8/25/26: Bessent Threatens Blowing Up Global Finance, Canada Trade War Begins, SCOTUS Mail In Decision

This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast, Hollywood Handbook. Each week, we talk to someone in show business and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. Everyone has a good time and no one gets mad at their publicist for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, Adam Scott, Danny McBride, Ben Stiller, and a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I choose option B. I'm Julie Pinheiro and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. 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This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. Good morning and welcome to Breaking Points. We have an amazing show today, don't we? Oh, it's so good. Couldn't be better. Just not giving people what they want. No, but you have a bro show tomorrow, so that's something to look forward to. We do have that. A kind of depressing show, I think, today. Pretty usual, but. Well, Scott Bessant declared his D-Day yesterday afternoon. We're going to walk through what he said he's going, he might do, but he doesn't want to do. It's going to hurt him more than it hurts the rest of the world. Please don't make him blow up the financial system. It's basically a direct quote. Yep. Trump doubling down on his trade war with Canada for some reason. We're going to try to figure out why he's doing that. The auto workers don't want it. The auto executives don't want it. Canada doesn't want it. We don't want it. Nobody wants it. Susan Collins doesn't want it. Susan Collins definitely doesn't want it. Yeah, Troy Jackson might be the only person benefiting from this trade war that Trump is launching with Canada for absolutely no reason. The Supreme Court came in and stayed a ruling that's allowing Trump to go forward with his monkeying with mail-in voting. We'll talk about the details of that ruling. There's a little bit more to it than appears from the headline. Abdul Al-Sayed went on the Jesse Waters program, which was. Again, I think he's done it before. The entire thing was kind of amusing all the way through. We'll talk about the implications of that. He also very delicately chucked Assam Piker under the bus after Mike Rogers, Neera Tanden, and others who seemed to oppose him. Mike Rogers certainly opposes him. The centrist Democrats only kind of. Pretending to support Abdul Al-Sayed. They circulated this deceptively edited clip and then condemned him for what was said in that deceptively edited clip. We'll talk about that. What else we got? We got the. You're going to tell us about the South Carolina race, which is getting very interesting. And actually, you've tracked this solar lobbying issue for a while, but people don't realize what's happened under the surface in some of these races. So we covered it when Andy Ogles lost. We covered a bit. We covered it when Andy Ogles lost. We covered it when Chip Roy lost. But there's this interesting solar lobbying effort to quietly oust people who fought against the Biden solar subsidies with the one big beautiful bill. And they're coming for. It came for Andy Ogles, Chip Roy. Now they're coming for Ralph Norman in the South Carolina runoff. He has a chance, though, to beat Darlene Graham. We'll see. That's today. But we have some interesting details that a lot of people aren't talking about. And finally, Ryan. Some sunshine on this. On what's been unfolding in the dark. Sunshine. Sunshine on the sunshine, right. But we also have a guest. Yes. We're going to talk to Jamie Belsito, who's running in Massachusetts' 6th District. Fascinating dynamic unfolding there where some. She. Actually, I don't want to tease it too much. No spoilers. No spoilers on this one. You're really going to like this race. It involves some of your favorite characters that you've been following throughout this race, particularly APAC and organizations that call themselves women's rights organizations that have been colluding with APAC. We're going to get into all of that. You're going to want to watch that one. Mm-hmm. All right. And finally, the free month-long trial is still up over at BreakingPoints.com. So if you ever wanted to check out the premium subscription, which allows the show to get into your inbox early, totally uncut, supports the journalism that we're doing here at Breaking Points, you can try it for free for the next month. BreakingPoints.com. That also has a free version. I'm sorry, you also have access to a premium version of the newsletter and the AMAs as well. So BreakingPoints.com, once again, if you want to try for a month. Ryan, let's dig into the show. The trade. Well, let's start with Iran because Scott Benson formally rolled out what Economic D-Day is going to look like. We discussed yesterday his op-ed in the Financial Times threatening Economic D-Day. He did a press conference at the Treasury Department yesterday where he gave us a little bit more information on what Economic D-Day would look like for. for countries that are doing any trade with Iran. Let's listen to A1. Beginning today, the actions of Treasury and other agencies will tighten the noose and block every potential source of revenue that funds the IRGC and the evil Iranian regime. We are enforcing a zero-leakage approach. There will be no minimal breathing space for the regime to rebuild its capacity to inflict terror against America and the world. The final refuge of this regime is a mistaken conclusion of nations that still finance the Iranian threat in the hopes of evading it. It is no longer acceptable to operate in the gray spaces of this conflict. Countries cannot claim they are blind to enabling this activity. The top trading partners with Iran are China, UAE, Turkey, Iraq, EU, India, Pakistan, Russian Federation, and Oman, according to CNBC. So as you hear Scott Bessant outline all of this, keep that in mind. Let's now listen to A2. He got a question from a journalist about China in particular. Here's how Bessant responded. One of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal is the ability to impose secondary sanctions on banks and financial institutions that facilitate transactions for Iran. Chinese banks have often been talked about being targeted, but we don't see any of that happening. We don't see any of that happening. We don't see any of those institutions targeted here. Is that something that is coming in this campaign, or is the very delicate trade truce with China something that could prohibit you from going that far and taking that very big step? We want to make clear here today that no one is above the reach of U.S. sanctions, that if they facilitate transactions and are part of the ecosystem, that turns Iranian oil into money, into repression, they will be targeted. We find that the best way to engage with countries is through quiet diplomacy, and