← The Tony Kinnett Cast
The Tony Kinnett Cast
Ep. 448 - Trump's DOJ Classifies Fentanyl as Chemical Weapon, Stock Market & Tariff Chaos, & More!
01:22:40
A newly declassified report from the Department of Justice reveals that Fentanyl has been reclassified by the Trump administration as a "Chemical Weapon," providing the Department of War with international law & constitutional justification for kinetic strikes against narco-terrorist boats in the southern Caribbean.
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Tony Kennett
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J.D. Vance
Tony Kennet.
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Tony Kennett
Tony Kennett.
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Yael Osowski
Tony Kennett. Tony Kennett. Tony Kennett.
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Tony Kennett
Tony Kennett, host of the Tony Kennett cast. Let's get down to business. You're listening to the Tony Kennett cast on 93 Wibcy TV here on the Daily Signal. Good evening and welcome to the Tony Kennedcast here on the Daily Signal, nationally syndicated, first on 93 WIBC. Well, it has been quite a week and then some. We're really glad that you're with us because there is way too much for further ado. So first and foremost, the Department of Justice has now reclassified fentanyl as a chemical weapon. I don't know of any other time in history that the Department of Justice has reclassified a substance like fentanyl for the purposes of labeling it as a weapon being smuggled into the country. Of course, fentanyl as a drug, which has, of course become kind of all the rage in the last couple of years. As far as smuggling into the United States is concerned, a very small amount can kill hundreds, if not thousands of people. Well, a classified Justice Department brief authorizing the military strikes from the secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, on the drug narco terrorist boats in the southern Caribbean and Pacific operations has described fentanyl as a potential chemical weapons threat. So the memo cites a couple of different things here. First of all, it cites Russia's 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis in which aerosolized fentanyl killed over 100 people during a rescue attempt. Uh, additionally, the administration has urged, of course, that via this, drug cartels are not just foreign terrorists trying to make a quick buck off of those who are addicted to drugs but are using fentanyl specifically to undermine the security and stabilization of the United States. So Senator Andy Kim, Democrat Senator, doesn't like this. Same with Chris Van Hollen. They're very, very, very upsetty spaghetti about this from Senator Andy Kim. Quote, they are trying to use that now to create A lethal kinetic justification, which is not what that designation is for and has never been done before. Okay, first of all, no, if there have been terrorist attacks in history in which there are individuals who have used fentanyl in an aerosolized form or have used it in a method. We talked about this, actually at the TPUSA event down in Bloomington. Did we not? Producer Nick. That if there would have been fentanyl on the COVID of the book, that the student or protest or whatever ran up, escaped security, got up on stage, put a book on the podium that Tucker Carlson and the TPUSA staff are going to speak at. There was a security guard that just walked over across the stage and picked up the book, no gloves on or nothing. And producer Nick made the point because I had said, yeah, we said, what if something was laced, you know, on the book? What if that was in, like, dusted onto the page or something like that? And I said, oh, you mean like anthrax? He says, no, like fentanyl. And that it can absorb through the skin. And unless there's Narcan right on hand, yeah, that's going to be extremely lethal. So, yeah, if it is, in fact, something that can kill you by gently brushing up against your skin, yes. That is, in fact, something that can be classified as a chemical weapon. You don't have to prove the intent. If someone wants to bring a case. Shipment of high explosives into the United States and pass them out, it doesn't matter if the intent is to go dynamite fishing. It's still considered a weapon, no matter whether it's used as something good or whether it's used as something bad. The reason you're not allowed to use asbestos anymore is not because it doesn't work. Asbestos is fantastic.
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Jamison Greer
It.
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Tony Kennett
It makes a phenomenal insulator, but it carries a lot of health risks for you and anyone that comes in contact with it. And as a former science teacher who had to go through all of the hoops on earth to get a kind of pyrotechnics license so that I could buy certain chemicals in order to show students cool things, I have the argument that Chris Van Hollen is making saying, oh, this is legal mumbo jumbo. We've never even seen anything like this before. No, no, we have. The United States government, way earlier than the Second World War, has limited certain material import into the United States because it's not as though the cartels are showing up at the port of entry, where customs, you know, officer says, all right, do you have anything declaring is like, yeah, almost like a 2kg of fentanyl right in the back there. We're going to distribute it out to everyone, if that's okay. No, it's not like they're registering it and then turning it over to the government for distribution. For example, if you were an individual that was importing certain kinds of uranium, if the United States was importing uranium from South Africa or from the Canadian provinces, that has to be registered and then turned over and checked and tagged by the government. Fentanyl is not, that's not how that happens. It just comes into the United States and is then distributed. Now, again, every one of those individuals who is consistently groaning, intoning, bemoaning the United States, removing a series of threats from the United States, the voter, the polls, maybe I should say. Yeah, it's really just not impressing anybody the argument that's being made here. So that's not the only thing Democrat senators have lost their mind over. Today the Texas Tribune hosted some kind of event where idiots from all over these great United States could come and embarrass themselves on stage in front of everyone. One of these is Senator Chris Murphy. Here you go.
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Chris Murphy
Sure. I think he is right now trying to scheme a way to be able to stay. I think you have a potential, two potential Supreme Court vacancies coming up. And it may be very important for him to install folks on the Supreme Court who may be willing to entertain radical ideas.
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Tony Kennett
Okay. So they see Murphy's suggesting Trump's gonna want to stay in office because he's gonna want to pack the Supreme Court. Now, you may remember producer Nick Come Kamala Harris promised to add in a ton of Supreme Court justices, expand the court from 9 to 15 and then of course nuke the filibuster. So they could add in Puerto Rico, Washington, D.C. et cetera. But you know, clearly that Trump wants to stay in office forever is the claim that he's making. But listen, his conspiracy theory for how Trump is going to do it, I don't think we have enough tin foil to make hats for the individuals in the room who were impressed by this.
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Chris Murphy
Statement about the restrictions in the Constitution about a third term. He also may just be interested in installing, right. Donald Trump Jr. Or another family member in the White House. Whatever he's planning on doing, he can't get away with it unless he destroys the ability of the people to speak their mind in election because he's, he and his party are going to lose in 2026 and 2028 unless he's successful in rigging the election.
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Tony Kennett
So the point that Chris Murphy brings forward is that Donald Trump's plan to stay in the presidency is appointing his son, Don Jr. As the next president to the United States. Okay. Then Tim Walls gets up in front of the crowd and starts talking about how excited he was to change the flag of the state of Minnesota. Yeah, here you go.
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J.D. Vance
When we do better, we all do better. And the idea is of working together, lifting all boats. It works. And so one vote majority continued to pass those things all the way down. The last one on the thing was, is we had a racist flag, so we got a new flag in Minnesota and got rid of it, so it matters.
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Tony Kennett
Seals clapping oh, yeah, you did it. By the way, the racist flag. There is a Native American riding on a horse in the seal. That's it. Is the Native American portrayed awfully? No. There is, in fact, a settler in the seal as well that has a rifle. He's not pointing it at the Native American. The Native American is riding peacefully next to the farmer's field. That's it. That. That's the. That. The racist depiction. Oh, no, not a Native American riding a horse. Oh, man. As a tribal member, we certainly don't have all of the pictures on Earth of people before cars riding horses everywhere. Oh, no. Incredible. So that's where kind of the policy internal building is right now. The bench is not very deep. The focus is not, in fact, there. Also from today, very, very, very impressive. Just one of the greatest individuals in the history of these United States, you have the great Michelle Obama, who has now come forward to lecture anyone and everyone, anytime. Future prospects looking grim here, worry about it. Let me explain something to white people. Our hair comes out of our head naturally in a curly pattern. So when we're straightening it to follow your beauty standards, we are trapped by the straightness. That's why so many of us can't swim and we run away from the water. People won't go to the gym because we're trying to keep our hair straight for y'.
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Yael Osowski
All.
