David Frum: Trump is a World-Class Dupe

I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome back to the To the Contrary podcast. Um, back in 2017, back in the midst of time, uh, David from actually tweeted something out about, uh, Donald Trump that seems particularly relevant these days. He said, "Regular reminder that Donald Trump's core competency is not dealmaking with powerful counterparties. It is duping gullible victims." And so this seems timely once again. And so we welcome back onto the podcast, David from, by the way. Welcome back, David. Thank you so much. And congratulations on um the David from show um which which you've just launched through

the Atlantic. Um, and and it it seems to me, and I just wanted to comment on this, that that that you are you and I are probably the only two YouTube hosts that actually wear ties. Yes. And jackets on on YouTube. We we we took we we we I I took a a a corner of my house and it's a part of a library that's kind of dark and we set up all kinds of apparatus there. And and uh when I was working with the team said, "What was the vibe?" And I said, "The vibe

is monsterpiece theater with Alistister Cookie." and and all my young people at the Atlantic had no idea what I was talking about. But that see I just think that it was um you know people have asked me like so like nobody else wears a tie on on on YouTube. And I said I'm I'm trying to reclaim the space for grown-ups. So it's like you're you know branding it. It's like okay everybody else can't be a co you know cosplaying hipster. I want to be a grown-up. I don't mind doing that. Well, it's not. Yes, there's

that, but there's there's also this, which is um and this is why why I I've resumed doing on on your show and on other shows, but especially on the one I host. Um that at the beginning of podcast, there's a lot of romance about this is loose, this isn't, you know, this isn't NPR, this isn't the CBS Evening News, it's loose, it's goose. And and that had a kind of fun informality relaxing. Say, okay, it's loose, it's goose. And that's why to bring on to talk about the Nazi Holocaust, we have a Nazi crackpot. you

think, you know what, it's getting a little too loose. Getting a little too loose. We need to tighten it back up. And and if uh so one of the reason I'm if I bring on someone uh to talk about the Nazi Holocaust, it is going to be some a credentialed expert who reads German and knows the archives and it's not just some random crackpot I've hauled in off out of some meth fugue on the streets of some city and who has some thoughts about the Jews. It's going to be someone you can have confidence in.

And so I'm trying that's the thing I'm trying to reclaim is you can have con we're working hard. This is not this is not fun actually. It's uh and I realized one of the things I had never is how hard all the podcast hosts have to work because I always showed up. I was the guest at the party. You guys work hard to set the table. Um it's work and and also when I say things I've checked them and you know what everything we do the reason it doesn't appear the same day is because the

Atlantic fact checks them. Um, and if we f if they're factual statements made on the show, there's an independent eye to look at them and say, "David, what was your source for this thing?" And even though I said it impromptu, if I don't have a source, it'll be cut. Um, and no, yeah. And no, which is a good thing. Seems so last century, you know, that whole factchecking thing. Well, it it's it's it's it's how you avoid the whole Hitler was misunderstood genre of podcasting. Yeah. which which seems to be a genre in and of

itself. So, let's talk about uh the week the weekend scams. Um I want to talk about uh the the president uh in his M East tour, but but I I am not yet tired of the grift in the air, the whole Qatar jet thing. Um, and and I have to say that one of the high points of this discussion was something that you tweeted out a couple of days ago um about about this plane that Well, I I don't I don't want to steal your your thunder about it, but but where the plane came from

and and it's it's got a backstory. It's got a history, right? It's got a history. So, um I got a tip to look into this. Um and and I the thing I love about the story is because if you're a Trump skeptic, you're always having to balance two truths in your mind. One is the president is unfathomably corrupt and wicked and immoral, right? On the other hand, he's kind of a goofball and a fool and a sucker and a dupe and in himself that that um he himself is often the victim of his own scams.

And so this plain story brings them both together because um look if normal administration the a mayor of Qatar says to the US ambassador, look, we're thinking of making a $400 million gift to the president. Mhm. The ambassador's job is to say, "What a beautiful thought." But you know what the president, the first lady would really like is one of those beautiful hand crocheted scarves I saw on the market or a pair of them. Just keep it under $250 and present them and they'll love they will love them. I promise you. And you know, if

you maybe some artwork by children, they they always they always love that. You're not supposed to let this project go forward. But it did go forward and Trump said, "Why wouldn't I take a $400 million bribe?" But then you discover the backstory of the bribe. So here's the story. So the uh the uh there's uh the Qatar has a national airline which is a very luxurious plane if you ever have the good fortune to ride on it. They also have a fleet of airplanes that are bought by the royal family with government funds and operated

by the airline but only for the exclusive use of the royal family. Um, in the about 2010, uh, there was a particular prime minister who loved the extended 747 with the with the extra- long canopy on top. And he bought a couple of them, uh, for for use for his own use and outfitted them in the way that we've all seen. Uh, one God, one Godier. Um, and and he meant them for his own use. In fact, his initials are in the tail signal of the plane. That's about 2000. He orders them, I don't know,

2009, 2010. They come into service in 2012. That prime minister is a member of the royal family falls badly out of favor in 2013 and loses his access to the planes. At which point the infavor family has a problem. They've got these two gasg guzzling four engine things and they're too much even for the cuties. So they put them on sale and no one buys them because they're g because they look ridiculous on the inside. Even too much even for a dictator. They're too much. And they have four engines so they're big gas guzzlers. And

by the way, they're um they're the planes are aging. Um so they they put them on the market, they try to sell, they try to sell, they try to sell. And finally in 2018, from 2012 on, they've been trying to sell these white elephant planes. 2013 when the minister they're taken into service in 2012. Neither of them flies more than a couple of hundred hours. In 2013, the minister who ordered them falls out of favor. Um and from 2013 on, they're trying to sell. In 2018, uh, Qatar has a very close relationship with Turkey. They