we are level-setting with every country to tell them our expectations. We know who they are. They know who they are. So when the hammer of U.S. Treasury actions falls on them, they will have no one to blame but themselves. What did you make of that response, Ryan? Yes, I mean, he is very clearly threatening to sanction China, basically the countries that you just listed. Right. Like, he's threatening to sanction China, all of our allies in the Gulf, India, Pakistan. And then he says, I don't want to blow up, why would I want to blow up the global economy? Yeah. Like, why haven't you done it already? Why would I want to? So he's already admitted that if he executes on his plan, it will blow up the global economy. At another point, he said he was very close to sanctioning an entire major financial institution for moving Iranian money. He said what, to expect it by the end of the week? Maybe. He's Trumpian. It might happen by the end of the week. I'm really close to doing that. doing it. A major financial institution like say, Lehman Brothers. The reason that these institutions are structural is that they have, there are counterparties that have all of their trades that are closing there or moving through there or their collateral is there. And so everybody that, if you seize that up and everybody runs out or it's seized up and people can't get access to whatever their assets are that are in there, then all the counterparties that are all spread around it are also then at risk. And then anybody who's a counterparty to anybody around there, that's why when Lehman went down, it spread a financial crisis through the entire world. So Besson is saying that he's considering doing that. He also says if he does the things he's saying he's going to do, it's going to blow up the global financial system. Therefore, he's not going to do that. Like, right. Because as he said, why would I want to do that? You wouldn't want to do that. Therefore, he has put no time and no specifics on who and what. Yeah. So why, why does anybody believe, and maybe we can put up this next element, why would anybody believe that he's actually going to do anything? So put up a three. This is Mohammad Ghalibaf, the top Iranian negotiator, speaker of the parliament. Americans, know that no one buys their bombast. The United States is not in an economic position to further restrict its relations with other countries. Iran's trading partners, both in the media and through messages sent to us, have made it clear that they don't take these statements into account anywhere. Because if he would follow through on his threat, he'd destroy himself. So what did you make of it? Well, here's what it's really all about. So Doug Collins, we were talking about this yesterday, but Doug Collins then goes on Newsmax. He's cabinet secretary and I think really gives the game away. This is what it's all about. We were speculating and I think it's pretty obvious speculation, but he essentially, without attempting to reveal what's happening, kind of revealed what's happening. Let's roll A4. But the biggest issue is you just saw what we just heard. The Iranians are reacting to this and very, okay, oh, so they aren't listening and we've finally gotten to the real heart of the matter. We've already beat them down with the best military in the world. Now it's time to take their money and go from there. So now it's time to take their money. And Ryan, this is what we were discussing yesterday. And I think the fact that he went on TV and said that, again, just gives the game away. We have exhausted military options. He says he framed it as we have defeated them militarily, but we've exhausted the military options that we are willing to use. Well, they're not playing fair because we beat them, but they just won't admit it. They won't admit it, which is, yeah, it's deeply unfair. Deeply unfair. Game's over. Scoreboard. We won. They're still out there playing. Amazing how that works. You can't do that. Give us your money. Shouldn't someone step in? Yeah. Give us your money. Someone should step in. But that's what it's really all about is that they have military options. The military options that remain involve escalation, escalation trap. And if they were to pursue them. I think he's on tomorrow. Yeah, I think he's on tomorrow. I think you do have rubber paper on tomorrow. Escalation paper will be on tomorrow. Escalation paper. But that is really what this is all about. They're trying desperately to avoid the escalation trap and to squeeze Iran. One other thing that Besson said, let's actually jump here. To a six, because this underscores what you heard from Doug Collins. This is another line that Besson delivered from Treasury yesterday to the ordinary soldiers supporting this regime as more and more of your paychecks stop or supposedly just delayed. Ask whether your commanders are leading your country to triumph or to ruin and recall that the Berlin Wall fell when ordinary soldiers decided not to shoot at their own people. Okay. Lay down your arms. Let's overthrow the government and we can get back to business as usual. Right. Because we won. Yeah. But that's what this is all about is they're still desperately trying to find some way without escalating militarily, without losing more Americans and without continuing to expose this crunch in our weapons supply. So now they've turned to this hazy, vague, economic threatening that they're rolling out in a really Trumpian way where it's framed grandly. It's, it's framed like some super cohesive strategy and it's escalating threats instead of escalating military or escalating real hard financial decisions. Unless he rolls something out by the end of the week. I mean, we'll see. Even the tariffs we're going to get to in a moment aren't supposed to take place until January 1st. So they're doing threats to try and bring Iran to the table. I don't know. And Iran was at the table. We broke. Well, Iran was at the table multiple times over the past. Decade. But they were at the table in February when we launched the war. And then they were at the table again through throughout the MOU in which they agreed to keep the Strait open while negotiating the remaining pieces. Trump couldn't keep the 60 day truce going just to get through the negotiations. So in February, while Iran was at the table, Netanyahu made a certain series of promises that we could kill the Ayatollah and his top commanders. We we with the Kurds, we would go in and we would spark an uprising. We would we would overthrow the regime, greet it as liberators. You know, it would go very quickly. And none of that has. Oh, they would not close the Strait of Hormuz and they would not turn it into a regional war where they attacked our bases throughout the region and our and our allies throughout the Gulf. We did kill the Ayatollah and his top commanders. Everything else. for the most