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Tony Kennett
It is exhausting and it's so expensive. Then the lady in the toga next to her flipping the hair. Very, very exciting. Oh, so, so, so strong. So brave. Radio crew, we got to send you to commercial. We're going to continue on the live stream. It's the Tony Kenneth Castle. So allow me to pose a bit of a question here to you. Do these seem like serious people? Because right now, what we have to talk about after this week are a couple of very serious things. The Trump administration is changing some direction on tariff policy, the Trump administration is addressing what could be a serious bubble in the stock market. Regarding AI, there are individuals that are being charged with serious things. We just got done talking about a serious change in how the United States is combating terror in our hemisphere. And the criticism that was made from people like the Senator Chris Van Hollen or Senator Andy Kim is that this administration is full of a bunch of unserious people just making things up as they go to do whatever they want. Well, what I have just showed you is the current outlook for the left. Who seems like more serious people to you, addressing real problems. We had a racist flag. Ah, yes. Now you are being told right now that the affordability situation in this country, the Democrats, they have the answer now. They've never actually solved that problem before, ever in any locality, in any state, ever. There has never been a Democrat administration in the last century that has lowered prices or increased economic activity authentically in the American system. Not a single administration. So, question for the boys, girls and squirrels out there, what on earth do you believe this bench of individuals is going to come up with to address? Because I hear quite often that Republicans, there's a lot of infighting right now. There's a lot of arguing that's going on. I'm told this is a very, very bad thing. I'm told that it's something that we need to avoid. I'm going to pose a different question or a different analysis. Sorry. I think that the open arguments and fighting, while sometimes they need to be put out, put aside, and we need to move towards particular things, I think that's good. I would much rather hear the representative from Ohio and the representative from New York duke it out on the floor of Congress on the Republican side of the aisle, then going into the back room with Nancy Pelosi and as she sucks on her dentures, tells absolutely everyone how things are going to be in the party. This is instead of just giving the orders, as Pelosi often does, finally, we.
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Can do our maneuvering and bring our ideas to the fore, but without the outside moments. I want to thank all the groups that are here saying that climate can't wait. I see some other reformed use for climate justice. This is a religious issue.
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Protect people, not Pelosi turning around and saying, oh, man, climate change is a religious issue. We have to bring everyone in and get them all in the same place and then maneuver them around so we can accomplish things. And look, there are a couple of points on that that are, that are good for actually ramming something through. But I right now, watching this country as it tries to navigate what it believes about certain things and what its moral foundation is, because it isn't just like the Cold War where you can point and say, the Soviets are bad, we must all be unified against the Soviets. People don't believe that Communists are a natural threat to the United States anymore. People don't even believe that radical Islam is a major threat to the United States anymore. By and large, groups are rising. That suggests that they are totally fine with threats to the American people. And if there's no common moral foundation, not just on the left, but on certain parts of the right, I absolutely want these ideas articulated and argued out in the open. And that brings us to one one final point here as to kind of where you can expect the country to go and where you can, you know, not expect the country to go here in the next couple of years. Right now, there is a major push, but by institutions and organizations around the world to try to pivot the United States away from its policy on illegal immigration. So there was a group of bishops that got in front of the American people and said, J.D. vance and Donald Trump are bad, bad, bad, because they are turning away illegal immigrants at the border and things like that. That dog is not going to hunt. We gotta pick up the radio crew. Bring him back from commercial. We got more news to cover. Don't go anywhere. It's the Tony Kenneth Castle foreign. Now we get into the good stuff. And by the good stuff, I mean the stuff that you might need to take an aspirin for. Last week, when we came in out of Sunday or into the last week of the shutdown, everyone was focused on pretty much unilaterally, on the Democrats still clinging to the healthcare fight, of endlessly funding Obamacare. And more Democrats started to flake away. By the end of last week, the shutdown was over. Democrats started a major amount of infighting. And we began this week with that. We also began this week with one other thing in particular. A major release by the U.S. attorney General's office and FBI Director Kash Patel, delivered directly to the Senate Judiciary Committee, included a set of compiled documents which were internally dubbed the Clinton Corruption Files. So what are these, these Clinton Corruption files? Because there is even money that most of you have not really heard of this this week, and there's a very good reason as to why. So you may remember that Bill Clinton went from the governor of Arkansas to essentially a billionaire in and of his own right just by being the president of states and working with good old Hillary, they run this amazing charity that supposedly doles out all of this money to countries who are suffering. And brilliant activist groups for freedom and liberty and justice. Well, the files gathered over the recent weeks contain evidence alleging that the Clinton foundation accepted donations from foreign governments, foreign nationals, domestic entities, including at least one US Defense contractor in exchange for political influence during Hillary Clinton's tenure as Barack Obama's Secretary of State. You remember Hillary Clinton, the, the group, the. And I say the group because Hillary Clinton always operated as a group entity. You remember that during the Obama administration, that it was Russia, in fact, according to other recent files that hid information about Hillary and her Quaaludes use and her extreme manic bipolar activities from the American public. While at the same time, the Obama administration, the senior staff like John Brennan and James Comey, organized a totally different intelligence report counter to the data that had been brought in by the Alphabet agencies in order to suggest that it was actually Donald Trump. And also they were going to quiet everything down so that Hillary Clinton didn't get investigated for this huge email server wipe and having a bunch of classified material and classified stuff on private technology and a bunch of other really big concerns. And you and I were told that, well, they investigated Hillary Clinton and they found no wrongdoing. Everything was super duper wonderful. These particular documents released to the Senate Judiciary Committee reviews a long standing series of pay to play allegations against the foundation suggesting that critical evidence was systematically withheld from federal investigators during the probes launched around 2015. Hang on a second here, Producer Nick. I remember. Wait a minute. Wasn't it James Comey who was the FBI director around 2015, those probes that, oh, we found no wrong doing at all. The same guy that's now under investigation for lying to Congress? Are you. He, he wasn't honest about the evidence into the file. It is a little strange to have a political ally admit evidence on a series of probes into the lady who's right next door, who emails have shown they absolutely went all in to protect her on key allegations in the file. Donation patterns and influence seeking. Numerous instances where donors contributed to the foundation while pursuing US Government approvals, contracts or favors. Examples include foreign entities donating during Hillary Clinton's time at the State Department, coinciding with favorable policy decisions or approvals to Ukraine, to Russia, to several groups in Eastern Europe, to several groups in Japan, to several groups in China, to several groups in the Indo Pacific at large. Hmm. Also suppressed investigations from three separate FBI probes into the foundation initiated in 2015 by the U.S. attorney's office in Little Rock, Arkansas. Little Rock, Arkansas. Hey, producer Nick, can you remind me what state Bill Clinton was the governor of? Help me out here. Which state was Bill Clinton the governor of?
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Producer Nick
He in 1978 was governor of Arkansas.
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Tony Kennett
Oh, Arkansas.
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Jamison Greer
Oh.
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Tony Kennett
So where they're from. Oh, okay. Good, good, good. Excellent, excellent stuff here. Whistleblower accounts previously concealed testimony from insiders, including FBI informants, highlighting how evidence of bribery, like transactions were buried consistently to shield the Clintons. Now, again, this foundation Founded in 2001 by former President Bill Clinton, over $2 billion have been raised by this organization. However, according to multiple watchdog reports, the Clinton foundation only spent about 6% of that income on foreign aid. Now, that's still a sizable amount of money, but as you may recall from 2016, as a Haitian reporter put it, we have been looking for this amount of money that the Clintons supposedly gave to Haiti to help us after the earthquake and the hurricanes and said, we haven't seen a dime of it. This is back from 2016.
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Yael Osowski
In 2010, the earthquake of Haiti, not only American taxpayers, but the whole world has given billions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation. For the Haitians, not only, not even 2% of that money went back to Haiti. So, Mr. Trump, we are asking you, begging you, the Haitian community will side with you if one day you ask Hillary Clinton publicly to disclose the audit of all the money they have stolen from Haiti in 2010 after the earthquake.
