America’s Housing Crisis: Why You Can’t Afford a Home, Supreme Court Blocks Trump Tariffs, Democrats Hand Trump a Midterms Ad | Weekly Recap

Summary

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Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu

Episode: America’s Housing Crisis, Supreme Court Blocks Trump Tariffs, Democrats Hand Trump a Midterms Ad | Weekly Recap

Date: March 1, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this weekly recap, Tom Bilyeu and his co-host tackle the most pressing events shaking America: the country’s deepening housing affordability crisis, a landmark Supreme Court ruling limiting presidential tariff powers, and critical moments from the State of the Union that teed up 2026’s midterm election drama. The team dissects the headlines behind the spin, aiming to reveal the underlying dynamics and long-term impact.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The “Othering” of the Economy & Why Young People Swing Socialist

• Timestamp: 00:30 – 01:45
• A growing attitude among the young: policies like taxing billionaires or increasing property taxes don’t affect them, so they're indifferent—or even supportive.
• Tom argues this is shortsighted, warning that policies which disincentivize the “smartest and best among us” from building and innovating will stagnate society:

  “Once you start disincentivizing them, you get less rich… you’re never going to have a middle class if you don’t have that top 0.01% that is just psychotic about giving up their entire life to build something extraordinary.” — Tom Bilyeu (01:31)

• China’s historical shift under Deng Xiaoping (“To get rich is glorious”) is cited as proof that growth comes from enabling ambition and innovation.

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2. The Roots of America’s Housing Crisis

• Timestamp: 02:45 – 11:00

• Affordability Breakdown:

  • In the 1990s, the median home was 3x median household income. Today: 5x—“the highest ratio in recorded American history.” (03:41)
  • Median home = $417K; required annual income = $127K. Median household income = $83K → “mathematically locked out of the average American home.”

• Political Incentives:

  • Homeowners (with $35.8 trillion invested in their properties) are a dominant voting bloc; no politician wants to collapse home values.
  • Trump himself admitted the dilemma:

    “In a way, you create a lot of housing all of a sudden and it drives the housing prices down. So I want to take care of the people… that have sort of made them wealthy.” — Donald Trump clip (06:01)

• Policy Problems:

  • Policies “designed to make housing go up, not come down.”
  • Lowering mortgage rates isn’t enough—supply is the real constraint.
  • Regulatory costs (permits, fees, zoning):
    • ~25% of new single-family home cost, >40% of typical apartment (adds ~$93,870 per house, delays by 6.5 months).
    • 60% of metro residential land capped at 2-3 stories due to regulations.
    • Goldman Sachs: relaxing land-use regulations could yield 2.5M more homes over a decade, halving the shortage.
  • Call to action:

    “You can’t make housing affordable without housing prices coming down. It’s just supply and demand… just let builders build.” — Tom (10:40)

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3. Supreme Court Blocks Trump’s Tariff Powers

• Timestamp: 12:30 – 20:21

• Ruling Details:

  • 6-3 decision: Trump’s aggressive tariffs exceeded authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
  • Chief Justice Roberts:

    “The president asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration and scope… we hold that IEEPA does not authorize the president to impose tariffs.” — Chief Justice Roberts (12:54)

  • Only certain tariffs (e.g., on steel/aluminum) remain; reciprocal tariffs (China, etc.) struck down.

• Consequences:

  • Lawsuits are likely—companies may seek refunds.
  • Tom frames it as a genuine crisis:

    “This… is a very big deal… if you’ve got a president saying, ‘I don’t care about the Supreme Court,’ you have a constitutional crisis, man.” — Tom (14:04)

  • Prediction: Trump will “find some way to have the same cudgel, just under a different name.” (16:41)
  • Larger philosophical question: Should the executive have power to “use tax as a weapon against other governments?”
  • The team debates how future presidents might try to re-assert trade leverage under different legal pretexts.

