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- [00:08]
A
Welcome to the Rest is Politics. Us with me, Katie K. And the very normal Anthony Scaramucci.
- [00:15]
B
Okay, Catty, let's just face it. Cat, I see you laughing.
- [00:19]
A
I'm sorry. We have to get it out in the first minute and then we're done.
- [00:23]
B
Katty, some of these. Lindsey Graham, he's down in Disney World. Kristi Noem's husband. I'm just letting you know every day I'm feeling more and more normal. Okay. This is a serious podcast and I'm a serious person. But I just want everybody to know I'm feeling very good about myself the day after April Fools. Feeling very normal caddy compared to Maga Men Gatti.
- [00:46]
A
Okay, if you know, you know, guys, that's all I'm going to say. Is Donald Trump getting desperate? Yesterday he delivered that 20 minute address from the White House claiming that the war is near completion, also saying that he's going to bomb Iran back into the Stone Age, possibly over the next few weeks. He claimed that Iran is asking for a ceasefire, something Tehran denies. We'll get into this speech that had been built up over the course of about a day in Washington to be a big deal and I think turned out to be a nothing burger. We'll discuss all of that. And then in the second half of the program, we're going to talk about Donald Trump turning up and terrifying the Supreme Court justices as they heard the case in the 14th Amendment ending birthright citizenship as we know it. So we'll talk about whether the justices are snowflakes and are going to be intimidated by the first president ever to show up in the Supreme Court while they were hearing a case. So, Anthony, last night the president gave a primetime address to the nation. 9:00pm I rushed back from the theater thinking we were either going to have the end of NATO or an immediate withdrawal or the announcement that they were escalating because the White House had been leaking all through the day, reporters here in Washington, that either the president was thinking of pulling out a NATO because he's on a rant about NATO, or that he was going to pull out and leave the Straits of Hormuz shut. And they were done and dusted and getting out of there in the end. He spoke for about 20 minutes and I felt didn't really make any news at all. He did say we're going to bring them back to the Stone Ages where they belong, which some people in Washington this morning that I've spoken to have said is a sign that actually we are still possibly going to escalate and you've got the president saying one thing which is a kind of jumble of we went in to end the nuclear program, we've had regime change, we've won. It's all up to the allies. They've been very disappointing. We're going to have a ceasefire. They're begging for a ceasefire. We're to going while the Iranians are saying no, they're not actually negotiating. And when pushed, it's not clear who the White House is negotiating with. So listening to the president last night, I think you would be fine if you're feeling confused about where the White House is going. And at the same time, we still have, as we said on the program earlier this week, tens of thousands of American troops and forces massing in the region. So if you want signal and noise at this stage, guys, I would suggest looking at the signal rather than listening to the noise of the speech last night, which was kind of low energy. He was on prompter, auto cue, whatever you call it, which he really doesn't like. But what did you make of the speech? Why, why have the buildup? I mean, Anthony, if you're going to give a speech to the nation and tell everybody this is going to be a big deal speech and I have to run back from the theater to listen to the speech, why then say nothing?
- [03:34]
B
Power. Attention. He really wants your attention. And CBS now owned by the Ellison family, CBS interrupted Survivor and so they broke the show into two halves.
- [03:45]
A
If you're interrupting Survivor, that's a big deal.
- [03:48]
B
So, so in Trump's a reality television person and so when he heard that they were willing to do that for him, he said, hey, we got to have this speech tonight. And you know, cbs, the only network that did that, obviously. But you know, Caddy, if I'm an agent of Vladimir Putin and I'm again, I'm not stipulating, I'm not saying anybody's an agent of Vladimir Putin, but let's say I was an agent of Vladimir Putin and I happen to run the American government. Here's how I could really make a mess of everything and really help the Russians. So here's what I'm going to do. I am going to attack with Israel, Iran, but then co temporaneously unsanction their and Russian oil so that billions of dollars can flow back into Russia and also the Iranians. I don't care, let them get a little bit of money, too. That's, that'll be some of the side effect of it. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to wreck the relationship that the United States has with its Gulf State allies, where the Gulf State people are basically saying, hey, man, very hard to trust, very unreliable group of people. And then I'm gonna slam NATO. I'm gonna tell NATO I've made a mess down here in the Strait of Hormuz, come here and fix it. They're of course gonna tell me no, and then I'm gonna slam them and threaten to pull the United States out of NATO. And maybe I could get away with that. You know, my stupid Secretary of State, though, two years ago, he got the Congress to vote that two thirds of the Senate would need to vote alongside of me. So I probably can't get it done. But, my God, what damage I could wreak if I'm Vladimir Putin's agents. What are your reactions to that?
