Would I put it into the economy grade? No, because he doesn't really have control over rates. So that is separate. And how he deals with rates goes into the economy. But what he does with Powell, I see more as a leadership grade.
- [12:32]
Gregory Ott
Here's a big one. Immigration in general. You got all this money going to ICE now he's got the alligator Alcatraz set up. And with this new ICE money, they're looking at building more tent cities and different places to round up immigrants. Legal, illegal, or, you know, however, people are getting snared in this, this net. There's the reports, these bad conditions in some of these places. And this is obviously the biggest thing Trump has been running on since build the Wall, since he could, you know, this was his very first speech. Running for President in 2015 was on. On this subject matter. So what is your, your grade thus far?
- [13:08]
Chris Cuomo
Here's how I'll do it in explaining my grade.
- [13:11]
Gregory Ott
Okay. You're shuffling a lot of papers around. So I'm so. Yeah. And don't spell a word or something. It has to be. Yeah. Okay.
- [13:20]
Chris Cuomo
Immigration should be a grade of A for this administration because they campaigned on it. People wanted the southern border secured. That has happened. So they should have N A. But instead it immediately drops to by. Because securing the southern border was the easiest thing to do.
- [13:41]
Gregory Ott
Okay.
- [13:42]
Chris Cuomo
He didn't even need legislation to do it. And in point of fact, he has not gotten major legislation which is absolutely necessary to create the kind of system for immigration that we need in this country. And he chose to do a tax cut bill instead. So that immediately. Immediately drops him. Then the grade gets lower. Why? Because the idea of deporting everyone who's entered this country illegally is illogical. I don't know that it would be legal. I don't know that logistically it would make sense without almost bankrupting the country in terms of how expensive that would be. And the message that it sends is un American. And not that the law doesn't matter. The law does matter, but not everyone who enters illegally is the same. And he knows this. See, this is my problem with people who come at me and saying, you know, with this really facile argument that, look, entering is illegal. Right, Chris? Yeah. Entering is illegal if you don't come the right way. Right. If you Go. If you sneak across whatever it is, you overstay your visa. That's illegal. Okay, so that's it. The analysis is over. You gotta go. No, because we have a culture here of allowing people to overstay and allowing them to be hired and not going after the employers the way we do the employees. Okay? And all of that bothers me and takes me to a C. And now we're gonna go down another level. And here's why. Here's why. And yes, I know that this was a big win for him in the election. I get it. I said it during the campaign. The Democrats fucked this up, I believe, on purpose. The ICE policy has to change. It has to change not just for farmers and hospitality workers, okay? You gotta take care of the dreamers. And you have to distinguish between the people who are bad hombres and who are here making our country better. And the president is not speaking to that loudly enough. He said it. He then had to back off to protect MAGA because you were all pissed off that he was being anything but harsh. And now he's back there again. And they're going to change their policy. And when they change their policy, I'll change my grade. But I cannot look at what's happening with ice. And first of all, you're putting the ICE men and women in a bad position where they're paying a price for your policy. I don't like it. Second, you can't look at what's happening in these communities around the country and the fear and getting the wrong people. And you can say, oh, it's just a few, but there doesn't need to be any. And you know, you're grabbing people. The non criminal to criminal ratio, well, those numbers aren't exactly the way they're supposed to. Then report them differently. But what you told us was, hey, we're going to round up all the people who killed Lake and Riley, right? As a metaphor, that's not what you're doing. And when you start doing it the way you promised to do it, which is finding ways to keep the people we need who are doing it the right way, who are building communities who are born here or brought here, instead of trying to get rid of birthright citizenship, which is unconstitutional, okay, you want to have the legal battle, fine. But I think you're mucking this up with a harshness and an expediency of extremism and playing to the extreme. That is a mistake. And that's why you're barely passing when you should have an A yeah, you're.
- [17:11]
Gregory Ott
Holding up the D. What. What is keeping it from being an F?
- [17:15]
Chris Cuomo
He secured the southern border. He is doing what he promised, which was to get people out of the country.
- [17:21]
Gregory Ott
Credit for that.
- [17:22]
Chris Cuomo
But he's not gotten legislation. We're not dealing with people being allowed to stay. There's no even discussion of a work visa program. And you're not getting them what they need on the border, which are rule changes about asylum and their ability to process Alcatraz, alligator. Alcatraz, whatever the hell that thing is called. You know, you need, like, much, much more capacity to hold people in a humane way, process them in a way that respects the constitutional due process and move them through the system faster. And you're not doing any of those things because you're doing what's easy and optical, which is, let's round them up, let's find the bad guys. You know, those are the good optics. That's the good. Those are the good pictures, the photo ops. I don't judge it that way. And you should have an A. I'm giving you a D. Change the policies, the grade will change.
