Future Outlook and Closing Thoughts

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I'm in Hong Kong today, heading back to New York. Uh, actually here with Alistair, uh, so we're having a little bit of fun together Does the world look better from the other side of the world? I will say this about Hong Kong. Yes, very fast trains and uh pretty nice highways. So some things about their government is functioning. We probably could learn some things there. I'm sure that both sides could learn things from each other. But let's talk about two sides right now, Caddy, that seem to be talking over each other. There's escalating tensions with Iran. Looks like the US launched a strike over the weekend. They said it was a self defensive strike. Caddy, I mean we we lost another plane to a country that has no military because we've decimated their military, Caddy, we've wiped out their Navy, we've wiped out their air defenses, but somehow we lost an American plane . So explain that to me, and then let's talk a little bit about this potential ceasefire. Yeah, this is a very odd form of ceasefire when actually the two sides seem to be hitting each other, but the Americans in particular, desperate to say this is not a breach of the ceasefire, which in and of itself may be problematic, I think, for Donald Trump when it comes to negotiating, because the message he's giving to the Iranians is, I really don't want to get back into fighting. So even if you fire at us and then we fire back at you, we're gonna call it in self-defense and say that the ceasefire is still holding because I have no appetite for resuming a war, although it's hard to know what else you would call this. So we are in this strange situation where we're looking at an extension of the ceasefire. We're now at two months, Anthony, by my reckoning, into a ceasefire that was actually only ever meant to last for two weeks, which again, I think, shows you just how much Donald Trump wants to keep extending this. And now we are talking about a deal about a deal, basically this memorandum of understanding that apparently the US and Iran may be reasonably close to agreeing to, but I think it would be wrong to suggest to our lovely listeners that this means that we are about to have a deal between the US and Iran because this is really just a deal to start negotiating about the deal. Um, so we are still a way off. And uh you and I were texting over the course of the week end about what's really going on, what this deal really means, and what Donald Trump's motives really are. And I thought your analysis was super interesting. So I want you to share that with people. I said to you over the weekend, I'm not sure it makes much difference what the deal is. And that's for two reasons. One is that all of the Iran experts I've spoken to, people who actually really are in contact with people in Tehran don't think the Iranians will stick to whatever they sign their name to. So they're not confident that whatever they agree to on the nuclear front in particular, they will actually stick to . And we can run through this later, but I think America's negotiating the terms of its surrender here. I think this is a deal that is an American surrender deal. America has lost this, and now it's just a question of how much pain America can accept in the final terms of the negotiation. And I think we're a little way off that, but whether it's a huge amount of money that America will have to pay to the Iran ians in terms of unfrozen assets or sanctions relief in order to get the Straits of Hormuz back open and in order for them to be able to say they got a deal. Donald Trump will try and sell this is a better deal than Barack Obama's deal I don't know. Am I being too hard on the US at this point? Yeah, listen, I wanna be objective here. It breaks my heart to say all of this. I but I Trading the market. He doesn't have a deal. He announces on Sunday that the deal is eminent. He's trying to get a little bit of a spike in the market, so he can trade the market. And then of course on Monday they announce there's no deal. So now oil prices are back up again, right? I mean Yeah this is like a roller coaster, except that it's getting boring because it keeps happening. Yeah, he's just trying to move the market so he can make some short-term trades. But Katie, I I I'm I'm gonna say something dramatic, and if it's overly dramatic, you pull me back, but I think he has forced a reckoning and a potential rebalance of the whole Gulf. Uh I think that he's exposed a seam of weakness in the U.S. military where we're spending a trillion dollars on what lobbyists and equipment makers want, but are not necessarily useful for today's warfare. You've got THAAD missiles, which we can only produce 96 or so of them. The last delivery we got was in 2023. We can't get another delivery into 2027 We're shooting these missiles at $5,000 drones that are going up in the sky. We blew through $1.9 billion of THAAD missiles in the forced eight 48 hours of the war. And so I think this is uh accidental, of course. I'm not saying that he's uh a a slave or a knave to Vladimir Putin and he started the war to uh cause an American capitulation in the Gulf and to unsanctioned Russian oil. I'm not saying that he did that, but I think he's why are you looking at me like that? Because I'm wondering if