Does Trump’s Economic Vision Match What Americans See?

I'm Brian Reid, host of Question Everything. We've got a story about a journalist covering an anti-ice protest who ends up behind bars for more than 100 days for doing journalism. And here's a twist. He was a Trump supporter. I think he's a very intelligent man. I also think that he's very charismatic. It's a story of real betrayal. Question Everything, From Placement Theory and KCRW. Hey everybody, it's David Green, and I want to start left, right, and center this week with a guy who just loves hyperbole. Tonight, after just one year, I can say with dignity and pride that we have achieved a transformation like no one has ever seen before, and a turnaround for the ages. It is indeed a turnaround for the ages. That is President Trump giving the first State of the Union address of his second term, what should have been his third term, he told Americans. Just let that sink in for a moment. So here is what our show today is not going to be, a rehash of the longest State of the Union speech in modern American history. But we are using the messaging and the arguments of this past week as a moment to reflect on where we are as a nation, what promises the president has made, what promises he has kept, and how his framing of this moment stacks up against reality. President Trump spoke of a country that is stronger and more united than it was when he retook office. He spoke of a presidency that is helping working families by driving down prices and keeping people safe from dangerous criminals. and also as a nation that is promoting strength abroad. But let's look between the applause, the rhetoric, and some pretty serious shouting from Democrats to understand the truth. Mo Alethi and Sarah Isger are both here, and I cannot think of two people who love State of the Union speeches more than the two of you. Am I right? Was that sarcastic? Yeah. Good. Okay. Could not dislike them more. Mo didn't even say a word. He just made a noise. It was a grumble. I mean, just remember in the gazillion things that Woodrow Wilson did that are truly terrible, we can't argue that this is, you know, in the top group, but it's on there. I mean, are we OK using it as a moment to sort of frame and understand this moment in a presidency? Can we at least do that? That's funny, Mo. I don't know about you, but for me, the State of the Union was all about the midterm elections. David, we can try to use this to understand this moment. What's clear is I don't think the president used the State of the Union to show that he understood the moment that we're in right now. And that's maybe the most telling part of it all. Why, Sarah, do you think it has to do with the midterms? And Mo, I wonder if you agree with Sarah that this is all about the midterms. Think of a sports game where one team is way up or has the momentum. In this case, I'm referring to the Democrats heading into the midterms. They like where they're at going into these midterm elections. the team that is behind is the one that needs to change the momentum. And so you're going into the State of the Union thinking, how is Donald Trump, how is he going to use the State of the Union address, all 17 hours of it, to try to shift that momentum, shift the message that Americans are hearing, whether it's on affordability or immigration or anything in between. Donald Trump did not change the message for Republicans. There was no sort of singular message that came out of this of like, here's what we're doing on affordability. Here's how we're shifting the economy. This just didn't change anything for Republicans. It didn't change anything for Democrats, but you really saw Hakeem Jeffries unable to corral the crazier wing of his party. He had, of course, told them, do not shout if you can't keep a handle on your horses don't come but nevertheless those that came he said don't hold signs up there's representative green holding the sign don't shout you have rashida talib and i don't know that this is actually what she was shouting but it sure looked like it on the video you know the republicans are shouting usa usa for the i believe it was when the gold medal men's hockey team came out. Yeah. And she appeared to be shouting KKK and looking around at her fellow Democrats, like, why aren't you guys chanting with me? And even Elon Omar was like, Ixnay on the KKKK. Mo, does that worry you? I mean, Sarah's painting a picture of your party being in a pretty good position. And now with all of these headlines of the shouting and Democrats doing exactly what, you know, at least a few of them doing exactly what Hakeem Jeffries was worried about, creating headlines that maybe are feeding an image that's not going to help your party this fall? I'm not that worried about it. I mean, if you can't control yourself, don't go. If you're going to go, Democrats, sit, pay attention, listen. Don't be buffoonish because that's the president's job. Do your thing after the speech. But do I think it detracted from the biggest problem? No, look, so Sarah's point that the party that's behind, which right now is the Republicans, they needed to turn a corner and they didn't. Full stop. And that's mainly because this president seemed disconnected from the reality that people are feeling. He did a huge victory lap on the economy. If anyone listening thought Joe Biden seemed out of touch when he talked about the economy, Donald Trump basically said to you, hold my beer. He went through all of these metrics at the macro level that showed that we have the strongest economy in history. People are struggling. Mo, I want to be careful with the way we frame because he didn't just say hold my beer. I want to listen to a little of what he said, because some of the message was, be patient. Things are going to keep moving in the right direction. Here's a bit of what the president said about inflation and the price of everyday goods. The price of eggs is down 60 percent, Madam Secretary. Thank you. The cost of