S2 Ep1014: Adam Kinzinger: Mortal Damage to the American Empire
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Who is Adam Kinzinger and what is the focus of this episode?
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Could not have a better day to bring back our friend. He's a former Republican congressman from Illinois. He served in the Air Force during Iraq and Afghanistan. He's the founder of Country First, and he writes a Substack newsletter. And he's got to turn off his notifications. It's Adam Kinzinger. What's happening?
Buddy, what's going on? How are you? Thanks for having me on the day when the... Stock market collapses. That's a good day to have me. Thanks for saying that.
Yeah, nothing happening. You know, we just have like MAGA conspiracy blogger, white nationalists running the National Security Council and the stock market collapsing, global economic crisis, the Canadians dunking on us. Nothing, nothing much to talk about. So we'll get into all that. But I wanted to start, you texted me yesterday, this clip and we're nineties kids, you know? So, so Ferris Bueller's day off was obviously pretty formative. I don't know how old you were, but you know, when I was, When I was 11 or 12, getting into my troublemaking phase, catching Ferris Bueller's Day Off on home video. I don't think I'm quite old enough to – I didn't see it in the theater.
I was born in 78, so however old that makes me. You probably saw it in the theater then. I did, brother. I saw it. We were rebels back then.
Well, it's funny. In that movie, Ben Stein, who has now become a big Trumper, gave the class a lecture on a topic and – The elder millennials and young Gen Xers among us will remember what it was. But for everybody else, let's take a listen to Ben Stein speaking to Ferris Bueller's class.
In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the... Anyone? Anyone? The Great Depression, passed the... Anyone? Anyone? A tariff bill, the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act, which... Anyone raised or lowered, raised tariffs in an effort to collect more revenue for the federal government? Did it work? Anyone? Anyone know the effects? It did not work, and the United States sank deeper into the Great Depression.
It did not work. Smoot-Hawley, actually.
I would think that Trump has seen that, right? That's why it's important to talk about, because if he all of a sudden sees Ben Stein saying that Smoot-Hawley didn't work. That's been the interesting thing, by the way, Tim, is I've seen a few Republicans try to reimagine Smoot-Hawley actually as having worked. which is the weirdest thing, and they blame the recession or the further into depression on something else, kind of feels like where we're at now when you see some of these guys saying, well, we're just, in essence, front-loading the recession because we were going there anyway, and it was going to be way worse, and now we're front-loading the recession. You've got to trust Donald Trump.
He knows what he's doing. I mean, it's madness.
Trump's more of a musical queen. You know, he's familiar with Cats, Phantom of the Opera, Top Gun. I don't think he might not have seen Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Probably true. Yeah, it didn't work. No, it didn't. And we're finding that out as we tape right now. The Dow is down, looks like another 2.5%. NASDAQ down another 3%. Plus, I mean, it got slaughtered yesterday, the markets. We saw job losses already in various sectors. You know that, I mean, any minute now, there are going to be little signs outside of stores because the businesses don't want the customers to be mad at them. They're like, sorry, we had to increase the avocado prices, but it's the tariffs, it's not me. You know that's coming. And it's like... The Trumpers have no rationale for it, really.
I mean, there's going to be some magical golden age to come off the back of it. And then our old friends and non-friends, but the people from the pre-Trump time, like even Ted Cruz is out there like, well, I don't really like tariffs, but this is just a negotiation, right? And it's like, no, I don't think so. It doesn't seem like a negotiation to me. I think the dude is just...
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