- [18:15]
Gregory Ott
All right, let's move on to crime and justice. And I kind of have a lot of different things in here because it seems as though they have deprioritized going after, like, white collar crime. This kind of ties in a lot of the crypto stuff, like Justin's son. You have the lawfare, you know, because there was a lot of. You could call it lawfare with the previous administration, with going after Trump and, you know, getting him convicted on all this stuff. But now he's going after Adam Schiff for, like, mortgage fraud, Letitia James for some real estate deal. Then he got all the Epstein stuff with, you know, the FBI and Bongino and all those guys, so. And Pam Bondi and yeah, crime and justice is a. It's a pretty broad category.
- [18:55]
Chris Cuomo
And look, I would argue with the designation. I don't think it's crime and justice. I think it's lawfare. I think it's payback.
- [19:03]
Gregory Ott
So you just call this all lawfare? Oh, yeah.
- [19:05]
Chris Cuomo
And it gets an F bomb all day long. We have to stop prosecuting our political opponents. And he is doing exactly what the Democrats did. And the only people who can't see that are extreme maga. Everybody else sees that you're doing what they did. They don't like you. They are suspicious of you. They're going to look and they're gonna find something and they're gonna prosecute you if they Can. You're doing the same fucking thing. It's a distraction from the concerns of the many what will make this country better. And it is just proof of how we got to this bad place in the first place. And I do not condone it. And it's so easy to rationalize what they're doing with Obama. I was the hunted and now I'm the hunter. It's bad. It's toxic. Oh, no, it's just enforcing the laws. Bullshit. No, it isn't. You want to change the culture. Change the culture with your own actions and not going after other people, but how you comport yourself. Instead of cashing in on gentlemen's clubs and crypto and all these other things that create a bad standard, focus on that instead of punishing other people.
- [20:21]
Gregory Ott
So this is your first fucking.
- [20:22]
Chris Cuomo
Yeah, yeah, as far as I know.
- [20:23]
Gregory Ott
Okay, so so far we have. On foreign policy, we have a B. Economy, we have a D. Immigration, we have a D. Crime and justice, F. This is not. This is not a good report card so far. If I give this to my parents, they'd be very upset.
- [20:37]
Chris Cuomo
Well, look, I mean, a lot of these grades are set up against what I think is potential here. And I. I think especially on immigration, you could be doing so much better. Economy's tricky, but in terms of lawfare, I mean, that's a layup to. To get an A. It's a layup, and you got to work for an F. And that's what he's doing.
- [21:03]
Gregory Ott
Well, we. I said I had 10 categories. These are kind of quicker ones because there hasn't been a lot of action on. On some of these. So next up is infrastructure. I remember Infrastructure Week was a huge joke during the first administration of Trump because he kept promising all these projects and they never quite happened. He did pull some money from that California high speed rail program that never really went anywhere. That was like, what, $7 billion or something like that. There's all the air traffic control issues that's been going on in especially like, Newark near us. And I think they're going to take over the. The Penn Station project, which they've been trying to revitalize forever. So to me, those are like, big picture. Like a lot of people are, you know, getting around and stuff. Like, those are some big picture infrastructure things. But what do you. What do you.
- [21:42]
Chris Cuomo
I give them a C because while I think a lot of it is noise, not signal, messing with, the FAA saying it's the air traffic controllers say it was dei. You know, none of that bore Out. It was all bullshit. Just playing to prejudice, playing to extremism in our politics. He wanted to kill the infrastructure bill and the caucus went crazy because Republican constituencies around the country did better under the Biden infrastructure bill than Democratic ones because the need was greater. And so they cautioned him to get rid of it. And so he's left that alone. He's done some other things that are good from an infrastructure perspective. And so I'll give him a C. I'll give him a passing grade. But he could do better if he gets out of the mindset of trying to negate Biden instead of just focusing on what's better for this country.
- [22:33]
Gregory Ott
Kind of along those lines. I've got this category of environment and climate, which I'm sure most people can immediately give a grade on. But there's like, ending the support for federal subsidies for like solar and wind power and things like that. Wanting more oil and gas drilling and trying to prioritize those industries over. Over green ones or ones people consider green.
- [22:53]
Chris Cuomo
This is going to be a surprise grade. Okay, I'm going to give him a C. Wow.