you're thinking that Well, I'm not saying it. Let's just put it that way. I'm not saying it . But you know, I just want to go over this with people. We're spending roughly a trillion dollars a year on the fence. It's more than the next nine countries combined. Uh we can't build any ships. Uh China is producing ships at an accelerating rate. We can't do that. Our munitions stockpiles are run dry. We helped Ukraine for a period of time, and now ourselves here, uh I guess you'd have to ask the rhetorical question, Caddy, how on God's earth could you spend a trillion dollars and not have a military footprint that could run a multiple month possible , multiple year military operations somewhere. We're not making any advanced computer trips on American soil that I'm aware of. You tell me if we are. We're depending on China for our rare earth minerals that go into our fighter jets and our submarines. And so I think we're in the beginning of a seam opening for America where you had this veneer that we were global superpower with this military strength, our bases were all over the region, and we could flex on you at any time. But so therefore, you should be deterred by us and sign the JCPOA. Uh, and now we flexed on you. And it turns out that our flex was fairly imminent. And so, and it's also exposed to this seam of danger now for America. Whereas if you were really being honest, you'd say, hey, guys, you're spending money on the wrong type of equipment. And last point, Catty, $13 trillion aircraft carriers can't get anywhere near the theater because the carriers have been made obsolete by the hypersonic missiles. So I don't know. You tell me, Caddy. How are we doing? Look, I I think this is pretty catastrophic for America, not just in the short term, but I think it's also uh severely weakened America. Look, if we I mean, zoom out big picture and then let's focus in on the agreement just for a second. But big picture. We came out of the last century, indisputably the American century, the 1900s. We go into the 2000s, and I think it was a toss-up for the first 20 years of this century. It was a toss-up. Which is it? Which is the economy that's going to prevail? The United States or China? It's the battle of the two big superpowers. This venture of Donald Trump's, at least in the short term, and I get it, there's way more intellectual freedom and capacity still in the United States to develop a Silicon Valley type economy than there is still in China. But they're catching up. They're further ahead on robotics, they're further ahead on agentics, and they are making much more progress, I think, in defense areas than a lot of Americans had initially thought they were. And I think this venture has exposed America's weaknesses, not just because of Donald Trump, but because of actual structural weaknesses that America has. And you've tipped the balance of power. During the course of the last three months, the balance of power has shifted towards China. It just has. I mean, you and I had a conversation right at the beginning of this war, and you sounded pretty optimistic about the idea of America being able to pressure China into getting involved in a way in the Gulf that was positive for America. You thought that maybe Donald Trump could call up Xi and get him involved. I don't think that's happened. I don't see Xi exercising the kind of power behind the scenes to help Trump that Trump would like and would need because they don't have to. They don't feel they have to on this one. They we don't know it's a state secret, but they have much bigger reserves of oil and refined fuel than American intelligence thought they did in February, is what I've been told by people in the intelligence community. So they can ride this out for a little bit longer and now they're getting fuel through other routes as well. So I think if you wanna look at the balance of power, it's a win for China, it's potentially a win for Russia, your friend , that you were just mentioning. I really want to know what you actually think, and I'd like you to say that. And it's a loss for the United States. If you had to scorecard this one, this has been a terrible cost and beyond all of the costs. What are we doing now? We're negotiating. It's a qu this is the terms of surrender. This is the terms of pain that America has to accept. It's a question of how much frozen assets does Iran get? How much sanction relief does Iran get? How much enriched uranium is it going to get to keep and where? Trump said it had to be out of the country, but guess what? On Monday he's also suggesting that it could be in the country. How much control will Iran have of the strait? You can call it an environmental cost , but it's actually control of the strait that Iran has and that they can resume at any point they want to. How many proxies can Iran continue to fund with all of that cash that it's about to get as a bribe for reopening the Straits of Hormuz and allowing Donald Trump to say that this was a win. This isn't looking good. Well, I want to be balanced because I do think that to use a Hegset term, which I despise, but his has some relevancy, war fighting.. The US. knows how to do war fighting. Maybe war fighting with the wrong wrong kind of weapons with outdated weapons. Yeah. So but I think what the U.S. doesn't want to do is actually war fight