chicken, butter, fruit, hotels, automobiles, rent is lower today than when I took office by a lot. and even beef, which was very high, is starting to come down significantly. Just hold on a little while. We're getting it down. And soon you will see numbers that few people would think were possible to achieve just a short time ago. Nobody feels what he just said. And that is the key. I mean, he is saying be patient as this year plays out. But as you say, Mo, no one is feeling it at this moment. I mean, you know, a poll this week from ABC, The Washington Post, Ipsos said, you know, should nearly half of Americans think the economy has gotten worse? That compares to almost 30 percent who say it's getting better. And Sarah, I guess that that's my question for you. You're saying that Trump missed the moment like he is saying, be patient. Things will keep moving in the right direction. We know that when people do start feeling an economy improving, that can move polls and help a president. But what what could he have done differently here? I mean, remember, Joe Biden had the exact same problem. It is very hard when the economy is not viewed as going well for most Americans to tell them to vote for your side when you're in charge. That's just going to be a political reality. Nevertheless, I think there are better and worse ways of doing it. I would say the Joe Biden method, the like, actually everything is fine, is probably the worst way of doing it. The Donald Trump, hey, give us a second. I'll put just above Joe Biden's everything is fine. Like if gaslighting is the worst, saying, hold on, not that much better in terms of its political effectiveness, whether it's true or not. What seems very obvious to me is what you want to say is the same thing you would do in a courtroom. What you say is, here's our plan. Here's how it's going to work. Here's when it's going to work. And if you don't like that, let me tell you that their plan is much worse. And it felt like, per usual, right, Donald Trump is not particularly great at making sort of laser-focused arguments, either in favor of his own side or pointing out the flaws on the other side. Instead, you kind of get Democrats are crazy, look how crazy these people are. That will work for some amount of voters. But on the economic issue, saying they're crazy isn't enough. You've got to make the case that the economy will be worse if Democrats are in charge of Congress. and he did not at any point really make that case. Yeah, I think it's even more than that. This is what I think the president could have said. We've taken some steps. It's starting to move the country in a certain direction, but not everyone is feeling it and we know it. We know that you are still struggling. So here's five things, six things that we are going to do in the next year and Congress, you need to do this that will tangibly make your lives easier. He didn't really do that. He tossed out a couple of ideas, one of which these retirement savings plan, which, by the way, was a Biden era provision that he has repackaged as his own. This, by the way, is the problem when you have two left wing parties. They're both from a policy standpoint, economically, largely repackaging each other's stuff. Just rename them. Just rename them with different names and, you know, no one will notice. That's right. And by the way, Republicans like blocked it. He tossed out forcing AI companies. He's asked them to build their own electricity plants in order to bring down the cost of electricity for everyday Americans. But there was no plan to do so. It was sort of a pretty please, would you guys do this? After I deregulated at the federal level and told states they're not allowed to regulate you, do me a solid and build these plans. Right. Like there's no real plan there. So rather than saying, hey, look, I get that you're struggling. I get it. And so here's what I'm going to do to make this this economic recovery real for you. He's basically saying we're not really struggling. We're hitting it on all cylinders. Transformational moment. I do want to listen, Mo, to Virginia's governor, Abigail Spanberger. She gave the Democratic response to the State of the Union. And I think her challenge was exactly what you're saying. What could she say that would convince people that Democrats have a different kind of plan to help people who are struggling in this economy? So here she is. Americans deserve to know that their leaders are focused on addressing the problems that keep them up at night. Problems that dictate where you live, whether you can afford to start a business or whether you have to skip a prescription in order to buy groceries. So I'll ask again, is the president working to make life more affordable for you and your family? We all know the answer is no. I mean, Mo, let's just cut right to it. If we are talking about policies, as Sarah just said, that aren't all that different, I mean, is the essential message from Democrats this year in this midterm season going to be you can trust us more than you can trust this president? Or do you see some real policy distinctions that Democrats will be able to highlight? Look, I've long said that Democrats should do what I just suggested the president should have done in his State of the Union. Democrats need their own version of like a contract with America, if you remember the 1994 midterms, where they stand up and say, here's the five things if you give us control of the Congress, the five things that we're going to try to do to make your lives more affordable. That's the contrast. Elections are, at the end of the day, a contrast. And you can make that contrast in one of two ways. Sarah identified one way, and it's the one that I think more people are using these days. The contrast of which of us are you going to feel worse about? You may not like us, but the other side is worse. That's one contrast a political campaign can make. I prefer the other one. They're not fighting for you. Here's how we will. Democrats