The Chuck ToddCast
Trump Won’t Recover From Disastrous Tariffs + Will Congress Take Tariff Power From Trump?
Mon, 7 Apr 2025
On this episode of The Chuck ToddCast, Chuck explores why America is undergoing a major political realignment, and why President Donald Trump’s approval rating may never recover following the disastrous rollout of sweeping tariffs.Later, Republican Rep. Don Bacon (NE-02) joins the show to discuss the impact of those tariffs on his constituents in Omaha and whether Congress could move to limit the president’s tariff powers. They also talk about the need for moral clarity from the U.S. in the Russia-Ukraine war and why abandoning the global order that has benefited America for the past 80 years is a mistake.Rep. Bacon shares his deep concerns about the recent firing of top military and intelligence officials, and they debate whether one—or both—of America's political parties could be headed for a split.Finally, in the “Ask Chuck” segment, Chuck responds to a listener question about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez outpolling Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in New York—and whether Democrats should rethink their strategy as a result.Timeline:0:00 Introduction3:15 We’re in the middle of a political realignment6:00 What if America was a 4 party system?10:30 Tariffs are Trump’s Afghanistan withdrawal - He won’t recover from it*16:15 Could the turbulence from the tariff destruction fracture the R party? 17:04 Rep. Don Bacon joins the show!19:42 How will tariffs negatively impact 21:38 Did the White House notify congress before imposing the tariffs?22:45 What is the goal of the tariffs?26:11 Will congress take its tariff power back from Trump?31:42 We need moral clarity in the Russia/Ukraine war34:11 Does Trump have a mobster mentality when it comes to geopolitics?36:27 The last 80 years have been great for America. Why do people think otherwise?38:30 Lack of official US government response to the crisis of democracy in Turkey41:28 Does Rep. Bacon consult with his wealthiest constituent, Warren Buffet?44:02 Concern about firing top military leaders and Laura Loomer’s influence 48:59 Could we see a fracture in one or both political parties?55:00 Chuck’s thoughts on interview with Rep. Bacon and potential cracks in both of America’s political parties57:30 “Ask Chuck” - Does the latest poll showing AOC beating Chuck Schumer by 19 points could cause a change in direction or strategy for the Democrats?(Timestamps may vary based on advertisements)
Chapter 1: What political realignment is America undergoing?
But that Omaha district has gone blue, I think, the last... A few times. So we've had these split decisions out of there, but they have voted simultaneously for president and they've elected Don Bacon, a Republican, to Congress.
And I really think it does sort of tell you a lot about Omaha in general and sort of where, you know, where there's different wings, if you will, of the Republican Party these days, because I think when you see a guy like Don Bacon get elected and.
and you see Democrats carried in a presidential, I think it tells you what type of Republicanism they don't like, because this is a Republican leaning area in general. This is certainly Omaha itself is a 50-50 place. The city for years, they've gone back and forth, Democratic mayors, Republican mayors. It's always been a swing area of the state, but generally it leans pretty Republican.
But I think what you see here is what I find interesting here is something that I think
You know, this this fight that we're going to see inside the Republican Party over tariffs and this fight that I think we're now, which may end up accelerating a larger fight about national security, because in many ways, Donald Trump, I think whether he means to or not, certainly is the leader of a new version of the Republican Party or arguably an older version of a Republican Party.
That goes that dates itself back to the late 19th century, early 20th century. And back then, the Republican Party was a very protectionist party. Of course, the party of being the party of business, it actually was very logical why back then business wanted protection. because back then we didn't have air cargo travel.
Back then we had, you know, so American businesses wanted to be one of their businesses protected, if you would, from outside influence, outside exports. And so it made a lot of sense that the Republican Party, being the party of business back then, would be in favor of tariffs back then. Ironically, I think today's
business, while they want to align with the Republican Party that was sort of from the Eisenhower to Romney era, one for low regulation and low taxes, is not advocating these tariffs. There's a couple of industries that are, but not many. And I think there's a real question now. And this is something I've been thinking about quite a bit and about our polarization. Right.
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Chapter 2: How do tariffs compare to Trump's Afghanistan withdrawal?
We're we've been in the middle of a political realignment now, arguably for 20 years. I mean, in some ways, it's ever since the end of the Cold War. We've begun this sort of what I would call this this realignment and this splintering of coalitions that were very steady. during the Cold War.
But if you think about this sort of calendar of events, right, the wall falls in 89 and the first evidence of the Trump era shows up in 1992 in the form of Pat Buchanan, a conservative pundit back in the day, worked for Richard Nixon, was a speechwriter. He challenged the sitting president back then, a Republican, George H.W. Bush. And challenged him in for the nomination.