take the god earier of the two planes and they make a president of it to the president of Turkey. Here you operate. Yeah. Erdogan. And he accepts it. And it's it's and you can see pictures of it on the Twitter thread I linked to the interior. And it's it's like if Vegas did Aladdin's thousand1 nights, this is what they'd make for the the Vegas Aladdin suite. Um uh but then they've got the second plane which is a little less fancy and and again it's on the market and in 2020 it's a sister plane. They're they're

basically the same plane just slightly less obscenely gaudy. Okay. Yes. Exactly. Um and so the second plane is the one and it in 2020 they give up co they take it off the market and it just sits in a hanger in Arizona um uh waiting for someone to do something with it. And then wait a minute Mr. Yoko shows up. He likes bribes. Let's let's give it to him because most people have offered a gift of a 747. Most governments say, "Well, that's very nice, very thoughtful, very touching. How much a year does it cost

me to operate this magnificent and what's it going to take to retrofit it?" Yeah. Right. It's free. No thank I can't afford this gift. But Trump, who doesn't never reads the fine print, he says, "Yes, we'll take it." So my assumption is that this thing eventually falls apart. And not just because um it's illegal, which is obviously it is, but because it's it's absurd. Um it's impractical. It cost tens of millions of dollars to operate, let alone all the cost of rental opening up. But it's a story not just about Trump's fathomless corruption, but also

just what a you know, he's the fool at the poker what a he's the fool at the poker table in so many of these transactions, which I think we'll talk more of today. So, actually in your your Twitter feed, you linked to a story from I think it was July of 2020 where somebody was writing about this white elephant plane sitting there and saying that, you know, nobody was buying it. And of course, if you had to ask how much it cost and you couldn't afford it and and the only people that would that would

actually think of buying it probably, you know, we're not talking to the, you know, cutteries at at at the time. And so they speculated back in 2020 that they were probably going to have to give it away like they gave away the other planes. So it was like, okay, so they had to give away this plane to the pre, you know, president of Turkey. Who's going to be next? So five years passes and they go, okay, we got a guy who will take this off our hand. Now, there are some estimates that it will cost

a billion dollars to retrofit this because they're going to have to take it apart, put it back together again. And you know, you know, and and Trump, of course, wants to keep this for himself. So, it's not going to be free uh to the, you know, he keeps saying it it's free. Well, it's it's not free. It's going to cost a lot of money. And then plus, we're going to need an Air Force One since he's taking this with him. So, yeah. And he and his air is planned to operate it. Um there's something one

more thing about this that is I said, um uh I've uh I worked in the White House and I had the chance to fly on Air Force One, but I've also flown on some planes operated by non US NATO governments. Mhm. And the mood on those planes is austerity. Um that that is that that that the chancellor of Germany, the uh prime minister of Canada, I don't know about the president of France. I've never se that one may be different, but that they do not fly in luxury. Um the idea is they need to be

able to go to all kinds of places that commercial airlines don't fly. If you need to go to Sudan, you don't want to be booking a ticket on Lufansza. Um they need secure communications and they need to be able to survive terrorist attack. uh whether it's including ground air missiles. So they need all kinds of survivability techniques. But once there these are democratic governments it's not you know the Gulf is not even Turkey. It's it's not it's a flying Vegas. Yeah. It's not a flying Vegas. And even air even the United States Air Force One

more luxurious than any it's still not a flying Vegas because it is a republic uh by the tip of its fingertips but it still is one. Um, so that's that that that's another reason I think all this is sticking in everybody's craw is that everything that Trump likes is why you should say no aside from even even if it were to stay in the possession of the United States and not be turned into a perfect personal gift to the president and his heirs. So you you you wrote it is the most astonishing act of brazen

corruption in the history of the American presidency in the history of many postsviet presidencies. I mean, it's unamerican. It cannot be compared to anything that has ever happened in American um history, which is not an exaggeration. I mean, there's there's nothing even remotely like you can run through all the various scandals and griffs in American history and they feel quaint in comparison to to all this. But I I do um I know part of me wants to see what he does with all of this because we talk about Gaudy and considering how Trump has already

redecorated the Oval Office with all the gold, you know, guilt and everything. Um what he will do with this plane. I mean, you almost expect to see Wayne Newton, you know, coming out of, you know, with the door. But these things are directionally important in that they tell us that about the crisis that is coming. So I get one of the questions I get asked a lot on the speaking circuit is about Trump in the third term. Yeah. And and so my answer to that always, and this is the same thing with the plane, look,

it's obviously not going to happen. Um because it's illegal and and Trump can't make it legal. Remember, ballots are and ballot access is controlled by the states. So, will the state of California agree to print a ballot in 2020 with Donald Trump's name on it um in the face of considerable bodies of law that say it can't be there? No, the state of California won't do that. Will the state of New York do that? No. you know, maybe Oklahoma will, but um but he doesn't need California and New York, right? He just needs 270 electoral

votes. Uh he uh maybe the state of the point is he's going to be on he's not going to be on the ballot in the majority of the country. Um so it's it's not a workable Yeah, it's not going to be a work it's not a workable plan. So it's not going to happen and he probably won't be on the ballot in Florida because Florida actually is pretty clean elections law. Um, so but the reason that it's important when he says it is it tells you the way his mind is going as this plane tells

you where his mind is going. He is not going to allow there not to be a constitutional crisis. Um, and what what of the many things he's doing will turn into the crisis of the second Trump presidency. Um, he started so many things in motion. Whether it will be defying a court order on the immigration actions. Um, whether it will be one of these corruption scandals, whether it will be insider trading. I I can't predict yet, but it's it's coming. He's not going to. He is steering into it, not steering away from it. So, what

would that look like, though? What So, what are you thinking about? He you he can't run for a third term, but he will create a constitutional crisis that will do what? I don't I don't know that that the crisis will be third term specific. What I'm saying is he's he he's just saying, you show me a law and I show you you show me a red line and I cross it. You there's no red line that I won't cross. And and and there's a lot of contingency and unpredictability in which of the cross red lines

