This reporter behind me was quite snarky. The other day when President Trump talked about the girl having two dolls and he said, well, what president didn't take the question, but he said, what would you tell that girl? I said, I would tell that young girl that you will have a better life than your [00:00:17] parents, that you and your family, thanks to President Trump, can now be confident again that you will have a better life than your parents. Which working class Americans had abandoned that idea? Your family will own a home. You will be able to the advance. You will have a good education. [00:00:34] You will have economic freedom. You're going to have to fact check the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent there. There is not a single little girl in the world whose life is better off because of Donald Trump. And I'm including Ivanka there. Except maybe if you factor in, if Donald Trump had more restraint [00:00:49] than I imagine he had. But anyway, there he's talking about the economy and the way Trump has been talking about the economy. He, as always, has his mind on little girls and their dolls and has decided to say that the tariffs aren't that bad. [00:01:05] You're just going to have $5 instead of $30 and you'll spend more on it. But it's fine. It's it's a weird way to talk about the economy. Not only that, he's so focused on Dol specifically, but that he really does make it seem as if the effect of the tariffs is going to be quite drastic, that you go from $30 down to five. [00:01:22] That's a big drop in dollars. And look, that's Trump. He's weird. Whatever. But a lot of Republicans don't necessarily agree with Scott Bessent. They would really prefer that he talk about the economy in a different way, and didn't make it so clear to so many Americans that their, their, their holidays, [00:01:38] their, you know, their ability to buy gifts, their ability to participate in American consumer culture is going to be so drastically affected by the tariffs. But that said, I don't think Scott really sells how strange Trump is when he talks about this. So in case you missed the original comments, here it is. [00:01:55] Somebody said, oh, the shelves are going to be open. Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally. But we're not talking about something that we have to go out of our way. They have ships that are loaded up with stuff, much of which not all of it, [00:02:14] but much of which we don't need. I don't think a beautiful baby girl needs at 11 years old, needs to have 30 dolls. I think they can have three dolls or four dolls. When you say they could have three dolls instead of 30 dolls, are you saying you're. [00:02:30] Saying they don't. Need Americans could see empty store shelves? No, I'm. No, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying they don't need to have 30 dolls. They can have three. They don't need to have 250 pencils. They can have five. That again, is a very big drop off in pencils. [00:02:45] I just want to I know he's not good at math, but I want to stress that. And it was a good follow up question by the interviewer there. I would have loved for her to ask him, nay, beg him to talk about some product other than dolls, but I guess he eventually got to the pencils. In any event. Look, he thinks it's great messaging to tell people effectively [00:03:01] to just sit down and take it that your ability to buy things for your family, toys for your kids. That's pretty much done. Just shut up about it and you're going to be fine. But again, not great for people who have to run for office again. And and it's also it's, I think minimizing the actual effect in the end because, [00:03:18] more than 70% of baby related products purchased by Americans is manufactured by US companies, but in China. So that's basically every car seat, every stroller, every bassinet, every changing table, like these children's products. It's not like new parents have crowed over the past few years about how affordable [00:03:37] buying all of this stuff is to begin with, and now it's 150% more, so that's bad. The Juvenile Product Manufacturers Association is expecting overall markups of about 30% on those product categories. And again, like inflation has already been bad. [00:03:53] People have already been paying more for this stuff. Groceries up 20%, daycare up 23%, baby food and formula up 10%. Promising higher prices, less ability to buy things and potentially empty store shelves is a pretty big one. 80 from the way he talked about his impact on the [00:04:11] economy while he was running for office. David. But what do you make of it? Well, and to take it one step further and there's no relief in sight. I mean, Donald Trump for weeks has been saying, oh, we're having these wonderful conversations with China and Scott one on one of the weekend shows last weekend and said, well, we're having talks with 17 countries. [00:04:28] We've had no talks with China the 18th and China is the most important. So beset is out there standing for the lie that Donald Trump keeps making about all these wonderful talks, these wonderful deals. And by the way, as of tonight, we still have not a single deal. Zero. And a lot of the manufacturers point out that when it comes to, you know, [00:04:45] the children's toys and the dolls or whatever it is, even if you were to make the tariffs even higher, there's still no way that over the next decade that manufacturing of these products is suddenly going to come to the United States. There's just no incentive or infrastructure for it. [00:05:01] The designs for a lot of these companies. Yeah, the designers are in the United States, but the manufacturing, the assembly of these dolls and toys and strollers and everything else