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Tony Kennett
This is a very serious concern. There are multiple instances of accusations like this. Now, a decade ago, CNN did in fact point out that there are a lot of inconsistencies with what the Clinton foundation reported as far as foreign donations. Essentially, it's a racketeering outfit. It appears to be a full on racketeering outfit and it implicates the Obama administration and James Cony and John Brennan in covering up for this. They allude to it pretty overtly in the emails that were released by Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence. So with these documents delivered to the Senate Judiciary Committee when they're already in a pretty cross mood because of things like the Arctic Frost investigation, if James Comey makes the decision that, well, you know, we're going to make sure that we, you know, leave some evidence out of here. But eight Republican senators later on at the adv vice suspected of Barack Obama and cronies then tapped the phones and tracked the locations of eight sitting United States senators without notifying them. A very serious felony. Yeah, I would be a little cross as well. What Happens the next day. The next day at 8:00am the House Oversight Democrat Committee leaks three emails redacting the victim's name in the Epstein emails to a series of outlets. And then away we go. What have we talked about? Nonstop in the major network outlets for the rest of the week. The Epstein stuff. Has there been any brand new, like, major breaking stuff? Okay, here's what we found. Number one, we found that Epstein didn't like Donald Trump. He didn't like him. He said, he's dangerous, he's bad, I don't care for him. Which the Democrats then paraded around as though I should trust Epstein's judgment of Trump's character. We found a whole lot of not smoking guns. And we found some information that showed that a former New York Times journalist was tipping off Epstein when he was about to be federally charged and convicted. I've looked through a lot of these documents, including from accounts that are very much not friendly to the Trump administration. And now we are in a major drama battle between the left, the majority of the right, and then like a weird cross section of the right that has decided that now we're gonna have this huge national battle over when we release this, when we don't release this. And we're getting into distraction territory. Real quick. Radio crew, we gotta send you to commercial. We'll continue on the live stream. It's the Tony Kinit cast. Now, here's the deal. President Trump seeing the entire media coalesce around the Epstein stuff because, again, they're not going to cover the Clinton situation. They're not going to cover the continual chaos inside the Democrat Party, which is still ongoing, by the way, although now it's starting to lose oxygen because everyone's focused on something else. A post from President Trump, quote, now that Democrats are using the Epstein hoax involving Democrats, not Republicans, to try and deflect from their disastrous shutdown and all of their other failures. I will be asking Attorney General Pam Bondi and the doj, together with our great patriots at the FBI, to investigate Jeffrey Epstein's involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, JP Morgan Chase, and so many other people. Then Trump says this is another Russia, Russia, Russia scam. Okay, a couple of things can be true here at once. Number one, this is absolutely 150% a distraction and an annoyance. It is a distraction and an annoyance that the Trump administration did not initially do themselves a ton of favors on, because there were people in 2022, 2023, 2024. That said, as soon as Trump gets into office, the Floodgates are going to burst open and all of the documents are going to be released unredact. And we're finally going to have all these answers. And also I know, I know in the deep bottom of my heart, all of these things happened. And then when you get into office and then you open the documents, whether or not you can legally release certain parts, people are expecting you to fulfill the campaign promise. And I said this at the time, I continue to maintain this. As soon as Attorney General Pam Bondi brought the influencers to the White House, handed them all binders that contained nothing new whatsoever, things that had already been released, trotted the influencers out in front of the public and humiliated the influencers. Stupid move. And then got in a slap fight with Cash Patel over which documents were and weren't turned over. The American people at large were never going to trust you on it again. They never were. Because institutional trust in this country is gone. It's gone. No one trusts the FBI. No one trusts the CIA, the nsa, the doj. No one trusts the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission. No one trusts them. And there has been very few reasons. There have been very few reasons to give the American people a sense of trust in these institutions over the last couple of decades. And it's not gonna get any better. It's not gonna get any better. It doesn't matter. Here's the real kicker right now. Whatever else comes out of these Epstein's documents, which, by the way, now they're just. They're gonna have to release everything. There is no way around it. They will have to release everything. And even when they do, no one will care. And when, I mean, no one will care. I mean, yeah, everyone, at least on the online, is going to go. They're going to look at it. They're going to see this kind of a thing. And the people that care about this story deeply are not going to believe whatever comes out of it. That's the true irony here. The people on the far right who are just asking questions. Yeah, no, no, they don't. They don't actually want answers. Doesn't matter what the documents end up revealing. They've already made up their mind. Same with the people on the left. It doesn't matter. Again, Jasmine Crockett, who was called out on CNN yesterday, yesterday for saying that, oh, she knows that Donald Trump did it. And CNN says, well, actually, no. The victim in the email whose name you saw because you were One of the people who drew the sharpie over the name said very openly, trump never flirted with her, groped her, touched her, nothing like that. Well, she's back again the next day doing more of the same. Here you go.
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Sure that the Department of Justice didn't have this information. And if they didn't have this information, do we know whether or not they actually deleted this information? Do we know that there was a thorough investigation? Do we know whether or not investigation had concluded? These are all questions that we need answers to, but we can't get them when you're not cooperating.
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So we don't Gotta bring the radio crew back from commercial. We're back in just a second. It's the Tony Kinnit cast here on the Daily Signal. This is the Tony Kennett cast on 93 WIBC. Welcome back to the Tony Kenneth cast. I must say I would love to tell you from the bottom of my heart that the conclusion to all of this Epstein stuff is going to make people happy. It's going to make absolutely no one happy. It's just the truth. By the way, a lot of federal investigations right now are just going to be in that general vein because right now we are in an era where people believe what they believe. They're not waiting for any evidence. They're not waiting for an actual release. They're not waiting for anything. They have already decided whomever they want to be guilty, is guilty. Doesn't matter. This is the biggest crisis for the culture of the United States right now. And this is not just limited to the Epstein situation. This is also over in the Charlie Kirk assassination investigation. There are people out there, actors right now, who have decided, they know, they know, they heard it in a mystical, magical dream that TPUSA is the one that killed Charlie Kirk. Do they have any evidence for this? No. Is there anything viable or reliable about that story? No, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because right now people believe what it is they believe and in all seriousness, to hell with everything else and gone because they're not ever going to think about anything else that doesn't nail down the presuppositions. And so when you have people like Jennifer Welch, the blonde botoxed goober, now the backbone of the left's new media strategy, the same one who said that if you don't celebrate Charlie Kirk's death, then they're coming for you like they come for Maga. She was out today making the case that she knows for a fact Donald Trump. Oh, he is. He is a pedophile and says this on broadcasted media.
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Think about teenage girls that you know that are 14, 15, 16 years old, no matter how developed or underdeveloped they are. Think about how child like they are mentally and emotionally. And then think about 40, 50 and 60 year old men that you know. And that's what happened here. These men are rapists, they are pedophiles, they are predators. And the Republican Party under the Christian signaling leadership of Kanks, are trying to act like they care about children. And you even have kings talking about the Bible protecting children.
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So by the way, that's, that's a reference to Trump, I believe, right? Is that like her, that's a reference to Trump? Like that's her nickname? I believe it's what I saw. People. I don't listen to Jennifer Welch constantly. What she says after this clearly indicates Trump and that legal issues will follow.
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He participated in and knew all about this child pedophilia ring.
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That is a direct assertion with defamatory implications. You can't do that. You can't do that. If you don't put up or shut up, you can't legally do that. But that's never stopped her before.
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And because he's so compromised, our national security is compromised. And because it takes such a morally depraved individual to take part in all of this, he has attracted equally morally depraved individuals like.