He didn't get very close, but he found a following. He had a and it was a very when you hear if you go back and listen to a Pat Buchanan stump speech in Manchester, New Hampshire in 1991 and 1992, it'll sound very familiar. It's tough on immigration. It is definitely articulating beliefs and a bit of retreat.
Buchanan for years was seen as anti-Israel because he was really anti-foreign aid to anybody, including Israel back in the day. He was certainly thought, he was one of the early conservatives speaking against free trade agreements. He was violently anti-NAFTA. And so when you now look back at the time, He was considered kind of a gadfly, kind of a loud mouth.
Yes, there's always been this sort of constituency available to Republicans back then, but it was a small, you know, it wasn't a majority constituency. Certainly it wasn't where the donor community was.
And it really wasn't where sort of, you know, if you think about, I always think about most of the American people are somewhere between the 30 yard lines if you want to lay us out on a football field, right?
There really is only about 15 percent of the entire country is further to the left or further to the right than that, than those sort of invisible lines that I've drawn there at the 30 yard line.
And if you want more detail on that, just go go go go down a Pew Research rabbit hole and you'll sort of see how the progressive left and the and the MAGA right collectively is not even 20 percent of the population. But. Right now you could argue that they're having more than their fair share of influence on the two parties.
And it's made me think at this point, especially, this really clicked into my head in 2016, where we really could have easily been a, if we had been a sort of European democracy, think France, which has, four major parties, maybe four people on a general election. Top two would meet in a runoff.
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Chapter 3: What impact will tariffs have on the economy?
Well, if we were a four party system in 2016, it had Bernie Sanders, sort of the Green Party nominee or the Progressive Party nominee. You'd had Hillary Clinton as sort of the the Lib Dem, if you will, if to compare it to the UK or sort of the center left party. You had a Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio as the nominee for the center right party. And you had Donald Trump as sort of the nationalist, right?
The nominee of the nationalist party. And perhaps if there's a runoff, it would have been Trump Sanders, or perhaps it would have been, you know, Rubio Clinton. You know, it could have gone in any different direction depending on what the top two were. And perhaps, you know, look, This isn't what we are. We have a duopoly in this country. I think it's a duopoly that's doing a lot of damage now.
I think it's a duopoly that is making the democracy a bit weaker than it ever has. I think in some ways we do have arguably four robust political movements that might be deserving of its own political party rather than trying to stuff two of them into these larger coalitions. And I have this thesis that if we could
if you had to create a coalition to attain power, like many parliamentary systems work, or even these sort of hybrid sort of multi-party democracies work, then you would be more comfortable building a coalition to enact power, right? And it would only arguably empower more folks, number one, at the negotiating table.
And number two, I think you would have, yes, it would be more incremental movements, but it would be incremental movements that were more likely to stick rather than the sort of whiplash that we are getting in public policy that is arguably created or accelerated the instability that we have. The reason I bring this up, because you're gonna hear this
you're going to hear from Don Bacon, and he really is. Here's a guy that is filing a bill to try to take tariff power away from the Republican president, Donald Trump. Here's a guy that just wrote an op-ed, very critical of some of the movements the Trump administration's making when it comes to a reproachment to Russia.
He's been very supportive of Ukraine in the war, in that aggressive action that the Russians took to invade their country. And he's very concerned. And look, he's in that sense, he is being a representative of his area. Omaha and Nebraska in general will get hit hard by these tariffs, very hard. All of the ag states are gonna get hit hard by these tariffs. It's not an accident.
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Chapter 4: Will Congress take tariff power back from Trump?
that Chuck Grassley, the Republican senator from Iowa, Don Bacon, a Republican congressman from Nebraska, are two of the leading sponsors of sort of companion bills that would essentially try to take this emergency tariff power away from the president. He really shouldn't have this power. There's really no emergency out there. He's manufactured this emergency.
And if Congress has the authority to take it away from him, The question, of course, is when is there going to be the political will, particularly in the House, to do that? I don't want to prejudge the conversation you're about to hear with him, but I think it is something you'll hear. There's a bit of a strategy here. A lot of it will depend on the impact these tariffs have over the economy.
I think the jobs report is a lagging indicator of the health of the economy. But I understand if I were in the Trump administration over the weekend, I'd be trying to use the jobs report as proof. Hey, you know, playing Kevin Bacon in Animal House. Remain calm all as well. Look, the jobs report. Guess what?