- [05:25]
A
I don't know if Donald Trump is an agent of Vladimir Putin. First of all, let's stipulate that neither of us do. But what we do know is that if you look at how this war is going up until now, it's pretty clear who the big winners are. The big winners are Russia and China. In this context, it's hard to understand how the White House has been so dismissive of American intelligence reports that Russia is advising Iran on drone strike patterns. The Iranians are using the similar drone strike patterns that the Russians are using in Ukraine. Iran is using Russian satellite data, doesn't have its own satellites to target America's Gulf allies. It's reportedly dropped plans for budget cuts this year because it's doing so well out of having its oil price go up and having its oil unsanctioned. So I think it's clear that Russia is doing well out of this. And it's also clear that the White House doesn't seem to be particularly concerned, at least not in public. Every time they are asked about this, the President kind of bats this away. And the NATO thing, I actually thought it could have been worse for NATO. In the speech last night, he always says he's thinking of doing things or he's considering doing things. It doesn't actually mean he's going to do it. And as you say, he can't actually do it very easily because Marco Rubio, his lovely Secretary of State, got Congress to pass this law when Donald Trump was out of office, meaning that there'd have to be a 2/3 majority in the Senate to pull out NATO. But in a way, whether he pulls out or doesn't pull out, I think is secondary. NATO under Donald Trump's second term has been massively degraded. Anyway, I think it's unclear whether America would stand by Article 5. They've threatened to attack a NATO country, Greenland, and take it over by force potentially. So I think it's, you know, it's a little bit of a red herring whether they've pulled out or not.
- [07:22]
B
Katie, is the United States a rogue state?
- [07:26]
A
That's an article that is out in the Atlantic this week, just in the last day that has dropped in the Atlantic saying that America is now a rogue state. I think that the long term implications of this attack on Iran are going to cause. We're already seeing Keir Starmer in Britain's saying the UK has to get closer to Europe, it's going to increase China's clout in Asia, it's going to increase temporarily, at least Russia's clout or I think Russia's problems are bigger than just this moment. But there is an argument that even though it's a rogue state and the rest of the world is already thinking trust America once after elects Donald Trump. You don't trust America twice after it lects Donald Trump. But there's also an argument in the long run, America causes havoc and the rest of the world needs America more. They need American more of America's lng. The President is right when he goes out and says, buy our lng. We've got lots of liquid natural gas. Natural gas, buy it. They're probably going to need American weapons more because it's going to be a scary world out there without American hegemony. So I think there's actually, yeah, America may well be a rogue state at the moment. America in this moment maybe a rogue state. But you might end up in the ironic situation after this where the rest of the world is coming to America to buy more stuff and actually needs American markets more.
- [08:50]
B
If a smaller country did the things that America is doing on the global stage, would they be called a rogue state?
- [09:00]
A
Yes. But then Mark Carney, when we were in Davos, Mark Carney said exactly that the world order works at two different tiers. It works for big countries. There's one rule for big countries, always has been, and one rule for medium and small countries. And absolutely a small country would have been called a rogue state.
- [09:18]
B
Tell us about the President's approval ratings.
- [09:20]
A
What are we at? Somewhere between 37 and 40%. Historically low popularity ratings at the moment.
- [09:27]
B
But on the war, he's got a 66% negative on the war, 34% people are supporting the war. That's his sort of his core base.