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So this theory that the left is currently operating in that, that Jeffrey Epstein knew that Donald Trump was a pedo and so they, Jeffrey Epste used, blackmailed Donald Trump to give favors to Putin. This is the, this is the actual theory because they have to tie it back to, to Russiagate because this holds about the same amount of water as Russiagate does. Again, the issue with that particular claim is that if that's the case, Donald Trump was the worst friend to Russia in his first term possible. I remind you the Trump administration is the only administration on its bookends in which Russia did not invade sovereign territory outside of its own. The United States did not offer big, beautiful deals to Russia. Trump put more of a hardline stance that, by the way, prior in his administration, Barack Obama was making fun of his 1980s foreign policy up against Mitt Romney. The Trump administration was rather, rather rough with the Ruskies. But because she's not going to play any of those clips, the Democrats aren't actually going to go back and look at any of that particular information. And so they will keep on driving that narrative home. So you say, Tony, you didn't actually give us a huge number of updates on like Pamela Bondi reopening the investigation. There are assertions that because there's a big vote coming next week in the House to release all of the files whatsoever and this person's blocking it, and this person isn't that Pam Bondi, by reopening the investigation in the Southern District of New York with U.S. attorney Attorney Jay Clayton, that this is now because it's going to be an active investigation again, this is going to prevent the files from being released. No, I'm not speculating on all of that because it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Everyone's already made up their mind. And right now, given what we knew at the beginning of the week, it is absolutely a distraction. It is. This isn't like the individuals just died or were killed yesterday or that the files magically evaporate like a Hillary Clinton email server in a guest bathroom. They're here. There is one reason and one reason alone. This has been the coverage point for every single media. CNN even brought up a, a random girl from the 90s who said that Trump, like squeezed her butt once. Desperation is, in fact, at hand. Now this is where things get interesting. So just in all transparency, Producer Nick and I, we don't always agree on things. Producer DANIEL and I, we don't always agree on things. And one of the most interesting arguments and conversations here in the Tony Kinnid crew through the first year of the Trump administration has been how much of the tariff policy is good, how much of it's being used for leverage or kind of like a permanent, like revision of American foreign and economic policy and what are the effects. And Producer Nick and I, when we were discussing all of the various factors that go into how much bunch of bananas cost or how much, we said, what else do we talk about on this today? Producer NICK we talked about like gasoline as well, other food items, not avocados. But what else?
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Producer Nick
Raw material prices.
- [34:53]
Tony Kennett
Raw material prices. That's the one. Thank you. These particular goods, there's a lot of factors that go in to why they may or may not be more expensive. And the Trump administration, and we said this way back when, I think I remember saying this back in February, as early as February could be into March. I know it was said in April. The Trump administration talking about tariffs had like two or three schools of thought. You had Scott Besant, which was all for, excuse me, who was all for using tariffs as leverage points for national security and kind of strong arming countries that relied On US For Trade, you had Peter Navarro, who was like a Yorkie seeing a treat anytime you said the word tariffs around him. He started wagging his tail very excitedly to the point where, like, the administration was like, can we get him off camera for, like, a few seconds? We had U.S. trade Ambassador Jameson Greer, who was very pragmatic in his approaches to how tariffs would be implemented. And then you have the President of the United States, who, while praising tariffs, held his cards a little close to the chest on this one. You say, tony, how do you know that? Because it's always how he negotiates on everything. Speaking of Russia, when Putin had talked to him and said, you know, I might actually go ahead and do a little of this movement into these Eastern European countries. And Trump said, you better not. I might bomb the bleep out of you. And Putin's like, you wouldn't do that. And Trump says, well, I might. That's how Trump negotiates. He's like, well, Canada, what if we absorbed you into the United States? And then Canadians start running around screaming and, you know, shaking their bottles of maple syrup and running into Zambonis. I don't know. I don't know how they panic up in Canada. Uh, so it ends up effectuating leverage and change. That's how the President negotiates. And this is why when. When. When Democrat strategists or Republican strategists get on TV and said, Donald Trump said something like, yeah, he says a lot of stuff. Career's kind of built on it. I'm going to wait to see what the end point of the policy is. When Donald Trump has used tariffs as leverage against other countries like China. Great example. He ends up getting results that change the balance of trade and power in South America. Scott Besant pointed this out less than, I think, five days ago. It's been a long week. In which he said that it was because Donald Trump had used the economic peace through strength and the currency swap with Argentina that China was boxed out of relying on the Argentine soybean market. Especially if the parliament swung to the left in their upcoming election, which would have boxed the United States out of the rare earth minerals market. When Trump uses tariffs like that, Absolutely stellar. Excellent, impressive. 10 out of 10. Good stuff. There were some tariffs that were posed on the basis of trade deficits on things like bananas and coffee, on South American, African and Western European countries like Switzerland, for example, that had people raise a couple of eyebrows and go, really? Why these? And the reason that they were given such questions is that they do, in fact, in part, raise some consumer prices in some groceries. Now there's a question as to how long it takes certain things to kick in, how much of a price increase it is, who ends up paying for some of those tariffs. Was it going to cause rapid scale insane hyperinflation in the United States? It did not. Did it cause the consumer price index to go up in some places, like with bananas, for example? In part, yes, totally no. So now the Trump administration is moving forward and is changing its policy now on tariffs. That is very, very clearly, by the administration's own admission, in response to the complaints, not just from the left but also from the right on consumer good prices in the United States. Every single poll, every one of them, from Rasmussen on the right and all of the right associative polling groups to, of course, those on the left have Trump underwater with affordability in the economy. And again, there's a rebuilding period after the Biden administration. There's the rebalancing of trade right now in the country. I cannot tell you the polling numbers on things are different, whether people are right, wrong, smart, stupid, silly, gracious. Those are the polls at the moment. And the Trump administration does respond to polling. Radio crew, we're going to send you off to commercial while we dig into some of the goodness here on the live stream. It's the Tony Kinit cast. Now let's dive in. So the President has released an executive order. The executive order states that the United States will be reducing significantly its tariffs on things like coffee, on bananas, on avocados, things of that nature. I think I have Jamison Greer talking about this as well. Let me see if we can get that clip pulled up today.
- [39:52]
Jamison Greer
The reality is, at a macro level, the president's trade program has been incredibly successful. We've opened up markets for our exporters where we're reining in the trade deficit. You know, are there, are there micro areas, you know, like, like bananas or coffee or cocoa or things like that where we don't need a tariff? I think that's right. The president appropriately use them as leverage to get these deals. I mean, Ecuador, that's a country, what do they export to us? A lot of bananas, coffee, things like that, some of these other countries. So it makes sense when you're making a deal and giving tariff relief, it's mutually beneficial for them and for us. Us. So the timing is right.
- [40:26]
Tony Kennett
Okay. So I want to, I want to point a few things that the ambassador said that I think are correct in the assessment. The time is right. Very clearly. It is a response to high prices in the United States. The argument also that in a lot of ways the president's trade policies have been very successful. True. A lot of them have been. Some of them, however, have not. And by the way, when I say some of them have not, I'm not talking about that. Donald Trump made a specific decision and said, this is the direction that I am going to go and everyone else be damned. I don't, I don't. That's not what I'm talking about. But when you have people like the Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, saying earlier this year in June that the reason that we had to raise tariffs to 10% on bananas was because people needed to build bananas in the United States, it hurt me just a little bit.
- [41:23]
What's the tariff on bananas? Americans, by the way, love bananas. We buy billions of them.
- [41:28]
Okay, Ms. Rachel, I love bananas.
- [41:30]
What's the tariff on bananas?
- [41:33]
The tariff on bananas would be representative of the countries that produce them.
- [41:38]
And what, what's that tariff generally?
- [41:40]
10%.
- [41:41]
Correct. 10%. Walmart has already increased the cost of bananas by 8%.
- [41:46]
Recognizing as countries do deals with us that will go to zero. As countries do deals with us on.
- [41:53]
The American consumer now and on the businesses with the confusion now, Mr. Secretary, I believe you know better. I believe you recognize that a trade deficit is not something to fear. I believe you know that predictability, stability is essential for businesses. I wish you would show that truth to this administration.