here, right? Because I'm sure they have these plans. You could put five hundred thousand troops and mobilize them into the region and try to take the Strait of Hermuz back. And uh, you know, maybe you need a hundred and fifty thousand marine expeditionary force and others, hundred and first airborne, etcetera. And they'd have to stay a while, right? They'd have to stay a while. This is not a one and done. That's a ten year that's a you know, look, we've stayed a while in Europe , right? We've been in Europe for eighty years after the Second World War, and look at what we've done uh since nineteen fifty-three in Korea. So this is a stay a forever of a while, uh, but then you'd have the straight open. But but again, I want to be I want to be fair. So in the research and preparation for the podcast, let me just go over a couple things. 38 days of major combat ends April 8th. Uh Khabanis killed. Forty plus people are killed at the top of the structure. 85% of the Iran's defense industrial base is destroyed. That's empirical data from Europeans assessing it, not American propaganda. Iranian Air Force flights were anywhere from 30 to 100 a day over the 38 days. They're down to zero. 150 warshi ps across 16 classes were destroyed. Uh, all the submarines are gone. If you are the Americans and you're working for Pete Heggseth, you're making those announcements, right? But then you're saying we really depleted ourselves while we're doing this, right? 50 to 80% of the THAT interceptors are gone. Uh, 45% of the precision strike missiles are gone. 50% of the Patriot intercep tors gone. Now be a defense anal yst, and let's say that you were going to President Xi Jinping and you were saying to him, what about the American military? What would you say, Caddy? Well you what you mean in terms of how well positioned the American military is. Yeah so I'll I'll I'll start. I would say President Xi, I'm worried about their AI capabilities . I'm worried about our missile defense systems because they didn't work in the first couple of days of the war. I'm also worried about the way we're using AI relative to the US Pentagon's use of AI , but they are thin. Are they not from an arsenal perspective? Yeah. Are the Americans thin? No, I think they are looking thin. And I and I think they've they've used an awful lot of weaponry and munitions and missiles up , but haven't defeated the opposition. I mean, that's the problem. That's why we're now in a position where the choice is between a long-term ground force is com mitment, which the president doesn't want to make, more bombings, which has no guarantee of producing a better result than we've got right now, or a negotiated deal, which is what Barack Obama did over 20 months, and we'll end up with something that looks very similar to the JCPOA. Um, Congressman Mike Turner, who used to run the Foreign Relations Committee, said to me very clearly, the one thing that Trump doesn't want is to be sending pallets of cash to the Iranians, like Obama did. It's the thing that he keeps mentioning. And it's no surprise to me that over the course of the weekend, Donald Trump is putting out cartoons, denigrating all of Obama's negoti ators because projection or confession, this is what Trump does when he's in a difficult position. He attacks the people who've been in that position before. But they did release frozen assets, and he's going to end up doing the same thing. He's going to end up releasing frozen assets because it's going to cost him. It's going to cost him. This defeat is going to cost Donald Trump in money and in uranium. And I'm not sure that he's going to get the uranium deal that he thinks. He's not even going to be able to come out of this and say, we got rid of, we got that enriched uranium out of the country. Cause I think it's going to end up with the uranians quite possibly watering down the urani um inside country and then they can spin it back up again quite quickly to get to weapons grade. And at the same time, not to mention all of the costs that you outlined. Kenny, where where do our Gulf allies stand ? Uh where do you where do you think they stood at the beginning of the war? What do you think the realism of the war has that altered where they stand? And then where do you think they stand right now, in terms of the peace process. So at the beginning of the war, the UAE did not want this war. They realized that they were in a vulnerable position. Once the war had started, they wanted America to prosecute the war fully to make sure they eliminated the threat and didn't leave them sitting next to an even angrier tiger. So they are in a position now where they've actually been pushing Trump to go further and make sure the regime doesn't hold and get rid of the missile threat, which they are concerned about, and they want the Straits of Hormuz opened. They also want the nuclear threat off the table. So they've been pushing for that. It doesn't look like they're getting that, so they're trying to make a t alternative arrangements of their own. You've now got a split in the Gulf between the Saudis and the UAE, um, which makes less of a coherent alliance for the United States. And meanwhile, you've got the Israelis telling everybody who will listen we were closing up with the UAE and making Netanyahu visited there uh at the beginning of the war so that