- [09:35]
A
Also a negative. But if you drill down into those numbers, as we've said before, amongst Republicans, he's still got overwhelming support for the
- [09:42]
B
war, but they've lost. Republicans have lost registration in the last two years. But Caddy, it turns out I'm going to read you some things that I wrote in preparation for this podcast. Okay? The Epstein files. The bombing of a school in Iran, where, unfortunately, little girls are in the school. Alligator Alcatraz. And that's, of course, the penitentiary in Florida, which they're all proud of, that have has a sewer backup. The murders in Minneapolis. The kidnapping of children by ICE and their disappearance. The market manipulation that goes on with the president's truth. Social announcements, the bribes, accepting a gigantic $400 million jet and then telling people you're going to keep it with you after you leave the presidency. The attack on Greenland, going after Canada, okay, we're attacking the 1st, 4th, 5th, and 14th and 15th Amendments to the point where we're going into the Supreme Court and we're intimidating the justices. We've increased prices on every single product in America through tariffs. We've exploded the deficits where we're now running deficits, which Jerome Powell is like, the deficit is completely out of control. And, oh, by the way, with the big, beautiful spending bill, we're taking benefits away from people that make less than $50,000 a year, and we're giving a $7,000 benefit to people that are making more than $1 million a year. Turns out none of that is a red line for maga. But you know what is a red line for maga? Gas prices. Because when they go to fill up their pickup truck, their 2007 pickup truck, the gas prices are heading for six to seven dollars a gallon. They don't like that.
- [11:35]
A
And the White House, by the way, is looking at the prospect, I understand, of gas prices going to $150 or more a barrel.
- [11:43]
B
It turns out that there are some Republicans that listen to this podcast. Turns out there is, because you guys call me and then you tell me stuff. Turns out. Okay, that's the list, fellas. Okay. Is Susan Collins concerned? Maybe.
- [11:59]
A
She probably.
- [12:00]
B
She's concerned. Please add to the list. But this is where I'm going, Katty. It's a horrific situation, and the country's becoming a rogue state. But go ahead, Katty.
- [12:11]
A
Sending migrants to the erosion of the independence of the Department of Justice and the breaking of the firewall between the White House and the doj, which is going to make people investing in this country worried about the rule of law, the erosion of the civil service and the institutions of government. Many of those Gulf states really liked dealing with Donald Trump because they could pick up his phone and bypass the nsc, the National Security Council and the institutions of foreign policy. Turns out that actually those institutions of foreign policy are pretty useful because they are the ones that would step in and say, no, it's a bad idea to get involved in a war in Iran, the handing of soft power to China with the ending of USAID and other instruments of American foreign policy. I mean, the list goes on and on, right? I'm hearing from people who live in Washington D.C. and I think I've mentioned I live right around the corner from Bobby Kennedy, that the impact that Bobby Kennedy is having on America's health system won't just be felt by our children, it will be felt by our grandchildren in terms of research and the hollowing out the thousands of scientists who have left the American government. So I mean, I think we could play, we could do the list game all day. There are so many things that have happened that I think in the long run won't be helpful to America's standing the question now. I think, okay, let's bring it back to where we are right now in terms of Iran. Do you still think we're in a position that you and I talked about on Monday where he's going to escalate? Because I actually listened to last night's speech and I texted a couple of people this morning and, and I think it's still possible that America escalates even after all this stuff about he's pulling out a NATO, he wants to get out, he's got to tread a fine line. How do you target the irgc but you don't go so far beyond it that you invite retaliation. They're clearly worried about retaliation. I don't think he's going to go in and take the uranium, which is probably a good idea because that's an almost mission impossible and Tom Cruise is not available, but that bombed them back to the Stone Age comment. I wouldn't be surprised if he goes for something. Maybe it's the islands or something, but I think those troops are there for a reason.
- [14:19]
B
So. Well, I mean, I do think that, but the market thinks that because the market, it was a non eventful speech, but the market went full risk off last night after the speech and oil prices rose, stocks came down, bond market ticked up in terms of the interest rate, which means the price is a Bond actually went down. And so the market's telling you that they're bracing now for escalation and ground troops in the area. Okay. The second, second thing that's happening, which I think is equally concerning to me, is the relationship that the American government now has with our adversaries. So let's leave Putin out of it for a second and let's talk about our competitive economic, economic adversary, China. China talks about stability. China talks about US Overreach. China talks about energy security. Right. And so roughly 40 to 50% of its oil is coming from the Middle east and coming through the Strait of Hormuz. And so China, I think, is going to be involved here. At the end of the day, I think the US if they put the ground troops in place and they figure out a way to shut off the oil, you're going to put an enormous amount of economic pressure on China. And then the phone call is going to get picked up. And this is the, one of the reasons why Trump delayed the meetings with Xi. He's going to pick up the phone. I put 10,000 troops on carg island, or I've got the troops now shutting off the oil spigots. So the toll road of the Strait of Hormuz, where your Iranian tankers are allowed to flow to you has now stopped. So you need to get involved, you need to get in country and you need to secularize that regime and you need to help me find the nukes. And so, Kadi, I think that's a possibility, and I want you to assess that for me. Do you think that that's crazy or do you think that that's something that's coming? And then I'm going to explain the ramifications of that over the next five to 10 years.
