The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1013: Mallory McMorrow and Tracy Alloway: A Self-Inflicted Crisis
03 Apr 2025
The market plunge is just pure Trump chaos, and perfectly matches his record as a businessman. From his numerous bankruptcies and many failures—including his airline, his casinos, his university, his water, and his steaks—he's been running one long con. And the supposedly smart people who should have known better put him back in power, somehow thinking he would never do something like destroy global trade. Meanwhile, in Michigan, where there have already been job losses directly caused by Trump's tariff war, State Senator Mallory McMorrow announced she's running for the U.S. Senate—saying she's had enough of the leadership and the bullshit in DC. Bloomberg's Tracy Alloway and Mallory McMorrow join Tim Miller. show notes Tracy's Bloomberg podcast, "Odd Lots" Mallory McMorrow's Instagram Mallory's new book, “HATE WON’T WIN: Find Your Power and Leave This Place Better Than We Found It.”
Full Episode
Hey, guys, we've got a great double header for you today. Mallory McMorrow announced she was running for Senate yesterday. So I'm planning to have her on to discuss the campaign and more. And then I wanted to bring in somebody who had real expertise on what's happening with the markets and the tariffs following yesterday's Liberation Day announcement. And so we brought in Tracy Alloway.
who's a very insightful observer of what is happening in the markets. She writes a newsletter and does a podcast with my guy, Joe Weisenthal. So she, I think, is going to educate us. I'm going to have more economy experts on in the coming weeks and months because that is what Donald Trump has thrust upon us. And so look forward to that. And we'll probably have Tracy back when the time is right.
But before we get to it, since we got so wonky and nerdy in that first segment, I want to emote with you guys for a second. It is fucking insane that we are here with regards to the stock market and the economy. I mean, as I am taping this right now, the NASDAQ is down 5%, almost 6%, really. The S&P 500 is down 4.5%. This is all self-inflicted. None of this had to happen.
There is not a bubble that has burst. There is not some issue in the credit markets. There were not a bunch of credit default swaps being bundled. This is not the big short. This is not a global recession. This is not a pandemic. It is just Trump chaos. Any pain you have in your retirement account or your 401k right now is only due to Trump chaos.
If you're one of the people who are going to lose their job over this, it's only due to Trump chaos. And here's the thing. Trump's Whole career has been failures like this. This was utterly predictable across every metric. We screamed it from the rooftops here at the Bulwark and elsewhere. He bankrupted a casino. How do you go bankrupt in the casino business?
Trump steaks, Trump airlines, Trump water, fail, fail, fail. He's failed at everything. He was a horrific businessman. He was a good marketer. And we can be honest, he's been a pretty good political manipulator. That's what he's good at. He's a con man. He's good at conning people. But we are all about to experience unbelievable pain, unbelievable economic pain.
Because people who should have been smarter than this went along with the con. People who should have known better, who should have known Trump for who he is, went along with this and decided to take this risk because they thought maybe they might get a little tax cut. Or maybe there might be a little regulation cut that might help their business. Well, guess what?
All of your fucking businesses are going into the tank right now. And it's hard to see a way out. Tracy Alloway will talk about that in a little bit more dispassionate way up next. She'll educate us, get us smart on what's happening. After that, we'll get to Mallory McMorrow. Very much look forward to it. Stick around. Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
We are on the morning following Liberation Day and we have been liberated from the value of our 401ks. I want to talk about that and much more with one of my favorite finance journalists, Tracy Alloway. She's a co-host of Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast alongside the stalwart, Joe Weisenthal, and also author of the Odd Lots newsletter. How are you doing, Tracy?
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