we could give them our defense capabilities, which puts the UAE government in a vulnerable position as well. There isn't a chance Donald Trump was raising it over the course of the weekend. There isn't a chun of the of a broader Abraham's Accord with the Saudis signing up, the Pakistanis signing up, uh, the Qataris signing up. I don't see how that happens right now. There's too much crumbling of UAE of uh Gulf alliances and the Saudis have no interest in signing up to an Abraham's Accord at a at a time when the Iranians could be getting stronger. So I think that which was on the table, it was certainly very much on the table before October the 7th, because actually a lot of work that the Biden administration had done, the Biden team had really pushed the Abraham Accords and got it to a position before October the 7th where it looked like a realistic possibility. It now doesn't look like a realistic possibility, whatever Trump says over the course of the weekend. Is that about where you think we are? I I I think so, but I want to play devil's advocate. So uh we'll give Trump and Jared Kushner credit for the Abraham Accords. I think the idea of that was very positive. And uh the move was to eventually have Saudi , where uh Mecca and Medina, the holy shrines, are and they're the caretakers. The royal family is the caretakers of the most important religious sites. Uh, we're going to get them to eventually acknowledge the state of Israel. And so a as a result of that, I think the militias backed by Iran, funded by Iran, Hezbollah , attacked on October seventh and went after the Israelis, and the idea was to create a reaction from Israel that would be overwhelming, that would obviously create tension among the Gulf states, right? And to more or less end the Abraham Accords. Well I don't know if it ends the Abraham Accords because actually they haven't pulled out. I mean one of the interesting things that the President to his credit did point out f in all fairness this weekend is that none of the original signatories of the Abraham Accords have pulled out of the Accords despite pressure over the attacks of October the seventh. What it's ended, I think, is the possibility of the Saudis joining the Abraham Accords. Yes. But I think I think the point I'm trying to make and uh interested if you agree or disagree, is that there was a strategy by Iran to block the Saudis from getting too close to Israel by executing that terrorist attack. Was that or was that not successful? Yes, it was successful. They got what they wanted. And so now Trump ramming down the throat of the Gulf nations over truth Social that they need to join the Abraham Accords. Your point, you don't think that's going to be successful. And so we're sitting here at the end of May or about to start June. Is that straight gonna get opened? It will there be some type of formalized peace? And I'm gonna say something that President Xi is probably thinking, which we reported a few weeks ago, which is hey, I know you need my help, but I don't really need to help you because I'd like to embarrass you further and I'd like you more weakened. Uh, I don't want to blow up the entire global economy, but my oil's coming through the strait. You guys are letting that come through the strait for obvious reasons. And so I'm gonna let this thing go for a little while longer. And Caddy, you know, is that two hundred dollars a barrel of oil by the end of the summer if this thing continues on its current trajectory or or what do you think happens? One of the perplexing things is why oil hasn't gone much higher. We can talk a little bit more about this in the second half when we talk about the economy and the politics of the economy. But the only answer that I've had from people who are in the oil markets or people who are on the national security side who watch the oil markets who have been surprised by this as well is that it this is short-term trading with traders making a bet that in they are buying Donald Trump's argument that in two weeks' time it's gonna be over. Now, how many times have we heard that in two weeks' time it's gonna be over? We heard that uh at the beginning end of February, we heard it uh in the middle of March, we heard it at the beginning of April, we heard it at the end of April. It's always just about to be over. And yet traders seem to be happy to make short-term trades that are propping up the markets. People who are in the oil industry, not people who are on the politics side are saying, well, in June they think that global supplies will be severely depleted that are out there. The tankers have now reached their destinations . And that will then start to have more of an impact on prices. But let's see. Let's see how much traders just seem to want to make a quick buck and they what they like is the volatility, which is what gets back to you were saying to me over the weekend that Trump is enjoying the volatility. This suits him very well. as a global citizen, is the quagmire. What I'm worried about is Rubio saying, well, if the if it's not a strong deal for us, we're not going to do the deal. I'm just I'm just worried. I I I mean, we can we can break and talk about the economy in the second half, but I I'm I I don't see as you and I are sitting here right now the outcome. Uh the markets are saying you're right, it's gonna be a perfectly fine outcome. That's why stocks are so buoyant. But I don't see the outcome. If because of his own sense of hubris and antagonism towards Barack Obama. And his own sense that he had to be better than Barack Obama , he would never have pulled out of the JCPOA, which was actually working and containing Iran's nuclear program. But he pulled out without consulting experts because he doesn't believe experts know anything and he thinks he's right . But if he hadn't pulled out of the JCPOA, we'd be in a much better position than we are today. And it would have cost an awful lot less to Americans both in blood and in treasure. Okay, now I've got that off my chest. Let's talk more about the economy after the break . 