- [16:29]
A
It's something that the Chinese would be obviously very reluctant to do. Their idea of being a global superpower has never been America's idea of being a global superpower. The last thing China wants is to be a policeman in the way that America has been since the Second World War. So I don't think that is they will try to resist that. I think their hope would be that America stops the bombing, whether it's in two weeks. Ideally, they stop the bombing after they've degraded Iran's capacity to retaliate and even Iran's capacity to keep the straits shut. But that would be tricky. And that once the bombing stops, the Straits get reopened with this kind of three tier tolling system. Iranian ships get out, neutral countries get charged 1 fee aggressor countries either don't get through or get charged a much more exorbitant fee. And the Chinese would be happy to pay that. It's actually not a lot of money by Chinese standards. You'd have to watch the insurance rate for the ships. Would that go up so much that. That actually is a lot of money for the ships. But I find it very hard to see, even though the Wall Street Journal has been reporting this, that the UAE puts boots on the ground in Iran. The idea that the Chinese would have troops in. Is that what you're suggesting? The Chinese would put troops into Iran?
- [17:45]
B
I'm not suggesting troops. I'm. I'm suggesting a crowbar of economic leverage
- [17:51]
A
on the Iranian regime.
- [17:53]
B
Yes. To get more secularization. Hey, guys, the oil. We need the oil.
- [17:57]
A
They don't really care about the secularized. I mean, more secularization, but they care about the oil regime change. Exactly. All they care about is the oil. They could have Islamic Republic still and the IRGC in power, so long as they are compliant towards the Chinese.
- [18:13]
B
Let me think like Trump for a sec. Let me reframe the question. I'm gonna go in there, gonna hit Carg Island. I'm gonna take it. I'm gonna fully degrade these guys. I'm gonna stop all a l L, all the oil from leaving the Strait of Hormuz, and then I'm gonna call Xi and say, you help me figure this out. No oil's leaving the Strait until that regime secularizes.
- [18:37]
A
So how do you make sure that when you take K island, or you attack Iranian energy, or you attack Iranian desalination plants, which is also a possibility, that the Iranians don't, then attack the processing and stabilizing spheres in Abkaik. All of those ones in eastern Saudi Arabia that are vulnerable. We've seen them attacked before a couple of years ago. How do you know that? The Iranians don't do that. So that's the risk. And we've already seen that this thing can produce results that America did not anticipate.
- [19:10]
B
Okay. Which is why I'm interrupting Survivor reality TV programming to announce to everybody that I need a few more weeks to bomb these guys into the stone age, which, by the way, is a rogue state leader. Disgusting comment. Non humanitarian comment. And I find it absolutely reprehensible and repulsive. And as an American citizen, I denounce the comment fiercely. But let me just explain the imbecile's thinking to. To everybody listening in. I'm gonna take three more weeks to quote, unquote, Bomb them into the Stone Age. Then I'm taking the 82nd Airborne and the Marines, and I'm dropping them into the region, and I'm shutting off the oil. Then I'm calling Xi. I'm gonna say, hey, you got a problem now. You got no oil. You got no oil coming in from Venezuela. You got no oil coming in from here. And this is the last gasp of American hegemony. And I need you to get involved now. And I need you to break up this radical institution, which I haven't liked since 1980. And I've been given interviews to Barbara Walters and Larry King since 1980. And I called for Americans having the courage and the strength to do this. And you say what? Because that's what he's. That's what he's doing, by the way, guys, I'm just letting you know, because I know the guy. That's what he's doing, but go ahead.