part, they, you know, has, has not happened. So clearly what followed was Trump saying, Hey, Scott, what can you do? Like choke them out. Cause I can't, I'm like my guy, Pete over here. He's done everything he can. Like he's got nothing left. Literally has nothing left. Cause we won. Cause we, well, we won. Yes. Uh, so now you go in and you do the mop up with the, you choke them out. And, and Scott has this interesting life history where he, along with George Soros, where he used to work, they broke the back of the British pound with this famous trade. And so he is really approaching this from an interesting perspective. He's not looking at the world as kind of run by forces. He's, he's the force. He's looking at it as run by forces. By men and by, and by traders and by trades. And so, because he's been one of those, right. But the problem is Britain was tin pot economy in the early nineties that was like propping up its currency in an unsustainable way. And, you know, Soros and Besson could come in and, and poke at it with their, with their big short and break it because they were able to hold out longer than, than the central bank was able to prop it up. Now, now what he thinks he can do is he can take this $40 trillion of, of debt that we have circulating and which, which wants to push yields up because the, the world is like, Hmm, we don't really trust the leadership of this country. And I can't imagine why they didn't. The guy, the guy looked really like he wasn't sweating and he wasn't, he wasn't sweating at all yesterday. And that calm and cool, like that was, that was a confidence inspiring, no doubt. Yet for some reason, others are not receiving it with the same level of confidence at all. So they're at, they're demanding a higher premium in order to fund our debt. And so he's thinking I can go in and trade. I've got this $4 billion that he, that he flushed down the toilet last week. Now he's identified this trillion dollar bucket of cash that he is going to try to use to try to push down the tail end of the bonds. Uh, because he thinks he can do, he thinks that trades and men can override the structural forces at work, but he's comparing 1992 Britain to 2026 United States. And that to me is like insane. Like those are completely different things that we're talking about here. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport and Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook on the big money players network. Our show is extremely accessible to first-time listeners. Each week, we talk to someone in show business, AKA the biz and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman. Not that great. Actually, can you help me? Can you help me shape this? How about we flip it on its head? How about we flip this around? Okay. What if the surprise woman who actually you think is the straight man is actually the one who's acting weird? Adam Scott, this entire time, you've been expecting Adam Sandler to come to visit the show. I would never let go of that. I have, I would never set expectations for something like that to happen. If the universe allows for something like that to happen, I'm open to it. I'm always going to accept. Danny McBride, fine. Yeah. It's all this fragile masculinity exuding. I could smell it walking down the hallway. to be honest with you i was like is that weed nope it's fragile masculinity ben stiller no because a lot of times in out of context people don't get it or even know what a circle is you know what i mean like you're like oh what's this state everyone's so dumb and fake right fake and and also not interested or just like oh i've got my life i don't care about your life and a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us oh and by the way will ferrell told us personally he loves the show and he wants to be a guest on every episode but he's just so busy listen to hollywood handbook on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts on the new podcast solita we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman i can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle i chose i'm julie pinero and i travel by myself because it's a rare space where i can say yes without asking anyone else first i'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita trading the pity for possibility every time i tried to be alone i kept meeting people and they were like you smiled at us not a lot of people smile around here it's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it it can be a time where you push your limits change your mind or wake up to a new version of yourself so whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're a solo traveler or you're a solo traveler you can be a solo traveler and you can be a solo traveler you're too nervous to book your first trip i hope you listen to solita on the i heart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts when i was 14 years old i was kidnapped and held captive for nine months i survived and i've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them i'm elizabeth smart and these are the survivor files i just remember this low taunting voice next to my ear saying shut up don't say anything every week i'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable i knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going to hurt me i started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and i just started screaming they are abducted stalked controlled and nearly silenced but these aren't stories about what's taken from them they're stories about what it takes to be a survivor and what it takes to be a survivor and what it takes to make it out alive listen to the survivor files with elizabeth smart on the i heart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts we're going to skip ahead here again i want to put a eight up on the screen so this is remarkable criticism i'm quoting greg if who's chief economics commentator for the wall street journal remarkable criticism of treasury treasury secretary scott besant by his former boss nan druckenmiller especially this quote once markets believe treasury is defending the economy and the economy is defending the economy and the economy is defending a price every rise in yields becomes a test of official resolve and the operations must grow to survive the tests now skip ahead to the next element this is charles gasparino over at fox business who said scoop besant will do whatever it takes to quote put the fear of god into the bond vigilantes shorting the long end of the curve in an attempt to drive the 10-year yield to five percent wall street executives with direct knowledge of his thinking say that would include buybacks selling short-term debt possibly possible elimination of long-dated bonds like the 20-year etc it's a short-term solution to keep yields from soaring further strangling growth as the midterms approach they say and it