are in such a good position right now to seize on that opportunity. I just hope they take it. Sarah, is that the framing that you see? That the framing that I think Mo and I think happens for midterm elections At the end of the day though when neither side actually chooses that framing in any large scale way the framing comes down to negative polarization Voters you know no longer really feel like they belong to a political party This is the first time in American history where more people identify as independents. And so it's all about hating the other team, voting against the other team. And as I said, when you have two left-wing parties, and we can get into a whole political theory of what I mean by that, but we are certainly seeing for the first time two political parties that believe in a strong government fixing problems. then all of the fights are going to come down to vibes, culture war, or how the state is going to fix those problems. You know, that's going to make for a pretty brutal midterm election, as we are already seeing. Well, we want to keep engaging with all of you across the aisle, across your kitchen tables, all of you listening. If you have something to say about this week's topics or anything else, join the left, right and center community conversation on Substack, you can sign up. We'll send you a weekly inbox reminder to hone up on our show, get to debating. You can join at kcrwlrc.substack.com. That's kcrwlrc.substack.com. Speaking of problem solving, the president still seems committed to tariffs being part of the solution. And Mo and Sarah and I are going to come back and talk about that when we come back with more Left, Right, and Center. Skincare is one of those things where if I'm thinking about it, it means there is a problem. But it doesn't have to be that way. A lot of skincare looks good on paper, but doesn't really deliver results. Or even worse, you're sold on the idea that you need 10 different products to have an effective routine. That's why OneSkin really stands out. 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Born from over a decade of longevity research, OneSkin's OS1 peptide is proven to target the visible signs of aging, helping you unlock your healthiest skin now and as you age. For a limited time, try OneSkin with 15% off using code LRC at oneskin.co slash LRC. That's 15% off, oneskin.co with code LRC. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show. Tell them we sent you. All right, we're back again with more Left, Right, and Center. I'm David Green. Sarah Isger is here on the right. Moa Lathie is here on the left. And I want to stay on the topic of the economy and tariffs and maybe dive in a little bit into the legal specifics of this recent Supreme Court ruling on tariffs. So for the past year, the justices of the Supreme Court have generally ruled in favor of the administration's policies when they have been challenged. So this ruling did feel like a rare show of independence by the court. President Trump, of course, not happy about this. Here he is reacting to the court's decision. The Supreme Court's ruling on tariffs is deeply disappointing. And I'm ashamed of certain members of the court, absolutely ashamed for not having the courage to do what's right for our country. I don't know, Sarah, you think a lot about the Supreme Court. This felt to me like a moment of courage in many ways. But I do want to talk about some of the rationale behind this ruling because we've heard so many headlines about it, but I don't know if we've gone deep enough all the time. So the administration's move this week to push through tariffs using other laws on the book. Sarah, can you kind of give us a primer on what exactly the court said the president can't do and where there might be room for him to still use tariffs if he decides to? Sure. And just to level set for a second, you know, we sort of memory hole the Supreme Court decisions that have gone against Trump, big ones so far. So the Alien Enemies Act case where it said Trump could not deport illegal aliens without due process was a big loss for the administration. And maybe the biggest one before the tariffs case was the National Guard case, in which the Supreme Court said that he could not federalize the National Guard and send them to Chicago. That came out, you know, just before Christmas, and everyone kind of shrugged it off. These were huge losses in terms of presidential power for Trump, in terms of his own priorities for Trump. So, yes, he has won some interim cases at the court, as in what the status quo will be while those cases are pending. But on his actual initiatives, he is losing more than he lost the first term. And the first term, he lost more than any president in American history. He was the first president ever to fall below 50% at the Supreme Court. So with that background, let's go into tariffs. Think of there being three different tariff authorities. One, IEPA. This is the one that the Supreme Court was ruling on. This is an emergency powers act. Actually, you know, funny enough, it's going to look a lot like that National Guard case, which was also an emergency powers question. You know, when Congress gives the president powers, when he thinks there's an emergency, how expansive should we read those powers? And what the Supreme Court said was, you know, gosh, they definitely wanted to give the president some powers in foreign policy during an emergency, but they never use the word tariffs. And there's just no history to show us that they meant to give him the tariff power, something that is, you know, explicitly in the Constitution as a power of Congress. And so we're not going to read in the tariff power. This was directly in line with how they read statutes that President Biden tried to dig up that were decades old to say that he had the power to forgive student loans, impose a vaccine mandate, cap carbon emissions. Same idea, right? There's some vague congressional statute. The HEROES Act, the one