211. AOC Is Breaking With The Democratic Socialists — Here’s Why

Democratic Socialists of America are having a national moment. They're racking up electoral wins across the country, Zora Mandani, of course, famously in New York, Katie Wilson, in Seattle. They're also setting a policy agenda in Democratic primaries across the country. So it's time we asked, do they really have what it takes to change American politics? I have some pretty strong views on this, and we'll get to that. Meanwhile, prices are rising. Unemployment is climbing, is Trump's working-class base starting to crack? This episode is brought to you by Utoro. A tariff of spending plan, a regulatory change, it can all start just as the first line of a speech. But it sets in motion things that can reach far beyond Washington an unfold for years to come. That's right, Katie. Mark has moved on expectations. Not just events, investors are constantly weighing. What a decision could mean for companies sectors and the wider economy. So, Utoro is an investing platform where you can access a wide range of markets and explore how political and economic developments could affect them. You could also learn from the global community of investors and see how people around the world are interpreting the same news. As with all investing, your capital is at risk, see itoro.com/tripus for full-terms. Welcome to the REST Disporters US, I'm Katie Kane. Today, I'm joined by my friend, the co-host of the Prof. G. Markets podcast, Ed Elson. Ed, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here. I will not reveal to the audience that the last time you and I spoke, it was a bad pornography from another podcast. Don't tell them. Don't tell them that sex always sells. Thank you. Anthony is away today. He's on a Disney cruise, which is okay. I'm going to be honest. I could not do a cruise with the whole load of screaming children, but he's having a great time, so good for him. Incredible. Okay, let's talk about the DSA and Ed, I want to get your take on their economic position in a second, but let's start by looking at the amount of attention that the democratic socialist of America seemed to be getting at the moment. Obviously, we've had over the weekend, Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who has distanced herself from some of the more radical positions of the democratic socialist of America, but said she was a member of her local DSA chapter, and she was being asked about other DSA candidates, and she seemed to be distancing herself from them. I also heard Abdel El-Sahyd, who won the Michigan Primary, of course, last week, distancing himself a little bit from some of the DSA positions. He says he's not DSA, but he has campaigned with them six or seven times, and I'm wondering if you're now getting a kind of pushback from some leading figures on the left, on the progressive left, saying, okay, we actually are now heading past the primary season into the November election. We do want to take power, and the way to take power in America is by moving away from some of these, particularly the cultural issues that are more on the left. And are you hearing that too? I just thought AOSC's interview was fascinating over the course of Sunday and what she had to say about Woke One being crazy, as she described, which could be the new bumper stripper, by the way, for the democratic party. That could be what they run on in November. Woke One was crazy with how she described it. And I'm just wondering if you're kind of getting that sense too, that there's a little bit of disquiet about some of the DSA positions. Yeah, I'm getting that sense, and I think it's honestly a really smart and savvy move from AOSC. I mean, first we should just kind of recognize how we got here, how we got to this moment of democratic socialism and why this is so popular among people. I mean, it all goes back to the economics. It all goes back to the affordability crisis, which is getting worse and worse. We're seeing that with the inflation numbers, which we'll get into later. But I mean, a big piece of it is also just the rampant inequality that has emerged in America, where the top 19 households today now control 2% of all of the household wealth in America. It was point 1% just 40 years ago. So we've seen this massive widening between the upper classes and the lower and middle classes. The top 1% now controls more wealth than the entire middle class. You have Elon Musk becoming a trillionaire. He's worth 3% of US GDP. He's the richest American in the history of this country on a relative basis. I mean, the inequality is getting out of control and we can get into that further. But that's sort of the basis. And young people are particularly pissed off about it. Of course. Of course. My kids always point to the DSA platform and they say, okay, we might not like some of the individuals and we can get into some of the policies. But there isn't appeal there just because they're so fed up with old people hanging on to power and this income inequality, like you say. Exactly. And it's clear from the democratic socialist that that is one of their key issues that they want to target and they want to get serious about. We've had decades of politicians kind of signaling that they're interested