- [20:35]
A
Well, and the Chinese then have retaliatory efforts of their own. As we saw, the only people that stood up to America after Liberation Day were the Chinese, because they've been war gaming this. They've been accounting for all of these possibilities the last four years. They've been looking at all of the stuff that Donald Trump might do, and it's hard to believe they're not war gaming this at the same time. Now they need the oil. They've got, what, 100 to 200 days of reserve supplies that they have. So we've already got through a month of that, but they can also turn around, as they did after Liberation Day, and said, okay, you want to play that game? You want to be the tough guy? Then we have rare earth minerals that you need. And she has found America's weak point. America made. Trump may think he has leverage over China's weak point, which is the oil, but China has some control over this as well. So I think if that is the game that they're playing, thinking that this is all going to fall neatly into place for them, there's a lot of things along that route that have to go very right for the White House. And this is a White House that is still, I would say, a month in floundering for explanations and floundering for an exit route. We've had regime change. We haven't. I don't care about the remaining uranium. We have to end their nuclear capacity. The straits can stay closed. It's not our problem. The Iranians can control and toll the states. That's the world's issue. I mean, they're literally saying things from one day to the next that contradict each other. If this was a game of sophisticated chess that you have just laid out where the start point of February 28th was leading to the Chinese becoming more involved in the Middle east and changing the Iranian regime, and these were all the thought out steps that were going to get us to that end point. And I had confidence in the clarity of the vision and the strategy and the intelligence and the use of the intelligence. Not just the intelligence, but the White House's ability to listen to the intelligence, then I would say to you, okay, well, maybe that's where we're going to end up. But a month into this, I'm seeing confusion and disarray. I'm not seeing clarity and I'm not seeing evidence that they're listening to the intelligence documents that I know are being presented to the President.
- [22:48]
B
I know we're going to talk about another topic, but let me ask you another question. De dollarization. Would you be worried about that if you were an American business person or the Federal Reserve chairman or you were somebody that cared about the deficit in the United States and how we financed the deficit? How is this working out now? Do you like this? Do you like what's going on in the Strait of Hormuz?
- [23:12]
A
This must have upped the risk of it, right? Because the Chinese people who are paying these tolls to the Iranians are not paying in dollars. And you're now, you know, if you're talking about petro yuan rather than petrodollars, that I would have thought increases the risk of pressure on the dollar as the reserve currency of the world. But you're the financier. How much is this actually changing the state of play?
- [23:38]
B
Again, you have to tell me directionally where the country's going, because if I'm a European leader, you made an excellent point a few minutes ago where you elect Donald Trump once. Okay. But now you're doing it twice to something wrong, something going, going wrong in the country. But I really think that we're headed for realignment and we're headed for some superpower brinksmanship here. And I think this is a very dangerous territory. And one thing Trump is right about is that we let manufacturing go in the United States and we didn't take control of the rare earth minerals that we need for a lot of our technology and a lot of our technology based missile defense, etc. And the Chinese have 90% of the production capability of that. And I think it's a really, really tough Move here. I think to me, I don't, I mean the negligence of the Republicans in the Senate to not check this man. Okay, and we'll flip over to the birthright citizenship in a second cuz it's the same thing there. This is the thing I would be worried about as a European leader. I'd say, oh my God, these guys have allowed a country, a great country, to get down to a decision making of one.
- [25:01]
A
We're gonna talk about this in the second half and we'll take a break and talk about the birthright citizenship case. Because in some ways the only the bit of the system that is holding in America, the bit that might give hope to people looking at the country, are America's courts.
- [25:17]
B
This is worth knowing. TikTok shop helps you discover good value products and surprise deals fast. No endless searching, just Smart finds. Download TikTok now.
- [25:37]
A
Welcome back to the the program. We're going to talk about the Supreme Court and the birthright citizenship case that is currently before the Supreme Court and the extraordinary sight yesterday of Donald Trump turning up, the first ever president to turn up to the Supreme Court while they were hearing a case that he is bringing. So, Anthony, the case is around, centers around the 14th Amendment of the United States, which allows for anyone in the country to become an American citizen. With the exception of the children of diplomats or invading armies, I think they're not allowed to become American citizens. But basically it says that all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States. This applies to children of immigrants in the country. So my children, for example, I am not an American citizen, but my children who were born in Washington, D.C. automatically became American citizens just by virtue of the fact that they were born here. But the Trump administration wants to deny citizenship to children of people who are either in the US Illegally or here on temporary visas, arguing that that encourages the practice of what is known as birth tourism, whereby people come to the US when they are heavily pregnant in order to give birth, in order to get an American passport. So the 14th Amendment has been around since 1868. It's been looked at several times. Why does the Trump administration think that it has a case to overturn it? If you are the Trump administration's Solicitor General and you're going before the Supreme Court, what is the case that you are making? Put on your hat of being John Sauer. But ideally, not the voice, which is a kind of weirdly grating, scratchy voice. I don't know if it's Just me that thinks that, but anyone else who's listened to it might feel the same. So what's the case that you're making?