- [22:57]
Gregory Ott
Yeah, that is a surprise.
- [22:58]
Chris Cuomo
And here's why everybody's going to say, what are you talking about? He hates the environment. 1. I don't know that that's true, but him removing the subsidies. I'm not a fan of the subsidies. These. Our grid is not where it needs to be. He's not addressing that, but some of his people are. And they want it to be an agenda item. They want it to be a bigger focus. Our power grid. Grid can't handle more power. So we're not set up for solar, for wind, for any of these things. And they are highly inefficient and they are largely subsidized. And I think that on the fuel side, we went too fast. We're not ready for all EVs. How do we make the electricity? We use fossil fuels to make the electricity that you then want me to charge my car with. So we're not ready. And making those batteries isn't the best thing for the environment either at this point.
- [23:48]
Gregory Ott
Point.
- [23:49]
Chris Cuomo
And the price point isn't right. You gotta find a way to better through fossil fuels. Okay. While you can. Especially natural gas. And I'm okay with that. I give them an average grade.
- [24:01]
Gregory Ott
Here's the thing with, with solar. There's this great New Yorker report that just came out. I'm showing this at the screen.
- [24:07]
Chris Cuomo
Oh, hold on.
- [24:08]
Gregory Ott
We're gonna cut most of this out. But this is. Chris has some Sort of a sump pump problem or something wrong with his boat. So Chris keeps getting phone calls, but you're having your boat repaired or something and this guy triggered some sort of alarm or something. And so is that what's.
- [24:27]
Chris Cuomo
Yeah, like government is pain management. It is dealing with problems.
- [24:34]
Gregory Ott
Right.
- [24:35]
Chris Cuomo
And how you deal with them dispositionally is as important as how you do in terms of action or inaction. And this is actually a segue. The reason that some of these grades are reflective of low scores is because the President could be doing a lot better with them. And sometimes it's just attitudinal, it's just how he's dealing with it, how he talks about alternative power, how he talks about migrants, how he talks about different things that are happening in the economy. Look, the whole Epstein debacle is about hyperbole and about how things are discussed. So these grades, to me, a failing grade is easy to give. Something short of that, that shows the potential, I think is a more honest assessment.
- [25:27]
Gregory Ott
Potential is interesting because I want to push back on your grade for the environment and energy stuff because there's this New Yorker article that came out pretty recently and it kind of goes over how well solar is doing. And I'm just scrolling through this. It's like people are putting up a gigawatts worth of solar panels, the equivalent of power generated by one coal fired plant every 15 hours. Last year, 96% of global demand for new electricity was met by renewables. In the US 93% of new generating capacity came from solar, wind and batteries and such. It goes on and on like this. But it's not like, obviously Trump likes all the oil stuff. You remember there was like, they were, the oil industry was trying to put more stuff in the big beautiful bill before that went through. It's just a, the technology seems to be getting much better. And I, I see your point about it is this. You can't, you can't just switch it on and off. No pun intended.
- [26:16]
Chris Cuomo
My point is, look, you're right, it's getting better. Then don't subsidize it. If it's getting so much better, if it's creating so much market share and so much commerce, then stop artificially supporting it and let the market decide.
- [26:28]
Gregory Ott
But the market that's controlled by these massive oil companies have more money than anything. It's like it is incredibly hard to compete with something like that. You know what I mean? It's like, well, we're still making this, we're trying to get this industry up and running while this other one is just a behemoth, you know, you can't really outrun it.
- [26:44]
Chris Cuomo
Well, even if that were true, too bad. I mean, that's the nature of competition. What do you want me to do? Like give you a 10 yard head start because you just can't beat me in a race?
- [26:54]
Gregory Ott
No, but I'm saying, I'm saying that for a. There are other benefits besides, oh, the technology a little bit better. It's like, it's also cleaner. It's better for our planet. We're not digging up all this. We are putting something in. You know, Trump doesn't like the way a windmill looks on a golf course. So it's like, oh, I hate the wind, it's killing the birds. It's like, that's all bullshit. He just doesn't want us in the.