- [42:15]
I don't care for the moral lecturing there, but the point that, and I have to cut off the latter 30 seconds here because we're going to have to bring the radio crew back. He concludes by again asserting that the tariffs are to get organizations and industries to build here in the United States. A lot of the negotiations the Trump administration has leveraged includes things like hundreds of millions of dollars to billions of dollars. We're looking at the Indo Pacific countries to invest in the United States. The deal with Switzerland today includes a, I believe, is it 300 million just to double check. Sorry, producer Nick, to ask you to do the, you know, to look it up like Jamie. But we'll bring you back from the radio break here in a second. We got to pick them up from commercial and we'll talk about this a little bit more and then get back to the fun stuff. It's the Tony Kinnit cast here on the Daily Signal. This is the Tony Kenneth cast on 93 WIBC. Welcome back to the Tony Kennett cast. So a deal was struck with the Swiss and Lichtenstein groups of companies by the Trump administration to invest at least 200 billion with a B, not 300 or 200, 300 million billion into the United States with at least $67 billion worth of investment incurring in 2026. Those are very good things. And for those right out there right now that are saying, hey, I told you so, I told you tariffs are going to raise prices. Yeah, a lot of the tariffs have in fact raised grocery prices. That is correct. Some of it was done in exchange for major industrial investment into the United States. Now, here's the dirty little secret. Neither you nor I know right now whether that's worth it yet. We don't, we don't see the end of it. Originally in March, Scott Besant had predicted that the United States would begin taking off in Q4. He said it again in September. Now, the new argument from the administration is that it's going to the economy is going to start taking off in Q1 or Q2 of next year. Obviously we just had a government shutdown for a month in October. That changes things. Say, Tony, are you being wishy washy on this? No, I'm telling you what I know. I'm not going to assert to you something that I definitely super duper know. If I'm making a big heavy prediction, I'll tell you because I'm going to want to brag about it if it comes true in a couple of months. And right now what is very clear is, number one, the Trump administration has recognized that consumers are upset. All of the polling data, all of it suggests that people are happy about gas prices going down, which does in fact bring the total cost of food because of increased energy production in the United States. We're going to talk about that here in just a bit regarding that and the climate change provisions of the last administration and the racketeering coming out of that, but also that the administration from the White House is responding to people who are unhappy with the price of a lot of groceries. Now, I'm not saying that that's entirely due to tariffs. A lot of it isn't, but a lot of it is. And so the Trump administration walking some of those things back matter. Now, Besant made kind of a different point here. He said that the tariffs were great because they were paying down the deficit of the United States. Here's Besant making this case earlier this week. I think that the tariffs help consumers because we are able to, if you go back and look, we have the brought down the budget deficit. And if you MIT came out with a study that said that 42% of the great inflation was caused by the big deficit spending. So as you bring down deficit spending, inflation will come down and the tariffs right now we take in substantial tariff income over time that will rebalance as the factories move to the US and that will become the corporate income or wage income. And by bringing down the budget deficit, we are bringing down inflation. Correct. What Besant is making the case for here is that when tariffs are used as leverage to change the balance of trade, they are a very good tool. Now the question is how much are tariffs going to change in the next couple of months? We received a comment in the comments section on the live stream. I don't have the name. I believe Dawn Dawnnet's POV who has asked what authority does the President of the United States have on what kind of tariffs? Why does this matter? The Supreme Court of the United States is getting ready to decide just what tariff power the President has. The President of the United States has invoked a particular law that was leaned into a smidgen by President Nixon that allows the President to declare national emergencies and therefore impose tariffs based on those national emergencies. Now here's where we get into a little bit of the weirdness, because I've said before on the show, national emergencies are the number one tool to be the death of a republic. They give the executive way too much power and they're subjective national emergencies. There's no way you can write a law that actually says here's what national emergencies are and aren't. So the Supreme Court is now essentially backed into a corner. They can't really pass on this. And so my prediction, by the way, and I've said this before, I don't know if I've said it on the air before, my prediction is that the Supreme Court says some tariffs are okay, some tariffs are not. Trump's tariffs on for example China and some on Canada regarding things that are useful for autarkical needs in a trade negative situation, for example during war, like the production of rare earth, minerals, aluminum, some kinds of lumber. Again, kind of a question there. Automotive manufacturing, yeah, those are definitely tariff applicable things like bananas and avocados. Not seeing the national emergency national security measure of such things. That's what Solicitor General, General Sawyer is still trying to argue before the courts. But that's my prediction. So again, I still think the best opportunity, the best move is for the House and the Senate to pass effective tariff powers to the President. For a number of times you Know that you can do that, right? That if Congress wanted to say for the next, you know, year, two years, the President has the authority to negotiate tariffs, we're just going to appoint an oversight committee over it or whatever with a couple of people. They can do that. You can get creative. You don't actually have to draw a big, huge two and a half year bill out with all of these secret, extra goofy provisions. I think that would do a small part in restoring a little bit of trust to the system. Now, moving on from that, I do want to hit on one other economic point before we get to the climate change interview. It is in fact regarding climate change. So right now there are a series of articles that have come out citing experts warning that if climate change is not addressed, it's not that we will be facing the average global temperature rising anymore. Instead we will be facing the next ice age. And that is because the Gulf Stream is destabilizing as sea levels rise and as the measure of salt water changes. And so they're worried about ocean currents going flat and that causing an ice age because ocean currents drive a lot of weather patterns. I do think it's really funny that this is now the assertion that is being made, first of all, because it was in the 1970s that we were worried about a great ice age cooling. And then it was global warming, and then it was cooling very briefly in the 90s and then it was global warming again for 20 years. And now here we are, back to global cooling. I am going to give you a hot take that I have said before. I know on air previously. I don't know if I've ever said it here on the show. The currents in the ocean are in fact the planet's number one regulator of climate stabilization. And if things go too far one way or the other, a temporary destabilization or reduction or expansion in the oceanic currents will then reset the climate to where it needs to be. Currents act as a buffer. I've said this before. This is why we don't need to freak out and lose our minds over climate change. The planet has a built in buffer system. It is what it is for. Now, you said this before, producer Nick Iceland, I believe is it Iceland who has now declared a national emergency over ice melting into the Atlantic. I believe that you'd sent this to me. I'm sorry if I'm putting you on the spot on this one. Oh, radio crew, we have to send them over to their evening stuff. We're going to continue on the live stream for just A bit. So for all of y', all, have a wonderful weekend. Head over to the live stream on YouTube.com daily signal or rumble and we'll see you guys there. Take care. For y', all, it's the Tony Kennett cast here on The Daily Signal, first on 93 WIBC. All right, I've actually got the clip. Go ahead, give us a little bit of an overview while I get the clip from Reuters.
- [51:27]
Producer Nick
Yes, that's what I thought you were referencing. I pulled up the article from Reuters. November 13th. Sustainable Switch. This is the title, Sustainable switch. Iceland warns melting glaciers a national security threat. They are referencing the Atlantic Maradonial overturning circulation ocean current system.
- [51:48]
J.D. Vance
The.
- [51:51]
Producer Nick
Risk of that current collapsing is a risk for climate change. As we were mentioning, the sort of ice age that can be caused by that.
- [52:01]
Tony Kennett
Let's play the clip here for the fine folks before we head over to this interview. Thank you.
- [52:05]
Iceland has declared a potential collapse of the AMOC a national security concern. Concern and an existential threat. They say the amoc, or Atlantic Meridional overturning circulation may collapse within the next couple of decades as global temperatures keep rising. So why is the AMOC important? The major Atlantic Ocean current system brings warm water from the tropics northward toward the Arctic.
- [52:36]
Okay, so essentially they have the. The girl in her little accent, you know, read the entirety of this. I haven't seen enough evidence that suggests that just all of the ice flow is just going to collapse into the sea and destabilize everything as Iceland is apparently considering. I just don't. I don't see that happening. Now. The way that the left is addressing this, by the way, is comical to the extreme. Comical to the extreme. Right now in Brazil, there's a major climate change conference which is going on. We have the deputy director of the Consumer Choice center joining us. Really incredible stuff. Just a total flop of prior administrations. And then, of course, the left's ability to make anything into a racketeering opportunity. We head over now to Yael Osowski, the deputy director, the Consumer Choice center, the Globetrotter himself. From Brazilian climate change conferences to all of the shenanigans he gets up to over in Vienna. How's it going, man? You tired yet?
