He's testing the limits of his power over and over and over again. That's why the last couple days, every single day he's brought up, that could be a dictator. I mean, I don't want to, but I could be, because he's testing the limits of how much he can get away with because he doesn't believe in democracy. [00:00:15] It never has. He's a cook. The fed governor over her mortgage. If she doesn't resign, she's. See, what she did was a bad. So I'll fire her if she doesn't resign. Well, in this case, Donald Trump actually stuck to his word, and now he's saying [00:00:31] that he is moving to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook in an unprecedented and legally dubious power grab. So we'll give you Trump's justification for firing her. But first, jank this. You know, what did they say? Legally dubious power grab that is putting it very, very mildly. [00:00:50] We're seeing some wildly unprecedented things with this presidency, including. And I think it's important to remind our viewers of this, the fact that Trump is, you know, wrangling these institutions that are a part of our federal government, things that are supposed to be independent of the presidency. [00:01:06] And he just has all of them underneath him. He has installed loyalists everywhere that he has been able to. And in the areas where he hasn't been able to, he's thinking about it. And this is what we're seeing here. So what are your thoughts on this? Yeah, it's a disaster. Hopefully it will be fended off. [00:01:22] See, the number one problem with Donald Trump is his constant desire to go past the law, pass the constitution, pass any. Forget decorum. I don't give a damn about decorum past any actual laws and rules that govern [00:01:38] our country and our way of life. So that's why I think he's oftentimes un-American. So the Supreme Court just ruled on this. He cannot mess with the Federal Reserve's independence. And he's like, yeah, I don't care. I want to fire her, but you don't have the power to fire her. [00:01:55] I don't want to fire her anyway. It's like him saying, that's it. I'm firing John Iadarola from the Young Turks. But you don't have that power. He's the guy. I want to do it anyway. Well, all right, if you don't care, then step aside. Let someone who cares about our laws and our constitution do the job. [00:02:13] Because you obviously don't want to. You want to do a different job. Perhaps an authoritarian job. What he keeps talking about the last couple of days now, I'm not a dictator, but people would love it if I was. No, people would not love it if you were. Maybe you're some of your base would. Oh, yeah. [00:02:30] - Oh, yeah. - I love America. That's why I hate democracy with someone who is profoundly dumb and hates this country. But for the rest of us, no, we would not like it. Every time you violate the law or violate the Constitution. So to give you more details about this dumbass plan he has. [00:02:48] Yeah. So Trump has been eager to fire cook for some time now because it would allow him to install a loyalist into the fed who would push for lower interest rates, which is something that we know he has been pushing for for a long, long time. So he justified firing cook by pointing to allegations [00:03:06] that cook may have falsified records to obtain favorable terms on a mortgage. The allegations came from Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, who, like Trump, has also been trashing the fed for not lowering interest rates. [00:03:22] He says he got a tip about cook but wouldn't say where he got it from. So reporting says that Pulte specifically claimed that cook had committed mortgage fraud, alleging that she improperly designated both a condominium in Atlanta [00:03:37] and a home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, as her primary residence when taking out loans. In doing so, Pulte said cook had falsified bank documents and property records in a way that allowed her to obtain a lower interest rate. [00:03:52] Pulte referred the case to the Justice Department, Apartment, which opened a criminal investigation at his request, but as of now, cook hasn't been charged with any kind of wrongdoing, nor has she been convicted of any crime. Nonetheless, Trump, he wrote in a letter addressed to cook [00:04:08] and shared on social media, he said, you are hereby removed from your position on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, effective immediately. I have determined there is sufficient cause to remove you from your position. Letter. Okay, so, so is this allowed? [00:04:25] Here is what the law says under the Federal Reserve Act. The law that charters the central bank. Trump may dismiss a governor only if he can demonstrate cause, typically defined as professional neglect or malfeasance. In recent days, legal experts have questioned whether the president [00:04:42] could satisfy that burden, given the fact that the allegations against cook have not been proven in court and involve personal matters. In addition to all of that, the Supreme Court said in May that while granting Trump the ability to remove members of other independent agencies, [00:05:00] that the Federal Reserve is a uniquely structured, quasi private entity that has its own distinct historical tradition. And yeah, like what we were saying earlier, this is truly unprecedented. No previous president has even tried to oust a sitting fed governor. [00:05:17] But of course, nothing is off limits for Trump. And I feel like he can just say something. Even if, you know, as you mentioned, he doesn't have the actual authority to make something happen. He can just say it. And then, like, he has so many lackeys in various aspects of areas of our government that, you know, maybe he can actually get it to happen. [00:05:36] But even Michael Strain from the conservative American Enterprise Institute slammed Trump for trying to undermine the independence of the fed by saying the president is using the criminal justice system to remove people from office over policy disagreements. That is extremely dangerous and is, in the case of the fed, [00:05:55] a threat to long term prosperity. And guess who agrees with all of that? Jim Cramer from CNBC. Take a look. If you've been indicted for mortgage fraud, you shouldn't serve. But she hasn't been indicted for mortgage fraud. [00:06:10] So why should she step down on the possibility that she's being investigated? No, she shouldn't step down. The Federal Reserve, as is, has historically been the best. And one of it is because it's independent. It's very difficult to try to get the to get them to do something [00:06:27] they shouldn't do. But if you think that you're going to wake up one day and discover that the Justice Department may or may not be indicted, it's highly embarrassing. It's terrible to find out that you might be charged by the Justice Department, but you don't know. [00:06:42] But the president is taking swift action, and it's very intimidating. I do feel like intimidation is the point. A big part of it. So Lisa Cook, for her part, is fighting back. She said in a statement last week that she had no intention of being bullied. [00:06:59] To step down from my position because of some questions raised in a tweet. And now she is vowing to file a lawsuit contesting Trump's attempt to oust her. And yeah, I feel like the fact that she said she has no intention of being bullied to step down is important because she hasn't been fired. [00:07:16] Just because Donald Trump posted on Truth Social. It doesn't mean that anything is actually going to happen. I feel like he does all these things to make it seem like he's a strong man. He's trying to get people used to the fact that he's going to say these things, and people are going to make these things happen for him. [00:07:31] And on top of that, you know, he's getting people used to the idea of Trump, you know, acting more dictatorially and more authoritarian. Authoritarian. Is that the word I'm looking for? - So what are your thoughts there? - Yeah. So Supreme Court just ruled on this and they gave Trump [00:07:48] almost everything he wanted. They said, okay, normally the Department of Justice is independent. A lot of agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is independent, and these guys do a lot of things, but they also go after white collar criminals. And Trump's like, I don't want their independence. [00:08:04] I don't want to go after white collar criminals. And then he pardoned a slew of people who were charged with fraud, financial fraud. And so he's like, no, I don't want any cops on Wall Street. I hate cops on Wall Street. I hope all my me and my donors get to do whatever we want on Wall Street. [00:08:21] So the Supreme Court said, okay, fine. You could they don't. They no longer have independence, you could fire them, etc. But the one place where there's still independence is the Federal Reserve. And so Trump goes, okay, thank you for giving me 95% of what I wanted a giant power grab. [00:08:37] Now I can just control the Department of Justice. So now what I'm going to do is I'm going to start a fake case against cook, because I don't like that they didn't lower interest rates. And why am I why is he picking on cook Of out of all of them, who knows? [00:08:52] But the fact that she's an African American woman is probably a part of it. If that hurts your feelings, I don't really care. Okay, so it doesn't matter. I don't care if he does it to the whitest dude in America. He's not allowed to do it, so. But he says, oh, yeah, I got an idea. [00:09:08] If I found out that there's a loophole, if they're convicted of a serious crime, then maybe the president could get involved. So, Department of