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Sign up and get ten percent off at betterhelp dot com slash trip US. That's better H E L P dot com slash T R I P Welcome back to the rest is politics US, and before we dive back in, don't forget everybody to get your tickets to our October tour of the United States and Canada. The month before the midterms, we're going to be doing live shows across the US and also heading up to Toronto. You can get your tickets at therestispoliticsus.com or click the link in the episode description. We can't wait to see you there. We have fun doing these shows, right, Anthony? This is fun. It's a great chance for us to meet you. It's great for you to ask us your questions live. Anthony occasionally stays on script, but not very often. It's good. The only thing I don't the only thing I don't like about the shows are the introductory takedowns. Okay, because you know what? We really get the honest take of what our producers really think about us, Gaddy. And it and it hurts. They're mean. Yeah, maybe for these shows we insist we put it in our very extensive riders because we're such divas that, they can only do little videos that are incredibly flattering and complimentary and only use photos of us taken from before 20 years ago. Well, all I know is that there's this uh beautiful actress that plays the Queen on the Crown, playing you on Saturday Night Live. Yeah, and then they have me taking a dump on the Special Forces show coming out of the uh the dumping. It's not it's not flattering. It could, you know, it's flattering to you So, guys, if you want to know what on earth Anthony's talking about, get a ticket and we'll show you the video when you come and join us. Okay, we're talking about the economy. Um I thought this was worth doing, Anthony. I wanted to touch on this because, of course, we had Kevin Walsh confirmed last week, now installed as the country's chief central banker. He handpicked by Donald Trump with one mission, which was to bring down interest rates and not be a too-late Jerome Powell, who was a thorn in Donald Trump's side. All presidents want their Fed chairs to bring down interest rates. It's the way it goes. And I think that actually Kevin Walsh over the last year, as he was auditioning for the job, and make no mistake, he was auditioning for the job. As he was auditioning for the job, he kept going around earnest think tanks and theational Intern Monetary Fund and uh groups of high net worth individuals making the case for why it was time to reduce interest rates and the possibility that America, the American economy, was ready for a reduction in interest rates, but bang, he gets into the job. And what's the first thing that he's gonna do, Anthony? I think he's in a tough spot, by the way. So I mean, you know, do you think he's gonna lower rates right now? 'Cause that would really freak out the bond market. So I think he might even have to raise rates. Possibly. But I think the first thing, you know, uh yeah, it's a political job. We like to say it's so independent and so forth. I mean he's being accused by Elizabeth Warren of being a sock puppet for Donald Trump. I guess, I guess he's going to do very little in the beginning and probably write some speeches and probably leave rates where they are. Even if he needs to raise them, I don't think he's going to raise them because of the uh overwhelming political pressure not to. From the White House. Yeah. But Caddy, when he was brought into the White House last week, this is the first time a fed share was sworn in at the White House since Ronald Reagan swore in Alan Greenspan uh way back in April of nineteen eighty-seven. Of course, uh a few months later, six months later, we had the stock market crash, 22.8% decline in October of 198 7. Uh, do you believe Donald Trump? Donald Trump looked over at Kevin Warsh and said, uh, I want you to just go and do a good job, Kevin, and I want you to be independent. And then you saw that. Do what you need to do. And then the guppies were clapping like, oh we see he's you really believe that? You believe that? I don't believe that for. a second I mean, Donald Trump, he's no dummy. He knows what's happened to the economy because of everything we were speaking about in the first half. He can see what's happened to gas prices. I'm sure he doesn't go around and fill up the beast very often with gas, but if he did, he'd have heart failure because it would cost him so much money. But he has enough people around him telling him that gas prices are high. I was, you know, I filled up my car in Washington last week. I was