Before we let you go. This is just breaking here. Sure. The media says you're in the doghouse with Trump. Is that true? Or is that fake news? - That's fake news, Jesse. - Well, I mean, if he says it's fake news. And with that genuine laughter, he's just so enjoying this conversation. [00:00:18] I mean, look, I know that I should question public officials. I think that maybe I'm just being won over by his natural charm. But anyway, that's Peter Navarro, and he's basically been seen to be kind of like the avatar of Donald Trump's ideological attachment to the idea of [00:00:35] tariffs solving literally every problem. If there's anyone who has more faith in tariffs than Trump, it would be Peter Navarro. And Navarro calls the reports that he could potentially be about to be thrown under the bus fake news. But he was also implying right before the tariffs were dialed back, [00:00:50] that that would literally never happen. You could take it to the bank. They're here to stay. So he doesn't have a lot of credibility in the public marketplace of ideas or rhetoric. But at this point, I think we had talked about the possibility that he could suffer consequences when Donald Trump retreats. [00:01:05] What do you think about these reports? Yeah, so I've got a little bit mixed opinions on it, which is that so is Navarro fake laughing? I don't have a mixed opinion on that. Yeah, that was wonderfully awkward. Like, no, it's Oh, yeah. [00:01:23] Fake news. Sure it is, brother. Okay, so yeah, the he's lost power. Best sent the Treasury secretary's gained power. So we'll tell you what that means and the ramifications of that, in a second. But also, the upside is that [00:01:42] they really do have a team of rivals. And is that. Yeah. But how does that help us? I want to explain that, too. But first, let's keep making fun of Navarro. Yeah, let's let's definitely do some of that. It is looking like as of right now, he's been basically sidelined. [00:01:58] That's what's Politico is saying with, with, lutnick now being sort of elevated, but bessent probably more so than the others, which feels like kind of like a micro version of the economic sort of argument. The factions that that happened during Trump's first term, [00:02:14] where, again, Trump was interested in starting these trade wars and everything. But then, like the adults in the room, quote unquote, sort of took over. It feels like Besson's kind of playing like that role in this particular case. But the issue for Navarro is that he's very tied in with basically every part of the disaster that we just experienced, and we're still seeing the fallout of, [00:02:32] he apparently, was largely behind the way that they came up with those particular tariffs for Liberation Day, which liberated so many Americans from their retirement. So he came up with the, the formula. People are saying, or at least he typed in the prompt to ChatGPT [00:02:49] that generated the formula, and maybe he ordered at Kinko's the little like write up of what it would look like. He also insisted that the tariffs would be non-negotiable. And so he's really closely tied to it more than basically anyone else. Now for POLITICO's report, they had three anonymous people close to [00:03:05] the white House that they had as sources. So Jesse Watters is always going to pretend that it's the media saying something. It's the media being told by sources the endless stream of leakers inside the Trump administration. They're the ones that are the source for this. Now, it's also nuanced. [00:03:21] They say that Navarro still has Trump's ear. Trump respects Navarro's aggressive populism, which for some reason in political reporting doesn't have quotation marks around it. And that that doesn't mean he's at the center of it. And importantly, they also say in the reporting those sources that the big feud, [00:03:39] the very public social media feud between Navarro and Elon Musk, that that isn't necessarily what's driving Navarro maybe being put into the back seat here. I think it's mainly just the fallout of the tariffs themselves. But that's the way they're describing it right now. Yeah. So remember, whenever there's a story like this, [00:03:56] somebody's leaked it to this, reporter. And they had an agenda. So what is their agenda here? This is the best inside the winning side. I'm not saying it's the best in himself, but somebody on that side basically saying, to Navarro through the press. [00:04:12] Ha, ha. Okay, Now they would add in that, remember, Elon had nothing to do with this because that person is probably allied with Elon. So they don't want people thinking that Elon is the real president. And he's the one the biggest donor that's making the decisions. [00:04:27] ET cetera. So no no no no no, it has nothing to do with Elon. And by the way, it might not it might not. But the fact that they said that doesn't mean anything. So, now, Navarro, of course, in my opinion, is a grade-A clown. He's the one that really believed that these nuclear level tariffs [00:04:43] would work when no rational person should have thought that they would work. Especially he's a Harvard trained economist. Dude. That's embarrassing. Oh my God. Okay. And remember, he's a terrible guy, too. He's the one that came up with, or at least detailed the fake elector plot [00:05:01] to overturn the 2020 election. In his book. He was bragging about it. Like, you're right that we bring in these electors, right? And they weren't the ones that were elected. But so what? And then we steal the election. No, he doesn't say steal. He has code words for it, but