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4. State of the Union: Missed Opportunities and Political Theater

• Timestamp: 22:05 – 33:14

• Atmosphere & Drama:

  • Tom laments the lack of inspirational leadership:

    “You’re not going to be able to survive on a diet of: the other side is a moron, for long… It does rile people up, but it’s a very caustic strategy.” — Tom (23:35)

  • Early disruption: Rep. Al Green’s protest sign (“black people aren’t apes”) in response to Trump’s inflammatory social media posts—chaos ensues (22:40).
  • Trump triggers Democrats by asking Congress to stand for “protecting American citizens, not illegal aliens”—Democrats remain seated; Tom deems this a propaganda win for Trump’s midterm playbook.

• Policy Highlights:

  • Trump touts an economic “golden age” (despite sub-40% approval, 61% saying economy not working for them).
  • Record employment stats are misleading—population growth outpaces jobs.
  • The “Thrift Savings Plan” proposal:
    • 50 million Americans without an employer 401k could open a low-fee, index-based retirement account; government matches up to $1,000/year—praised by Tom as a “legitimately exciting” idea (28:27).
  • Trump claims GOP will protect Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, but contradicts himself by supporting major Medicaid cuts—a move Tom calls “borderline gaslighting.”
  • Foreign policy: Trump is brief. No mention of Ukraine (even on invasion anniversary), focus remains domestic.
  • Ongoing DHS shutdown: TSA, FEMA, Coast Guard, Secret Service unfunded—workers about to miss paychecks. Trump blames Democrats for stalling.

• Analysis & Reflection:

  • Tom suggests Trump’s second win may owe more to repetition and emotional resonance than to facts:

    “It’s just more effective to lie and repeat it over and over… than to actually give them the cause and effect.” — Tom (31:45)

  • The midterm stakes: Trump’s approval is low, and economic sentiment is poor—unless people “feel” wins (peace, perceived economic boom, refund checks), he’s on “a one way course to calamity” in the midterms (32:26).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On innovation and growth:

  “The way out of this stuff is to understand that humans have a drive to get better… and for a lot of the brightest minds in the world, the competition is in the realm of business.” — Tom Bilyeu (01:10)

• On the housing crisis math:

  “The average American family is now mathematically locked out of the average American home.” — Tom (04:29)

• On the true blockers of housing supply:

  “Regulatory costs… made me sick to my stomach… $93,870 per house, six and a half months per project—just get out of the way and let the market do its thing.” — Tom (09:35)

• On the Supreme Court ruling:

  “This is going to get messy.” — Co-host (16:11)

• On political division:

  “To hate your enemy is not a good strategy long term. And that seems to be the thing… If you’re a seal clapping for Trump setting traps for his political opponents, you’ve already lost.” — Tom (23:14)

• On the retirement plan:

  “It gets people in the game and makes investing a part of the average American’s routine conversation.” — Tom (28:45)

• On the disconnect in leadership:

  “If you’re giving the speech, it isn’t about repeating that everything is great when people don’t feel that.” — Tom (27:05)

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Key Timestamps & Segments

• 00:30–02:45: Why young Americans “other” the economy & lessons from China.
• 02:45–11:00: Housing affordability crisis—stats, causes, and the political bind.
• 12:30–20:21: Supreme Court blocks Trump tariffs—impact, consequences, and predictions.
• 22:05–33:14: State of the Union review—political theater, key policies, economic realities, and the midterm forecast.

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Final Thoughts

Tom and his team cut through the noise on this week’s hot-button political and economic news:

• America’s housing affordability crisis is the product of deep regulatory and political dysfunction, not just interest rates.
• The Supreme Court decision is a monumental shift in executive power—potentially triggering a wave of lawsuits and new political maneuvering.
• State of the Union politics are more about “owning” the other side than inspiring the country—leaving real economic pain unaddressed.
• The upcoming midterms will turn on how Americans actually feel about their futures, not on party spin.

This episode is essential listening for anyone trying to see past the headlines and make sense of America’s disruptive moment.

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Transcript

[A]

Hey, Sal.

[B]

Hank.

[A]

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[C]

Think something's up?