for the student loan debt forgiveness, was also an emergency powers act. and the Supreme Court gnaw-dogged that one as well. Okay, so IEPA is the one where the Supreme Court just said, no, there is no power to impose tariffs under IEPA. So now you have the president looking for other options. That's right. So he still has to find some congressional statute that gives him this power. Now, there are two other types of statutes where Congress explicitly used the word tariffs, gave the president some power to impose tariffs, which, by the way, kind of proves the point. They know how to give the president tariff powers. The fact that that's not in IEPA kind of goes to the point. But there's what I'll call the time-limited tariff powers. That's what President Trump claims to be using now. This would be a 150-day power, and then you have to go to Congress to get them to ratify your tariffs. And then there's the thing that you're tariffing power. So, you know, you can impose tariffs specifically on steel or something like that. The problem with both of these is that first of all, on the what you can tariff question, it's pretty limited what Congress has handed over. On the time-limited tariff question, the administration has already said that they can't use that because it is triggered by a balance of payments imbalance, which does not exist right now. So they have told the courts when they were arguing over IEPA, someone asked, like, why can't you use this power? And they were like, oh yeah, we can't use that because it's not triggered. Oh, so they put themselves in a little bit of a bind. They've already said this, that we can't use that option. So now that they're faced with needing other options, they've already put that one off the table themselves. Yeah. I have not seen one economic or legal expert say why they're legally allowed to use this power. Nobody seems to be defending this at this point. So we've got another use of tariffs that appears to be not sanctioned by Congress, which of course, presidents do not have any power unless Congress has given it to them, aside from, you know, pardons and whatnot. So Mo, are you taking any reassurance? I mean, as Sarah said, I think there is this narrative out there that this court has been very friendly to President Trump. She's challenging that narrative and saying that this court has stood up to him at many big moments, including this one. I mean, in the larger narrative of Donald Trump as President of the United States, and obviously there's been tremendous amount of fear and outrage in terms of him being able to impose his will on our country. Is this a moment where you're saying, okay, the judicial branch of government will stand up to him in some critical times? I actually think of Sarah often when I think about the Supreme Court. Me too. Sarah, I hope you're happy about that. I think she gave us some good guidance a couple of months ago, which is stop trying to pigeonhole them. They're going to do what they're going to do. And you can't ideologically pigeonhole them. I think they've shown that times they do stand up to them and other times I wish they wouldn't and they didn't. So I'm very glad they did on tariffs. I'm not a lawyer, but it seemed pretty illegal to me. And it has caused so much economic pain for people. And so as we were talking about in the last segment, like this could and should be a moment where we've got a collective sigh of relief. And then the president tried to take that sigh of relief away from us all almost immediately by saying he's not giving up and he doesn't need Congress and he's going to go find other avenues to do it. So the level of uncertainty that people are going to be feeling over the next few months isn't going to abate. If you are nervous that prices are high and you believe that tariffs were one of the reason, stay nervous because he's going to keep trying. From a political perspective, he could not be more boneheaded on this. Even if he does try to use that 150-day clock, and I think Sarah raised some good issues about why he legally can't, that doesn't mean he's not going to try. And so we're going to be back in court and we're going to be continuing to fight this. And let's say he's successful. That 150-day clock, which he has already said, at which point he will go back to Congress, he is forcing every Republican member of Congress to have to take a vote on another tariff right before the midterm elections. Which he sort of signaled in the State of the Union that he wasn't going to do that. I mean, I got that sense from him that that was not the plan. But, Sarah, I want to pick up on what Mo was talking about with the makeup of the court and how we should be careful about defining which justices land where. I mean, you had Neil Gorsuch, you know, a Trump appointee. He wrote this scathing, concurring opinion, voting with the majority against Trump's tariff power. Here he wrote an impassioned defense of the legislative process, how important it is to protect liberty. He took his colleagues to task, including some who agreed with him on the tariff question, basically calling them hypocrites. Like what – how should we think about Gorsuch and what he is arguing for in this moment? And what does that say about the court? You know, in my legal podcast advisory opinions, we've referred to this as the festivus concurrence. I got a lot of problems with you people, and you're about to hear about them. So even when people, when other justices sided with him, he was like, yeah, you agreed with me, but you did it for the wrong reasons. You should have totally agreed with me instead of only partially agreeing with me. He took to task Barrett and Kagan, Justice Kavanaugh, who was in dissent, Justice Thomas, who he often aligns with more than several of the other justices. So it was a fun, if totally unnecessary, concurrence. As a friend texted me, it was sort of Gorsuch's libertarian coming out party where you alienate even your own allies on the way to what you