they're very thinly disguised. So as bad guys, you'll find. I'm thrilled that he's lost some power. [00:05:21] But, John, the part of the reporting that's right, that John told you about is that. No, he's not gone. He's like, Bob, you think he's gone? He's not gone. That's such an old school. - What about Bob reference? - I barely get it. Yeah, I know right. Bill Murray, check it out. So he's right there. [00:05:38] Okay. Anyways, so. But look, to be fair, like, both Republicans and Democrats in the past have pretended to have a team of rivals. Obama bragged about it. They always picked a transportation secretary as the one from the other party. They never have any kind of real conversations or debates. [00:05:56] It's just marketing. It doesn't mean anything at all. And Democrats will pick a Republican defense secretary half the time. It's just and helping the Republicans seem stronger. There's always such a terrible and useless thing. Right? But in this case, there really are rivals. Navarro and Musk actually hate each other. [00:06:14] And and Bessant is definitely on the opposite side of Lutnick. So Lutnick the commerce secretary, he's also lost a lot of power and leverage. Now he was on Navarro's side. And since the Treasury Secretary, he's the one that is more of a traditional Republican. Like we came here for the robbery. [00:06:31] Let's not ruffle, you know, the the pillows and the, you know, upholstery here. Right. It's just it's nice and easy. We've got the $5 trillion tax cut robbery incoming. Let's all focus on that. And after we rob the American people, then we can go back to our fights. [00:06:47] So my point is, I'm not a fan of Bessent either. I'm not a fan of any of those guys, but they do have genuine disagreements and one positive for Trump. I mean, the negatives are obvious, right? I mean, what kind of knucklehead thought that those global tariffs were going to work? Okay. But the upside is when he's getting hurt bad in the polling and the markets [00:07:08] or whatever he does turn around. Like like thank God. Because if he didn't turn around, his ideas are so catastrophically bad that it would I mean, I don't know that we can recover, but yes, once he hits calamity, he goes, all right, okay, I got it. [00:07:24] You you you you you're out of the room. The other guys. You're in the room now. Now again, I would hope for a strategy that was a lot more thoughtful than that. But at least he has the ability to turn around when he's made a massive mistake. - So we'll take it, I guess. - Was so how? [00:07:40] Folks, I want folks to think about this Navarro and Trump situation, a very close friend of mine has like a a celebrity client who, like, has a reputation for having a bit of a, like a volatile personality. And the guy went out there and did something crazy. [00:07:57] And I said to my friend, I was like, why didn't you step in front of this? And he said to me, wise, you know what I've learned about working with these famous, powerful people? They when they have something in their head that they want to do, they're going to shop that idea to the people around them until they [00:08:13] find one person that agrees with them, and that's what they go with. So I'm sure Trump took this tariff thing that he's literally been talking about since the 80s, back when he was complaining about Japan. You can look this up. It. It was Japan back then. Who? We were worried about their economy someday surpassing us [00:08:31] and their cars were taking over our economy and blah, blah blah. And Trump was talking about tariffs back then. He's had this seed of we need to do tariffs for 35 years now. Right. And so Navarro is the only person that literally takes him up on it. [00:08:46] It's like, yeah boss, let's do it. In fact let's do it in the most extreme, ridiculous, stupid way possible. And then he does it and it inevitably fails. And Trump's like this idiot Navarro. I don't know why I let him talk me into this. And now he's been sidelined. But make no mistake, it was Trump's idea. [00:09:05] And Navarro was kind of the only sycophant who was dumb enough to put his name behind this thing. And so now he's been sidelined. But he'll never be permanently discarded because Trump deeply, deeply, sincerely, almost religiously believes in this tariff regime. [00:09:22] And so, you know, that's what we're going to get. But I think the only thing that we can take, you know, be heartened by and, you know, Nate Silver in his newsletter either today or yesterday was like, well, we shouldn't have the market be the like sort of fourth branch of government. [00:09:37] Like, ideally we'd have a freaking leader that had vision and had a plan. I think this is the first time in a long time, though, that Trump ran into something that was tangible. It's not like some norm that we've established this intangible that's out in the ether like, no, you can't say this like, no, [00:09:56] you can't align yourself with this person. Like, no, no, dude. Like the way the global economy works, these businesses have to plan months, if not years ahead for how they want to spend, how they want to hire, what they want to invest in, what they want to do R&D in. [00:10:12] And if America, the biggest consumer economy in the world, is a basket case, the markets are going to be cooked. There's nothing Trump can do about that. I think at this point everybody's wondering the same thing I am. Who is that celebrity? Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets his wings. [00:10:30] Totally not true. But it does keep you updated on our live shows.