[A]

You tell me. They got thousands of options, found a great car at a great price, and it got delivered the next day. It sounds like Carvana just makes it easy to buy your car, Hank. Yeah, you're right. Case closed.

[D]

Buy your car today on Carvana.

[A]

Delivery fees may apply.

[B]

A lot of people are saying that the reason why the young people are swinging to socialism is they think that it's othering of economy. I don't care that you're taxing billionaires. I'm not a billionaire. It's not going to impact me. I don't care that you're increasing property taxes. I rent. That's not going to affect me at all. So there's this othering of the economy. And Kalashi just announced that the US housing market has reached its most unaffordable level in history ever.

[A]

Yeah. So on the othering of the economy, people really have to watch how things are playing out in New York right now. Watch how they've played out Historically. It doesn't work because the people are mobile or you just disincentivize them. And I don't think people are being honest about what it takes to get the smartest and best among us, to build things, to innovate, to create things that actually drive GDP forward if you want. Just like the most shocking history lesson, look at China. Finally, after decades and decades of murdering his own people, starving them to death, Mao finally died. And then Deng Xiaoping takes over. And what was his solution? Let people get rich. And I quote, Deng Xiaoping, the successor to Mao, said, to get rich is glorious. So the way out of this stuff is to understand that humans have a drive to get better. They have a drive to get ahead. They have a drive to compete and to win. And for a lot of the brightest minds in the world, the competition is in the realm of business. And the way that you make the most money in business is to create something that people want. So you innovate and you build something that's better, cheaper, faster, and it works out well when you have light touch. Regulation to avoid things like monopolies and rates, regulatory capture is very important to avoid. But when you do that well, like China did, you pull hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, I mean, and rapidly. So it's absolutely extraordinary. However, once you stop understanding that mechanism that you're allowing those people to get rich. Precisely. So they will pull everybody up with them. But you want those workhorses, the people that are excited, they're smart, they're driven by. They just want to win. And you get to harness that as a society. But you have to let them run. You have to let them get as far ahead as they're able to get. You have to do it. And as soon as you start disincentivizing them, you get less rich. Now you have to protect the middle class. Hopefully you guys know that is like the core of my focus is making sure the middle class can thrive. But you're never going to have a middle class if you don't have that top whatever, 0.01% that is just psychotic about giving up their entire life to. To build something extraordinary. So let us all be thankful that they exist. But you have to let them run. And so when you're just like those kids and you want to tax them into oblivion, they just stop being incentivized, as I've said many times. You start clamping down on them, putting restrictions, and then they can't, even if they want to. Now, speaking on home prices and what's going on there, to Drew's point, home prices are completely out of control, and it is damaging this country massively. In the 1990s, the median American home cost about three times the median household income today. Today, it costs five times. That is the highest ratio in recorded American history. It's higher than the peak of the 2006 housing bubble, which I hope we can all agree was a catastrophe. Unlike 2006. Nobody's calling this a bubble. They're calling it normal. They're not thinking about it. They're, everything's okay, you know, it's not normal. Home prices are going up like 60% just since 2019. The median home now costs $417,000. To qualify for a mortgage on that, you need to earn roughly $127,000 a year. And the bad news is the median household only makes 83,000, which means the average American family is now mathematically locked out of the average American home. It's so simple, you can see it in the math when you can see it in a spreadsheet. Make more homes. A study tracking 95 major housing markets, which they did across eight countries for 21 years, just published its latest findings. For the first time in the study's history, not a single market was rated as affordable. Not one. We are now short just under 5 million homes in the US alone, which is an all time high. According to Zillow, 8.1 million families are doubling up and sharing homes with people they're not related to, not because they want roommates, but because they can't afford a place of their own. Now, I hope you guys are all asking, how on earth did we get here? And the honest answer is that our policies are designed to make housing go up, not come down. In a world where deficit spending is eroding the value of every dollar you save, people have piled into real estate as a hedge. You have to. You have to go into some asset. And real estate is the one that people actually understand intuitively. Homeowners right now sit on $35.8 trillion in aggregate equity. They are a massive political constituency and no politician wants to tell their whole group the biggest asset that they own is going to lose value. Trump has said out loud that that's the case. In December, he admitted the two goals are in conflict. In fact, we have a clip. Are you still considering a national emergency over housing?