in addressing affordability, that they're interested in addressing inequality. Trump, by the way, would be a perfect example who said that one of his main agendas was to get prices down and also to reduce the cost of housing. And then he doesn't tacitly admit. He openly admits that actually he wants the price of housing to go up because he wants to reward older, wealthier Americans whose net words are tied to the value of their homes. And so he's he's saying it outright. I don't care about the fact that young people have basically no pathway towards getting towards achieving homeownership. I don't care about that because what I really care about is the the demographic group that matters most in elections, which is the older demographics in America. And so that's the group to whom I'm going to throw these bones. So I think young people are correctly very, very upset about this. They're upset about the way that housing prices have risen faster than wages over the past 40 years, same as true of economic productivity and GDP. Same as true of the cost of college, by the way, which has tripled since 1980. Stocks are very expensive right now that's more expensive than it's ever been in the past 20 years. So they're upset about all this stuff and to a platform where they say we are going to change the course of this nation. We're going to change the trajectory dramatically. There is a world where there's capitalism and that's what America has been all about. And we have something different that's called socialism. Now the question is what does socialism actually mean? So like, okay, shall I run through this is here's what the DSA's national program calls for. Okay, I'm going to just tick off a few of things. Public ownership of the largest corporations are abolishing the US Senate, replacing the president and the Supreme Court with bodies answerable to Congress. Actually, probably not a bad idea. Fully abolishing police and prisons, drafting a new constitution. So those are some of the things that they want. And various members of them have talked also about abolishing ice in the light of all of the immigration crackdowns. And it's interesting to see how kind of you've got these progressive candidates juggling two things, right? Juggling the anger and the energy that you're talking about. Yes. Both on economic issues, but I think also on cultural issues and realizing that some of those things, like fully abolishing police and prisons, is just never going to get you elected in America. I mean, that's like a it's like a non starter, which is why you've got AOC slightly dancing around this and ask to endorse because tomorrow Tuesday, there's another big primary for in Wisconsin, another purple state, just like Michigan. And the woman who is running for the Democratic nomination for governor, Francesca Hong is a DSA candidate who is also called for abolishing thanksgiving as well as abolishing police and prisons. I don't know why. Well, I mean, I don't like to keep fine abolishing thanksgiving as well. But I can see another reason probably you're not going to get. And she's having to do this kind of, well, I've said these things and now I'm not saying them. L side is in the same position of, well, you know, I campaigned with Hassan Piker very far left on some of these issues. Now he's having to distance himself from him in an interview over the weekend saying, no, I mean, that was a dumb thing he said when he blamed America for 9/11. Now he's saying that the dumb thing four months ago, by the way, L side didn't disavow. Hassan Piker, he stood next to him at a rally in Michigan. So I just think it's, I get where the anger comes from. But I think some of the ways that these candidates are talking about it, risk doing for the Democratic Party in November, what refusing to back away from some of the transgender issues did to the Democratic Party in 2024. And I think there is a concern there. 100% and I think what they're realizing is that a lot of the people in the in the DSA and a lot of the people that run the DSA are not very bright people. And in some cases, they're kind of just basket cases. Well, did you hear that interview, by the way, with the co-chair of the DSA in Megan Roma? You pointed it out to me. I went and I found it and I couldn't believe it. Give our dice to your listeners a quick description. Well, she was asked the very important question, which is, what does taxing the hell out of the millionaires actually mean? Because that's what she kept saying. We need to tax the hell out of the millionaires. And it's like, okay. So she's talking about the inequality problem. She's talking about what we need to do about it. And then the interviewer says, what do you mean by that? And she actually couldn't answer the question. She said, I don't really know. And then she stumbled a little bit. And then she redirected your co-chair of the DSA. And she says, oh, yes, I should. Exactly. She practically kind of says, yes, I should have an answer. I should have an answer. I thought it was amateur hour. It was amateur hour. And I think what we're seeing is that there are some people who have aligned themselves with the DSA who are not amateurs whatsoever. AOC is an expert. She is a world-class politician. No question