see as the perfect solution. Very libertarian. Gorsuch by the way to Mo's point about each of these guys kind of being their own idiosyncratic justices Gorsuch has ruled against the government more than any other justice in a decision that came out earlier this week he sided with the three liberal justices in a case against the U Postal Service He similarly decided against the IRS I mean he is kind of this extreme libertarian justice when it comes to criminal justice, tribal matters. So when, for instance, there's a Democrat in the White House and you have a justice like Gorsuch who's against expansive executive power, he's going to look very conservative, right? Because he's going to be ruling against that Democratic president. When you have a Republican in the White House and he's consistent, meaning he's ruling against expansive executive power, he's going to look more liberal. And so if all you're doing is viewing the court through this ideological partisan lens, every four years, it's going to look like Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh have a total switch, right? They become liberal or they become conservative when in fact, it's far more about executive power. and these two guys who are twins, basically. I mean, they both grow up in DC with powerful mothers before there's even a women's bathroom in the Senate. They go to the same high school. They clerk for the same justice on the Supreme Court. They're appointed by the same president to the Supreme Court within 18 months of each other. They are on the same side 50% of the time, that's it. So really fascinating to just study the two of them. And David, I have one other point to make about the Supreme Court as a whole and what its role is. when we're thinking about whether they're ruling for or against Donald Trump. In 1941, Robert Jackson, for any of you guys who have seen the Nuremberg movie, that Robert Jackson, he's attorney general. He's a prosecutor at Nuremberg. He's a Supreme Court justice. Here's what he wrote, and I love this. In spite of its apparently vulnerable position, this court has repeatedly overruled and thwarted both the Congress and the executive. It has been an angry collision with the most dynamic and popular presidents in our history. Jefferson retaliated with impeachment. Jackson denied its authority. Lincoln disobeyed a writ of the chief justice. Theodore Roosevelt, after his presidency, proposed recall of judicial decisions. Wilson tried to liberalize its membership. And Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed to reorganize. It is surprising that it should not only survive that, but with no might, except the moral force of its judgment, should actually attain supremacy as a source of constitutional dogma. And I guess my takeaway from that history, when the court rules with a popular president, it doesn't serve much purpose, right? The political process worked. When a court rules against a president and that president attacks the court, but nevertheless follows its decisions as Trump is doing here, right? He suggested that some of these justices are under foreign influence, that their families should be ashamed of them. But he took down his IEPA tariffs. That is what gives you a more powerful Supreme Court. So in many ways, as much as we talk about Trump undermining the rule of law, hurting the Supreme Court, over the history of the Supreme Court, it is exactly those types of presidents that have built it into this independent branch that does both, right? It's going to side with the political process sometimes, and it's going to be countermajoritarian other times. And that's what makes it work. All right. You're listening to Left, Right, and Center from KCRW. We've been talking about the Supreme Court and Sarah, a lot of really kind of helpful thoughts about how we should view the court and take sort of a broad view over time. I want to turn to a different topic now. And I want to focus a lot of the rest of the show on the subject of outrage and really understand in this political climate, like how we should view outrage when it's meaningful, when it's outrage for the sake of outrage. California's Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, has been on a book tour. I mean, I don't have to tell many of you this. He's widely speculated to be running for president in 2028, but he was on this stop in Atlanta and he said It's something in conversation with Atlanta's mayor, Andre Dickens, who is black, and it really raised some eyebrows. Take a listen. I'm like you. I'm no better than you. You know, I'm a 960 SAT guy. And, you know, and I'm not trying to offend anyone, you know, trying to act all there if you got 940. But literally a 960 SAT guy. Mo, what do you feel when you listen to that? Back up for a second to what you were saying a moment ago. I think when Sarah and I were coming up in through political campaigns, we were always taught the most valuable asset any campaign has is the candidate's time. I don't think that's true anymore. I think the most valuable asset any campaign has is outrage, right? That is now one of the most powerful currencies in the world of politics, and this is such a good example of that. So look, I'm personally not a Gavin Newsom fan. I don't dislike him. He's not my cup of tea necessarily in terms of first choice for 2028. I lay that on the table. This is a bit manufactured. This is something that Gavin Newsom – it's being characterized as him speaking to a black audience. It was a mixed race audience. And it is a joke he has used before in front of other audiences, right? I can't count the number of times I've been with candidates or seen candidates who've gotten in trouble because they use that joke over and over and over. And then they do it in front of one particular crowd and suddenly it hits wrong. It's like they're on autopilot because they say this thing all the time and they're not even thinking about how this might land with. Right. And it always gets them laughs. And in