[C]

I'm looking at it.

[E]

What would that look?

[A]

What would that.

[C]

You know, I have to. 2 thoughts on Housing. You have a lot of people have housing that, because we have such a strong time and such a strong market, their houses are very valuable. It's a big part of their. It's called inflation net worth. Their house. I don't want to knock those numbers down because.

[A]

Because they'll stop.

[C]

I want them to continue to have a big value for their house. At the same time, I want to make it possible for young people, people out there and other people to buy housing. In a way, they're at conflict. In a way, you create a lot of housing all of a sudden and it drives the housing prices down. So I want to take care of the people that have houses that have a value to, you know, to their house that they never thought possible, that have sort of made them wealthy.

[A]

Listen, man, there are weird ways that you might be able to get both, but the reality is that you've just got to give up on trying to balance these two things and just say, we are going to focus on housing affordability. So his promise to make housing affordable and his promise to protect home values can't be true. At the same time, he told his Cabinet, I don't wanna drive housing prices down. I wanna drive housing prices up for people that own them. Don't we all? I get it. But the solution has been to focus on lowering mortgage rates. He directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy $200 billion in mortgage bonds. But here's the math. Even if rates drop to an impossibly low 1%, the typical monthly payment would still be higher than it was in 2019. Kate, let that one sit with you for a minute. Rates are not the problem. Supply. That's the problem. The national association of Home Builders found that regulatory costs. This one made me sick to my stomach. Regulatory costs, permits, impact fees, zoning delays, code mandates. They account for nearly 25% of the price of of every new single family home and over 40% of the cost of a typical apartment. That's $93,870 per house. Complying with regulations adds an average of six and a half months to every project. And Goldman Sachs found that 60% of residential land in the 240 largest US metro areas is capped at two or three stories by height restrictions alone. This is the part that should drive people nuts. Goldman modeled what happens if you reduce land use regulations in major metros to match the 25% of cities with the fewest restrictions. The result is 2.5 million additional homes in the next decade, eliminating half of the shortage. A little more. We don't need a miracle. We need to get out of the way, let the market do its thing. Trump's National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett hinted at this, saying that the administration could reward states that make it easier for people to build. That would be good, but it needs to be way more than a hint. It needs to be the centerpiece of their policy around housing. Because what everybody is dancing around but not saying is you can't make housing affordable without housing prices coming down. It's just supply and demand, or at least like flattening the increase for long enough for wages to catch up. And you let builders build. We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere. The traditional retirement playbook was designed for a different era. Bonds were safe. Savings accounts paid real interest. The dollar held its value. That world is gone. Inflation is eroding purchasing power faster than traditional assets can grow. That's where Block Trust IRA comes in. 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[B]

This tariff thing is breaking. This is a report. CNN confirmed it. NBC News. The justices divided six three held that Trump's aggressive approach to tariffs on entering the United States from across the world was not permitted under a 1977 law called the International Emergency Economics Power Act, I. E. EPA. The ruling was authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, who was joined by three liberal judges and two fellow conservatives, Justice Neil Gorsch and Amy Coney Barrett in this majority. So three conservatives, three liberal justices, and then the other three justices, also conservative, Justice Clarence Brett and Samuel Alito, all said yes for it. The president asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration and scope, Roberts wrote. But the president, the Trump administration points to no stature in which Congress has previously said that the language in the IEEPA could apply to tariffs. He added, as such, we hold that IEEPA does not authorize the president to impose tariffs. It is a rare setback for the administration at the Supreme Court, which has a 6:3 conservative majority since Trump began his second term in January. They gave him the blessing on deporting people, even to other people's countries. And then this is, I think, the first L. He actually publicly took this.

[A]

This is more than just an L. Like, this is a very big deal that if what, what they have just said is that, that what he did was unconstitutional and now companies are going to go after him hard and they're going to sue the life out of this administration for the damages that they perceive will have been done. And so the unwinding of all of the money that's been collected via the tariffs.