about it. There is another individual who I think is also a world-class politician and who I actually think has been a lot less extreme than a lot of people have thought. And that is Zora and Mamdonit. I mean, if you look at the way that he was talked about and with fair reason, because he seemed very extreme, it seemed as though we were going to see a New York City that was going to go fully socialist, that was going to meet some of the definitions of the democratic socialist platform that you described earlier. But actually, that's not really what we've seen here in New York. I live in New York under Mamdonit. What we've seen actually is that there are some pretty out there pilot programs like the rent-freeze, which I personally don't agree with, like the city-owned grocery stores. Again, pilot program. I don't agree with it, but he isn't saying that this is the way that we're going to be forever. But then there's also been a lot of very reasonable and some would say more right-leaning decisions, such as he decided to continue the tough-on-crime agenda that we're seeing in New York. And we have seen the lowest number of murders in NYPD history. He decided to deregulate small businesses. He eliminated all the permits and the paperwork for thousands of small businesses, because he wants to jumpstart entrepreneurship. He wants to increase housing supply. He wants to reduce permits to build more housing. He's taking balancing the budget quite seriously. He's appointed a chief savings officer to figure out how to eliminate wasteful spending in every agency of the New York government. He could call up JD Vance, who's targeted with addressing fraud, right? Or maybe give Elon a quick call. Yes, exactly. Which is not something that you would have necessarily expected out of this guy who is, I guess, a socialist, but again, you have to ask yourself, what does socialism actually mean? Because what he's doing here, it seems, is he's pursuing a system which is more like capitalism but with a significantly expanded social safety net, something similar to what we see in the Scandinavian nations. And that's a very, very different vision of America that does not fit the DSA. Some of this is structural, right? Mamdani, to some extent, as all democratic socialists would be, and all mayors are limited by state law. So he needs Albany, the capital of New York state, to help him if he's going to do something like free buses or a rent freeze. And he hasn't got Albany's sign off so far. My understanding is on those things, he has had Albany's sign off and corporation on expanding childcare, access to childcare for New Yorkers. And so he can do that. So there are checks and balances built in to the system for all of these candidates, which makes me also wonder how much could they actually do. I mean, Elside was on TV everywhere at the weekend, being pushed on Medicare for All, which was his bumper sticker, right? Free healthcare for all Americans. But we have, you and I have always known, as the NHS effectively, the National Health Service in the UK. And he was pushed on this and he said, well, yes, people, even people making less than a million dollars will have to pay a little bit more in taxes in order to get this free healthcare. But at the moment, I thought he made a very coherent argument, which is that at the moment, the second biggest thing that comes out of your paycheck after your taxes is money to a health insurance company, who CEO is making multiple millions. He said 20 million. I'm going to be honest, I have not fact checked that, but it's making 20 million. And most Americans would prefer the guarantee of healthcare if you move a job. If you get over the age of 26, if you have a pre-existing condition, et cetera, they'd like the guarantee of healthcare provided by the government and they'd be prepared to pay a little bit more for that. The polls are a bit fuzzy on this, depending on how you work the question. People like the idea of free healthcare, they don't love the idea of paying more taxes for it. What did you think of his answer? And do you think that is something that these candidates have a chance of getting through, given that any big change in American politics takes 60 senators? You just have to have 60 senators voting yes on something. So is this pie in the sky when he goes around saying Medicare for All, or is it kind of progressive economic policy that could actually happen and change the country? Personally, I think that universal healthcare is a good idea. And I am for expand-- I agree. Some of these social safety nets in America. But I think that what you're getting at is a arguably more important question, which is there's being right and then there's being effective. There's actually getting things done. And if you want to get things done, you do need to build a coalition. You do need to establish a sense of community in Congress. You need to build up a group and a team and you need to get everyone behind you. I think right now he's in election mode. He's trying to win an election. He's trying to come up with very bold and progressive ideas that are going to inspire the populace right now, which I think is the right strategy, because I think something that we have learned over the past few