Justice, why don't you just start a case against her? Well, that's not how it's supposed to work. If you find a case and somebody has done something wrong, [00:09:23] nobody's above the law, right? But if you say, hey, I want that political opponent, or in this case, economic opponent charged, go find me a case. I mean, again, tinpot dictator. This is stupid. This isn't America, okay? And if you're a right winger and you hate any kind of principles, well, [00:09:41] you better hope that no Democrat wins and you're going like this. You might think, oh, yeah. Authoritarianism, I love it, I love it. I wouldn't want any democracies where the stupid Democrats can win. I want to rule forever. Okay, yeah, but then you're not an American. Go live in a different country. Okay, but if the Democrats get Ahold of this power, [00:09:58] they could use it just the same. And they could go, oh, here we go. All my political opponents. Mega X, Mega Y, right winger. They're Republican. They're. Oh, I just happened to start a whole bunch of cases against you guys. I told them to go investigate you. And they dug and dug and dug. Oh, look at that. Back in 1987, you did this. [00:10:15] I'm coming after you. So the whole thing's a sham in the first place. So now the Justice Department has no independence. They're going to investigate her. As CNBC points out and everybody points out because it's a fact. She hasn't even been charged. She hasn't been indicted. Trump just said, I want her investigated and I want you to look into it. [00:10:33] And the Justice Department is like, I don't know, maybe something about her mortgage. We don't have anything to charge her with. Trump's like, good enough. You're fired. But that's not a thing. You don't have that power. Okay, I watched that whole CNBC clip. [00:10:49] It was amazing because they they're torn, right? They don't want to criticize their beloved president. They're like the market's up. Market's up. We love this guy. And one of them asked in the middle there like hey you know if there's no rule of law anymore and the Federal Reserve has no independence, [00:11:05] then politicians will play around with it and it'll totally screw up the markets. Aren't you concerned about that? And Cramer's answer was markets up, markets up. The companies love it. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Markets up. Yeah. But dude idiot markets up today. What happens tomorrow? What happens a month from now? [00:11:21] What happens six months from now when you realize, oh yeah, Trump got rid of the Federal Reserve. Folks who were independent put in a bunch of dumb asses who were like, oh, yeah, let's lower interest rates to -12 and the market collapses. Well, then market won't be up. [00:11:38] So God, it's so frustrating that everybody sees not everybody. A lot of people unfortunately see just like right in front of them. Oh, there's a little bit of crime in D.C.. Let's just give up democracy. Rolling the tanks. Who cares? There's a little. I'm a little bothered by crime. Should we hire more cops and fix it that way? [00:11:55] We should still be a conservative position. No. I need the Marines and these guys. The markets are up. Just give away all the power and democracy. So this is. This is unbearable. And and Cramer I mean, the whole time he's like I mean why doesn't she just resign. I mean, most people would resign. [00:12:10] I mean, if the president's bullying you I mean it's going to it's going to take up a lot of your resources and your time. Why don't you just in other words, they're like, look, just give him what he wants. Just, just just give him everything he wants, okay? And besides which, they're going to cut interest rates and and and Cramer and the market would be happy with that again for a couple of days or a couple of months. [00:12:29] And then if inflation goes up because of his dumb ass tariffs then they'll be like oh no, oh no, we shouldn't have cut the rates. It's fueling inflation. Then they'll panic, but it'll be too late. You don't have this power. Move on to do 8000 other things that you have the power to do. [00:12:46] It's not an accident. Yes. He's testing the limits of his power over and over and over again. That's why the last couple days, every single day he's brought up, that could be a dictator. I mean, I don't want to, but I could be, because he's testing the limits of how much he can get away with because he doesn't believe in democracy. [00:13:03] Never has. And you saw it in 2022 or lost today. Rogan and Dave Smith great podcast they're talking about. You know, we gave him four years to come up with one goddamn piece of evidence about 2020. I mean, you run your mouth the whole time. I was robbed, I was robbed. [00:13:21] Whiny little bitch. So show me one piece of evidence. You were robbed. I don't have anything. I don't like Democrats. No, no. Look, man, this