- [27:30]
B
Well, I'm gonna make the case, by the way. I'm gonna say that it's a ridiculous case and just remind people that Marco Rubio will have to turn in his passport because he wouldn't fit the description.
- [27:41]
A
Along apparently with lots of Native Americans, according to the White House, we'd have
- [27:46]
B
to talk a little bit about Barron Trump. I think they would have to figure that one out as well. But let me make the political argument first, then I'll make the policy argument and then we'll talk about the power and the culture. So the political argument is that the base believes that illegal immigration is the country's biggest problem. And so birthright citizenship is the most powerful symbol of that. You're coming into the country and creating an anchor baby so that you can pull your illegal family into the country. So this is that xenophobia, this is that racism that Trump. Trump likes polling on. Okay, so this is something to Trump's voters. This feels wrong to them. And Trump is a brilliant culture warrior. Again, people can like me for saying it or dislike me, but he understands how to identify emotional pressure points on people.
- [28:33]
A
Right.
- [28:33]
B
The policy argument is a little bit interesting about the magnet effect. Right. So what Trump's people like at the Heritage foundation, that are a little deeper intellectually than Trump, what they would say about this is that the data is mixed, meaning that some people come for jobs and safety, but some people also come to live off of the welfare system. Right? So that's the thing. The Heritage guys are like, hey man, you're coming over here, you have your kid, your kid's a citizen, he's already entitled to this. And so this is that we hate poor black and brown people argument.
- [29:12]
A
Forget the argument that they're also going to pay taxes and have jobs and keep the American economy going.
- [29:17]
B
No, no, we don't like that. Because remember, they're all welfare queens. Remember, we're right leaning lunatics. And they're all welfare queens. Okay? And then the power argument, and this is something that nobody actually says out loud, so I'll say it. If you redefine who counts as a citizen by executive order, you've claimed so much power, so much enormous presidential power. Power, okay? And so Trump's theory and the glooney tunes around him is a maximalist position for the President. And therefore Article 2 blows out Article 1 and Article 3, and I now have the Maximalist power, where if I win this, I'm winning everything after this caddy. So this is the touchdown throw.
- [30:04]
A
It's the domino effect.
- [30:06]
B
This is the touchdown throw, okay? So people have to understand what they're going for here. They're not just going for the black and brown person that had a baby here in the country. We're throwing them out. Probably got to throw Marco out, too. But that's okay. Marco's expendable. We're going for the maximalist power here. I just want to say one last thing very quickly. Trump is going to lose this, but he's going to win this in the culture war. So he's sitting there saying, I'm gonna go to the court. I'm gonna lose. I'm gonna go to my base and say, look at me, I went to the court, I nominated those stupid people, those stupid people on the court, and I lost. And you gotta come out. Why are you laughing?
- [30:51]
A
Because that's exactly what he says. Yeah.
- [30:53]
B
Yeah.
- [30:53]
A
I mean, literally, he's calling the Supreme Court justices stupid, which I don't know about you, but if I was walking into a courtroom trying to win a case, I wouldn't start with, your Honor, I think you're stupid.
- [31:07]
B
He 95% knows he's gonna lose the case.
- [31:11]
A
Yes, I agree with that.
- [31:12]
B
He 95% knows this caddy. And, Katty, you have to understand what would happen here, okay? You would blow the entire country up.
- [31:25]
A
Okay, well, you'd have to go back into. I mean, as one of the Supreme Court justices was saying, it was Amy Coney Barrett was saying, okay, what's the practical nature of this? Do you go back to people who were born here in the last year? Are you going into hospital rooms? Are you checking people's birth certificates as they're in the delivery room? I mean, the implications of this are unmanageable anyway. It's a very hard thing to institute.
- [31:51]
B
Let me pick up the phone here. You're going to be Justice Roberts, okay? You're the chief justice. Let me go to the phone.
- [31:56]
A
Who had one of the best lines, by the way, which we'll come to if you want a slogan for this administration.
- [32:01]
B
Well, no, no. What was his line? Go ahead, tell us the line.