stunned. Petrol was at $6 .50 a gallon. I mean, that's super high for Americans. It's not very high for Europeans, but it is very high for Americans. And he knows that. He knows that people are not happy about the gas pri ces, he knows they're not happy about inflation. And when he says, the fact that he turns to Kevin Walsh and says to him, Okay, you can be independent, you do Kevin what you need to do. Completely different, by the way, from what he said to Jay Powell, which was bring down interest rates. I think it is a reflection of the fact that even Trump realizes that Walsh is in a difficult position and may not be able to bring down interest rates. And if he's looking at the polls, there was an extraordinary CNN poll out just recently showing his 70% disapproval of Donald Trump's handling of the economy. In his first term, he never got below 50% disapproval of his handling of the economy. So in that 70 percent, that's not all Democrats. There are some independent and swing and possibly even Republican voters in that 70%, right? That's a pretty low modern number. I mean, we're down at Herbert Hoover levels, but let's just talk about a few things that Kevin Walsh will likely do. Number one, he's got to give a speech, and I think he gives a speech that tries to differentiate himself from PAL. Doesn't want to be a POW clone. So he's going to probably talk about restraint or a doctrine of restraint. I think number two, I think he's got to take an opinion on the oil shock. And my guess is knowing Kevin, he's going to look through the oil shock and not chase it. But I think in the speech he's going to say that we've got to reset the dot plot in June. And it's just for people listening, what is the dot plot ? They have inflation, expected inflation, and then actual inflation. And these are dots on their economic, their econom etric model. And then based on the data, they make decisions on r ates. And I think he's just got to simply say that the March plot that they've been looking at is quite stale now. It was written before crude peaked at $138 , or at least Brent Crude Peak there. So I think he's got to get into that with the people and explain to them that he's modernizing this. And I think he's got to signal to people that listen, I'm looking past the oil shock. You're going to get at least one cut this year. And the goal is to cut twice in the first quarter of twenty seven. And I think if he says that uh he's not gonna get overly criticized for that because that's really what the market is see ing. Okay. And so that's where I think he's going. And I think if he says that, I think he gets Trump off of his back pretty early. So those are some of the things that I think he will do. Uh and the last thing, Caddy, is that uh if you go back to the 1996-1999 uh productivity study uh that Alan Greenspan commissioned. So Greenspan was like we're having massive productivity gains in the economy as a result of the internet. Let's call that web one. And so Greenspan took the position that that was deflationary, that technology typically brings prices down Yeah. And he's probably going to deploy that playbook. I don't know that he will commit to cutting rates this year. Uh I think that was depend on slightly what does happen, even if he doesn't want to talk about it with oil. And that depends on the Straits of Hormuz. If we are really now only entering another 30-day ceasefire and we're not going to get to even negotiating the opening of the Straits of Hormu z until the end of June, that is knocking up against the midterm election. So let's see what he does about that. I think he's going to commit to a quieter Fed. It's something that he has talked about a lot, where the Fed is not on the front pages all the time. Maybe good luck with that. It depends on how Donald Trump takes to him and whether he manages to keep Donald Trump happy. I think you're right he's going to talk about an AI productivity boom. He's been talking about this a lot and making the case for the strength of the American economy and bringing down rates based on that AI productivity boom. We're going to be talking about that in our bonus episode for our founding members, because actually there is starting to be a big political story around AI. It is not just the Pope that is talking about AI and ringing some alarm bells. You're starting to get college campuses where AI is being booed every time it's mentioned by speakers, whether it's in terms of productivity or creativity. You're getting in certain states where there are a lot of data centers, you're getting huge pushback from voters left and right against the data centers. People don't like living to them. They make this loud humming noise. They drive up electricity costs because they consume so much energy. I think data centers could be a sleeper issue in these midterm elections in the states where they're being built. So he may have to be a little careful in the way that he talks about AI. That may be something that American politicians are just going to have to start to moderate a little bit on. But whatever Kevin Walsh says, it doesn't get to the fact that Donald Trump is suffering and he's suffering because he failed to deliver on the promise he made the American people. Voters get upset when they think that a president isn't doing the job that they elected them to