- [27:13]
Chris Cuomo
Background of his golf course. That is bullshit. And a lot of his resistance may be bullshit. But there's also something to be said about us trying to move and transition before we're ready, certainly before the consumer base is ready, before the economics make sense, before the productivity of it makes sense. And I don't think it's as easy as the way the Democrats have made it with their goals and their standards, especially when it comes to EVs and the obvious. Politics aside, the left loved Elon Musk, now the left hates Elon Musk and it's all about Trump. Right? So you have all these lefties driving Teslas with bumper stickers saying, I bought this before Elon went crazy. It shows you how much of this is politics versus actually good policy. And I think that the only thing that makes sense is an all strategy. Use your fossil fuels. You try to get them to be cleaner and cleaner technologies and expand your infrastructure and your capacity and your ability to carry higher power to transmissions and where you can get reach of different kinds of power transmission and Internet access and different types of access and then you evolve that way. That's the intelligent way to do it. We have not had anybody do it that way.
- [28:31]
Gregory Ott
Environment and climate gets a C from you. How about healthcare? I feel like there has not been a ton of discussion of healthcare in general because it's more of a Democratic priority. But there are those giant Medicaid cuts in the big beautiful bill. But they're trying to go after Medicare and Medicaid, any sort of service like that. And with all this stuff, there's also like the Obamacare subsidies, they're being reduced, I think. And so like the people's premiums are going to go up for next year. And this is the kind of thing that's going to affect many of Trump's own supporters. And then you have a guy like Josh Hawley who's trying to put out the rescission bill to, like, go after the cuts that he just voted for. We have a leadership category coming up, but I'm curious. But yep, there's the F. That's an F. He's holding up on healthcare.
- [29:14]
Chris Cuomo
Absolutely. You're punishing the least fortunate. You're punishing the people who need the most help. And you're doing it for this fantastical notion that it's about waste. And that's not what it is. It's not that people on Medicaid don't work. This stigma that if you're poor, you're lazy has got to die. And what hurts me is that there's so many people who voted for the president who are going to be affected by this. There's so many rural communities and health hubs that are going to be affected by this. And the change in the reimbursement rates. Now, two things are almost always true at the same time. Have certain states abused the reimbursement rates and done things that they shouldn't have done and paid for things in a way that they shouldn't have, covered things that they shouldn't have? Yes. So deal with that. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. And that's extremism and that's playing with fringe politics. And you shouldn't fuck around with healthcare. And we've done enough of it in this country already. Has done nothing to make it better. He's done things that are going to put more stress on the system, and he's done it for political expediency by playing to extreme ideas. And he gets an F. How about education?
- [30:28]
Gregory Ott
I feel like there's not been a lot of coverage of this, but there is the ending to Department of Education. But, you know, there's. Living in New York, I feel like as somebody who is like a kid now, it's like I actually. It's such a confusing mess for me with, like, I look up on Chat GPT yesterday, like I didn't know what a charter school was. And so there's, and you hear about the, like, waivers and charter schools and all this stuff. So it's the whole industry and the whole apparatus is very confusing to me. And so I'm, I'm still wrapping my head around it as having not been in the education system. For. For quite some time or no time at all, based on what your viewers think. So what would you, what would you give the. The education?
- [31:03]
Chris Cuomo
Well, look, first of all, he didn't get rid of the Department of Education.
- [31:06]
Gregory Ott
Okay. He put out.
- [31:07]
Chris Cuomo
Does he want to? Yes. Should he? I'm not sure. I'm not going to give him a grade on getting rid of the Department of Education, but I will give him. And incomplete. Because you have no plan for what to do after that? Oh, just leave it to the states. You mean like reproductive rights? Which he gets a big fat fucking F on, by the way. Shouldn't have, you know, and the Supreme Court gets an F, by the way. But reproductive rights is one of the biggest steps back in this country in a very long time. And I don't feel the same way about affirmative action being erased because I think that there are other mechanisms to enhance or increase. Enhance engender equality in this country than just having to have the legal standard that was in place. But with education, you've done nothing to make it better. Now, I'll give you one thing that he's done to make it better. The woke thing. And what's being put on kids, I believe was exaggerated. I think the book burning was bullshit. I think the trans stuff was exaggerated. And was pun punishing a group that's already targeted and victimized beyond their threat profile. Yes. You don't want a guy who looks like me playing high school basketball against your daughter. I get it, I get it. But we're talking about such rare, rare instances, but one is too many. Fine. I think he was in the right place on that issue. And culturally, how much of that is part of education? I don't know. But. But that mattered. And what kids are allowed to be exposed to by the local boards matters. Now, I think that it works against him wanting to get rid of federal oversight, because how do you control what happens in some states, not others, in terms of what they want kids to pick up on the curriculum through federal oversight. Now you're trying to get rid of it. So I don't know that this is about better as much as it is about punishing. And while he can be in the right place culturally on one particular aspect of it, I don't know that he's made the system better overall. I give him an incomplete.