turn like who thought in the first term that it would be about blackmailing the you know the Ukraine over weapons. Who thought that would be the scandal it was? There are so many other scandals. Um and I think in the second term we can't predict it but uh if if we have free and fair if we have free and fair elections in 2026 uh which is an if but if we do um at least one house of Congress will have u will resume its investigative functions and there will be a standoff uh because Trump will

not they'll send subpoenas Trump will ignore them um uh it'll become clear that he's covering up something pretty bad and then we go from there again I can't predict the content I can predict the form So, what do you mean if we have free free and fair elections in 2026? What what what is the darker scenario for the midterm elections that you're hinting at? Um, I think I think Trump tipped his hand in 2020 what that would look like, which is again the president can't press a button that says cancel elections and he c and

he can't run the elections and because some of the most vulnerable Republican incumbents are in California and New York, he probably cannot protect them. Yeah. But what he can do is try in in states where he's got some purchase on the state election law, North Carolina and Wisconsin are the two most obvious candidates. Pennsylvania is another create chaos um as that was the plan in 2020. some reason that people can't be seated, some question there's a cloud and um something where you can create enough commotion that the first the next Congress will be consumed with

the question not what did Donald Trump do but who are our members? Um, you remember I do you remember that big battle um in uh the I forget it's in the 80s or 90s there was some seat in Indiana um Indiana 7 I think it was where there's some where there's a disputed election involving one person and Nuke Gingrich went to war over the he eventually lost but he he he thought it was he made it seem like it was the constitutional battle of the century over whether this and I I completely forget what it

was all about. I do too. Yeah. But I remember it was a huge and it took a lot of congressional time. So what if it's not one seat in one state, but what if it's enough state seats in two states to hold the balance of power? You know what? Unfortunately, this is completely plausible. It's it is very easy to imagine exactly what you're talking about. Um you know, keeping control of Congress in doubt with these kinds of fights, even if they are completely bogus. Yeah. So and so it's it's like the plane stories. You don't

have to assume that Donald Trump has wellw worked out intelligent operational plans to see that. Um there it's kind of a superpower to have no regard for the rules. Um I I was I was noticing this today. So um so one of the uh one of the things we're all dealing with right now is the Trump foreign policy. So he fought a war against the Houthies at a cost of a billion dollars and he lost, right? Um and then just gave up and then just gave up. We uh but the Trump method is you just

rely on brazeness. So you say we won the war against the Houthies. I just did my latest show. We we the United States brokered the peace between India and Pakistan. Yeah. And both India and Pakistan say no. No. Yeah. Thank there's a phone call. You just claim it. But you just claim it because uh if you don't care at all whether you're exposed as a liar, um it's amazing what you can do. And if there's some people who will believe what you say or pretend to believe it and certainly there are people who will repeat

what you say. Um and there are many many people this goes thing we were just saying about thinking what it's really like who want to believe there must be more to this. There must be some logic. Um that it can't be that it's all just chaos and nonsense and danger. There must be something. and and uh that's that's one of the reasons why people are ready to believe the story about brokering peace between India and Pakistan and I I gave 45 minutes to taking that story apart this week. Um and some people are interested but

most just say ah it's it's another piece of noise. Let it let it bounce off our ears. Well, let's talk about the foreign policy and I want to get to tariffs because you had a very very interesting piece about the um uh the the you know how how regressive tariffs are. But I want to talk about this this trip to the Middle East. And there's so many different aspects of it, including, you know, meeting with the president of Syria, uh the kissing up to, uh, you know, Msad, uh, I'm sorry, Muhammad bin, um, I'm sorry,

uh, MBS. All right, I'm just going to call him MBS. All all of that. But why do you think that Donald Trump dissed Israel? Why did he not visit Israel? Why did he basically give the back of his hand to Benjamin Netanyahu? Because up until about five minutes ago, he was joined at the hip with Israel and with Benjamin Netanyahu. So, give me your sense of of what happened there. I want to talk about a lot of there a lot of other things I want to talk about, but just give me your your take on

what's going on between Trump and Israel. Well, let's take a step back and talk about these trips. So, presidents of the United States uh when they make their first trip uh out of the country have a long tradition of vis the first trip is almost always to one of America's near neighbors. John John F. Kennedy's first trip was to Canada. Lyndon Johnson's first trip was to Canada. Barack Obama's first trip was to Canada. Gerald Ford's first trip was to Mexico. Reagan's first trip was to Mexico. George W. Bush to Mexico. This is not just Republicans.

Uh Republicans tend to be from um near the Mexican border, Democrats near the Canadian border. So, they have personal relationships. But anyway, so those so three and three, three to Mexico, three to Canada. Um Lyndon Johnson actually made a special made a balance. He made his first he made a quick informal trip to Canada and then he made his first substantial visit to Australia because Australian troops were fighting with the United States in Vietnam. Um Donald Trump made both his first two trips to the Middle East and specifically to the Persian Gulf. His first trip

in his first term was included Israel. His first trip in his second term did not. Um uh and I think part of it is that they're putting pressure on Israel to agree to um a deal that the Israelis don't want. But it's also I think this uh the this trip to the should be seen very much in the in the light of retirement planning and Israel is just not relevant to his retirement planning. So it's all about the deals the the deals the griffs the scams. Yeah. Presidents don't go to the first to I mean

uh because here's a very basic reason why they don't. So, you're a new president. You've got just a million things going at once. Let's make the first trip something easy where there are not a lot of contentious issues. So, you go to Canada, you know, you you talk about the water in the Great Lakes, you talk about getting the Canadians to spend more on their defense procurement. You speak to the Canadian Parliament. It's e everyone knows everybody. It's easy and they're not a lot of the security. Easy. As easy as it ever is for an

American president. Low risk. Go to Mexico. Low risk. Yeah. Yeah. It's not going to blow up. Same thing with the trips to Mexico. Um again they go at a particularly more warm moments in US Mexican relationship. Again deep knowledge not there are many many issues but none of them super salient. Going to the Middle East is is a big project. Um that's why by the way it's May that Trump's first trip of his second term takes place in May whereas normally the first trip takes place earlier because you do an easy one Mexico Canada. Nick