ain't strong. This is super weak. So this whiny little bitch wants to be a dictator. And. [00:13:37] And if you're a right winger, you thought you love freedom, and you want to give it away to a guy who doesn't understand the limits of a president's power within a democracy, and you want to give him infinite power and hope for the best. No, you never love this country. [00:13:54] Yeah. I mean, you're absolutely right. We did see it in 2022. We've seen it for for years. Right. He's always been this guy, and he's been ramping things up steadily since he even announced that he was going to be running for president back in 20 1516. And I don't know why people don't learn. [00:14:11] I don't know why they haven't learned by now that the more you keep enabling him, the more it's going to like you're just going to enable him. That's how it works, right? The more you let him get away with, the more he's going to try to get away with somebody like Donald Trump, who only understands numbers, [00:14:27] who only understands money and greed and the accumulation of wealth and power is not going to be the one to say, you know what? That's enough. I'm done. I'll just stop here. He's never going to be able to to put that check and balance on himself. Not only that, but he's going out of his way to erode the existing checks [00:14:45] and balances that have been in place. You know, here he is. He's already been weaponizing the DOJ. He's doing it again here. He's already been trying to co-opt the fed because he hates that the fed is actually an independent agency, to the point where he even said, you know, [00:15:01] it was dumb for Joe Biden to appoint Jerome Powell as the head of the fed, forgetting entirely that it was actually him who appointed Jerome Powell as the head of the fed. But, Jake, you did mention the fact that, she is cook is an African American woman, [00:15:16] and that point has actually come up among Democrats. But there is some disagreement as to whether how relevant that is. So in response to Trump's attempt to fire Lisa Cook, Democrats rolled out their old identity politics defense, Hakeem Jeffries wrote. [00:15:31] Doctor Lisa Cook is the first black woman ever to serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Donald Trump is trying to remove her without a shred of credible evidence that she has done anything wrong. So even some Democrats have chastised him for turning to identity before the part [00:15:50] of, you know, like trying to remove her without a shred of credible evidence. So Rotimi Adeoye and MSNBC contributor had this to say in response to Hakeem Jeffries. He said, for the love of God, please stop framing it this way. Yes, firing the first black woman at the fed is bad. [00:16:07] But the core issue is presidential control over the economy, like a strongman risking real damage to Americans finances. Identity is secondary to abuse of power, identity first framing hands opponents an easy straw man and buries the policy stakes. [00:16:24] Voters feel rates, rent, car loans and jobs. Start with threats to fed independence and household costs. Then add that ousting a barrier breaking leader is wrong much later. So yeah, I feel like the stakes are as high [00:16:40] as they have ever been in this country as far as authoritarianism and democracy. Everything is at stake, and I feel like we can't really overstate that at this point, because we already have the military in our streets. We already have the National Guard deployed in cities [00:16:55] where the state never asked for it. He's already threatening to do that again in other states like Chicago and Baltimore, like we are at the level that progressives especially have been warning about for ten years. It feels like. Right. We saw this coming a mile and a half away, and everybody said [00:17:11] that we were being hyperbolic and we were being dramatic and whatever. But here we have Hakeem Jeffries, who is at such a high level within the Democratic Party, and he's still playing games like this is 2016. You know, he hasn't learned that whatever the Democrats are saying, they need [00:17:28] to be able to back this up with action. You can't just say something like, oh yeah, this is bad. We probably shouldn't fire this black woman from the fed. Like, yeah, nobody likes that. But that is not the bigger problem. That is not the bigger threat to our democracy right now. I feel like it's kind of like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. [00:17:45] You know, if you have an existential threat to democracy, focus on that first, and then we can look into identity and feelings and things like that. Secondary. You know, like maybe not tertiary, you know, like that is a privilege to be able to have those high level conversations. [00:18:00] But right now we have a more existential threat that we need to address