- [33:24]
Gregory Ott
Incomplete. Okay, we have two more categories to get through, and they're both combined categories. This one is civil rights and democracy. Sending the National Guards and Marines to the ICE protests to try to quell those. But you Know, they went. They kind of did nothing, and then they went back home.
- [33:39]
Chris Cuomo
They may still be there. Are they. Are they. They. Did they go home or are they still there?
- [33:42]
Gregory Ott
Some people have been recalled. So. But the reports in New York Times of, like, all these guys just, like, sitting around on the floor playing on their phone. And then also, this is this tiny ties into, like, the media in general, and not just like, you know, PBS being defunded or whatever, but the way that the press has been treated in the. In the. In the press corps. So having, like, you're putting the podcasters in the briefing room, and then the Epstein story comes out, and just like, they kicked out the Associated Press for not liking the Gulf of America stuff. Oh, journal, you're out. Because, know you.
- [34:11]
Chris Cuomo
You.
- [34:11]
Gregory Ott
This. He put out that Epstein thing about that fun little birthday card. Trump. Trump allegedly wrote his friend Jeff.
- [34:17]
Chris Cuomo
I mean, look, this is. This is through the looking glass, okay? If you're a maga, most of the grades that I've given are A's, okay? Because you just wanted them talking about it, and you just wanted your pound of flesh. You just wanted the comeuppance. You just wanted the harshness. I'm about better. And this is an A or a D based on your perspective of what you want the dialogue to be like in this country. I want leaders who show us at our best. I didn't run for office, and I would never run for office for a reason, okay? I'm not a leader. I don't exhibit the virtues and the highest qualities that I can often enough in enough situations to see myself as a standard. We deserve that, though, in our leaders. And there's so many people who do check those boxes that the President talking down to the media, except when they kiss his ass. Sending in the military. Look, I could argue that that made sense the way he did it. No. But the need for it. Yes. Protest versus riot. Yes. Making people know that they can't destroy their communities just because they're upset about policy. Yes. But the way he talks about it, I don't think is constructive. I think it's punitive, it's harsh, it's aggressive, and that doesn't make us better. But if you're maga, I'm sure you love it. I'm sure you love it. A. A. All day long. So what am I saying? I'm not maga. Fuck no, I'm not maga. I would never join a political party. I think they're the problem. I think we have to get rid of them. But I just. But in fairness, I don't think we get to a better place with the way he deals with the media. I don't think we get to a better place with the way he deals with dissent. So sending the military in, yeah, sure. You're going to have less community destruction. Good God forbid they kill somebody and you have a legal issue about why they were there in the first place because the governor didn't ask for them, which is the way you're supposed to activate it. Otherwise you risk posse comitatus.
- [36:33]
Gregory Ott
Posse comitatus?
- [36:34]
Chris Cuomo
Yes.
- [36:35]
Gregory Ott
Is that an insult?
- [36:36]
Chris Cuomo
That's an std. Posse comitatus is. You never want a comitatus.
- [36:41]
Gregory Ott
What was that ass you're talking about earlier?
- [36:43]
Chris Cuomo
Means that a group that is formed to enforce the law, you do not use the military for that. Remember in the cowboy days, round up a posse.
- [36:51]
Gregory Ott
Yeah, my cowboy days. Yeah.
- [36:54]
Chris Cuomo
Looking at that shirt.
- [36:55]
Gregory Ott
That's not a cowboy shirt. I don't think a cowboy would wear this. And what about the audio audience? They can. They can't see this.
- [37:02]
Chris Cuomo
But I'm sure that the MAGA would give a lot of these categories A's.
- [37:06]
Gregory Ott
Well, yeah, I mean, I'm asking you for your opinion, right? Your. Your ranking. Yes. Maga, they're going to get all these A's. Except for maybe the Epstein stuff.
- [37:12]
Chris Cuomo
Yeah, I. Look, these are also not even interim grades. And I think that he could do and could score really good grades on just about every category you've talked about. Except in the way he dress, addresses things. Things verbally. Because his messaging. Look, he said something once that was very awkward but is actually really true. The President once said, I don't know if he was president at the time or if he was just Citizen Trump, but he was responding to somebody's eloquence and saying, well, I can say that I know all the words. I know all the best words. And it was, of course, you know, mocked. But. And he does know how to sell anything to anybody. I believe that. And I'm not saying it as a criticism, I'm saying it as a compliment. And he could talk to the country and attach to the majority if he wanted to. He absolutely could. He is making a choice to play to the fringe and to play to extreme ideas, and that's his choice. But I do not think it leads to a legacy of greatness for a president because it's never before.