- [53:38]
Yael Osowski
You know, not tired yet. I got plenty of energy, you know, good caffeine. You can do a lot with nicotine, too. So I'm doing fine.
- [53:47]
Tony Kennett
So tell us about this Brazilian climate change summit. Our colleague Steven Kent, he reached out and he was squawking like a Snapchat mule over this I got to hear what you're talking about. What's going on?
- [53:59]
Yael Osowski
Well, you have the conference of the parties, number 30. This is something that just normally, if we had a Democratic administration in Washington, would basically be the talk of the town. But because we have Trump, they don't really care as much. And this is the annual gathering that is hosted by the United Nations. It's where the nations get together and talk about essentially their climate accords. And we're going back to the 2015 Paris climate accords, and they're just kind of catching up on how everybody's doing and what are new measures we can do to be sure that people are in line with the Paris Agreement.
- [54:33]
Tony Kennett
So the particular Paris Agreements got a couple of rocky bumps. I mean, we're finding out. Well, we're not finding out. We are now being affirmed, I should say, by some of the previous fear mongers, that climate change is not coming to kill us all and leave our skins on lampposts.
- [54:50]
Yael Osowski
Well, it's definitely true that a lot of the projections have definitely not panned out. So, you know, we heard 12 years, 15 years. Realistically, the Paris Climate. Climate Accords is pretty sober. Look, the whole thing is they want to try to reduce global temperature by 1.6 degrees Celsius in the next hundred years. And essentially what this agreement really portends and requires of all nations is everybody's got to have some kind of plan in order to reduce their emissions. It doesn't mean about being more efficient with energy. It doesn't mean that you're going to be using cool, awesome new sources. It just means you get rid of the emissions so you use less and somehow that makes the planet much better. That's kind of the argument they're using.
- [55:33]
Tony Kennett
So the, in this particular argument, though, some of the nations that are supposedly at least fraternizing with some of this policy or this plan or accord or whatever we're going to call it, they are producing more emissions. Now, they may have their, you know, state communication services get out there and claim, hey, we're producing a lot fewer emissions. But when you actually look at the satellite coverage and you see yet another 15 coal plants built along the Yongsu river or something along those lines. Yeah, I'm not really seeing a whole lot of Paris climate goodness. Not something that would make Jane Goodall smile, I'm afraid.
- [56:10]
Yael Osowski
Yeah, a lot of what COP30 is about and most of the cops that have dealt with climate is just selective facts and figures. So obviously in Europe, where you have a lot of people who are very excited about this. Essentially, they've torn down all the nuclear power plants, which were zero emissions. And now the country of Germany is very reliant on coal. They're very reliant on natural gas imports. And luckily, new markets have opened up and Europe is importing a lot more LNG from the United States, which is very good. But at the same time, you have China and you have India, they're building a lot more coal plants, they're continuing with huge mining projects. So a lot of this is just kind of saving face for some of the environmental movement. And a very important part of this is that these plans includes many different credits and swaps. So if you're not doing particularly.
- [56:57]
Tony Kennett
That's what I wanted to get to, the credits and swaps. Yeah. And. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. It was just. It's like a sleeper cell activation. I hear the word credits and I'm like, oh, no.
- [57:07]
Yael Osowski
So they have this right now in the European Union. They just agreed, I think, two days ago that they're going to be essentially net zero carbon emissions in the next 15 years, which, very tall order, but the way that they're going to do it is they're going to use, oh, about 85% will be actual reductions, and then the rest will actually be those caps and those license licenses that they'll take from somewhere else. So somewhere where they actually have cut carbon emissions, the EU will buy them and that will apply to their certain limit. So essentially, you have a lot of finance guys that are doing these caps that are essentially fudging the numbers to say, look, yes, we polluted a lot in our terms, we polluted a lot this year, but it's okay because Ecuador didn't do it so much. So we're going to buy a couple of their licenses and then we're fine. So again, they're. It's an ESG score sort of on steroids. And that's the problem.
- [57:58]
Tony Kennett
It sounds like indulgences to me. It's like my country has sinned this much to the climate. Therefore we will pay this amount of money. As though it's like, yeah, sure, we had a lot of emissions, but we also, you know, bribed the UN to look the other way on it. And we also paid off the scientists who made the emissions look worse than they are. And of course, you know, who ends up footing the bill. This is something that you focus on quite a bit. The consumer. The person in the House with the rising energy bill ends up footing more because some random country in the UN goofed on their emission goal they signed up for.
- [58:30]
Yael Osowski
Yeah, and there's going to be a lot of, obviously a lot of people who are coming from developing countries that will be taking the floor at COP30. Thankfully though, as everyone knows, President Trump took the United States out of the Paris Accords many years ago. So there is no official U.S. delegation. We've seen Gavin Newsom fly down there, a couple of the governors and people just trying to make headlines. But it is true, a lot of this just comes down to a lot of, yeah, very brave. Stunning and brave. There's so much sort of this racketeering and it's all about these numbers and figuring out. And that's why you often have countries like the Maldives or Mauritius, countries that most people have never heard of, apart from a vacation destination, become integral to this stuff because they're selling all of their carbon licenses to some of the other countries. Well, realistically, if you want to deal with this, if you want to deal with it 100%, and if you want to deal with this stuff, you know, you have to talk about technology and you want to talk about innovation, you want to talk about transmission, you want to about next level technologies, which the US Is the leader of. But that's not part of the agenda. The agenda is just how do we get emissions, which they claim are pollution, how do we get those down? And this is not a good metric. It's certainly not a good metric for human progress, but certainly not for liberty and then for consumers who have to pay much higher energy bills everywhere in the world because of it.
- [59:48]
Tony Kennett
Of course. Just sorry, just to cap this off, because this is, it's so hilarious to watch this. Essentially what's going on is you have a hunter, he's already exceeded his maximum amount of DOE tags or buck tags for the year, and so he shoots another one. And the game warden's like, dude, you're out of, you're out of tags. Like you, you. No more deer this year. Can you hunt? And he says, oh, that's all right. My buddy Jim down the road, I bought one of his tags from him. And the game warden's like, dude, that's not how this works. But that's how it works at the United nations and at COP 30. And just of course, Gavin Newsom with the plague of scandals regarding fraud and his administration currently would swing on down to cop 30 if that just isn't the piece of resistance, I don't know what is.
- [60:33]
Yael Osowski
Good French use of the term. Absolutely. And you know, we have our own issues when it comes to energy in the U.S. i mean, we obviously have raising prices. We've got issues, particularly in the Northeast, which is actually the highest electricity price place in the entire country. And a lot of that does come down to government bureaucracy. It comes down to a lot of red tape. We're not able to build new projects. They are being stopped in some blue states. You definitely see that. And then you have obviously the climate litigation game. So you have lawsuits being launched in most of those blue states against oil and gas providers, even electricity providers. So you have this kind of constant pressure in many of these blue states. I would love to say that the Secretary of the Energy, Christopher Wright, is doing a good job, because I think he is. But a lot of these problems are just local. They're right in our own communities. It's a lot of the NIMBYs. You have a lot of different narratives popping up. People trying to stop the building of new transmission lines. That's the kind of stuff that we need if we want to make energy affordable. It certainly ain't going to come from a UN conference or whatever emissions caps, things they're talking about.
- [61:37]
Tony Kennett
I mean, precisely, precisely. This is, this is one of the key issues that I consider. There are national issues, but in order to solve a lot of national issues, it requires you getting involved at the local level and getting a lot of these, well, for lack of a better term, goobers who have used bureaucratic regulation to stifle your state's energy production. Yeah, getting them out of office and getting that stuff cleaned up. Absolutely. Well said.