doesn't address the real problem debt is now at the 40 trillion dollar level and competition for capital from the ai build out so brian your analysis is basically echoed i think by people within besant world yeah that's so gasparino is basically saying that what i just said it seems to be his mindset actually is his mindset that he's conveying to wall street executives apparently he's that he thinks he has the ability to go in and threaten traders who who want to get on the wrong side of the trades that he's going to make them lose their shirts it's possible that this could work for several weeks uh because now you have uh traders who might if if any big traders are going to go in um and try to go short here what best is going to happen is that the best thing could do is come in at a well-timed moment and for an hour cost them a lot of money he can't he can't structurally change things but he's hoping that he can scare enough people out of the market but it's it's complete it's completely it's completely insane i was gonna say it sounds like this is not a way to run a global economy it sounds like a public relations effort basically to get through the midterms it it yeah i mean it's it basically is i mean he's out there saying that he has that he's going to do this for like 90 days like it's everything he's doing he's timing it to november like it's it's a complete joke and it's not going to work in terms of i mean it may prevent like massive price hikes in the short term but people are still going to be squeezed right and so actually let's go to a5 here this is the u.s you can see the chart here um from bank of america global investment is referring to not having enough you know economic power yeah check this out u.s now has 41 days of crude oil inventory left that is the lowest level that we have had in half a century right and so there's a there's a good analogy here to why trump isn't restarting the war he started the war in february with his ammo you know full you know full stock like ready to go multiple aircraft carriers the sailors were fresh um their ballistic missile interceptors were basically stocked up they you know they depleted a bunch in the 12 they were but not nearly stocked up enough but yeah right but they were they were ready to go they went to war oh and our invent and our oil inventories were flush you know not as flush as they could have or should have been but pretty flush uh economy was coming along uh the inflation was coming down like things were things were good yeah it literally was getting better in february so he went in with all of that and still lost so he went in with all of that and still lost so he went in with all of it so when he went back to pete let's do it again pete's like well you know we lost already i'm sure he didn't admit that yeah we we did all of this it didn't work and now we don't have the same amount of ammo so we turn to treasury so let's go to treasury now the problem is we've been doing this for 47 years right now we've been trying to do it for the last several years maximum pressure uh and we were doing that from a position of economic strength we are now in a position of extraordinary weakness where we are hours away at any given moment from a financial crisis and and we are as they say 41 days away from basically being out of oil inventories the panama canal because of el nino had has has also cut the amount of um ships that it's uh that it's enabling to go through the gulf had been producing extra amounts of oil and shipping it to asia through the north asia through the panama canal prices for that have gone through the roof and the number of people that can number ships that can transit uh has has now collapsed uh they claim they're getting a decent amount through the strait of hormuz if that was true for some reason it's not slowing the drawdown of our strategic reserves like if it was true that we were getting this insane amount of oil through that axios is claiming that the white house is claiming to axios then we wouldn't be drawing from our strategic reserves but we are so that's why golliboff is saying um that you can't uh that we don't have the economic power to do what we're claiming um before we left drunken miller i did want to highlight this this other quote of his he said if the 30-year must trade at 5.5 to clear that isn't a crisis it is an invoice and it's an interesting moment that that is obviously an ai written line i didn't even think about that but you're right it's an interesting moment it sounds like it like besson's thing was ai slop besson's mentor is now criticizing him with his own ai which i don't think is slop i think that's a decent line i thought it was pretty good although it also is a crisis it can be both but they they say it isn't a crisis it is an invoice ai only knows how to do the it's not this it's that yeah kind of writing um but it's an invoice it's a good line i was like when i read that i was like claude you delivered on this one this is this is quality stuff and i bet drunken was reading he's like that sounds like ai but yeah it's a pretty snappy line just gonna have to leave that uh so this is what we're bringing to bear in this war against iran is a bunch of ai slop when we're out of ammo out of money and out of oil and don't forget our economy is running on people demanding ai slop right and it right and it's fascinating that one of the reasons that interest rates are up which drug miller alluded to or uh gasparino alluded to is that they are out in the market with many many billions of dollars of bonds that they are raising and so that competition is pushing up interest rates for everybody so you thought you hated ai it's also the reason your carload is going up your mortgage prices are going up that we're getting a credit contraction and the US is having a hard time funding it's dead okay but ryan to be fair it's not a crisis it's an invoice it's an invoice it's an invoice keep that in mind before we leave this block let's put uh secretary rubio's post is a7 on the screen he announced that he formally rescinded yesterday syria's designation as a state sponsor of terrorism this action unlocks new potential for syria's economic revitalization and progress the trump administration continues to advance u.s national security to achieve peace prosperity and security in the middle east rain so think about this in comparison to cuba so syria is run by a former al-qaeda leader we're fine with that like that they're lifted from the state sponsor of terrorism list cuba citing stuff from the 1960s is on that list right i was talking to ed augustine reporter in cuba the other day he said they're now up to three and a half million people out of roughly 10 million people they're about 10 million people on that island because so many have left three and a half million don't have running water at this point because of the complete