years, especially with the emergence of some of the hottest names and politics right now, is that if young people especially see you as maintaining the status quo, if you're someone who's trying to be on the back foot and say, you know, we're going to continue things the way they are. That's something that young people hate right now. What they want, given what we've seen from this administration, is this idea that we are going to re-steer the nation into a different direction. We're going to do something bold, something new, something exciting. I really think that that matters in politics right now, because what we've seen from Trump is such a level of corruption and such a level of mismanagement that it would be almost unreasonable to not have an outsized reaction in response. That doesn't mean that you have to come up with ridiculous policies and cancel prisons and defund the police and abolish Thanksgiving, if that's actually what the Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate actually wants to do, but it does mean having a sense of anger, having a sense of defiance and expressing that in as strong a way as you can do. I do think that that is what he is doing right now, and I think that eventually he seems to me to be quite a small and measured person. I think he's very smart, and I think we're going to hear a lot more Obama and a lot less Hassan Piker between now and November, and this guy, he understands that he only won the Michigan primary by one percentage point. That is not a ringing endorsement. He lost more voters in the primary than he won. If he'd won by 60%, I would have said this is the new Democratic Party wave. This is the Democrats tea party. The fact that he only won by 1% in a purple state gives me pause on that, because it needs to give his campaign pause if they want to win in November, because he's going to have to do a whole load of outreach and unity and moderation. One of the things he said over the weekend, I'm sure you have smart thoughts on this from your world in finance. He was asked, are you a capitalist and Abdel El-Sahyd? He said, yes, I'm a capitalist, I'm not a socialist, I believe in the free movement of capital, but what's happened in America is not capitalism, it's corporatism. What is happening in this country right now? I thought it was a very interesting phrase, it really struck me in the course of his interview on Meet the Press. It's the idea that big corporations, Anthony talks about this a lot, and he's written a book the way he talks about this that's coming out in September, big corporations buying American politicians off by donating to their campaigns in order to get the policies that make those big corporations even more profitable. What strikes me about what El-Sahyd is saying is that I'm hearing this from people on the populist right as well, and I think I don't know that the Medicare for all gets anywhere. I don't know, I think they're going to have to moderate the Gaza policies, and we can talk about that just in a second about what this lady from the DSA said about Gaza, which was also pretty shocking. I think that this idea of corporatism, ruining America's politics, has a lot of traction from people on both sides of the political spectrum at the moment. I think that's exactly right, and my personal opinion is the reason it has so much traction is because it's true, and I think this is something that Anthony, I think he agrees with, and I know that one of his largest criticisms of our government and of policy over the last several years, and it's one of mine too, was the decision on Citizens United, which essentially made it legal for billionaires to basically buy elections, and that is essentially what happened. Billionaire political spending went from $16 million in 2008 to $2.6 billion in 2024, and what we have is a system that has become taken over. by the richest in our society. We're seeing it play out every day. We're seeing it in the deregulatory campaigns that we're seeing from the White House, which in my view does amount to defund the police. It's just defunding the police when it comes to White collar crime. And that's what we've seen with the insider trading and the crypto corruption, which I'm sure we'll get to in a moment. And so this idea that our politics has been hijacked by a small handful of whatever you want to call them, corporatists, the richest, the oligarchy, I don't really mind what your label is, but when I look at what's happening on a country, I'm like, yeah, that's true. And so you're seeing a reaction on the left. You're seeing a reaction on the right. Sometimes you should get wary when the fall left and the fall right agree with each other. Sometimes it means something bad. In this case, I think both sides have it right. And I think we owe it to ourselves to be upset about this and to want to do something substantial about it. And the fact that it has become so normalized by this administration and by this president, to me that is a real problem. And the question then becomes, okay, what do we want to do about that? Do we want to just tax billionaires? Okay, maybe it's kind of seems a little bit crude. Is there anything else that we can do? The biggest mistake that these candidates like us side could do is to