- [62:02]
Yael Osowski
And there's been many states have actually tried to implement their own sort of net zero policy. I think Minnesota is the most famous for this. You know, they're saying, popped into my mind, we're going for net zero, we're going good. And they're, you know, maybe they have very good wind energy. They've set up some good solar stuff, which works three months out of the year, but they're still having to use oil and gas because that's how our economy runs. That's how we live life. It's how we do our lives. Okay.
- [62:26]
Tony Kennett
They bought some of Connecticut's gas and oil credits, so we all get to go home happy. Right? I mean, come on.
- [62:33]
Yael Osowski
And obviously the worst, I guess, offender of everyone is California because they do have this kind of carbon market and it is just this entire swap and trade. I know JP Morgan Chase and many other companies are very happy with it because it's a wonderful market to participate in. But it really doesn't do anything. And that's why I think we need to have these energy discussions a lot more because this stuff is going to impact not just, you know, elections going forward, but this is at the front of mind for everyone. Everyone's having to pay these bills, having to pay more at the pump. And I think the electricity price was definitely going to be a big thing for the midterms, any local races you might have. And it's stuff that people are talking about at city councils, you know, county commissions. This stuff is real and it is true that it hurts, but we have to figure out why that's happening and how we can improve it.
- [63:19]
Tony Kennett
Yael Osowski over at the Consumer Choice center, stellar stuff. And as always, thank you very much for giving us a bit of a light on these rising climate energy nonsense projects.
- [63:30]
Yael Osowski
Absolutely. Thank you, Tony. Cheers.
- [63:33]
Tony Kennett
Now, the other side of the energy issue that I want to talk to you about really revolves around the American manufacturing sector, where the economy is headed and therefore where we go with the economy. Right now there is continually this massive drive in tech based everything. The entire stock market right now is revolving around AI and the different AI companies which are investing in each other, including their competitors. Oracle, which used to be in competition with a bunch of different groups, is now providing loans and server access, operational access and real estate to their competitors, all in the pursuit that we're going to breach some magical moment in AI where it's going to become fully sentient and it's going to do all of our jobs for us and it's going to be really wonderful. And the fact of the matter is it could be a bit of an economic bubble viewed by investors in the stock market. Yesterday the stock market lost a trillion dollars in value. Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Tesla, all the way down the charts. It was a rough, rough day because a lot of people on the future side of things are saying, wait a minute, if they're all just pumping money to each other and they aren't actually producing things that are directly cutting out huge expenses in the economy, then what are we doing this for? And that's a big, that's a very, very big issue. Additionally, a lot of these data centers are being plopped down, as was just discussed, in various regions in which there is no energy infrastructure for. And I have been, even I have been on the receiving end of lecture after lecture from the Indiana Development Economic Coordination. This group of goobers in the center of my state saying that I need to come out in support of data centers And AI facilities in rural Indiana because they're very, very good for business in the economy. And the question that I want to ask is how, how are they good for the economy? In two ways. Number one, the question that I have is what are you doing about the cost on energy? There's a nuclear power plant being considered near Indianapolis. That's great. Neato. There should be more. There should be more nuclear power plants all over the country. The cost of energy must go down. It can't be small, it can't be as needed. We must do as China and India are doing. But not with coal plants, with nuclear plants. We should go full force into nuclear plants. We shouldn't be shutting down coal plants either. We must go all in on energy. The Republican Party must be about abundance because after this weird wet fever dream the Democrats are going through with socialism and their, their LGBTQ + 2.5A and their multicultural, super duper ethnic background nonsense, they will eventually find their way to Ezra Klein's abundance framework work. And if the right does not also have a more of everything mentality, then it will eventually come back to screw us over. And so it is, it's crucial right now that we don't just say, yeah, plop AI things wherever, because clearly that's where the market is going. No, you must have a little more foresight. The stock market essentially did a little, little up and then down today. There's not a lot of positivity in the futures because as we are rapidly discovering, AI, while it can do some really cool things, is not replacing the trades. And this brings us over to, well, then what do we do for the economy? What do we do for the economy is an education question, it's a family question, it's a housing question, it's an immigration question. Because the economy is going to need people working in the economy. Now, when I was going through school, we went through the manufacturing crisis and the hollowing out of the American manufacturing industry. And in the aughts we saw American industry leave in a large part to other countries because the labor was cheaper and because of massive regulations by the George W. Bush administration and the Barack Obama administration heavily regulated those industries. And ever since, a lot of them haven't come back. Now Trump is doing a lot of brokering to bring a lot of that manufacturing back, but it's not going to come back the same way because there is a major facet of the economy and manufacturing that is, is really, really hurting the outlook of essentially just the same kind of classic manufacturing jobs that we used to have here. They're not coming back. But we are still running education. Not in the classic manufacturing method now education. And what changed for me while I was in school is that everything shifted into tech and medical. I don't know, Producer Nick, you're a little younger than me. I don't know how if you remember the transition, but there was a very serious transition where we were all sort of geared up as I went through middle school into high school where everything became about tech jobs and medical jobs. That's where everything poured into. You saw eventually we had to adopt our agricultural programs to medical and tech. They had to be sold as that because if you didn't have a job, a fancy lay back, take it easy, white collar medical or tech job, then you were going to be poor. Was that not how it was pitched to you?
- [68:45]
Producer Nick
We more experienced in my class I was a part of due to being in some accelerated programs, a unique job fair simulation program and they pushed the tech medical jobs within those programs and would have one every year past the grade of sixth grade onwards.
- [69:10]
Tony Kennett
I'm not joking when I say this to you guys. It matters. I am 30 years old. When I was in high school, my own grandfather was an electrician. He was an electrician in Muncie, Indiana at Westinghouse and ABB for decades. I had no idea that you could go to a trade school after high school and become an electrician. No one told me. I'm seriously not joking to you. I thought you had to go to college and get an electrical engineering degree and do several kinds of calculus to become an electrician. Not messing with you at all. And even today, if I could go back, there's still a part of me that's always said that I would go back and go into a trade school for electrician work because you would have it more job security. The trades in this country are where most of the focus should be. The real issue right now, by the way, is that we are still telling far too many young men and women that it's well, you need to become a doctor, you need to become a teacher, you need to become a lawyer, you need a soft white collar job. AI is going to make a lot of those jobs unrealistic. There's going to be fewer jobs in the tech sector that we thought there were going to be because AI is handling a lot of the basic white collar management. Quit sending your young men into business programs. Quit sending them like mass cookie cutters. Oh, I'm going to get a business degree. I'm going to get a business degree. And then they come out and they find out that a lot of that is really worthless. The trades are paramount. The other side of the economy question here is immigration. Because the United States right now does in fact have a major hollowed out portion in labor. And a lot of this comes down to Ford. I think there it is here. This is from Robert Pondisio, friend of ours, friend of the show. He is the head of one section of education, a senior fellow at aei. This is what he wrote for the New York post. Quote, the CEO of Ford has 5,000 mechanics jobs he cannot fill. 5,000 mechanics jobs he can't fill. Now what question is it in your mind, why can't he fill those? Well, he's probably not paying people enough. He's probably not, you know, offering a high enough salary. The minimum, the low end of these 5,000 mechanics jobs is a salary of $120,000 a year in full benefits. The CEO of Ford says we need way more, more, more, more, more trade schools. Now we have some career and technical education. That's after the fact crap. That's after the fact stuff. There are things that I do not know about broadcasting, even up until this day. I'm learning on the fly because I didn't actually have classical mentor to mentee training on certain areas of broadcasting. Same with teaching. My education program in college was good, but once I actually got out and I followed the master of teaching around at Try High in straw and Indiana Mr. Jones and he taught me what education and teaching was really about, what really worked and what didn't. Then I learned. And it's the same in the trades. We have far too few masters who are bringing along apprentices and teaching them and bullying them and dragging them kicking and screaming into adulthood. And it is crippling our country. The other problem with this regard is in immigration because you have the CEO of Ford saying, well, he needs 5,000 mechanics, he needs them now, he needs them yesterday. And by God, if he isn't going to be able to get them right here and right now, well then he'll import them through the H1B visa program. He'll import them. What we have seen in the last couple of decades is the misuse of the H1B visa program not to bring in the brightest, most intelligent super duper geniuses from around the world. There's an entirely different visa program for that. Instead we have seen the staffing of all entry and junior level positions in a majority of sectors in the United States, economy through mass Visa programs. Here's Will Kane on this. Earlier today.