this day and age, this digital era and this era of outrageous currency, that's dangerous. So I do think he's getting a little bit of a raw deal with this. Having said that, this is a period of time for potential candidates to show that they are ready to step out onto the national stage. And that's the question this raises, I think, for me. Is Gavin Newsom really ready to step out onto that stage? It was a mixed race crowd, but he's in Atlanta. He's sitting up on stage with the black mayor of Atlanta. He's just endorsed a black candidate for governor of Georgia. Context matters in situations like this, and the context was just wrong. Gavin Newsom already comes across – well, one of the biggest knocks on him is that in this era where the perception of authenticity is incredibly important, He already faces and struggles with an authenticity deficit in the eyes of a lot of people. So here's a guy who's super wealthy and a billionaire and all sorts of different connections saying, I'm just like you. I think the joke has taken him about as far as it can, right? Like people are going to look at him and say, wait a minute, right? Like, I get what he was trying to do. I just think it was a really bad execution. And he's going to have to get better before he steps out onto the national stage. All right, we'll pick up this conversation about outrage and talk a little bit more about Governor Newsom and also get to the U.S. men's hockey team when we come back with more Left, Right and Center. All right, we're back with more Left, Right and Center. I'm David Green with Sarah Isker and Mo Alethe. Mo was just talking about California Governor Gavin Newsom's comment in Atlanta when he was sitting with the mayor of Atlanta, who is black. Newsom said, quote, I'm like you. I'm not better than you. I'm a 960 SAT guy, which, you know, a lot of people, a lot of conservatives heard that and called Newsom racist, suggesting that he was saying that black people are less intelligent. On the other side of the political spectrum, you did also have some like Cornel West who came out and really criticized Gavin Newsom. This is Cornel West in a radio interview with Tavis Smiley. When he thinks of black people, he thinks of lower SAT. We see that in the Trump administration too. That's what DEI and the vicious attack on DEI was. It's the lowest, low SAT. That's one of the core pillars of white supremacy. We are less beautiful, we're less moral, and we're less intelligent. Don't play with us like that. So, Sarah, I wonder how this all landed with you because it – there's a lot here. You know, it's maybe Newsom was just using a joke that he has used before. As Mo said, there are questions about whether this shows that he's not ready for prime time. There's also the substance here, and I think Cornel West brings that up, and there are a lot of important questions that we need to be asking about someone on the political stage who, you know, says something like that that lands in a terrible way. whatever his intentions are. And also Gavin Newsom has not backed away. I mean, he's leaned in and basically said, I'm under attack from the right. So how should we interpret this moment in your mind? So it reminds me of several previous political moments that we've seen. It reminds me of Hillary Clinton adopting a Southern accent when she was speaking to certain audiences, which was viewed as inauthentic, sort of its own version of code switching. It reminds me of that line about H.W. Bush, a man who was born on third base and thinks that he hit a triple. But you know what? It doesn't remind me of it all. It's not a bit like how Donald Trump became successful. Donald Trump never tried to do the I'm just like you thing. He was very successful at being like, I'm not at all like you. Look how rich I am. Look how incredibly brilliant I am. I'm the smartest, fastest, most good looking man who's ever existed on planet earth. And that resonated with people in a way that I think fake authenticity doesn't. The most important piece of all of this, I get the criticisms, I get the defense. I think Mo covered that flawlessly. But the thing that Mo said that is most important is these are the times where you're testing, you're kicking candidates as tires to see how they do in different audiences, what their message actually is and how they do making that message stick. Gavin Newsom's having a lot of problems. Now, to his credit, he's out there a lot, more than any of the other candidates, so we're getting to kick that tire more than other tires. And I think it shows you why simply picking Kamala Harris as the candidate for 2024 was such a dangerous thing to do and why every political operative said it was a terrible idea because this pre-primary time is actually really important to decide who your standard bearer is going to be. It's important for them too. They get better. They hone their skills with the lights not quite as bright. And maybe Gavin Newsom will learn something from this. Maybe he won't. Look, this is the time in a pre-campaign to make mistakes, right? Because you get better that way. But let's talk about the flip side of this. This is a case where the outrage industrial complex kicked into high gear, I think to some extent unfairly. But this is the political reality that we live in, right? And so how candidates deal with the outrage industrial complex is going to be as critically important as the thing that got them there in the first place. There's lots of different ways to do it. Donald Trump has shown one path, which is take it head on and create a counter outrage. That's what Newsom's trying to do here. Whether or not he's successful at it, we'll see. And we are living in an era where at least in primaries, both Democratic and Republican primaries, that sense of counter outrage is absolutely critical. The showing that you will not back down, that you will fight fire with fire has been rewarded by the party bases in each party. So maybe Newsom's response is right on here. We