- [38:20]
Gregory Ott
The last category actually ties into this is leadership and governance. And I kind of put doge in here because I feel like he brought this whole thing in to analyze the government. Let's find waste, fraud and abuse. And instead, in some weird way actually ended up being waste, fraud and abuse on its own. And then you have like, the actual leadership of Trump, which is like, he's very similar as he was as a previous president, which is the way he treats social media and speaks to people. And, you know, in the past few days, have you seen that Snake video he put out there? It's like he's just kind of wasting people's time. And then I think of the, the immigration memes that are coming out and using like, AI to sort of laugh at people who are going to Alligator Alcatraz and things like that. Like, it's a really weird way to use your platform. And it's, it's, it's like a performative cruelty. And again, I'm sure if you're listening to this, like, okay, liberal asshole, it's like. No, no, I'm just saying, like, if you look at the things they're putting out in. Yeah. At Trump's direction, I would imagine.
- [39:18]
Chris Cuomo
I don't like harshness as strength. I don't like bullies. I was bullied as a kid. I learned to fight, to fight back against bullies. I would often pick fights I was going to lose. It has not changed to this day. And I'm still, I'm way too old to be putting hands on people because they deserve it in a moment. But it's another reason I'm not a leader and I don't run for office. But look, it's an F all day long in terms of him being a unifier. It's an F all day long. It's not even a close call to me, especially because he's capable of so much more than he is. But I'll tell you what, I will give him a C in the category that you were referring to a little bit earlier, which is a little bit crazy, which is I give him a C in terms of his discussion of things that matter in America. Sometimes he hits on something where people in the majority are and the media, special interests have distracted us from it. And so why do you just give him a C? Why don't you give him a B or an A? Because he could do better, that's why. But at least he's doing it.
- [40:33]
Gregory Ott
So I give him a circle on leadership and governance.
- [40:36]
Chris Cuomo
On leadership and governance, I give him a C. I could give him a B. I'll give him a B. I'll give him a B.
- [40:45]
Gregory Ott
You're Giving Trump a B on leadership. And you're changing your grade.
- [40:47]
Chris Cuomo
And I'll tell you why. In terms of. Here's how I break it down.
- [40:52]
Gregory Ott
No, I'm just. I'm trying to keep track of all this. Yeah, no, no, it's fine.
- [40:55]
Chris Cuomo
In terms of governance, I'll give them a B. And here's why. Because the grade is not about the outcomes, it's about the effort. And he is doing a lot. And he's doing a lot of what he promised he would do. Some things he's not Epstein. Transparency. I hear you, I hear you. But he's doing a lot of things. He's very active. In fact, in terms of leadership. Leadership. I fail him because he can do better than dividing us. And he really does have the facility and the skill set to do it. It. Now in terms of effort.
- [41:34]
Gregory Ott
An A for effort. Okay.
- [41:37]
Chris Cuomo
I mean, the guy is on 24, 7, 365.
- [41:40]
Gregory Ott
He does it.
- [41:41]
Chris Cuomo
Yeah, the guy, the president is on it 24, 7, 365. Yes. He golfs his ass off. I don't have any problem with that. I don't. If he was a golfer, if he was a lifter, if he was a tennis player, if he was a surfer, if he was a boater, a fisherman, bush. Do it. Live your life. Live your life and just be available and be thinking about it. I don't want you locked in a fucking box 24, seven. You're not going to be at your best. You got to move, you got to breathe, you got to eat, you got to sleep, you got to think, you got to fuck, you got to do all these things. You got to be a man in full. You got to be a woman in full. You got to be a person in full. And that's what we should want in our leadership. I want him to enjoy his family, I want him to enjoy nights out. I want him to live his passions. And look, I mean this job kills. This is the only guy I know who doesn't look 50 years older after he was president. Now.
- [42:37]
Gregory Ott
Yeah, but he's got a lot of coloring, like makeup, inches and inches.
- [42:41]
Chris Cuomo
But I mean these guys, this kills them, this job.
- [42:43]
Gregory Ott
But he's not a real looking person. Yeah, like Obama goes gray. Okay.
- [42:48]
Chris Cuomo
But it still stands to stands as fact that he doesn't look as bad after being president the first time. I know those guys do.
- [42:56]
Gregory Ott
He's got kind of the same paper mache head. You know what I mean? You pull some of that back.