Richard Nixon's first trip as president was to a NATO summit. Okay. Uh, again, pretty complicated, but you know, not it's not going to go wrong on you this. So, what the it's the call of the Gulf and Trump is doing all of this business there. Hotels, um, Abu Dhabi buying two billion dollars worth of his meme coin. This so that's that it tells you something what the main theme of this second term is, and that is retirement planning. That that that's hard to argue with. Um, that's hard to argue with. But the one of the

big surprises though was also the lifting of the sanctions on Syria. This was something that the Saudis apparently wanted him to do. So here you have this this image of the president who's not only now accepting this $400 million plane from um the you know some of the biggest funders of Hamas and international terror organizations. But he's now meeting with the president of Syria, a guy who once was part of al-Qaeda. I mean this is kind of breathtaking, isn't it? When you think about I mean in terms of and and again what Donald Trump can

get away with that no one else can get away with. Barack Obama could not have gotten away with that. Kla Harris could not have gotten away with that. If Joe Biden had done anything like this, you would have had the right absolutely, you know, heads exploding everywhere. It's complicated for for liberals in the left and the non-farright too because um look, this Syria question is very complicated and closely balanced. Uh the new president of Syria has a terrible resume. He has terrible. But over the past decade, he has made a lot of moves toward returning

to civilization. And he has consolidated power in a way that seems to have reduced the level of violence in Syria. Um, if somebody else were president right now, uh, you might say, you know what, um, we don't know. We don't know which guy was the real guy. Per my personality, I'd rather be wrong on the upside than wrong on the downside on this one. If I if it were my decision, I would say there's a lot of reasons here to be anxious, but there's some reasons for hope. Let's be wrong in hope, not be wrong

in fear. Um, and and if I if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. And there are all kinds. But the problem with Trump is, you know, it's not like that. It's the Saudis wanted him to do it. So, he's doing it. And of course, if Barack Obama if Barack Obama had done it, it would been intensely studied, intensely debated, intensely minuteed. Um, and the optimist would say, you know what, this is a risk worth taking. This guy might be for real. He's giving us lots of signs. By the way, he helped us kill a lot of ISIS

people um when he was nominally an ISIS himself. Um he might be good. It's worth it. It's a huge win. Let's do it. And if Barack Obama had done it, the right would now be saying, "Oh, he's doing it because he's a Muslim terrorist lover." Um whereas Trump is doing something again, it might be a good risk. Uh but we all know but whereas it would be false to say of Obama that it's not he's not doing it for national reasons with Trump you know he's doing it because the Saudis told him to and it's

part of his retirement planning and he doesn't care. So there's one detail here that that I don't want to gloss over because it does feel like it's been dropped into the memory hole which is that um the the murder of Jamal Kosigible it's as if it never happened. Um, you have, you know, a lot a great deal of evidence, consensus of the intelligence community, uh, that that that NBS was responsible for ordering the murder, this, uh, this Tiger Team murder of a US-based journalist. Um, you know, and the dismemberment of his body, and it's like

it's completely shrugged off. It doesn't matter. And but but also I mean I I thought I thought it's interesting that that Donald Trump actually seemed to address it by basically saying that you know a lot of people think that I should be concerned about the sins of other people the morality and I'm not. I'm just simply a dealmaker. But there's part of Donald Trump that has this really sort of sick admiration for powerful people who can get away with murder. And I'm not saying that he's planning to do it but there is something that he's

been asked about this. You know Vladimir Putin is a murder well. He kill lots of people, too. But there's something about it that that he thinks that if you're powerful and you're rich enough, you can literally get away with highprofile murders of people you don't like, which is also creepy. There also that's that's too that's a light word. There also dozens of women in prisons in Saudi Arabia for no offense that anyone can see other than posting on social media that they um wanted to enjoy the right to choose their own clothes. Um, yeah. And

because uh or uh because if you if you are if you're an elite Saudi and you say that, you're protected. But if you're a non- elite Saudi woman and you say it, you there's no one to protect you and you're at the mercy of the religious courts because the balance of power between the reformist agenda and the traditional is uncertain. And so the deal that I'm not any kind of expert on this, but it looks to me the deal they struck is um if my if one of my royal cousins uh goes out in a

Chanel suit, leave her alone. Uh but if some in this case it was literally a physical trainer who works in a local gym, if she posts on social media that she's wants to wear her gym clothes back to her car on her way home, you can arrest her and do with her what you want. Um but to to go to the Trump piece of this, um it has always been a part of America's power that America is more than just another big country. And it's not just that, and this is something that you, it's very

hard to make the bullies and thugs of the world like Donald Trump understand that the reputation for being more than just your rockets is a real objective fact in the power balance within nations. Um, it matters that people trust the United States and believe in the United States and think that think that the not just Americans as individuals, but the US government will doesn't just say I'm I'm we're here just here for the deal. In fact, that's something that lesser countries that yeah, maybe it's true that if the Belgians show up and they raise human

rights concerns, no one is going to listen. So, the best the Belgians can do is maximize whatever Belgian economic interests there are in Saudi Arabia. But if the president of the United States comes to Saudi Arabia, you know, uh Ronald Reagan made it a point that he had there was a list during the Soviet days. There's a list of prisoners that he was concerned about. And anytime the US ambassador Jack Matlock met with a Soviet counterpart, he was to begin the meeting by saying, "I have a list of names. I want to hear about the

health of each one of these individuals. How is so- and so doing? How is so and so doing? How is so and so doing?" Not that you could get them out of prison, but you could but you could make this someone was paying attention to their health and it it was a factor in the relationship. Not the only thing, but a factor. And the United States is big enough and powerful enough that, you know, that commanded some attention. That's an amazing switch when you think about how far we've we've come from that. Okay, so let