[B]

Whoa.

[A]

So this is one where there's no doubt that the administration will have some other trick up their sleeve, like, oh, okay, we're not doing it because of the IEP A, whatever it is, we're doing it because of. And then insert thing. I cannot fathom that they're going to back off of tariffs given the catastrophe that would be unwinding them just from a pure economic standpoint. And then also it's given him so much leverage in negotiations internationally, the odds that he stops doing it again again are vanishingly small. But now you're like in constitutional crisis territory where it's like, okay, if he skirts around that and goes somewhere else and then that has to work its way through the system again. First of all, you exacerbate the problem of him collecting more and more tariff revenue, which then open if, then whatever other thing he tries gets shut down again. Now you've got both periods of time of collecting these tariffs that you're just going to get sued to death over. So, man, this, this one is a really big deal. This is, this is a meteorite strike. And so we have to find out whether they've got a legitimate thing that they're going to try to go down but. Or if it just seems blatantly obvious to everybody that this is him just saying, I don't care about the Supreme Court. And if you've got a president saying, I don't care about the Supreme Court, you have a constitutional crisis, man. Hey, let's wait and see what happens. But this is, this is big news.

[B]

I want to jump back into the article. The decision does not affect all of Trump's tariffs, leaving in place ones he imposed on steel and aluminum using different laws. But it upends the tariffs in two categories. One in country by country or reciprocal tariffs, which ran from 34% for China to 10% baseline for the rest of the world. That was a tariff bingo day. The Other is a 25% tariff imposed on some goods from Canada, China and Mexico for what the administration said was to fail their curb the flow of fentanyl. So the Canada, China and Mexico under the fentanyl clause are able to be up held. These other ones, the reciprocal ones, would be struck down. And to your point, companies that had to pay tariffs may be able to seek a refund from the Treasury Department and hundreds have already sued.

[A]

Bro, this is going to get messy. This is going to get messy.

[B]

It's interesting to me though, because I'm looking at it from an international perspective, because he was using this as leverage. Let's make a deal with the Ukraine and Russia war or I'll impose a tariff on you. I need Europe to pay more to NATO or I will pose a tariff on you. Yes. And now that he kind of loses that card, that weakens his negotiation power in the next rounds of elections. If I'm one of these foreign companies that pay the reciprocal tariff, I'm suing. I'm coming back and want to renegotiate. So it seems like he has to have to do everything over again.

[A]

So here's my gut instinct. You're going to have two things playing out in parallel. He's going to find other ways to tariff people. So let's say he's got the problem that he has on everything historical where he's going to have to figure out how you deal with. Can we just say, okay, those tariffs still count, but they count under this other regulation, or no, they can't. You can't just move them like that. You said you were doing it for this reason and that was unconstitutional and so bad on you. But that still doesn't stop from moving forward and saying, oh, cool, so what you've given me is like, if this is a war powers or whatever, stop fentanyl, whatever that got classified as you're saying that one's good. Yeah, cool. Then I'M just going to find a way to do things like that to all these other countries, but I am not going to stop tariffing that. That is my prediction. Now, this is one of those strong convictions very loosely held. I'm going to say what I think is going to happen, partly so I can see how well I'm mapping Trump. My instinct is he is not going to relinquish financial controls over other countries from a negotiating standpoint, so he is going to find some way to have the same cudgel, just under a different name. What exactly he ends up finding that I don't know. I'm not a constitutional scholar. I'm not in these rooms. I have no idea what they're going to do, but he's going to find something. I will be utterly shocked. The only way that you're really going to be able to defang Trump if you don't like the way that he's going about things, is to flip the Senate and or the House. Like, if he loses at the midterms, they impeach him, then it's game over. Failing that, like, if he wins at the midterms, he's going to find another path to this. It really comes down to a question. Do the American people want the executive branch and then specifically Trump as the wielder of the executive branch? But they. They do well to think of this as policy, not as just Trump. Do they want the executive branch to be able to use tax effectively as a weapon against other governments? And it's an interesting question because traditionally, the executive can do a lot more internationally than they can do domestically. You more or less go, okay, the executive branch, like, we can't babysit everything. So Senate, Congress, we're going to deal with things that affect us domestically. And then you do. It's not like whatever you want, but you do, with much lighter restrictions, what you want internationally.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I could see something that ended up settling out where it's like, first of all, we're never going to call it a tax, because that gets muddy from a constitutional perspective. But you've got, like, broader authority to act outside of the country. But things that are domestic, you can't touch that. So then it will become a debate about whether we're going to consider tariffs domestic or international, because as people will be right to point out, when you tariff somebody, it's the importer within your own borders that ends up paying that. So now it becomes, how do we define tariff? Is it a domestic tax or is it best understood as an international tax. He'll probably lose that given what they've just said. So then it becomes, okay, what is the thing that you can do? Like, is there a new thing that isn't a traditional tariff where you are directly imposing the fee on the outgoing shipment? I don't know. I don't know if that's possible. There's a reason that it doesn't exist currently. There's a reason that everybody does it, I imagine, just for reasons of collection. But you could certainly stop things at the border and then say this, this payment has to come from them. You could do that. But yeah, this is going to get weird. So that is my bet is that Trump is going to find a way to keep doing this because he can't give up that leverage.