- [43:00]
Chris Cuomo
But be that as it may, he looks Kind of like he did when he came in, which is rare because they usually look like their own father by the time they get out. But I give him an A for an effort because the man is absolutely all over the place. Now, I've always found this to be a very. So. So Metric. Mushy metric, let's say effort. Yeah. Like, I don't give a. How hard you're trying. We're not grading.
- [43:21]
Gregory Ott
We're not grading.
- [43:21]
Chris Cuomo
But what you're trying to do is bad. What do I care how much effort you're putting into it? But I do realize that there is something to being energetic. And I think Biden did remind us of that. That, you know, we. I lived it with Reagan, but I was young. I wasn't on the job yet, which is, you know, we can't have a president who's not, you know, anywhere near their best. You can't have that.
- [43:43]
Gregory Ott
Well, there's that old report that Trump believes that exercise doesn't do anything because the body is like a battery, and so you have a limited amount of energy.
- [43:52]
Chris Cuomo
It's one of the craziest things he says.
- [43:53]
Gregory Ott
So you don't believe that.
- [43:55]
Chris Cuomo
It's not that I don't believe it. I know that's bullshit. And by the way, you know who else knows it? Every one of his kids. Every one of his kids is incredibly physical and athletic and active. So unless they all want to die real soon, obviously they believe in a different thing called science.
- [44:15]
Gregory Ott
This is just. I don't. I don't spend a lot of time on Eric's socials. Is he, like, what, a golfer, too? Like, what, does he swim?
- [44:21]
Chris Cuomo
Yeah, they're all athletes.
- [44:23]
Gregory Ott
Don points his gun at the. You know, the polar bears.
- [44:25]
Chris Cuomo
I don't know about the young one, but Don Jr. Is.
- [44:28]
Gregory Ott
Well, Baron should be playing basketball or.
- [44:30]
Chris Cuomo
I don't. I don't know that he does, but he could. He's sporty. Ivanka is a fitness person. Her husband's a fitness person. Eric's a fitness person. His wife.
- [44:41]
Gregory Ott
I don't know Eric's whole.
- [44:43]
Chris Cuomo
You know, I mean, you know, the grandkids are sporting.
- [44:46]
Gregory Ott
Tiffany. We've got Tiffany.
- [44:47]
Chris Cuomo
I don't know her as well. I don't know her life. But the. I'm just saying, this is one of the craziest things that comes.
- [44:54]
Gregory Ott
The battery. The battery is the idea that don't.
- [44:57]
Chris Cuomo
Exercise because you have a finite amount of gas in the tank. Think.
- [45:00]
Gregory Ott
All right, so I have you. You have a final grade you wanted to give at the Very end. Hold on. Wait, wait. Let me give you each of your grades that you've gone through so far. Foreign policy, B. Economy, D. Immigration. D. Crime and justice. F. Infrastructure, C. Environment and climate. C. Healthcare. F. Education, Incomplete. Civil Rights and democracy. You gave it an A or a D, depending on if you're MAGA or not. Leadership and governance. You gave a B. This all sounds right to you?
- [45:32]
Chris Cuomo
Yeah.
- [45:33]
Gregory Ott
What would your overall grade be? Before I tell you what it actually.
- [45:36]
Chris Cuomo
Is, I'll tell you what. Well, I can tell you what it is in terms of the. The averages. I know.
- [45:42]
Gregory Ott
I'm trying. I'm just trying to do it for the show here.
- [45:44]
Chris Cuomo
Overall, I'll give him a C. Oh, and now, mathematically, arithmetically, that doesn't come out that way.
- [45:50]
Gregory Ott
No, it's a D according to Chad. GPT.