first. Yeah. Look, there's a couple of reasons why he might have targeted her. And being an African American woman might have been one of them. But if you focus on that, then you get the framing of this conversation in a way [00:18:17] that is unproductive, counterproductive. Rotimi is totally right. I don't know this brother, but I think he couldn't be more right about this. It's not that you shouldn't care about that issue, but if you start with that, then it makes it seem like we're having a conversation about whether it was right or wrong to hire to fire a black woman. [00:18:34] But wait a minute. We don't even know what she did. Wait a minute. That's not even the issue. The issue is, does the president have the authority and power to do this? That is a monumental issue for our democracy. So if you confuse people with like, oh, can he fire a black woman? [00:18:51] They might say, well, yeah, of course he can fire a black woman. I might not want him to, but he can. That's not the question. That's not the question. The question is, can he fire this person at all? And then if you say, like I did a minute ago. Hey, look, why did he pick her instead of someone else? [00:19:07] Okay, fine. But that's a that is a much lower priority. Now, as we're in the throngs of a president trying to take away democracy from us and violating every law and rule and constitutional provision he could find. [00:19:23] And Supreme Court ruling. Focus. Focus. And the reason they can't is because they're so empty. Hakeem Jeffries has a playbook that they got from the 1990s. This is when we insert race in okay. Race is on our side. So race, race race race culture wars. [00:19:41] Jesus Christ, you incompetence. Okay, last thing, guys. I don't want Biden having this power any more than I want Trump having this power. I don't, because every politician, Democrat or Republican, is going to come in and want to lower the interest rates. [00:19:57] Why the juice up the economy? And if you think, oh, well, that's great, why don't we just juice up the economy? Because it has a downside. And the knucklehead politicians think both rightly and wrongly, rightly they think, well, maybe it has a downside two years from now when it creates inflation. [00:20:13] But I only have nine months left before the election or six months left before the election. I'm going to lower the rates now. The economy is going to look better. You're going to reelect me. It's going to cause or the next person in my party, it's going to cause problems down the line for you. But what do I care? I'm a greasy politician, right? [00:20:29] Or even in Trump's case, since he knows nothing, he's like, oh, let's lower interest rates now and do tariffs, which is highly inflationary, but I'm a dumbass and I don't know that. And so I just want it, I want it. No, don't give politicians this kind of power. Lastly, this whole thing of not remembering that he hired [00:20:48] Jerome Powell and not Joe Biden. Let's be honest, guys, if Joe Biden had made a mistake like that, we'd all be talking about how his uncle got eaten by cannibals and how he's lost his mind. Right? But Trump makes mistakes like that 24 over seven. Japan. So wrong for Jerome Powell. [00:21:03] Sir, sir, sir, sir, sir. - You hire Jerome. - Powell. Oh, what? I want all power. - I could be dictator now. - I'm not interested in this guy, so. She should definitely stay. She should definitely fight. Go to the courts, adjudicate this. [00:21:20] And the Supreme Court was crystal clear about this, so they should tell them to f off. And I hope they do. If they let him get away with this, then they're a useless court and we're all screwed. Yeah, absolutely. And like, you're so spot on about Trump and his motivations for wanting [00:21:35] to wrangle the fed under his control. I mean, he's been saying for a long time what he wants to happen, but we know these politicians, it's always short term thinking, right? They always want to juice the numbers, especially somebody like Trump, who, as I said earlier, he really loves his ratings. [00:21:51] He loves his numbers, even if he has to make them up to make him look better. But, you know, he wants to look good going into the midterms. He wants to like, put things in place. It's all about him. It's not about the American people. He is not looking out for the average American person. [00:22:07] He's looking out for himself and he's looking out for his rich, wealthy friends. And he wants to make everything look really nice so that maybe the Republicans can stay in power a little bit longer. And so then maybe he can be empowered to do whatever he wants, dictator or not, going into 2028. [00:22:24] And we'll see what our country looks like by then. I guess every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets its wings. Totally not true, but it does keep you updated on our live shows.