go to so extreme that they are immediately labeled as communists and people actually believe that label. And that's what we're seeing from Fox News. Basically, the attack is these people are communists. They want to ruin America. They support 9/11. I saw that from Mike Rogers's press release that outside believes that 9/11 had a meeting with Hassan Piker. Hassan Piker is this controversial streamer and he has said that America, at one point, he said America deserved 9/11. Right. He has since modified that. Abusei didn't disavow him. And then this weekend did disavow him. I think he's getting the message on that one. Right, and that's the accusation. And so, I mean, there are some simple things that you gotta do here. You need to, that's an easy one. And so, that's what they have to do at this point. If they want to actually build a coalition and build a substantial base here, is they need to communicate to the public that we're not, yes, we're bold. Yes, we want to change things, but we're not completely off our rockers. And there are people in the DSA who are unquestionably, undeniably off of their rockers. And so, the more that they can distance themselves from that label, I think that's honestly the right move. And I think it's gonna be important for these candidates that actually want to change things. Listen to it, everybody, to the Meghan Romer interview the Romaniac of the New Yorker did. This is the New Yorker. We're not talking, you know, some right wing publication, but it was a really good interview in which he pushes her, I know there is so much anger in the Democratic Party understandably and about what has happened in Gaza and Israel and the government of Netanyahu's response to that and the genocide that is being committed there. But I don't think that her answer is helpful to other candidates who really want to focus on what working class Americans care about, which is according to a new study from the Center for Working Class Polities, almost uniquely economic issues, except for defeating crime and bringing crime down. I think Gaza goes in the cultural bucket, which is what educated liberals care about more. It's not something that is preoccupying the people that need the economy changed in their favor. - I think that's right. I mean, these are such difficult, sensitive, hard issues that require really, really skilled and intentional communicators to navigate them in a way that doesn't cause outrage, upset, anger. I mean, you have to be very, very careful. You have to be very sensitive about the issues here and the way that you use your words and your language. And I agree what we saw in that interview is someone who just is clearly not equipped to communicate anything of substance. - She should not be allowed near a microphone. - Yeah, exactly. I'm glad you pointed it out to me because I too was shocked. - But AOC with work one was crazy. It was okay, we're gonna take a break and come back and talk about the economy. (upbeat music) - Welcome back, everybody. To the rest is politics, US. Katty K here joined by Ed Elson before we get into the state of the US jobs market. Just to remind you that Anthony and I will be traveling around North America and Canada in October ahead of the midterms on doing a live tour. We would love to have you join us. We'll be taking your questions while we're with you. Scan the QR code that's on your screen right now or go to the rest is politics. us.com to get tickets to a city near you. We'll see you there. Okay, let's talk about jobs. I have never seen a president quite this out of touch with the very people he calls his base. So I did a quick tick off. I was on Morning Joe this morning, ran through all the things that are going super well in the US economy. The jobs market lost 23,000 jobs in July. In June inflation was three and a half percent. Gas is over $4 a gallon. In May consumer sentiment hit a record low. That is not high, sadly. But unemployment is down from 4.2% to 4.1%, which sounds like good news, but it's actually bad news. And the economists and you can explain that to me. But Ed, I thought those job numbers were very interesting 'cause I heard somebody Kevin has it from the White House saying, well, what happened was we thought there's gonna be a hiring boom because the World Cup and it didn't really pan out. But economists are telling me other reasons for the fact that the US economy shed jobs in July rather than creating jobs which had been expected. And that there is just an awful lot of uncertainty around the jobs market at the moment. Can you, you're the economist and cover this stuff, explain to me what happened and why people are so concerned about those jobs numbers? Well, I think the concern is related to the fact that you saw the unemployment rate go down from 4.2% to 4.1%. - We should be good news, right? - Right, but then you also look at the fact that the US economy lost 23,000 jobs. So then you're kind of like, what's happening here? And I think what people are very concerned about is that the labor force participation rate fell to its lowest level in five years. In other words, there are thousands of Americans who are basically just opting out of the workforce entirely. And if you opt out, then you are not included in the