- [32:03]
A
You've got the Attorney General, the Solicitor General from the White House saying, well, we're in a new world compared to late 1800s, where people can fly to this country when they're pregnant and give birth there. And Justice Roberts turns around and says, well, it's a new world. It's the same Constitution, same old Constitution, which I think is how the court is gonna feel about very many of the cases that they're bringing. It was a good line that's indicating
- [32:28]
B
that Trump's gonna lose. But let me get on the phone with you. Yeah, Justice Roberts, are you there?
- [32:33]
A
I'm here.
- [32:34]
B
So I just wanna give you the heads up. Okay. If you rule with Trump, you are gonna create a whole class of people born in America who aren't Americans. But guess what, Justice Roberts, those kids will have no sense citizenship anywhere because their parents home countries. Justice Roberts, they don't automatically grant citizenship to the kids born abroad. So you're going to create a group of stateless children growing up here in the United States, unable to work legally, vote or access basic services. And you say what? Justice Roberts. Hold on, hold on.
- [33:12]
A
Justice Roberts is saying this is all a little tricky. And by the way, Mr. Solicitor General, what are you thinking about all of those Native Americans? Are they birthright citizens, too? At which point the White House turned around yesterday and said, oh, yeah, maybe, I guess they are.
- [33:30]
B
I hadn't thought of that before, is what the guy said in the court.
- [33:34]
A
I was texting last night, Anthony, with one of the lawyers who brought this case, Norm Eisen, who was sitting in court two rows behind Donald Trump, who's one of the lawyers for the American Civil Liberties, but his union who's brought this.
- [33:45]
B
Did he pick up the smell coming off of Trump?
- [33:48]
A
He said that like you, he says they're not going to win this. He thinks it's going to be a 6 to 3 or even a 7 to 2 ruling. Judging on yes by yesterday's hearings. He says the White House was not prepared. Partly, he says, because it's very hard to defend, as you've just said, but also because the DOJ has been so hollowed out with lawyers, because a whole bunch of lawyers, hundreds of lawyers, lawyers have left the DOJ because they wanted to institute the rule of law, not the misrule of law. That there's actually been a noticeable, he was saying, deterioration in the quality of the White House's lawyering recently and that the lawyer, the White House could present better cases. But for example, they hadn't even got an answer to something as basic as what does this mean about Native Americans who were in the country hundreds of years before white people arrived in the country, but according to, to the White House may themselves be here only through birthright citizenship. But he says something interesting. He said, I'll read his text. To me, the bubble of power and fear around Trump has been popped. So everybody from the Supreme Court on down is emboldened. Trump is on the run. Yes, that might be what he's going to say. He's taking on the White House. But if Donald Trump thought that by going to the court, he could intimidate the snowflakes who sit on the bench into doing his bidding, I think he has another thing coming.
- [35:09]
B
But he didn't do that for that reason.
- [35:11]
A
No, he did it to show his base. But it is one thing for him. He thinks he can do it with the Republican senators in the Senate. He thinks he can do it with the Republican House members, and he probably has some sway. But I don't think he's going to manage to do this with the courts, because you're right, this was performative. He wants to show the base that he's fighting is. He wants to show the base that he tried to stop mail in voting, which he also signed an executive order for this week so that after the midterms, if he loses, he can go and say, well, look, it's all the fault of the judges. They ruled against me. They ruled against me on birthright citizenship. They ruled against me on mail in voting. It's not my fault. We would have won otherwise. Blame the judges, don't blame me. But I think it proves again that if you're looking for an indication that the system in America is holding. Norm Isen said this to me again yesterday, what we heard from Senator Coons. They have bought something like 600 cases against the White House in the course of the past year. And they've had a success rate even at the supreme court of about 80%. The American system holds, but the last line of defense seems to be the courts. And as everybody says, it shouldn't just be the courts. Where's Congress? That's the good news for the day, by the way, guys.
- [36:24]
B
Yeah, it's good news. But I want to say something contrarian, which unfortunately isn't good news. And I want people to really pay attention to this, okay? He's going to lose the case. That's my prediction. Okay? But this was not the war, okay? This is a small battle that he's losing. The war is about establishing that everything is negotiable, even the Constitution. And Article two for me makes me the supreme ruler of the United States. And so therefore, everything in that Constitution I'm going to push and shove at over the next three years. But none of this really helps the attorney general, does it, Katty?