and total blockade of cuba and it's august like this is not a time you want to be in cuba without water uh on top of the like the disease that spreads in this in the summer which you know i shouldn't have to like link it back to us but that does it the diseases that we're breeding on cuba right now aren't going to stay on in cuba um so yeah so congratulations to syria huge yeah uh not a crisis in invoice all right let's move on to uh the trade war that's heating up hey this is hayes davenport and sean clements we host the podcast hollywood handbook on the big money players network our show is extremely accessible to first-time listeners each week we talk to someone in show business aka the biz and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us everyone has a good time and no one gets mad at their publicist for letting them do our show we've had a lot of great guests like sarah sherman not that great actually can you help me can you help me shape this yeah how about we flip it on his head right how about we flip the script okay what is the surprise woman who actually you think is the straight man is actually the one who's acting weird adam scott love this entire time you've been expecting adam sandler to come to visit the show i i would never let go of that i have i would never set expectations for something like that it seems like if the universe allows for something like that to happen i'm open to it i'm always going to accept you know danny mcbride fine yeah it's all this fragile masculinity exuding i could smell it walking down the hallway to be honest with you i was like is that no i was like is that weed mm-hmm nope it's fragile masculinity mm-hmm yeah ben stiller no because a lot of times in out of context people don't get it or even know what a circle is you know what i mean like you're like oh what's the state everyone's so dumb and fake right fake and and also not interested or just like oh i've got my life i don't care about your life and a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us oh and by the way will ferrell told us personally he loves the show and he wants to be a guest on every episode but he's just so busy listen to hollywood handbook on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts if your bookshelf and your for you page are equally important to your personality welcome home this is prose society the weekly podcast that's part book club part group chat for thought daughters pop culture obsessives and anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse i'm eli rallo and every week we're connecting the dots between books the internet and the conversations every week on the iheart radio app everyone can't stop having i'm gonna have to look up this story i'm obsessed i'm obsessed from best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments nothing is off the table it's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters and that is a trojan horse whether you're looking for literary deep dives smart pop culture conversations or a community of readers who love to think a little too much you're in the right place listen to pro society on the iheart radio app iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts see you between the pages when i was 14 years old i was kidnapped and held captive for nine months i survived and i've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them i'm elizabeth smart and these are the survivor files i just remember this low taunting voice next to my ear saying shut up don't say anything every week i'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable i knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going to hurt me i started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and i just started screaming they are abducted stalked controlled and nearly silenced but these aren't stories about what's taken from them they're stories about what it takes to make it out alive listen to the survivor files with elizabeth smart on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts the trade war with canada continues to heat up although i will note trump says his retaliatory tariffs in this case aren't starting until january 1 we'll get into that but treasury secretary scott besant was asked about this at his economic d-day over iran press conference yesterday here's a bit of how he responded b1 does the united states um and president trump still want canada to become a state he did say that they're getting all the benefits of being a state without um being one i think he would like canada to come to the table and negotiate in good faith they were offered quite a good deal last week they chose to reject it unfortunately prime minister carney carney rose to power on an anti-american anti-trump platform i believe he's more than 20 points behind and you know he seems to have gone back to his old playbook and i think one has to act mask oneself is he trying to benefit himself the liberal party or the canadian people because they were offered a very good job so obviously as a reminder i'm reading from bbc here trump threatened to hike tariffs on cars and this was a truck's auto parts that's sort of stuff 25 to 50 increase as of january 1 so while the talk is getting tougher there's a huge amount of buffer room but speaking of tough talk let's listen to canadian prime minister mark carney yesterday as well it's not a surprise for us that the u.s would take some form of uh reprisal to our response to their unjustified tariff which was on top of other unjustified tariffs that's not a surprise but what message does that send to the workers in michigan and ohio and kentucky and alabama who rely on canadian demand were there to do what they were told to do that's not a surprise but what message does that send to the workers in michigan and alabama who rely on canadian demand were they to do what they were told to do that's not a surprise but what message does that send to the workers in that the Trump administration learned through the Liberation Day, I was going to say fiasco, but the Liberation Day adventure, misadventure, choose your own adventure with the word that you want to use in that case. But he learned that he can do so much. He could do so very much with words alone because this, again, the 25 to 50 percent increase doesn't happen until January 1st. Yeah. And the reporting is that it was Howard Lutnick, Commerce Secretary, who blew up the talks. Like that seems to be what both sides are kind of saying. Jameson Greer is the U.S. trade representative who was supposed to be leading the talks, but there were areas that involved commerce, including the cars, aluminum, steel. And Lutnick was directly communicating with Carney by text and by phone and seemed like, to go back to your point about what elements of the deal and who they're allowed to trade with, it seems like he insisted on something. That Canada was