will find out. But it is another sign of the path that we are on, and there's no sign that we're going to kind of go back to any sort of more genteel type. But I think the thing is it I mean we seem to be applying this sort of outrage I don want to say applying it This outrage whole dynamic is just a reality we living with and it outside politics And I'm interested in thinking about like sure this is a good kicking the tires on a candidate kind of moment. But then I think about the U.S. men's hockey team and the outrage they have been facing. They are not political candidates who are kicking the tires on. They are athletes who had just like been exhausted and won this gold medal in Milan. They're in the locker room. They get a call from President Trump who invites them to the White House and to the State of the Union. But one specific moment has caused a lot of anger. And it's when the president joked about feeling forced to invite the gold medal U.S. women's hockey team as well, as if he was being pressured to do that. And he would be impeached if he didn't. Let's listen to a little bit. I mean, that laughing is so uncomfortable and has been infuriating to so many people. And, you know, that their reaction, the players reaction, laughing at the president, saying that that has been labeled sexist, dismissive of the women's victory, even though these are two teams that supported each other so passionately through the course of the Olympics. I just want to listen to a little bit. This is an ESPN interview with the captain of the women's team, Hillary Knight. I thought it was sort of a distasteful joke. And unfortunately, that is overshadowing a lot of the success and, you know, the success of just women at the Olympics. I just hope this doesn't overshadow the success of both these teams. But this is my question. It's like I understand why people listen to that laughter and are furious. I also wonder, like, should we have expected one or several or all of these players in that very moment after playing that game with the president on the phone to say, Mr. President, that is a horrible joke. How dare you? But there's been outrage about this. And I wonder how you both think we should be interpreting this outrage. Yeah, no, but I wish we wouldn't do this to people in general. where we pick people who have private lives that are not public figures, that have not run for office, and then we pick them apart and we ruin their lives. This is actually a very minor example of this. We seem incapable of having these conversations, I guess, in part because of the change in media environment. Everyone's voice is equal on Twitter or social media compared to having conversations where people actually have to look at each other as human beings like we do. We literally look at each other during this podcast, right? We are not even disembodied voices. And I think it makes a huge difference. I will also say, I think the media feeds into this and outrage gets clicks. There's just no question about it. And the difference in treatment between the skier who took money from the CCP and skied for China, despite, you know, living in San Francisco and being raised there as a very wealthy young woman, the headlines about her versus the headlines about the U.S. men's hockey team, you can't help but see a partisan narrative emerge of how the two were treated. One as, you know, oh, how clever of her to get all this money from a foreign adversary. And the other is how dare they even accept a call from the president and not stand up to him and speak truth to power. And I hate the whole thing. I hate the whole thing, David. No, I hate the whole thing, too. And, Mo, I guess I wonder, like, would you have wanted to – would you have wanted and would you have expected the men in that room to have reacted differently to that pretty, in my mind, disgusting joke by the president? I mean, would I have wanted? Sure. I winced when I heard it, right? It was a distasteful joke, and I wish they hadn't laughed. But look, I'm not going to crucify a bunch of like 20-something-year-old kids who had just – were in the midst of a high for winning the gold medal. They're in a locker room. They're spraying champagne. They get a call that's on speakerphone. They caught up in the moment, laughed at a terrible joke. I wish they hadn't, but I'm not going to crucify these kids. The adults in the room should have been better. The president should have been better. The FBI director, who apparently we all just financed his trip to go be in that locker room and spray champagne with them, should know better and be better. And so that's where I'm going to target my outrage is the guy who made the joke, the guy who misused taxpayer funds to go be a part – who wanted to take the champagne – get sprayed with champagne along with them. That's where my outrage is going to be because that's where it's deserved. When I was in my 20s, I laughed at a bunch of things that in retrospect I winced at. I learned from those experiences. I hope they do too. The president apparently has done all the learning he's going to do. This is who he is. And that pisses me off. David, we talked about Gavin Newsom and there was one historical reference I didn't bring up, which is Romney's binders full of women. Romney was talking about how important it was to him to have more women in senior positions when he was governor and that he would keep resumes of just female candidates for those offices in sort of a Rooney rule style hiring method. And he said he had binders full of women for these offices as he was explaining how you can do this. And that provoked, I mean, outrage is an understatement. And here was someone actually trying to say, he was trying to hire women, uplift women, put them in these senior positions. So also some of this, David, is people enjoy feeling outrage. It's part of tribalism, right? I'm outraged at them. We are morally superior, they are different. And I think it's important in any of these, how much is