let's switch gears a little bit and talk about um the other thing that Donald Trump has claimed victory. Um he blinks with uh China, but of course Trump being Trump, you know, declares that he's got this great deal with the with the United Kingdom with with with China. You had a great piece though I thought about the bait and switch involving tariffs and it was was very clarifying because it points out that here you have this populist president who you know for the little people and yet if you understand exactly how tariffs work they are

incredibly regressive. So talk to me a little bit about that because you went through who pays tariffs and who does not pay tariffs and it's really I think was very illustrative of exactly the the the the problem of a populist president pushing massive tariff increases. A tariff is a retail sales tax on an imported good paid by an American that applies only to goods, not to services. um and it's protectionist um and uh applies only to things you spend money on. So basically uh an upper if if you compare um a um a poor person

to an upper middle class person to a rich person. The rich the rich person spends almost sp saves almost all of their income. The middle class person will spend more of their income but spend much of it on services and the poor person spends almost everything on goods. So I imagine so the I I conjure this up. Imagine this. Um, poor family at dinner. Uh, the table made in China is tariffed. The chairs are tariffed. The cheap plates are tariffed. The cheap knives and forks are tariffed. Um, if they're having a meal, a meal of

pasta, which is again a very basic food, pasta, most pasta in the United States is made from Canadian hard wheat. Um, and that wheat is tariffed. Um, everything that if they have soda with dinner, the aluminum can in which the soda comes, tariffed. Now imagine a fancier family. They're celebrating their Trump tax cut at a restaurant. The most if you go to a restaurant, the most important costs in your meal are the rent of the space, not tariffed, and the wages of the chef and the servers, not tariffed. And the plates, if they're they are

tariffed, of course, but they come from Italy, not from China, so they pay a lower tariff. Um, and I went through this this sort of summary of, you know, uh, the doll is tariffed. The nanny that you that the wealthier family hires to play with the doll, not tariffed. The doorork knob is tariffed. the door man on the apartment building not tariffed. The towel is tariffed. The towel is tariffed. The membership in the swimming club not tariffed. Um so as you go up the hierarchy you pay less and less. So u one of Trump's talkers

uh fellow Canadian I'm sorry to say Kevin, what's his name? Ali. He goes on TV and says this is like a VAT. Um it's not a VAT is neutral between imported and is not protectionist and it applies to services as well as goods. So the VAT is paid on the membership in the as well. Yeah. Is paid on the membership in the swimming club as well as the um as well as on the uh towel. Um it is the most regressive, most unfair tax you can possibly have. And as Trump steps back from the brink

of the Dr. Evil milliond billion% tariffs on China to the 10 to 30% tariffs that we're going to end up with. Um he's building a whole revenue system that is paid overwhelmingly by the poorest people in America. And by the way, it is imposed at the discretion and whim of the president without Congress and that and that can be given exemptions to by if you're a if you're a corporation that says look, our corporation is a special case, so the usual rate of corporate tax is punitive for us, you have to go make that case

to Congress and you have to get Congress House and Senate to pass and the president to sign a special amendment in your favor. But if you want an exemption from a tariff, you just win Trump's favor in and then he he carves out an exemption for you. So it's an system of arbitrary executive taxation shot through with arbitrary executive exemptions all of which falls on the poorest people in society most heavily you know and this raises the question of you know looking back on that first 100 days uh the the abdication by Congress has actually

been breathtaking. It's something that uh that I don't think the founders ever imagined when they wrote article one that they thought that Congress would basically say we're just not going to even be part of this entire drama until now. Congress. Actually, the founders did not only did imagine this, they remembered it because uh the the most important historical event in the memory of the founders was the English civil war of the 1640s and and then the glorious revolution 1680s. And the 1640 civil war was triggered by the attempt of King Charles I to raise money

without parliament. Uh and he had a variety of schemes and devices for raising money without parliament. And it led to a crisis which ended with Charles the first getting his head cut off. So could the founders imagine an executive trying to raise money without Congress? They could sure could and they because they were descended from the people who had done the head cutting and and uh and but they could but and but having written the constitution they thought that they had solved that problem, right? They said we're going to make this absolutely crystal clear that

the power of the purse resides in Congress, not the president. I mean and we can't make this any clearer. And yet here we are where Congress basically on this issue on on the issue of tariffs had b turned themselves voluntarily into potted plants. Yeah. And not just Congress by the way that the constitution says every money bill must start in the house. So the the body of the part of Congress they regarded as close to the people. That's where the bills started that the people were going to pay the tariff on the table. They had

you had to get their ascent. And of course in those days because tariffs are relatively easy to collect if you're a less developed country. uh t the main source of revenue was tariffs. They thought okay the people were going to paying the tariff on the table they have to approve. Um and look Congress got into this jam gradually and for reasons that are not crazy. So through the 19th century um tariffs are the main source of revenue and Congress imposes them and it's always a blood path to impose a tariff bill and they're crazy and

they're irrational and they're stupid and everybody can see how stupid it is. Henry George who was a great free trader of the 19th century wrote that to introduce a corruption too. Yeah. Right. To introduce a tariff bill into parliament or Congress is like throwing a single banana into a cage of money monkeys. Soon they're all screeching and yelling for it. Uh so so uh they try to create tariff commissions and none of this works. And then uh you get the tariffs of the 1920s that caused the great depression, the tariffs of the 1930s that aggravate

the great depression. And by the middle of the 30s, everyone in Congress says, "You know what? This was all a terrible mistake." So, beginning in the in the Roosevelt administration, beginning the year 1934, Congress passes a series of laws that grant discretionary authority over tariffs to the president to roll back. The idea is always he's going to be the most free he's going to be the most free trade person. He's going to be the honest broker. He's he's not going to be vulnerable to the pressures we are. Um so beginning with the reciprocity act of