like, no, we're not doing that. And Trump announced last week we had a deal. Remember? He said, we've got a deal. And it was all done except for the signing. And then, so then what is Lutnick doing on the phone and texting with Carney? Either way, it's a complete mess. And in the very beginning, if you remember, they didn't want to deal with Lutnick. Yes. Like they have never wanted to deal with Lutnick. I don't know how much Trump wants to deal with Lutnick, honestly. So then what are we doing here? Yeah. Yeah. He's just kind of a crazy person. He's going rogue. Like, right. He just, he seems funny. He tells a good story. But like, I'm sure he's like fun at dinners or whatever. But like, what is this guy doing? Right. Other than having his firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, rake in all the tariff money. Yeah. Like that is incredible. And the crypto money. Well, isn't Cantor Fitzgerald also behind the stable coin move? He's making, they're making so much money. Right. Just making absolutely incredible amounts of money. They bought up. So people understand before the Supreme court ruled that Trump had to give the tariff back money back to the companies, Cantor Fitzgerald, his firm run by his kids, went around buying up for pennies on the dollar, the right to get that tariff money back. So that's why you paid more for stuff. I mean, I'm not saying that it's, I'm not saying that it's, I'm not saying that it's, I'm not saying that it would be a good idea. I mean, I'm not saying that it's, I'm not saying that it's, I'm not saying that it would be a good idea. And now he's in there blowing up this Canadian deal. By the way, we already have a USMCA, like the renegotiated NAFTA that Trump was so proud of. Like he already did this. What are we doing? Like, why did you do these years-long negotiations and sign a long-term agreement if you just want to, like, do it again? Yeah. Susan Collins was, came out interestingly against, I mean, it's not interesting. It's kind of obvious, but came out against this as she's been campaigning across Maine. It was interesting because J.D. Vance, I don't think, if I'm remembering correctly, Collins didn't go to the Vance rally that he had in Maine. And he was defending the administration's trade policy. Collins was opposing it. So that tells you a bit about how it's playing out in Maine. Ryan, let's put this drop site on, this drop site report up on the screen of this drop site comment on the Canadian wildfires. So drop site reporting on ex-wildfires and maintenance are set to squeeze Canadian oil that U.S. relies on at the worst possible time. U.S. refiners are bracing for a drop in supply from Canada, their largest foreign source of crude. At a moment when they can least afford it, Bloomberg reported this weekend, Canada supplies over 4 million barrels a day. And Midwest refiners cut off from seaborne imports, lean on it especially hard. How could this play into the next few weeks, few months? We've got four months until that January 1st implementation on the automobile tariffs. But how does that play into this now? Disaster. Disaster for the U.S. Yeah, so the combination of wildfires and maintenance are shutting down many hundreds of thousands of barrels a day from getting into the U.S. And these are in their oil. This is wildfires that break out what? Last week, last couple of weeks in their oil sands region. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's hitting as everything else is hitting. Ukraine's lighting up all of Russia's oil infrastructure. Straight up removes, crimped Panama Canal, tightened up because of El Nino. And this wildfires plus the maintenance where, you know, is it scheduled maintenance or is it Canada putting some pressure on us? Probably a combination. But we're not in a place of strength where we can handle a few El Nino and wildfire related crises because we have inflicted eight crises on top of it by our own hand. And I should mention just on the stable coin point, Cantor Fitzgerald is one of the big investors in Tether. So that's the tie on that end. Let's listen to more of James. So he's on CNBC yesterday. Here's what he had to say. So we don't have any issue proceeding with our trade policy as planned. And I and I think the market understands that. I think the market knows that at the end of the day, this is five percent of imports from Canada. It's point zero six percent of our overall consumption in this economy. So there's there's no possible way it can really affect U.S. well-being. Right. I mean, we had we've been having great prints on inflation the past couple of months going down. But in June and staying flat here, real wages for manufacturing workers going up. So we're on the right trajectory. The fundamentals are good. And I don't think this is going to affect anything. That's why I think the markets are shrugging it off. Obviously, it affects some states more than others. As long as you don't live in Michigan. Yeah. Or Maine. Yeah. So Trump's true social post put it this way. Canada has been ripping off the United States of America for years. The ridiculously high tariffs on our farmers and farm products has made life impossible for these great American patriots and has long created. By the way, I'll just pause. There and say, that's kind of true. The question of how you're addressing it remains significant. He goes on and said they've long created a 60 billion dollar deficit between our two countries. It's not sustainable and not anymore. On January 1st, 20, 27 tariffs on all cars, trucks, both large and small automotive parts and steel will be increased to 50 percent billed in the U.S. And there are zero tariffs. Canada will be treated like a state no longer trade and in other ways. Also, they're among the worst nations in the world to deal with. They feel entitled. And yet all caps. We don't need Canada. They need us. They do 95 percent of their business with the U.S. With us, the exact opposite opposite. And then he ended with the classic. Thank you for your attention to this matter. President Donald J. Trump reassuring, no doubt, to people in states that are going to be hit hard. Yeah, but the I mean, a lot of those states, Wisconsin, Maine, Michigan, this is actually a problem people want to see addressed the same thing, like with farmers during the first Trump administration, you'd have some corporate media reporter going. I mean, I think that's a big problem. I think that's a big problem. time, you've been expecting Adam Sandler to come to visit the show. I would never expect. Let go of that. I have. I would never set expectations for something like that to happen. It seems like you did. You know, Danny McBride, fine. Yeah. I could smell it walking down the hallway, to be honest with you. I was like, is that weed? Nope. It's fragile masculinity. Ben Stiller, no. Because a lot of times, out of context, people don't get it or even know what a circle is. You know what I mean? Like, they're like, oh, what's a circle? Everyone's so dumb except for you. And fake. Right, fake and also not interested or just like, oh, I've got my life. I don't care about your life. And a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Oh, and by the way, Will Ferrell told us personally he loves the show and he wants to be a guest on every episode. He's just so busy. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Prose Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinheiro, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people, and they were like, you smiled at us. Not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is, and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind, or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita. On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A big victory for the Trump administration, the Supreme Court yesterday, you can put up this New York Times element. The Supreme Court stepped in and allowed his executive order on mail-in voting to go forward. So let's unpack a little bit what actually happened here. So the court, and Emily stepped in, and you think I'm steering this wrong. The executive came in, Trump came in, issued an executive order. That was a three-part executive order, but the thrust of it was, we're going to send the states a list of citizens, and we are going to insist on a certain set of rules and regulations that you're going to have to follow, or else the mail will not deliver. So you're going to have to deliver your ballots, and officials involved with the programs will be prosecuted if we believe that you did not follow this executive order as the law, as it applies to the law. And a bunch of states sued to enjoin this, saying very clearly in the Constitution, it says the administration of the elections is left to the states. Like, it's not ambiguous. It's just right there in that precursive in the Constitution. There it is. And that having us go through all this work damages, you know, it damages us, it costs us money, and living with this threat of prosecution is crazy. You don't have any authority whatsoever in this realm. Go away. And the lower courts said yes, they're correct, they should not have to deal with this, states run the elections, leave them alone. This executive order is unconstitutional and invalid, and we've stated. The Trump administration then went to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court has agreed to lift the stay. Temporarily, right? Temporarily. Their argument is that they haven't issued a final ruling. Right. A final rule. That they did the order, but not the rule. And that because they haven't issued the rule, that at this point, there's no, there are no damages, there's no problem for the states. Except the states have said, as they've said, they're already scrambling to respond to all this stuff. On the other side, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump, as the executive, would be irreparably harmed if they did not allow it temporarily to go into action, right? That was the flip side of it, is that the states can't prove the harm the administration would have, would suffer irreparable harm to the implementation of the executive order. Yeah, and Sotomayor and Jackson and I forget who else in dissent pointed out that there was no, yeah, Kagan, there was no effort by the Trump administration to even explain or assert how it is that they would prevail and overcome the obvious obstacle, which is that the Constitution says you can't do this. Like, very specifically, the Constitution says that the, the voting is left up to the states. And the Supreme Court also said that the states can't sue because there's speculative harm, because they might be prosecuted, but they may not be prosecuted. Right. Which, if you're an election official, that's not a very. It's not comforting. It's not very comforting. We're not guaranteeing that you're going to be prosecuted for not following this executive order, so therefore you can't challenge it beforehand. Yeah, it's interesting because it's all over mail and ballots. So that for Republicans means a lot of elderly Republican friendly voters vote by mail. And so this is also a challenge for them. It's a challenge to even get Republicans who now have, if you're a hardcore MAGA-type voter, to get you out to the polls. Does it cause problems with that? I mean, that's someone was saying, some Republican strategist was saying as much on CNN last night. I could see how that would be true, but this is also going to keep seesawing. So reading from NPR here, they report a broader injunction remains in place against that executive order from March. As part of a separate but related lawsuit, the Postal Service is blocked from following Trump's directives under a nationwide ruling. That was from the district judge in Boston. But in a court filing late Monday, the administration says it plans to ask the First Circuit Court of Appeals to pause that ruling. If the judge does not pause or cancel the ruling by 5.30, 3 p.m. today, a dozen Republican-led states have already appealed that ruling, NPR reports. So it's actually a really confusing legal tangle of what actually might be happening come Election Day. And if you're the states, I mean, it's a mess. There's no question about it. And Mikey Sherrill just obviously anticipating how difficult this was going to be purged a bunch of non-citizens from the voting rolls. That was an actual thing that Mikey Sherrill dealt with. But now, if you're a blue state, it's just unclear what's going to happen. You have to start prepping mail-in ballots. That has to start happening soon. Right, yeah. There is a lot of concern out there about what plans Trump is hatching to try to. Because if you followed the previous couple of segments that we did today, Trump is driving the country and the world into a ditch. And as a nominally democratic society, usually that comes with major repercussions. That's why presidents care about the unemployment rate, GDP, inflation, because they are punished at the polls if their stewardship of the economy is such that people are angry about how things are going. Trump is trying to sever the link between his performance as president and the democratic checks on that performance. Rather than perform better. Trump has been very clear. He is more interested in waging his war on Iran than he is with the immediate well-being of Americans' economic situations. He has said people can suffer higher gas prices. It's okay. I'm not I'm not worried about it. Or remember, he did not sign the housing bill, the Elizabeth Warren-Tim Scott housing bill. He would not sign it because he was demanding the SAVE Act. And actually, a lot of the reason— It went into law anyway. Right, of course. Comically. Right, because it was so bipartisan. But