is in China. And that's not going to change regardless of the tariffs. So the only thing that is changing, as you point out, are the prices [00:05:16] that the prices are getting much higher. And I'll have to say that as a dad of a beautiful 11 year old girl, she doesn't have 30 dolls. She's really into beads and things like that. And guess where beads come from? China. And we've already seen that the price of beads [00:05:32] and all the art supplies is going way up. So it's it's impacting everybody already. Yeah. I mean, look, maybe used to have 300 beads. Maybe you have like four beads, you know, I mean, can you make a bracelet with four beads? I don't know, but I've always thought that jewelry is not about the beads. It's about the space between it. It's like jazz in that way. [00:05:50] But anyway, yeah, it's just this is a terrible strategy. It's just. It's so stupid. It's so self-destructive. We we felt. Or at least I'll only speak for myself. I felt like Joe Biden, not only, you know, didn't accomplish more to Reorient the economy, but he could have done more and vigorous messaging to make clear that people [00:06:09] understand that he understands their pain. Now, though, looking back at Biden, it feels like, my God, that guy was a master communicator in comparison to this. Like you got Donald Trump telling people to get used to having 90% less than they used to, and then right wing independent media like Charlie Kirk telling people [00:06:25] to shut up about the eggs and everything. Like, that's not how you explain to people that you understand. And while there's not a lot of Republicans that are willing to come out and like, directly slam this messaging, they're sort of getting towards that. So a half dozen GOP senators were apparently asked by The Hill [00:06:43] about their remarks. None of them threw their full weight behind them. Some said they understood Trump's point to a certain degree or pointed to his unique style of communication, which is one interesting way to put that. But Senator Kevin Cramer told The Hill, The thing that I admire about it [00:06:59] is he is willing to acknowledge that tariffs may have a short term consequence, but he believes in the long run they'll have a long term benefit. And he's setting expectations at the family table level. But he might be setting the expectations as a millionaire. That may not translate to the family worker. Well, first of all, you know full well that he's not just a millionaire, [00:07:16] he's a billionaire. And he has been for a very long time. So he's even more disconnected than in your example. And it's fine to be like he's willing to acknowledge the tariffs in the short term. I would like to just acknowledge, like, maybe you could have done that while you were campaigning because he damn sure wasn't doing it then he was being, [00:07:34] oh, it's instant day one. Economy solved. Now we're stuck with him and he's willing to acknowledge that he's wrecking the economy. That's nice. Anyway, Senator Capito, a member of GOP leadership, says he thinks it's a good example, but I'm not sure it's the best example about the dolls. [00:07:51] Or maybe the pencils or dolls holding pencils. I don't know what's going on in his brain. And one final Senate Republican said everything that we need to do needs to be instructed by people who experience scarcity. And that that's clearly the words of somebody that never has. It's not really sensitive to the circumstances of people [00:08:07] that are struggling every day. It would be helpful to be more relatable and like that's as close as they're going to get to actually slamming him as an out of touch billionaire who not only hasn't, he hasn't, like, had to go to the store and buy a product in, what, decades? [00:08:22] At this point you think he's like shopping for groceries or he doesn't even buy presents for his wife's birthday? You think he's buying dolls for Ivanka or something? And so I just hope that the Democrats are clipping all this stuff out and then throw it into ads. Show the changes in prices. I can add one. [00:08:39] My wife was looking at, a stroller to buy for her nephew who's expecting a child, and, she messed up because she saved it in her shopping cart, and it was $400. And then the price was updated, I guess because it's coming [00:08:56] from China. $600, 50% more. The political messaging, as you point out, is fascinating in all this. And I think the reason some of the Republican senators are sort of being gentle is because they still have to deal with Donald Trump. Karl Rove, the former Bush adviser, is on Fox News, described Donald Trump [00:09:11] as being like a Scrooge and that this was a terrible message to be talking about. Oh, you're going to have to make do with less toys. I would take it even a step further. You mentioned that Donald Trump has sort of a unique way of talking, or the senators say that, well, it's unique to the extent that Jimmy Carter had a unique way of talking [00:09:26] about the energy crisis in the 70s in his malaise speech, where he suggested, well, we're all just going to have to turn down the thermostat and wear some more sweaters. And that was a horrible message for Jimmy Carter. And I think if the Democrats were smart to your point, [00:09:41] they would take the same strategy now with Donald Trump and say, hey, Donald Trump is asking all of us to suffer. He wants all of you to sacrifice and to not go with these toys. That's not an optimistic America is strong America's great kind of message. [00:09:57] And it is political dynamite. So to your point, I do hope the Democrats follow through. Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets his wings. Totally not true, but it does keep you updated on our live shows.