34 and then through a series of measures more and more pres powers delegated to the president say you can impose tariffs basically for two reasons. You can impose tariffs you can impose permanent tariffs for reasons of national defense. You want to protect an artillery factory from cheaper competition. We need to keep that artillery factory here. You have permanent power for national defense. And if there's like some influx of of imports that threatens to dist destabilize a region, you have temporary power for emergencies. Temporary power for emergencies, permanent power for national defense. But the basic rule

is we're we're assuming that tariffs are coming down down down and you have these powers to stop us from doing something we'll regret later. So Donald Trump has taken these emergency power, temporary emergency powers and permanent national defense powers to create a permanent structure of executive revenue that can only be rolled back by a vote of the House, Senate, and a signature of the president. So these things are going to be here for a while. We have really this is an enduring mess he's made and it's going to be it's going to be a big

project to undo it. So talking about Congress, um they are about to uh assert some some cloud obviously with this uh you know one big beautiful bill, this massive, you know, omnibus bill that um looks like and again it's not clear how they're going to square the circle. You know, there's going they will extend the tax cuts. Uh they're not they're not going to raise taxes on rich people, but there's going to be deep cuts in Medicaid. Um I I I have you usually try to avoid watching the sausage being made, but give me your

sense of of how this is playing out. Um I'm assuming and tell me if you you disagree. I'm assuming that they will get something done because failure cannot possibly be an option. So they're going to pass something through reconciliation probably by the narrowest of margins. Um you know, may even take JD Vance to break a a tie in the Senate, but they're going to get something done. What is it going to look like at the end of the day, do you think? So, if you were to go to um a guru of of taxation, an

economist say, um tell me how to write the worst possible tax bill. If I want to create a tax bill that was just a an economic disaster that would slow growth, do what would I do? What how how do I write a bad bill? He said, well, the first thing you do is you make it temporary because then no one can have long-term planning. So, you have lots you have lots of fiscal cliffs. you have lots of incentives for investment but it lasts four years or six or eight. Um and and so you make it

temporary. And then the second thing is you want to have lots of favoritism. So similarly situated people should pay very different rates of of tax. And then of course you want to put the biggest burden of taxation on those least able to pay and the lowest burden of taxation on those most able to pay. Oh, and then you want to make it as uh intervent you want to favor one uh you want to try to introduce national economic planning through the back door and favor certain kinds of industries and disfavor other kinds of industries and

especially favor domestic over foreign. So that that would those would be my major things of of what of the don't do you're not you're not contemplating you're learning this you're taking this to so I put the label of the rat poison you're not thinking about drinking it are you? I say bartender line up line up the flaggins of rat poison we're going to drink them all. Um, no. It's this is going to be the most anti-growth like like where is Art Laugher? Where's even Paul Ryan when you need him? That everything you shouldn't do and

everything that even Paul Ryan I mean not that he minds upward redistribution but uh but even he he might say well you know what yeah well the least people who are least able to pay also get the most government services so let them pay the taxes the and let the wealth creators not pay. He might do that, but he wouldn't agree with make it temporary, make it favor and introduce economic planning by the back door. Um, the reason they're doing that, of course. Yeah. I mean, the reason they're making it temporary is that's the only

way the math looks like reasonably, you know, palatable, right? Because otherwise, this will just explode the national debt. I mean, we're looking at a $5 trillion increase in the national debt anyway, right? And if they actually wrote this in all the costs of all of this, people would go, "Oh my god, you are bankrupting the you're not only not only it's not only anti-growth, you are bankrupting the country." I think there's something even more cynical and sinister going on. Uh which is because they're making because they're not making these 10-year or 9-year fiscal cliffs the

way uh the legislation would sort of encourage, right? Um they're making the fiscal cliff 2028. what they that they're writing a tax bill so that uh the Republicans can in 2028 or JD Vance can go to every billionaire in America and say if um Hugo whoever wins who I'm representing as Hugo Chavez um if they win your tax goes up the day after the election the only way you can keep your the tax cut you got in 2025 is by reelecting me in 2020 is what right so so it's it's very much kind of hostage

taking bill so it's one more one more oh one the thing that the tax and don't make any of this a way to uh manipulate the political cycle. Don't do that. That's so that every tax no is what's going on here. Um and uh the thing that is um remarkable about this is look tax purity is normally a thing that conservatives and Republicans have cared about is those of us who uh so those of us who had the formerly right-wing now rhino belief that markets are good, the government should be neutral, um that the private

sector creates wealth, government can only redistribute it, um that we should have free trade, we should have open markets at home and free trade abroad. all all of that stuff which is now next door to communism but used to be right-wing um that we were the people who cared it was not Democrats never minded messy tax bills um the whole project of that was a Reagan project is we want you know simplify 15 uh if you have income below this level is 15% if you have income above this level is 27%. Uh we you know

otherwise we're completely neutral as to what you do, what you make. We don't care uh how the money is made. We just we want our 15% up to this amount 20. We don't care if you if it's a corporation. We don't care if it's a private person. We don't care if you're calling it a capital gain. 15 27 that's it. Uh that's that's the tax system. That was an old that was a big idea from the 80s. And um and members of Congress, mostly Democrat, but also well well then what do we do if we

if we have no favors to sell? who needs us and and the Republicans they say that's exactly we're trying to stop. We're trying to stop the sale of favors. Well, this tax bill right now is the biggest orgy of favorelling seen since the days of tariff bills. And it's hard to come back from that, right? Because you know, how do you compete with that? Um other than to say, okay, we're just simply going to give different favors. It's, you know, the so the elections basically become an auction for who's going to be able to give

out the the fear and the favors, which I think HL Minkin um predicted that some time ago. An advanced auction of stolen goods he called election. Yes, exactly. Very good. That was exactly the quote that I was thinking of. So the way the way we're we get out of this is um the Tea Party people of the 2010s predicted a fiscal cliff, a fiscal crisis, and um that didn't happen for for two reasons. um one was we entered this period of extraordinarily low interest rates and practically zero that lasted from basically 2008 to aftermath of