Jobs report literally is when you think about it, we always report it first Friday of the month. But it really is. signifying the health of the jobs market as of the 15th of the prior month, right? That's really what it tells you. So this is an indicator of what the job market was pre-liberation day. So this is just the beginning.
Obviously, what the markets do all day on Monday is going to be impactful of some of the political reaction here. But look, politically, I do think, as I said in our little emergency, our first of what may be many emergency pods that we start putting up here at The Czech Podcast, I do think that this is his Afghanistan withdrawal. And
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Chapter 5: What moral clarity is needed in the Russia-Ukraine war?
You know, this is something it's just like, you know, it's funny. Donald Trump is convinced that fair trade is something that's popular. Right. And when you when you pull fair trade, everybody's for fair trade. It sounds good. Reciprocal tariffs making the case. You know, whatever a country's taxing us, we should tax back. Right. I think fairness is something that's very easy sell. Right.
But then the impact of it suddenly becomes very difficult to sell because the impact is uneven. The impact isn't what necessarily the rhetoric President Trump is saying is on that front. And the reason I compared to the Afghanistan withdrawal is like very, you know, getting out of Afghanistan was very popular.
In fact, the Biden administration assumed that they were, you know, as long as getting they got out of Afghanistan, how they got out wasn't going to be a big deal. But it really sort of he never recovered from it because it how he got out. created a competence question about the administration.
And when you have competency suddenly becoming a sort of front of mind to voters, that is very, it's almost impossible to recover from. You can. You know, Barack Obama recovered from the arguably the incompetency of not being able to get the Web site up for health care. They paid a steep price, but he went out there and sort of owned it.
And they made a very public attempt to bring in the best and the brightest to try to fix it. They sort of leaned into the problem to try to fix the problem. Donald Trump, instead of trying to sell the country on tariffs and explaining his policies, left Washington early to golf.
I mean, if you were the Democratic Party looking for a visual to use to attack Donald Trump, sort of the let them eat cake moment, if you will, you couldn't come up with a better visual than him rushing down to his golf course, rushing to
play he apparently is there's some senior championship which of course he will be the winner of because it's his own golf club um you know we used to laugh at the north korean leaders who would talk about their golf exploits and now we have our own leader who likes to talk about his golf exploits uh but he's not even attempting to sell or fix this problem.
And then you have the issue where economists are looking at the math, if you will, that the Trump administration put out and how they came up with the various reciprocal tariffs that they came up with. And apparently, they'd be laughed out of economics 101 classes. So this really gets at a, it's how they did this feels a bit haphazard. And I think it creates a competency question. And again,
George W. Bush, Katrina, and Iraq, the combination of those created a competency crisis, excuse me, for Bush that he never recovered from. And his party started to pay a steep price in 06 and then paid another price in 08. This wasn't something that went away after one cycle. I think it's pretty clear that Democrats paid a competency price.
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Chapter 6: Could the Republican Party fracture over tariffs?
you know, obviously at this point, I think if he missed, he should have ordered this differently if he really believed in this tariff regime. But now he's made it where even if he passes a tax cut, it's going to have zero impact on improving people's lives, zero impact on getting money into their hands. And if anything, all they're going to see is the cost of everything else go up.
So whatever cut he may be producing. And the last time he cut taxes, it didn't It didn't cut everybody's taxes. He seemed to he cut corporate taxes more than he cut individual taxes. You know, in fact, for some people, taxes went up, particularly if you lived in in a suburb in a light blue in a state that had a state income tax.
So I think he has put his entire presidency in jeopardy of being of being an effective presidency. But as always, he's put himself at the center of the story and the center of the debate. But this is going to be a pretty rough ride and we may be.
I think the turbulence, the one thing I wonder about is the turbulence so great that this is what actually fractures the Republican Party into something that we haven't fathomed. Is this the beginning of splitting the Republican Party into two and you end up having essentially two parties on the right, one that is a business centric sort of belief in a global order
and one that is an isolationist nationalist party on that front. And of course, I think once one splinters, the other one could splinter just behind it. So, look, this is just a way to watch this in a macro sense. But in the micro sense, I think...
The.
And joining me for a conversation here about sort of the tumultuous week that we've had on the economy is Republican Congressman Don Bacon, who is from Omaha. And many people who follow the presidential election know know his district well, because Nebraska is one of two states that splits their electoral votes.
So the Omaha congressional district has been one of those swing, probably the swingiest district ever. as far in America when it comes to ad spending. But the congressman there is Don Bacon, and he has, while he has tough races, he makes it through. Congressman, it's good to see you. Thanks. Good to be back on with you. It's good to see you again. I appreciate that.