- [73:01]
Yael Osowski
100,000 H1B visa holders in America. Now, who is coming to this country to take these high skilled jobs. As I mentioned, stem fields dominate the occupations and most of the workers come from India. In fact, 70% of H1B visa holders come from India. Another 10 to 15% come from China.
- [73:26]
Tony Kennett
Now there are those who are very, very, very in favor of the H1B visa system and importing immigrant labor. Some of them are very good friends of mine. For example, Daniel DiMartino from Venezuela. He is a brilliant economist. He is a major future leader in economic policy and theory in the United States. Solid dude, good friend. Also a pseudo Hoosier in a way that this is where he put his feet down for a good time. He has made the case that a lot of the criticisms of the H1B visa program and a lot of the labor coming from India and from China is racist. It's because, you know, people don't like Chinese people, don't like Indian people, and it's a major cultural difference. I'm going to let you in on a little secret. That's not why a lot of the people coming in are from India and from China. Children in India and China are told if you don't learn the skills, you're gonna starve. If you don't make yourself marketable enough to get to the United States, then, then it's, then it's curtains for you. We don't tell American kids that. We don't tell American kids. You gotta fight, you gotta pioneer, you gotta push, you gotta get out there and you have to lead. What do we tell American kids? Well, you know, it's all about what you want to do in life, like follow your heart. And then, you know, the Disney sparkle goes over the castle and it's magical. What do you want to do? What like really drives your passion? That's a stupid way to raise children. That is irresponsible. And it is one of the key reasons why when Vivek Ramaswamy says, hey, part of the reason that the H1B visa system is as manipulated and gross as it is is because American children are not taught to go out and get, say, Tony, what's your key evidence for that? How many 20 year olds do you know that act like adults? How many 20 year olds do you know? How many 25 year olds do you know that are in full adult mode? Most of those who are, by the way, are in the trades. Just to be completely clear, let Wilcaine continue here.
- [75:27]
Yael Osowski
80% of H1B visa approvals are for entry level or junior level jobs. That's a little hard to stomach when we hear that we're not talented enough or that we're not skilled enough for these jobs. When you consider that most of these jobs are actually at entry or junior level jobs.
- [75:44]
Tony Kennett
Now that's a problem for all of those who have been telling you over age and age and age that it's. Well, I mean, clearly they're importing like master supercomputer technicians, right? They say, oh, all of the immigrants that are coming into the country via the H1B visa program, they're the head of engineering and they have all of this extreme, amazing, super duper intelligence. You know, you can't just ask Jim Bob on the side of the road. I'm not asking Jim Bob on the side of the road to be the head of engineering. And by the way, I'm not making the case that we don't have a serious education problem in this country. But I was told that it wasn't the entry level jobs that were being filled, and they are. So if there are no entry level positions filled, then what reason do I have to move to some of these areas? Because it all comes down to housing. The Vice President spoke on this, I believe, yesterday or today. I don't have the exact date. I think it may have been today. Here's J.D. vance.
- [76:39]
J.D. Vance
I know that there are a lot of people out there, Sean, who are saying things are expensive. And we have to remember they're expensive because we inherited this terrible inflation crisis from the Biden administration. But you've already seen signs that things are getting better. The price of eggs has gone way down. The price of energy has gone way down. The price of gasoline has gone way down. And as we know, when the price of energy goes down, that starts to filter out into the entire economy. But that also takes a little bit of time. There's another component of this, Sean, which to me is maybe the most important because I care so much about our young people being able to afford a good life. A lot of young people are saying housing is way too expensive. Why is that? Because we flooded the country with 30 million illegal immigrants who were taking houses that ought, by right, go to American citizens. And at the same time, we weren't building enough new houses to begin with, even for the population that we had. So what we're doing is trying to make it easier to build houses, trying to make it easier to build factories and things like that. So that people have good jobs. We're also getting all of those illegal aliens out of our country and you're already seeing it start to pay some dividends.
- [77:50]
Tony Kennett
What the vice president is saying is in fact, deeply essential to be a part of the communication in the next couple of years. There are a large number of groups in the United States, and I'm sorry, when I mean groups. A large number of groups of suburban and urban centers that are overrun with those who should not be here, those who are illegal, and they do they package the freeways. There are those who are living in standardized and subsidized housing. That is an issue. That is not the entirety of the issue. The argument that all of the housing in this country, which he's not saying all he's saying, a lot of. A lot of housing in this country is taken by illegal immigrants. No. A lot of apartments in some major centers and cities, yes, but that's not the same. Number two, a lot of those houses are in fact held by those who are legal immigrants. And the legal immigration system into this country is in fact, far too open for some of the problems that we are currently facing. It is also true that a lot of the open housing in the country right now are in places people don't want to move. You know where there's a lot of open housing, the burned out blue cities in Michigan, you want to move to Detroit, you want to live on one of the. There's houses out there that are inexpensive. Beautiful night. Well, not beautiful, but big houses with lots of bedrooms that are. That are inexpensive. Again, I'm using a lot of finger quotes. People don't want to move there. They are, in fact, in very bad areas. It turns out that realistically there is a limit in real estate in areas where you don't get shot and where, by the way, you also have to have economic opportunity in those areas, which we haven't solved in this country yet. Now, what's also true is that even the starter homes and things are vastly overpriced. They are. They and a lot of private equity firms are buying up those houses and then are selling them or renting them at exorbitant rates. It is one of the reasons why there was a major real estate bubble in the United States right now. So deregulation is a big part of it. Fixing immigration, including the legal visa system, is a big part of it. Fixing the education system is a big part of it. Fixing the culture of this country and how we raise children and what we tell them to do is a big part of it. Encouraging economic center development is a big part of it. This is a multifaceted issue, which means it's a marathon, it's not a sprint. Americans want quick fixes. All of us do. We do. We want the problem solved. I can just vote something in and it'll be amazing. It'll fix it, right? That's not how it works. It's not just a so the border is something that could in fact be fixed by having a different a new president. To fix these issues you need a couple of things. You need a good president, you need a good cabinet. You need a Congress that pays attention. You need a court system that's not ridiculous and hyper political. And you need a culture that recognizes what is important and what is not important. Say Tony, that's like an enormous order. Yeah, it's not going to be fixed in a month. It's not going to be fixed in a year. It is one of the reasons why things like spiritual revival of this country is such a crucial need. It's one of the reasons why people getting involved in paying attention in politics and not getting distracted by silly nonsense and goofball theories. Political action and paying attention to things is not just listening to a podcaster and taking everything I, I say they say, influencers say at face value. Nope. Active, passionate involvement as a citizen in the short term and the long term is the thing that is going to solve these issues. And that's why, by the way, I'm kind of optimistic even though it was kind of a doozy of a week filled with nonsense to the brim. Yeah, I am actually optimistic because there are those who are figuring out these problems. And yeah, after we debate some of the short term problems that don't fix everything like two or three months of tariffs on absolutely everything, is it going to rebalance the entire global economy? We are going to come up with some terms and some of the minutiae that do make long term solutions possible, applicable and likely. So with that said, have a restful weekend. Take care. We will see you on Monday. It is the Tony Knitcast here on the Daily Signal, nationally syndicated first on 93 WIBC. See ya. Here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug Limu.
- [82:44]
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- [82:46]
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