COVID. So the pre debt didn't cost much and the second thing is for reasons that I certainly don't understand and maybe are not well understood that med healthcare costs Medicare and Medicaid didn't stop rising as fast as they had been rising. I don't know why that happened, but but um so the two so you got these two forms of relief, low interest rates and slowdown in in Medicare, but interest rates are now high. Um the baby boomers are now moving into their 70s. So we're going to have a lot of medical costs. Um and at

some point we're going to need some revenue. So you're going to need a someone's going to have to write a bill that says the most important consideration is getting some money to pay the bills. Um, and at that point, you know, you are going to look at you're going to need to get rid of many of the special exemptions and you're also going to need, I believe, some you are going to need some form of consumption tax, a VAT, not a tariff, but a VAT and and that and and you're going to say if if

I plan imposing a VAT that falls on middle class people, there'd better be something here that falls on the billionaires, too. they're gonna have to do their share because we're going to need the VAT is is is a re revenue raising machine or maybe a carbon tax does it's also the right kind of consumption tax but that if those things fall on middle- inome people and and there has to they have to see that the very wealthy are shouldering even more of the burden so we're going to have to get rid of many so I

think that's how it comes it'll come about in the atmosphere of crisis I have no idea when the crisis arrives no um but it is going to arrive at some point but you can't keep doing all of this the problem is that both political parties have kind convinced themselves that tariffs don't matter. By the way, um, one of the, I think, what rather extraordinary stories of the last several months and and I'm not saying it's undercover, but it it seems to sort of be getting lost is is that now we're we are um getting very

very clear evidence that the whole Elon Musk Doge thing, which was dangerous and destructive and um uh you know, disruptive um but completely ineffective in terms of lowering the national debt uh cutting the size of the federal government. So what was it that you know you have these agencies that have been crippled services that have been put at risk but when you look at the actual numbers the the savings are are tiny are infatessimal so the whole thing was a was a total fiasco wasn't it? No not from so Elon Musk um in 2024 was

very worried about SEC enforcement actions against him. In fact, I think he said in one of in one of his public appearances that if Kla Harris won the election, he would be going to prison. And I think he was thinking about his SEC. So So the SEC has been destroyed. So that's a win. Um uh uh he probably doesn't pay all that much income tax and certainly neither do his friends. Well, a third of the auditors in the IRS have been laid off, especially those who focus on high-income people. So that's a win. Um and

uh that parts of the government that he regarded as dangerous to him have been destroyed. uh climate enforcement uh he's done tremendous damage to the uh atmospheric and oceanographic agencies. That's a win. So if you look if you look at that I have a very particular set of government agencies that I want to disable. He disabled them. The whole thing about So you had the perform you have the whole performative thing with the chainsaw was really in a way kind of a distraction from what his actual agenda was. You know I I describe Donald Trump

as this combination of of of wicked and sucker. I would not describe Elon. There's no that this is one shrewd shrewd operator and so he he got what he wanted. He got what he wanted and that's why he can go now and now he can get rid of NASA and so he can do his own SpaceX thing. I thought it was very interesting. I mean, this is like, you know, bottom story it feels like, but what they're doing at the Library of Congress filing the, you know, firing the the director of the copyright apparently like

a couple days after um she issued a report that would have uh pushed back on on Elon Musk on and uh artificial intelligence. I mean, these these are things like why is this happening? And the only thing you can do is, you know, only conclusion you can come to is that anyone that is has crossed Elon Musk or poses any sort of a barrier to Elon Musk's business or his entrepreneurial, you know, fantasies um is is gone. I mean, the fact that they're reaching into the library of Congress to fire people is an indication of

what you just were talking about. I'm a big believer in what I call good enough government. Um, so, uh, like if you're impoverished Singapore in 1964 and you're a rock with no natural resources, it takes tremendously visionary economic leadership to vault you into the first world. And they they they were lucky enough to get it. Many places weren't, but that that's really hard. How do I turn this resourceless rock into a first world country? Hard. You take up over the government of the United States say, "How do I deliver? How do I keep this thing

going?" Well, balance the books, free trade, not too much government interference in marketplace and predictable taxation, you know. Yeah, that'll do. It's not It's not Lie Kuanu style economic leadership. It's good enough. Okay. Okay. Okay. Well, to your point, sexy enough, though. Yeah. First point, I want to balance the budget. Um, and we've got a deficit. How? Well, then I'm a I'm a believer in good enough budgeting. Well, what you can do if you're God is use infinite knowledge and infinite time to reach through the federal government and find every individual item of wasteful spending

and eliminate them. But you know what else also works? You know what else also works? Um restraining the growth of healthcare spending. Um having uh making it a slightly diff less more difficult from individual members of Congress to cram favors uh into bills. Um and then finding some uh enforcing the tax laws to collect all the revenue you're owed. um and and maybe finding some additional sources of revenue like a a carbon tax or progressive consumption tax in a VAT. You know what? It's not the best answer. It's good enough. It'll work. All right. So,

I I want to ask you in the in the time that we have left, um I I actually have one small pocket of I won't say optimism, but I I will say hope because, you know, you and I have talked about the distinction between optimism and hope before. Um, how are you feeling about the federal judiciary and the Supreme Court? Now, as you and I are speaking, they're having the, you know, debates about um, birthright citizenship, but let's leave that aside. My sense is that there is a coalescing of opinion among even conservative jurists that

they are going to be the final guard rail. What do you think? I think the courts will save us one time. one time out of two. Okay, that is uh they will they will say um so they've said you can't just mask men with guns and no identification cannot seize people on the streets of an American city and without any form of hearing send them to um a prison in a foreign country with for life. They can't do that. Okay, good. Okay. So that's a that's a pretty minimal force of law and they say so

that means the next time the Trump administration does something bad we have to say yes. You think so? You think they think that way? I I do. Um so it's like the um the presidential immunity or as I call it presidential impunity case. Oh my god. Yeah. uh that uh the uh it see it seems to me that the correct answer to that question is uh can the president be held criminally liable for acts he commits in office um and the answer is uh from the president you know we're really glad that this has never