one of the big reasons that Republicans are hesitant to get on board with the SAVE Act is actually because of this federalization of elections we're talking about here. Now, this is an executive order, as Ryan explained, that tells DHS to come up with a list of citizen voters and send it—of citizens and send it to the states and say, compare this list, the federal government's list, and then purge basically people who are not on this list because they're noncitizens from your voter rolls. Noncitizens should absolutely not be voting in federal elections unless it's— You know, here in D.C., noncitizens can vote in local elections. That's D.C.'s jurisdiction. I don't think it's particularly a good policy, but that's a debate for another day. But noncitizens are also not going to swing the midterm elections. It's also not going to happen. And with the SAVE Act, a lot of Republicans were saying, you are federalizing elections by stepping in and telling states what they can and cannot do and how they decide to run their local elections, and they were uncomfortable with that. So it's different shades, I guess, of federal control over elections when you look at the two policies. Josh Shapiro put out a post yesterday saying, Not so fast. Today, SCOTUS decision does not deal with the substance of Trump's unconstitutionalism. It's a constitutional executive order and does not mean his illegal attempt to restrict mail-in voting will go forward. Donald Trump does not run elections here in Pennsylvania or in any state. We'll see the Trump administration in court. In the meantime, I'll keep defending Pennsylvania's right to free, fair, and secure elections. So all this is to say, these legal decisions about to what degree the federal government can stick its kind of— I was going to say no's, but, I mean, it's the federal government. It can't control how states run their elections. It's playing out. It's playing out in a very, very short timeline. Very short timeline. Right, which is another argument that the states had made, that, like, you can't do this at this moment. Also, yeah, to your point about noncitizens not being the thing that are going to swing the midterms, something like 50% of our citizens don't vote. Like, we have a not-voting problem in the United States. We don't have a voting problem. If there was an epidemic of noncitizens voting, we would hear about it nonstop. They've found, like, what, three or something? I mean, it happens. Over years, they've found, like, a handful of people who, like, misunderstood. Like, they've never found any systematic voting by noncitizens. They've never found any actual project to try to get noncitizens to vote. Because think about it. You don't have to do that. There are tens of millions of legal citizens who do not vote. So, if you are a political campaign or a political party, you have tens of millions of people to try to get to vote. Yeah. Before, like, imagine how hard it is to get somebody to go out and vote even when they are already registered to vote and they're a citizen. And you still can't get them to vote because there's nothing to vote for. Now you're going to try to talk somebody into doing it when they know they could go to prison for it so you're going to risk prison when you're not even a citizen to vote for some liar? Like, noncitizens aren't idiots either. Like, they're not moved by these candidates. Like, nobody's moved by any of these candidates. Like, most people do some level of civic duty and harm reduction at the polls. Harm reduction at the polls. That's a really good way to put it. That's all they do. So, why would you risk your freedom to do that? That's why this is just not a thing that exists. Yeah, I mean, on the other hand, I think when we look at some of the scary polls with Americans losing faith in the accuracy of election results and you do have, according to the New York Times, David Leonhardt's estimate, I think this is probably on the low end as well, 8 million noncitizens coming to the United States in a period of about three years and you don't have national voter ID, I think there are some fair concerns that people have about what might be happening, but it's very unlikely that's swaying. It's a decisive factor in elections. I also think if Republicans and Democrats should do this, just put a bill on the floor that's voter ID. Yeah, that's what SAVE should have been. Because Democrats, I think, have moved beyond. Like, for a long time, they were pretty hostile to voter ID. Right. Now, I think they're actually, basically, everybody's fine with it. But the SAVE Act has all these other weird things in it. So, if they just put voter ID on the floor, I bet it would actually pass. I think they're mostly fine. On a national level, I think it's state Democrats who know in the short term that would be difficult. Because it is true that for voters, especially in low-income areas, that you're adding an extra hurdle. So, you are eating in the margins of likely Democratic votes in close elections. So, I think probably the biggest issue is on the state level. People would be hesitant. But federal level, I think you're right. It's, you know, if SAVE had just been a voter ID bill, that would have actually been good. Interesting. Also, the first line of the Supreme Court ruling is kind of funny. Because, to me, it's just a straight-up lie. I saw you posting about this. You see this? Yes. The first line is, About five months ago, President Trump issued an executive order designed to maintain public confidence in federal elections. That's all he does. Is there anybody who believes that President Trump issued this order to maintain public confidence in federal elections? He just wants us to have some trust again. My confidence in federal elections, thanks to the design of this order and the Supreme Court's ruling, just rock solid. Yeah. We can only keep going up. It should have said, About five months ago, President Trump issued an executive order designed to tilt the elections in his favor. Ryan Grim. Just be honest. Sick of winning. Yeah. Sick of winning. All right. Well, let's move to Michigan, speaking of the midterms, where Abdul El-Sayed's campaign has had an interesting 48 hours. Yeah. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We've got a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, Adam Scott, Danny McBride, Ben Stiller, and a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. I can wait four hours for the next bus, or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinheiro, and I travel by myself, because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm Mange Shatigular, and I'm back with a new season of my podcast, Skyline Drive. This time, I talk to scientists, biopunks, curmudgeons, blues owners, super seniors, and Goa's top cryotherapists. I'm Mange Shatigular, and I'm back with a new season of my podcast, Skyline Drive.