do. Look at Barack Obama. In 2010, he was massacred in the midterm elections because he had spent from 2008 to 2010 focusing on healthcare, and Americans had elected him after the financial crash to come in and do something about the economy and to stimulate growth and to stimulate jobs and to rescue them for the financial crash, and he focused on healthcare instead. And it really cost him in terms of the midterm elections and political capital. And I think that's what you're getting. And the worrying signs, and this is not just one poll, the problem for Donald Trump is that you're seeing it in repeated poll. There's a CBS poll showing that he's even underwater with white non-college educated voters, only forty-six percent approve of the job that he's doing. That's his base. He cannot be underwater with that group of voters and hope to do well. Now maybe he doesn't care. But when he is talking about Iran and he's talking about the reflecting pool and he's talking about the ballroom and he's talking about the arc de Trump, it's no surprise that you've got the Wall Street Journal writing editorials saying that he's lost the governing plot. But I mean maybe you're right, Anthony. He doesn't care. Maybe he doesn't care about any of that. He cares about the fact that his family's making money is croed I don't think he cares. He he wants to make money and he wants to leave monuments to himself in Washington. He's decided that he's stuck a finger in everybody's eye in the establishment and he wants to continu e to do that. But here's another irony that I think we should point out to viewers and listeners is that Kevin Warsh is an establishmentarian. And when you go to the people that were in the swearing-in ceremony, they were all establishmentarians, okay? Condolisa Rice, who wrote that big letter for him and put out all those big recommendations on social media has been at the Hoover Institute with him. He had Stan Drucken Miller there, who he's worked for. My mentor, Ken Langone, the founder of Home Depot, who was on the board of the New York Stock Exchange and the board of General Electric. He's he's now 90, so he's more or less in retirement. They were all there. And I like that. I'm gonna tell you why I like that because I know guys like Druckamiller and Langone, and they would be telling somebody like Kevin Walsh: hey man, you don't want to come across as an Erdog an sock puppet employee of Donald Trump. You don't want people to think uh that he's now captu red the money the way Erdogan did in Turkey, where you're experiencing seventy three percent inflation. So And Walsh will outlast Trump, right? He knows that. No question. He knows that Trump is there for two years and he's there for another three years after that. That George Walker Bush, Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, Glenn Yunk in, any one of those as quote unquote the Republican president would have picked Kevin Warsh. Bill Clinton, believe it or not, would have picked somebody like a Kevin Walsh. You know, he reappointed Alan Greenspan. And so this is one of those things about Washington where the players played Trump and got themselves the person that they wanted as Federal Reserve. And so I wish him Godspeed. I like Kevin and I want to see him do well. I know you have a personal relationship with him. And to me, I think he's a very competent, safe pair of hands. But that doesn't mean that he's not going to be tripped up by the current supply shocks that are in the marketplace because of the Trump Iranian war. He's going to have to have a political mantle of steel because just because Trump likes him now doesn't mean that Trump won't turn against him. Trump appointed Jay Powell and turned against J. Powell. Trump appointed Chris Ray as director of the FBI and then he turned against Chris Ray. He's quite capable of deciding at the flick of a switch that he doesn't like somebody anymore. And he'll give Kevin Walsh a certain amount of leeway because he wants to show everybody that he made the right choice, but Walsh is going to have to have figured out, and I'm sure he's been having conversations. In fact, I know he's been having conversations with people before he was sworn in, how to deal with Trump were Trump to turn against him. I think this is the point. Detention centres, that story has not gone away. Um, and it is really important, I think, to keep on it the situation in those detention centres, the conditions in those detention centres, and how members of Congress are being turned away from trying to do their due oversight from those cent ers. We'll talk about that in our episode with our founding members. And as I mentioned, we're also going to be talking about AI, which is becoming a political hot potato in the run-up to these midterm elections. Of course, you can become a founding member by joining us at The Rest is Politicsus.com. We would love to hear from you. Um and we will take your questions. We will be back with more of the news later this week. Will you be back from Hong Kong? Will you have returned from Hong Kong by then? I will be back from Hong K ong when we're ready to do our next episode. And we'll have to see what's going on in the world at that moment, Caddy. But uh as they say, we live in interesting times. So we live in exhausting, interesting times. As George W. Bush once said