[B]

And it's interesting to your point, he probably has a team of lawyers spinning something up to get out of its finesse.

[A]

Probably they've already done it.

[B]

Guaranteed.

[A]

Taking a short break, but there's more impact theory after Stay tuned.

[E]

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[C]

Hey, you weren't listening to me.

[E]

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[A]

Thanks for staying tuned. Now let's get back to it. We here are just basking in the afterglow of the state of the union.

[C]

We're winning too much. And I say, no, no, no. You're going to win again.

[A]

Pop, pop, pop, pop. Let's go. The state of the Union. Drew, did you watch the whole thing?

[B]

I did. Cover to cover, from ape sign to applause. So, you know, it's. It was sad.

[A]

This is America, Drew. I wanted to be inspired. I was not inspired. And listen, I understand that when we look back and see things like from JFK and stuff, you're. You're seeing a truncated version. It's a highlight reel. You're not seeing the whole thing. You don't have the context to understand if it was considered very divisive in its time. But when you think about a hit song, a hit song is the thing that it lasted. So it wasn't just good in its moment, it actually can find a new audience. As you know, the era goes on, and as the things that you remember because they had enough emotional resonance, they. They stick with you. And when you look back at historical things that presidents have said that really got the nation inspired and become the things that stick to our ribs, that we remember as a nation, that become a part of the story that we tell ourselves about ourselves, there's just none of that in this moment. I don't think you're going to get any of that from either side of the aisle. It's just not what people speak to anymore. They're not trying to inspire people. And that makes me very sad. Like, we've got to find our way back to that. You're not going to be able to survive on a diet of. The other side is a moron for long.

[B]

It.

[A]

