Michael Moynihan
speaker
842 appearances
21 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard May 2025
Michael Moynihan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Donald Trump is giving Democrats a lot of openings. It doesn't matter if you agree with them or not. There's just a lot of openings because there's a lot happening. What are they doing in response? I mean, where is the political strategy here? We're going to have noisemakers and we're going to throw egg crates. And what are you talking about?
Seriously, you've had the time now to assimilate this defeat from November. Notice, by the way, that Donald Trump is actually keeping his promises in an aggressive way, some of which I agree with and some of which I don't. But the way in which he's handling it Elon Musk, all this stuff. There's so many openings. I see people burning Tesla chargers in towns that are one away from where I grew up.
But I don't see a lot of strategy when it comes to policy and when it comes time to fighting back. I mean, you notice MSNBC, they're like, all right, we're going to get rid of Joy Reid. And then we're going to replace her with another Joy Reid.
And this is like all these people, it's like the exact same strategy you guys had for the previous Trump administration and the previous four years of Joe Biden in which you fought the future Trump administration. I mean, I don't see any strategy here from Democrats whatsoever.
I mean, they're huge tariffs. This is the time for him to tout them today. He should do it today because the tail of this is not going to look good for him. And we already see this echoing out into certain input costs. I mean, we've seen a lot of numbers in this.
The Wall Street Journal has been covering this pretty closely, is that in anticipation of these tariffs, the input costs for a lot of things, a lot of American manufacturing have gone through the roof.
You have also seen a lot of Republican congressmen, Republican senators talking both off the record and on the record that they're really fearful of what this is going to do, particularly in agriculture, because we always think about this as an export thing only. I mean, import thing only. We want to put barriers up because someone's being unfair to us and we will reap the benefits.
Remember, Donald Trump says that the tariffs are going to pay for themselves. On their own, the most lovely word in the English language, according to Donald Trump, is tariff. So why would you ever take them down? Why would you ever use them as leverage? Why not just keep them in forever if they're so consequential to the American economy and in a positive way?
I mean, there's literally no economists that you can find that believe that trade is a net negative. They think it's a net positive that has some sort of factors that aren't great that you have to account for, you know? the hollowing out of certain American industries that was kind of inevitable in any case. But there was some consequences of free trade.
But on net, it is a very, very positive thing for the American consumer. And when you see people like American farmers, they export so much stuff, and this is going to really hit their bottom line. And they're worried about it.
Yeah, and Ron Johnson was talking about it. And these are much more consequential tariffs than the first time around. So I think that, you know, the Wall Street Journal had an editorial the other day that said it was, you know, we're again back to the dumbest tariffs of all time. We'll see. They do not look good for the American consumer. And we are going to take a hit. It's just going to happen.
It's just a matter of how much can, you know, the American voter and consumer take of this and how much will they blame Donald Trump in the law room?
And one thing to add to that is that it's not an economic argument. I mean, obviously, the economic argument is a lot harder. So if you're making the argument that it's about fentanyl, like, look, no one in their right mind is going to say, great, we want more fentanyl coming.
I mean, I think we could all agree that, you know, Canada, Mexico, a more aggressive stance towards, you know, drugs that are killing a huge number of people coming across the border is a good thing. Can you negotiate that in a way that doesn't punish You know, American consumers.
I mean, we saw today right before we started this, that Ontario slapped on a 25 percent tariff on electricity that they deliver to almost two million households in Michigan. They promised that they would.
And now they've done it. And, you know, that's an immediate thing that people feel in their pocketbook. Is that a long term good? I mean, what is the negotiation here? I mean, is it is this for American manufacturing? I just can't even I mean, is it for fentanyl? It seems like a very, very, you know, slapdash willy nilly policy. But I think people are going to feel really quickly.
So that's why I said, you know, mentioning it tonight.
You could also talk to most economists who don't believe trade deficits are even a thing that matters. I mean, that ultimately it is a benefit to American consumers either way.
I mean, that if there's some equalization is, and again, this is, you know, something that I believe myself, but I am not an economist and should probably talk to an economist about this, but that is a widely held view that trade deficits are not something that is like an actual deficit, which is another thing that we have to, pay attention to at the moment, our real deficit.
Well, some of them don't have balls because they're women. And I believe in those categories, Megan. Tammy Baldwin does not have balls. And that's just a biological fact. A couple of things here. is that, you know, I think last time we were on, Matt was pointing out something that you've pointed out this time, too. It's an 80-20 issue, and those are very rare.
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