unemployment rate because it's not that you're out there looking for work and you're unemployed, it's that you're just not looking for work at all. And so I think this is the concern among economists. And to be fair, jobs numbers are very, very choppy. They're constantly revised upwards and downwards. If we look at the job numbers in May and June, they were revised down by more than 100,000. There was a question about the World Cup and what it would do in terms of the leisure and hospitality industry because that sector did see a little bit of a bump before we saw this jobs report. And then we saw that it didn't really materialize and how permanent was that jobs bump going to be. All of these questions, the labor market is one of these very, very finicky things that no one can really nail down. And whenever you talk to an economist and you try to understand like, okay, what actually is the problem, you get several answers because no one can fully pin down what the problem really is. I think that one thing that is certainly true and which we have seen reflected in the jobs reports for not just the past couple of months, but literally like going back over a year is that basically the only sector that is carrying this labor market, carrying this job market in which we are seeing consistent job growth. The only sector that is doing well right now is healthcare. Healthcare added 22,000 jobs this month and we keep on seeing the same story every month. We see either sluggish growth from most sectors or flat out a decline in job growth, but then you have this big bump in healthcare. And actually if we didn't have healthcare, then we would have lost more jobs than we added last year. We would have been in a labor market recession. And so I think the question you have to ask yourself is like, okay, is that a good thing that we are becoming? Well, that we're all getting sick and consuming a whole load of healthcare and people are getting older and so they need more healthcare, right? I mean, we're getting sick and old. And that's why we're creating more jobs. You're getting sick and old. That's the good news everybody. We're getting sick and old. But I mean, it was quite interesting because I was listening to Kevin Hassan over the weekend talking about this and he was obviously pushed on these jobs numbers and they keep saying there's going to be this jobs boom and it's coming very, very soon and it doesn't seem to be materializing. And one of the things they point to quite rightly is that actually also the kind of trend of shedding jobs in manufacturing is slowing and they're very proud of that and manufacturing wages have grown a little bit more than inflation, in fact. But the manufacturing sector is so tiny that it just isn't, I mean, it's not tiny but it's not nearly big enough to boy up the whole of the jobs market. If that's their brag, I mean, they need to find a better brag. But that was, their brag over the weekend was the World Cup didn't employ enough people. That somehow seems to be everybody else's fault. [BLANK_AUDIO] The second brag is that, well, manufacturing is doing okay. Manufacturing is doing less bad than it was before, which was the worst it's ever been. I mean, that's what we saw in 2025 was, and you could say, yes, this has been a long decline that has been playing out over the course of several years. But 2025 was one of the worst years for manufacturing in a very, very long time. It is a sector that is in structural decline, and it continues to be in decline. And if their brag is it's less in decline this month than it was over the past 16 months. It's just not a compelling argument to me. I don't think it's a compelling argument to anyone, and they're really scraping the barrel here. Because, as you say, in all of your numbers, not a lot is going right here in the economy. Can I do you another one? I like this. You can do the kind of truth telling for me, because another person that might be scraping the barrel a little bit is the Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent who told, in an interview with CNBC said that the K-shaped economy is over. You can set us to rights on that one. But also then criticised the mainstream media sophistry in their coverage of the economy. That's probably a word that Trump doesn't hear very often, but anyway. But he was basically saying, it's just the mainstream media's fault, and everything is going great. We've just spoken in the first half of the program about all of the frustration there is with the US economy. All of the numbers there, thank you, tariffs, thank you war in Iran, that are making the economy worse, not better, the rising income inequality. We're probably now going to have a market spurt, because they're so happy about the fact that there is not going to be another bomb being dropped on Iran for a while. Maybe. Well, for this morning, anyway, how can the Treasury Secretary say that the K-shaped economy is over? How can he say that with a straight face? I mean, when I saw that, I believe he said, I'm sick of hearing about this K-shaped economy and then he went on to say he believes it's over. The way that he wants to deal with an economy that is structurally unsound and that is getting more and more unequal by the day is his response