of this is actual disagreement versus how much of it is that dopamine rush you get when it's us versus them and you can put them on the other side of your outrage. Yeah. And I think sometimes when people are enjoying outrage, we're forgetting about maybe the important thing, which is to, to use this moment as a, as a learning moment. Maybe Mitt Romney learned something, you know, maybe as Mo, you said, you know, I feel like we've all laughed at jokes that like we leave the room and we say to someone like I was in the room and someone made this joke and I think I laughed and I wish I hadn't. And I think that I've gotten better at listening for things that might be offensive and not just laugh and we just get we get better. And I think that's the lesson that we can all take from this. Yep. Maybe you all have thoughts out there about outrage, anything we've talked about, the president's tariff policies, what Democrats are up to when it comes to shaping their economic policy, anything on your mind. If you have a question or a comment, we'd love to hear from you. Record a voice memo. Keep it to 30 seconds or so. Send it to us at LRC at KCRW.org. That's LRC at KCRW.org. Just give us your first name, where you're calling from, and maybe we'll play your question on the show. We're going to leave it there and finish up with our rants and raves. I'll go to Mo first. Mo, you want to kick us off? Yeah. And I'm going to give a hat tip on this one to our fantastic producer, Arnie, who reminded me of this story minutes before we started our on-air conversation. You know those robo-vacs that you see around, like those little disc-like vacuums that so many people have? I don't have one and I don't want one for the record, but yes, I know what you're talking about. I don't have one. I always see them on TV though, and they both creep me out. I think they're fascinating and they creep me out. And that's what gets to this story. An engineer in Spain has one of these things and decided he wanted to hack it so that he could more easily control it with his game controller. I don't know, PlayStation, Xbox, whatever. He wanted to use his game controller to hack this so he could control it. And accidentally, in this process, ended up taking control of 7,000 other RoboVax. Suddenly, he had at his disposal an entire army of RoboVax because of this one hack he did. People apparently were in their homes and had realized they had lost control of their RoboVax. So terrifying. What makes this really creepy, it was a Chinese-made item. There are little cameras in these things so that they know where they're going. And he suddenly had access to the video feeds of 7,000 different homes where these RoboVacs were placed. If he's got them, the CCP has them. um so once again it sounds like another it should be an episode of of black mirror next season um technology run amok uh you know cover the lens up on your robo vax people when you're not using them when black mirror episodes start going in the other direction we start finding them in real life that will become good episodes on the show we are in deep you know what um sarah so you know the hey girl meme hey girl that was like it was very big during paul ryan's time as speaker of the house well i've been seeing some hey girl memes about the chief justice and i've just really been enjoying them and i just want to thank about john roberts sourcing yeah chief justice john roberts if you remember this iepa decision was made using something called the major questions doctrine it's this idea that if there is a major um economic question and the president is claiming to have broad authority, we would expect Congress to have spoken clearly in giving him that authority, right? They don't use the word tariffs. So we'll assume that they didn't give him this tariff power. And I just have to read you some of these. Hey, girl, our love is necessary, but not always proper. Get it? Necessary and proper clause. Hey, girl, you can always swing my vote. And of course, on tariffs. Hey, girl, I've got the answers to all your major questions. That is fantastic. I have not followed that at all. And now I want to. That's amazing. Thank you for that, Sarah. That is a gift. You're welcome. I will finish this off. I want to rave about some small businesses here in Brooklyn. I'm in Brooklyn. I've been here for On Air Fest, which has been – it's a big podcast festival, which has been great. But was here through the blizzard, and it was a big one here in New York City. The Bedford Flower Market, about four blocks from my hotel, they had staff stay in a hotel nearby to stay open to make sure they could keep serving the community. Some staff at the Arlo Hotel slept in the hotel to make sure that they could be there to help guests. I just want to shout out small business owners who are not doing this to make money during storms and things like this. They're literally doing it to serve their community and the employees who change their plans, stay away from their families to be able to be there for all of us as we're going through a blizzard or hurricane. They deserve real props and it's a real sacrifice. So in moments when there's a big winter storm or a hurricane or something terrible, just keep your businesses and all of their employees in mind when they are there to serve you and treat them maybe even better than you normally would. That's the show. Mo, Sarah, thank you as always, and thank you to the team for putting this show together. Left, Right, and Center is produced by Leo Duran, our executive producer, and also feeding Mo. Fabulous rant and rave topics is Arnie Seipel. The show is recorded and mixed by Nick Lamponi. Big thanks to Patrick Murray and Cloud Union Studio for hosting me here in Brooklyn this week. Todd M. Simon composed our theme music. Left, Right, and Center is a co-production of KCRW and Fearless Media. We are distributed by PRX. I'm David Green. More Left, Right, and Center next week. Hope you'll join us. www.kcrw.com Thank you.