come up before uh since George Washington because the presidents weren't criminals and we're really sorry that it's come up now and the answer we'd like to give you is please don't ask us this question because just we just don't commit crimes so we don't have to ever give you the answer. But if you really if you need an answer, if we have to answer, if it's unavoidable, then obviously yes, the president uh and it's not a three-part balancing test. Obviously, if the president commits a crime while in office, yes. Um and now there's a factual

matter of what the crime that's the correct, but they didn't do that. Okay, that's too upsetting and scary. So what we're going to do is we're going to invent a kind of presidential impunity row versus wade where on the basis of nothing no got nothing in the constitution no statute we're going to invent a complex three-part balancing scheme with tests and test invented it we just invented this is a very important point they just invented it yes they just invented it and and and the question is well first if we're going to invent a a

statutory scheme that's not a job for you if the constitution is as you suggest silent on this that's a big oversight and you should say that that somehow the founders of the American Constitution whom we admire so much failed to anticipate what is the remedy if the president commits crimes but I don't think they did then you have to say you know what then we're helpless but because because they didn't want to hold Donald Trump to account because they also didn't want to say the only way was to say well we regard the constitution as

defective there's no remedy um they then invented this thing and it's a mess um but so having done that that they then stood up on the kidnapping people from American streets uh without a hearing But the next one, I think they revert to the impunity and then they'll So, I think it's about half the time they will stand up and half the time they won't. I I I do think that though that the the attempts to bully and intimidate the the judges might be backfiring somewhat. I mean, when Steven Miller rolls out from the White

House, you know, and stands there and talks about we're seriously considering suspending habus, you know, I mean, it doesn't matter whether you've been appointed by Ronald Reagan or even by Donald Trump. There's got to be judges going, "Wait, wait, what?" Yeah, you you guys are seriously thinking of doing that. Yeah. Well, it's also, you know, actually, funnily enough, the founders did anticipate this question of suspending the rid of habius corpus and it's in the constitution. The president can do it and the constitution gives exactly the highly specific and limited circumstances under which the president can

and if you if you can't show these highly limit, then you can't do it. Um, but they're they're doing one other thing, which is someone has got a list of the addresses of judges and their children. I know. And is sending pizza boxes to their houses, as if to say, where a pizza box can go, a gun can follow. Um, my guess is those people are obviously not people who draw salary from the United States government. Uh, but they may, but people who draw sal I also don't believe that people who draw salaries are unacquainted

with who those people are. Right. And there's a wink wink to that, you know. So here here's here's here's another you and you come from this world as well that virtually all you know for for lor shortand principled conservatives have been excommunicated from the Republican party, right? I mean this has been the story of the last several decades. Um they they've been they've been kicked out of Congress. There's no room for the Liz Cheney, the Adam Kinzingers. Paul Ryan has no place in the Republican party anymore. Um, the one area where you still have thoughtful

conservatives are the courts because they have lifetime tenure. They cannot be they cannot be primary. They don't have to worry about Elon Musk. And so, in many ways, they're kind of this they are the remnant. They are the the last redout of conservative constitutional principle. And Donald Trump does not fully understand that. and his approach has been to deal with them the way he dealt with law firms and the media and others. I'm just going to bully you. I'm going to threaten you. I just don't know that it's going to work. Yeah. Well, here's the

good news and here's the bad news. The reason that the courts have not got ma got turned mega is because if in 2017 you're President Trump with a Republican Senate and you want to appoint someone to a court, not a district court, but like an appellet court, right? They need some they need a kind of resume that guarantees they're at least in their early 40s, which means they spent most their formative years in, you know, uh under the ZAR, not under the not under the not under Stalin. Um but what is happening now is it's

now been t we've now remember the um the big Stalin project the reason they kept shooting the engineers was because he knew these were people who had had their minds formed before the communists took over. Um we need red engineers and it doesn't matter if they're less competent we just need to know they're politically loyal loyal and by 20 plus years after the revolution you've got that cadre of people. Um, so you can now begin to appoint people to the courts who have went to law schools, have plausible looking resumes, who have have the right

age, and who have spent almost all of their adult life under MAGA. And I I think it's very striking that some um I'm just struck by how many of the worst actors in the Trump world come from, for example, Claremont College, that there are these places that have that that have been incubators of reactionary authoritarian or worse politics. And there are enough you're getting a critical mass. So um what you're what you're what you're saying when you say these optimistic things about the judiciary is that we think there's a that the combination of this life

cycle approach to talent plus the discussed in uh instinct in the US Senate will be enough to keep Trump from appointing too many people. He he has to appoint the Gorsuches and um the and the Barretts and so on, the people who uh who are more or less, you know, who are legally minded conservatives. They may be very conservative, they're legally mind, but he's going to have a talent pool coming along uh where he's going to and then the question is does the Senate hold and and the Senate are just turned out to this this

chamber of human worms. I mean, I just don't understand. That's that's one of the great cannot count you you cannot count on them. And if if they've gone along with Cash Patel and and and Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Hexit, then then yeah, there's there's no guardrail there. Yeah. I you know uh when you have appointees to the Department of Defense defense where uh the question is if you get an illegal order from the president, will you obey it? Oh jeez. And they say and they and their answer is illegal. That's such a harsh word. you

know, and and the Hamhov is they they they will not say on the record that there is any order from a president that they want the military is in unsafe hands. So, I I I think we're sort of in a race here. I as I said I remain hopeful that the forces of legality and the American tradition prevail. But this is a real test and uh it is and a sentence I wrote a long time ago is one I keep thinking mine that sunny American certainty that everything must turn out for the best is the

greatest threat to the sunny American certainty that everything will turn out for the best. I I agree with you completely. David from it is always a pleasure to talk with you and of course uh people you can find David's work in the Atlantic and uh you can watch him on the David from show where he is the only other YouTube host who actually wears a tie. I think he's the only one that's the only one. So anyway, David, thanks for joining me and thank you all for u and thank you all for listening to this

uh episode of To the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. You know why we do this? Because now more than ever, it is important to remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones. Thank you.