It does rile people up, but it's a very caustic strategy in that it hurts you as much as it helps you. We're just losing the plot on this stuff. To hate your enemy is not a good strategy long term. And that, like, seems to be the thing. And look, we'll talk about it in a minute, but if you're a seal clapping for Trump setting traps for his political opponents, it's like you've already lost. I didn't think it was particularly good. I didn't think it was as bad as it could have been, but it wasn't inspiring. It's not going to remembered. This is not something that becomes part of our national identity once we get over the fever dream that is populism. It's a missed opportunity. So Trump's approval rating as we come into this is 36%. So it is the lowest point during either of his terms in office, and 61% of people say that the economy is not working well for them personally. But last night, as he's giving the State of the Union, he stood before a joint session of Congress and called this moment a golden age for America. Now, as always, the night just ended up feeling like a tug of war between two warring factions that are far more interested in controlling the national narrative than they are actually helping the American people. And before Trump even got his first full sentence out, Congressman Al Green of Texas was standing in the chamber holding a sign that read, black people aren't apes, which is a reference to a video Trump's own account shared on Truth Social earlier this month, depicting Biden and the Obamas as apes. Republican senators physically tried to grab the sign away from Green, and then he was quickly escorted out within minutes. The biggest beat of the night, though, came when Trump asked members of Congress to stand if they. They agreed that the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens. Republicans obviously stood, but Democrats stayed seated. This was exactly what Trump was hoping for. They handed Trump a midterms campaign video. I won't say I don't know what they're thinking. I know what they're thinking. They want to make it clear that they stand in opposition to him and everything that he stands for, full stop. But especially as it plays out in immigration at the moment, in the whole event, Trump, as they're seated, looks at them and says, isn't that a shame? You guys should be ashamed of yourself for not standing up now. That exchange set up Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashid Talib to shout at the president when he called members of Minnesota's Somali community Somali pirates, and he claimed that they'd stolen $19 billion from taxpayers. To be abundantly clear, nobody's proven anywhere near that. Omar then yelled, you've killed Americans and you're a liar, referencing the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Preddy by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis. Omar also fired back with her own, you should be ashamed from. For me, the unhinged shouting, which has been going on for a while now, is just. It really is disgraceful. It's horrible. None of us should be excited about that. I don't care who's doing it. It's just a terrible, terrible look. Meanwhile, dozens of the Democrats just outright boycotted the entire night. Now, getting into the substance of what Trump's speech was all about. He opened with the economy making some big claims that I imagine felt a little hollow to everyday working people. And if he's going to try to win the midterms, he's going to have to be a lot more careful. He claimed he inherited a stagnant economy and has delivered a turnaround for the age. He said more Americans are working today than any other time in history. Now, that is a fact that actually is true, but it's both true and yet fails to capture what making ends meet right now, today would feel like. It feels pretty horrifying in a just grotesquely K shaped economy. Going back to the whole employment thing, what's true is that the employment is at a record high in terms of just the raw number of people that are employed. But the population of working age people in the country is growing faster then the jobs are growing that those people would otherwise fill. So on the ground level, the sentiment is likely to be way closer to something like, I can't find work. So if he can't delineate between those, not just try to spin a story, but actually help people understand the cause and effect of all this, I think it would go a long way. Americans right now are not feeling a golden age. It just doesn't feel like that. 57% of Americans disapprove of Trump's handling of the economy and 64% say he's out of touch with the concerns of most Americans. Like, if you're giving the speech, it isn't about repeating that everything is great. When people don't feel that, you have to first say, okay, this is why you feel the way that you feel heard. Got it. Let's break it down into a few metrics. Probably three to five. You're not gonna overwhelm them and you're gonna show the ones that you've made progress on. You're gonna explain why that hasn't solved the whole problem. Cause remember, you have to explain why they feel the way they feel or they're just gonna think this is all a bunch of bs. So here's what we've done. Here's why you still feel the way you feel. Here's the other things we've got coming. And we think over time it's gonna make you feel better for these exact reasons. What you're gonna more money in your pocket, all of that. Focus people on the tax returns that are going to be coming their way, all of that, and then explain why you need to stay in power. Because if you stay in power, you're going to keep pushing XYZ thing. And these, you know, very limited number three to five things that you want people to just be circling on over and over and over and over and over and how the other team isn't going to get them there. If you want to win, that's exactly what you have to do. But if you don't explain why they feel the way they feel now, it's never going to work. Now, amid all of the partisan noise, there was one announcement last night that I was actually legitimately excited about. It's one of the best things that was talked about. Trump proposed giving roughly 50 million working Americans who don't have access to an employer match 401k the option to open a retirement savings account modeled after the federal Thrift Savings plan, the same low fee index based plan that government employees use. And the government would match contributions up to $1,000 a year. Now, in a world where real wages have been flat for decades and inflation is absolutely gobbling people's savings alive. So at this point, being in assets is a matter of survival. And this plan would give millions of Americans a simple vehicle to invest through, which would hopefully help tremendously in terms of getting people into assets. Is a thousand dollars a year going to make anyone rich? No, it is not. But it gets people in the game and makes investing a part of the average American's routine conversation. You want them to get obsessed with, hey, that free money the government made me, that's now compounding in the market, how's it doing? You will actually get them to care. So when you talk about the stock market being at 50,000, that people actually give a shit. Now, Trump also said Republicans will always protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The catch? The one big beautiful bill cut Medicaid by more than $900 billion over 10 years. Whoopsies. The way that it was presented borders on gaslighting. Instead of actually helping the American people understand what's really going on on the international front, Trump was wisely very brief. Right now, people want him to be focused on domestic issues and not on foreign policy. No matter how many wins he has internationally, if he does not get his act together domestically and people don't feel that, ooh, buddy, they're going to turn on him hard and fast. His quick coverage included pointing out how the US Is amassing military assets around Iran. But he still didn't make a very compelling case for why we might launch an attack. Now, boy, oh boy, are there rumors flying. So we'll see. Now, one thing that was notably absent from his international talk was any real mention of Ukraine. So this was the exact four year anniversary of Russia's full scale invasion. I just am shocked and aghast that it's been four years, man. But nonetheless, he was pretty quiet about it. There's one more elephant in the room, and that's the Department of Homeland Security has been shut down since February 14, and that means TSA, FEMA, the Coast Guard and the Secret Service are all operating without funding. Workers are about to miss paychecks. No bueno. Trump demanded Democrats restore funding immediately. During the speech, Democrats say they're not going to do it until there are reforms to ICE and cbp, particularly after the fatal shootings in Minneapolis. Last night was the longest State of the Union in at least 60 years. It was 1 hour and 47, 48 minutes. I saw different reports and in all that time, the biggest thing that was missing was any acknowledgment that Americans are struggling. I have a deep fear that, that the reason Trump has been elected twice is that he understands a thing that I really don't want to understand, that you have to simplify things so much for the average person that it's just more effective to lie and just repeat it over and over and over and over and over than to actually give them the okay, here's the cause and effect. This is how we walk through some of the things that he, he will say are so like, easy to fact check and just be like, that just isn't true, but that doesn't really matter. Like, he's trying to get people to feel that it's true. If you're just trying to drive home this feels true, then it's a totally different game. And so if we're judging him from the outside as like, no, hold on, wait a second. That isn't actively true. That isn't empirically true. He's just like, what game are you playing? Like, he's never going to acknowledge it. He's just going to keep repeating the thing.