- [37:06]
A
No. If You've had poor lawyering. Is this another reason why Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, is on her way out? That the President has not been impressed by how she handled the Epstein files case that dragged on too long for his liking? He hasn't been. Been impressed, of course, by some of the stuff around immigration and how that's been handled. And apparently that very combative hearing she had up on the Hill where she was deriding senators and members of the House, he didn't like that either. She may have felt that was the way to play it, but he felt like it was overkill. I suspect this makes no difference to the erosion of the firewall between the DOJ and the White House, which I think is still one of the biggest consequences of the last year here in Washington.
- [37:51]
B
So we've established that we're acting like a rogue state. We've established that we have a ruler, a man child that thinks he's a king. And we've established that we've got a bunch of cowards in the Congress. And so it's not a great situation. Caddy and the market should actually be selling off more than it has sold off, if you really think about everything that's going on. Because how do you fix this now without transformative leadership? Because the current bunch of jokers that are sitting in Washington are not capable. They don't have the courage to fix this.
- [38:28]
A
I think you have to look to American elections and. Actually, I thought you were gonna say something else. The war is elections. The war is not just power. I mean, maybe elections are a route to power.
- [38:42]
B
It's another good point. But I'm really just trying to explain to people what Trump is thinking. You know, I mean, this is me trying to blow out the other two articles.
- [38:50]
A
Maybe the war is money. Actually, the war is money. And we can get into that some other time. We've spoken about that, by the way, for our founding members. We did a long episode talking about the finances of the Trump family. And Donald Trump Jr. Is going around telling people that by the time Donald Trump leaves office in 2028, which he will do, the Trump family will be the richest family in the world. And sometimes you wonder whether actually this is about money.
- [39:16]
B
But, Gatti, before we go, you read out a list. I read out a list. But what could bring Trump down are the gas prices. That's the irony of the whole thing. Okay, dude, you are losing the MAGA people. Okay? You better pull out by 4th of July because they're going to be grilling hot dogs. And, and they'd be driving around in the pickup trucks and they don't want seven, eight dollars gas here in the
- [39:41]
A
US with all of this going on the States. One other thing that I keep being asked about when I'm in Europe particularly and actually when I was down in Mexico, is the World cup and whether this could end up being an embarrassing spectacle. We were asked in our members only episode this week how Trump would react if fans boo the US national anthem. Take a listen.
- [40:04]
B
Trump is going to be angry about it. I think most people would be generally upset about it. I mean, we're booing the Canadian national anthem and they're booing our anthem. This is all created by one megalomaniac asshole. So, I mean, yeah, this would be sad for me to see that happen. Listen, I was at the 94 Italy vs Ireland World cup match. I've talked to Gary Lineker about it. It was one of the most exciting sporting events that I'd ever been to in my life. It was at the Meadowlands Stadium in the summer of 1994. And the spirit in there was the spirit that I would like to have at an American hosted World Cup. But we have an asshole running the country who's pissed off most of the world, so.
- [40:55]
A
And people are worried about coming here and getting picked up. I mean, seriously, they're worried about what happens if I come there and I get picked up by ICE and then I'm thrown into a prison for five months.
- [41:04]
B
There will be a lot of people that don't come here because of all that. Although I am going to say this, I do feel like that is toning down. I do feel like Homan and these guys have realized that the mini soda situation, the Minneapolis situation was horrific.
- [41:23]
A
I think we're not gonna see more surges. You're right. We're still gonna see the deportations though, but we're not gonna see more surges. They're gonna be more careful.
- [41:30]
B
I think it's gonna be more Obama and Biden like though it'll be a little bit more quieter.
- [41:34]
A
They're not gonna film it. They're not gonna try and get the whole publicity. But if you really want to change the policy, you need to change Stephen Miller. And Stephen Miller is still in the White House and the President still listens to him.
- [41:48]
B
Okay, that was great to Sign up@therealStispoliticsUS.com to hear the full episode. Happy Easter, everybody. Happy Passover and we'll see you next week.
- [41:58]
A
Have a great weekend, everybody.
- [42:10]
C
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- [42:37]
D
hi, it's Steph McGovern here from the Rest Is Money. Now, obviously there are big economic consequences to all the geopolitical turmoil. The Listen to us to find out how investors are reacting and whether we're heading to a financial Armageddon. I'm talking to Karen Ward, a chief market strategist at J.P. morgan Asset Management. Listen to the Rest is Money to get her take.