Well, let's start with, you know, because I have a little bit of time and we can do context to our answers, just for people that aren't as familiar with the Omaha economy, you know, it's been a great 30 years in Omaha. All right. If you look at it from that big 30 year picture, it's more of a diverse economy than it was 30 years ago. Give the give the elevator pitch.
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Chapter 7: How do tariffs affect Nebraska's economy?
both economic and personal security, the efforts we've made in health, you just name it. It's been an incredible 80 years. And it's amazing to me how much, frankly, you get some partisans on both sides that just trash how awful the last 80 years have been. You know, if these are terrible, I can't wait for the good years.
This is Chuck. It's been America's century. It's been our century. And we should not feel ashamed at all about it. God's been good to us. And so I totally agree with what you're saying. Even this balance of trade, I mean, you could dig into that, that The fact is, we're the wealthiest nation in the world. We have the ability to buy things we want. We like scotch. We like Bordeaux wine.
We like Central American cigars.
Let me just start with a basic cup of coffee. You talked about cigars and scotch, and that's one thing. A lot of people drink coffee, whether they're working class or upper class, and everybody's going to get a price hike.
Probably a 15%... increases the cost of coffee, which is a shame. But, you know, that's your point. This is America's country, and I don't want to walk away from it. I'd like to see America remain the leader of the free world, a humble leader of the free world, where we work with NATO, Japan, Australia, to counter Russia and China, Iran.
We can't do it by ourselves, but we can do it with Japan and NATO. And I see us right now sort of walking away from that, that we're going to be isolationists. We're just going to worry about ourselves. And it's going to be us against the world when it comes to the economy and tariffs. That's the more dangerous world. And I don't see that as a positive direction at all.
Look, we've been talking mostly about Russia and tariffs and it's been consuming us. But there's a there's a real troubling development in Turkey. And what's been most troubling to me is how little the United States has officially spoken out against what Erdogan has done to his chief opponent. This is and I look, Turkey diplomacy is very tricky.
And it's and I look, you know, Obama overlooks some things with him. Trump, you know, again, realpolitik, it happens. But I've been really disappointed in the lack of of official response on what's happening in Turkey. What about yourself?
Well, it's increasingly more and more that Turkey can't call themselves a democracy. Erdogan has become the big man, just sort of like, you know, Putin and Xi's done, but they never had a democracy. You know, it's Putin or Xi, but you see Turkey... walking away from its democracy roots that allows it to become a NATO ally. And we should rethink the future of Turkey when it comes to NATO.
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Chapter 8: What is the role of Congress in tariff legislation?
But they all feed off each other, and they believe that Gerald Hawk was bad. For no reason. They had a reason. Because General Milley was the chairman when he became the commander of Cyber Command. So guilt by association in their mind because General Milley was not elected.
Irony, of course, General Milley was appointed by Donald Trump. That never seems to matter to people.
And I would say the same thing to General Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He got fired for no reason. They did offer a reason. I don't know of a reason to fire him. And all that does is hurt us. It puts us on our heels. And it creates a lack of trust at the very top. I know some of these generals, and they're like, Don, I could be next. And you know what?
I don't mind getting fired if I did something wrong. But in this case, these are just guys that are getting fired for the whims of whoever
Before I let you go, one of my theses these days is that we have two political parties that are trying to take the place of four political movements, meaning both parties are arguably too big for their coalitions. Can you imagine a day where the Republican Party just split in two?
That's how we got the Republican Party to begin with. They broke off the Whigs. And we have Fremont as our first nominee, then Abraham Lincoln. Not a bad run. Yeah, it was a pretty good run. You're right. We have the populist wing. We have the Reagan wing. And I am clearly on the Reagan wing of this party. The Democrat Party, I would say, too, has their populists.
You know, you have AOC gunning after Schumer right now because he dared to keep the government open. And so it's... And I do think – I used to think of politics as a linear thing, but it really is a horseshoe that closes at the top. And you have our populist wing. They're now voting with AOC on a whole variety of national security measures, Ukraine, FISA, the defense budget, you name it.
They've gone all the way over, and they're together. And – I think we started off our show this way. When I talk to Democrats today, the traditional ones, they sound like Ronald Reagan. When I talk to our populists, they sound like George McGovern. Well, we're in the middle of a political realignment.
There's no doubt about it. And I think that maybe it'll all look more obvious in 50 years when you and I are gone and some historians are figuring it out. But it is a tough place to be in the middle of.
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