[B]

Was this enough to get him over the hump for the midterms?

[A]

Right now he is on a one way course to calamity in the midterms. Midterms. It will flip for sure. The House will, the Senate, I don't know. I don't know how many people are coming up for reelection because they're on different schedules. But yeah, if the elections were held right now, today, he loses for sure. He's already made the structural bets that he's going to make and now they either pay off or they don't. If he can make things settle down in Mexico and there's a perception that this whole strength through, sorry, peace through strength thing is working. It worked in Venezuela, it worked in Iran, it worked in Mexico. Like if he gets that trifecta running and people are seduced enough by big wins from the tax refunds, he could be in a much stronger position. Or he would be unequivocally be in a much stronger position going into the midterms. Will it be enough? I don't know. It all comes down to how the average person feels about the economy.

[B]

I think we're mad at the wrong 1%. I think the right is convinced that there's a bunch of furries and blue haired people that want to blow up the country. And I think the left is convinced that there's just a bunch of Nazis that are walking around that are trying to burn down all the Jews. Jews. And I think that we want the poor people to be mad at the rich people. We want the rich people to be mad at the poor people. But the 1% that's really been us this whole time is politicians. I think that is 1% that we need to do. I think that same energy that we have for cops and ICE agents and all that stuff needs to be had for everybody that was in that congress building yesterday. All of them got more money, look better, increase their net worth, are living in beach houses. They have three, four houses. They're on private jets because they're traveling so much. And meanwhile you're trying to scrape up like scrap up, change the future. Kids, kids, like it's crazy.

[A]

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