- [45:51]
Chris Cuomo
Yeah. But I'm going to give you. I'm going to give you a C, and here's why. Because you have been much more active. You have a lot more going on than most administrations. Now, you can argue that as a virtue or a vice. I see it as more virtue than vice. And I believe that you are capable of doing much better than you have to this point. I think that there could be a renaissance. And I get that people hate him and hate who he is. I am not in that number, okay? Now, my one hedge is I don't hate anyone, okay? I don't invest that kind of power in someone else over me, all right? Because I see what it's like when people have allowed someone to persuade them about me in a way, and the power it gives me over them in terms of their thoughts, their feelings. I don't give that power to anyone. And I don't believe one of my big beefs with this. This Coldplay Cam thing is, my God, we have gotten way too lustful of other people's misery. And if you don't think that that makes you sick. If you don't think that's going to come back on you, not because of some magical thinking like karma or something like that, but just the more you reinforce that we want to get other people and bring them down all the time, you're going to get your turn. I promise you that. That and, well, not me. I don't do that. Oh, good. It's nice to meet you, Jesus. Because, you know, even he made mistakes. Okay, here's my point. There's a renaissance potential here. Ice. These policies don't work this way. Not for America. We got to be more inclusive. There's got to be mercy, there's got to be grace, there's got to be efficiencies, there's got to be balancing of punishment, but also productivity. And I think Trump knows that. Will he act on it? I don't know. I think there's a chance that we can get the Middle east and Ukraine to a better place, and I think that he wants that, and I think that there's a chance it happens. I think that there are other policy areas that he has a chance of doing the right thing on this them. And so I am giving him an average grade because he's doing a lot of things, whether you like him or not. And I think that there's a chance for better and, well, maybe that's irrationally optimistic and he's Hitler and they're Nazis. I don't accept that assessment. I don't believe he's not going to leave. I don't believe he's an autocrat. Now, by the way, change the facts, change the feeling. I'm telling you right now, I am the type of person that if someone were to try to destroy our democracy and stay in power, I would fight. Okay? There is absolutely no question in my mind that there are things that matter to me enough to allow my family to know that it was worth putting my life, my freedom, on the line for those things. Now it's easy to say when I haven't had to do it. I did not join the military like many people in my school did. Why? Because I was a pussy. I didn't have the commitment that they did. I didn't have the heart. I didn't have the values that they did. They were better than I am, than I was. Maybe now I'm in a different place, but I take that very, very seriously. And if my opinion changes, my approach will change. And if that means I leave this because I got to join a resistance, then I would. Anybody who tries to destroy how we are here and what our national religion and code is, which is our laws, I'm here for it. I'm here to fight that fight. But that's not where we are, as far as I'm concerned. And that is not how I perceive this President. Could I be wrong? Yeah. Does that mean I'm a jackass? I'm a fool in this? That's on you. And as soon as you take that step, you become what you oppose. And so many of you who hate Trump have made this mistake. You've made the mistake of allowing yourself to hate and being blind to anything but his downfall. And you can say, yeah, because he's the Hitler and I'm this and that. I think you're exaggerating it. I think you're exaggerating it to make yourself right, to satisfy yourself. And I don't think it gets us to a better place. And I think it's why he beat your ass, by the way. That's why you lost. It is. No, it wasn't rigged. It wasn't rigged when he lost, it wasn't rigged when you lost. And the majority in this country speaks when it does for a reason. And I think that we can do better. And I'm really hoping this president does, because that's what the country needs.
- [50:52]
Gregory Ott
Well, I think we'll have to check in again in, I don't know, maybe six months again or maybe a year from now to see how your grade has changed over time.
- [51:00]
Chris Cuomo
I am sure that every single person that voted for him gives him better than a C. And even if they're Epstein people, they will balance out the F that he deserves on Epstein with other things and net up his grade. If you didn't vote for him, I would be shocked if you would give him a C or better. I would believe they all drf him. They hate him. He is hated in a way I have never seen another politician be hated in this country.
- [51:35]
Gregory Ott
I think he makes it easy to latch onto reasons to dislike him.
- [51:40]
Chris Cuomo
Yes. And I think some of it's on purpose, by the way. And that is the expediency of extremism. It. It has created a passion and a galvanization of his base unlike anything I've ever seen in this country either. So live by the sword, die by the sword.
- [51:59]
Gregory Ott
Thank you for doing the report card. You gave him a C. I gave.
- [52:01]
Chris Cuomo
Gregory Ott an A. I get an.
- [52:04]
Gregory Ott
A, Chris gets an A, Trump gets a C, and the thumbnail gets an F because I think it'll get more clicks.
- [52:08]
Chris Cuomo
I get a B.
- [52:09]
Gregory Ott
You get an A. You get an A.
- [52:15]
Chris Cuomo
My friends, thank you for subscribing and following here at the Chris Cuomo Project. Thank you for checking me out on News Nation every weekday night, 8 Eastern and 11 Eastern. Appreciate you. Appreciate you paying to be on the sub stack. That's how I regard your comments. That's how I get your questions asked to the people I do in a live every week. And that's how we make some money so that we can crowdsource some contributions to worthy causes, like getting people who can't afford to at long Covid treatment. The problems are real. We know the approach. That'll get us to a better place. Let's get after it.