Andrew Ross Sorkin

That was a wild idea.

The other thing that he did was he decides – by the way, like now – to –

put tariffs on, the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, 1930.

He had pledged to do that during his presidential campaign in 1928, trying to get farmers to vote for him.

And he said, my goodness, I need to make good on my pledge.

Meanwhile, every economist in America is writing him open letters, by the way, the same way they're writing letters to Trump, saying, I beg you, I beg you, don't do this.

The CEOs were going down to the Oval Office, getting on their knees, saying, please don't do this.

And of course, he does it.

And what happens?

Twelve months later, global trade is down by 60 percent.

By the way, meantime, you have the Federal Reserve sitting on their hands the entire time.

They're not flooding the system with money because they are worried about the politics of the moment, too, which I think also, by the way, interestingly relates to now when we talk about the independence of the Fed and all of these things.

So there was sort of this series of dominoes.

And I think at the point that we're now talking about where Hoover is talking to Roosevelt about the banks, he would have to capitulate.

He would have to almost admit that he didn't do the right things before.

And so he was trying to put it on Roosevelt and Roosevelt was trying to put it on him.

Right.

He's on the Mount Rushmore of Pod Save America here.

So I don't know if there was ever like a project 1932 or 1933.

But yes, I think there might have been some kind of project behind the scenes, if you will, to think through what were the levers that a president could pull that maybe hadn't been pulled before.