is, I don't want to hear about it anymore. I don't like hearing about that. Well, that's like Trump saying he was bored of Iran. And Trump says, by the way, first he started talking about affordability and then he goes out and he says, people don't care about affordability anymore. All these Democrats keep on going on about affordability. No one cares. Newsflush. Yeah, they do, which is why your approval numbers are tanking every single day. And we dispelled whatever myths Scott Besson is trying to put out into the ether about this idea that the K-shaped economy, which describes the rise of the top and the descent of the bottom in America that that doesn't exist anymore, it's simply not true. As I've said before, I gave you some of the statistics about how for the first time in American history, the top 1% controls more wealth than the entire middle class. We can also just see it in consumer spending, where the top 10% of Americans now make up half of all consumer spending in America, which essentially means that the richest in America are propping up literally the entire consumer economy. This idea that doesn't exist, it simply isn't true. And it's what he has to say because they're running out of ideas and they're running out of options. And I think when you go to the inflation part, one of the things that is so remarkable about this administration, because we've had inflation before, we know about inflation, we know that prices can rise, and we know that it's bad. But in previous administrations, usually the reason inflation rises is because of some exogenous event that leads to that outcome. For example, COVID, that was a situation where supply chains became blocked up because we were dealing with a global pandemic and it meant that it was a lot harder to get products to the consumers, which meant that you had to ramp up prices. And that's why we saw the inflation that we saw. Now you can blame Biden and the administration for how they responded to that crisis. But the reality is it was a crisis that was put in front of them and then they were forced to deal with it. The difference with this inflation is that this is inflation that is entirely of our making. If you go back to inflation before the tariffs, we were around 2%, which is the Fed's target rate. We implemented the tariffs and then within short order, within a few months, we went from around 2% to around 3%. So we added a full percentage point. Then on top of that, we decide to launch a war in Iran with no contingency plan without seeming to have any plan as to how we're going to deal with the straight-of-home mirrors. Of course, things spiral out of control as they often do in foreign interventions. And we add another percentage point. So now we're hovering around 4%. Again, it came down a little bit last month, but that's only because oil prices temporarily came down because we thought the war was over, don't know why we thought that. We're probably going to go back to around 4%. So we have invented this problem. And so I think that's why we see these ridiculous responses from the policy officials because they know how ridiculous this situation is. And so they have to say ridiculous things to try to get around it. Scott Bessent knows better than this, but he is playing for an audience of one, as all of these administration people are when they go on the Sunday shows. They are literally just, you know, slight. They may as well just call Trump up on the phone, but they have a camera in front of them. And it's why, last week, there was a Reuters-Ipsos poll out that showed for the first time in nearly a decade, voters now trust Democrats over Republicans when it comes to handling of the economy. Wall Street Journal has a piece out this morning saying that Republicans are losing ground on the economy. And they've got mentioning a Republican pollster who is seeing something fascinating in focus groups, which is that now the focus groups, they can name to the penny the price of their groceries, the price of their gas and the price of their healthcare. And he said he'd never seen that before. And that is why Republicans are losing ground. Okay, so question for you then, three months left until the midterms. If he wanted to, if he was to suddenly decide actually he does care about the Republican party's fortunes in the midterm elections, and he does want to do something to boost wages and bring down prices for American workers ahead of these very critical midterm elections, is there at this stage anything that he could do in practice? I reached out to a couple of Republican strategists to ask them about this this morning. They said all they could point to was him saying, well, it would be helpful if he didn't call it a hoax because actually at this stage, is there anything he could do to bring down prices between now and November or or make life better for working Americans and American voters ahead of November? Yeah, there are two things that he can do, which would bring down prices in America. He could cancel tariffs. Yeah. That was, they did mention that. And he could get out of Iran. That's it. And the question is, do you think in any, is there any world, is there any reality in which he would do that? And the answer is probably not because he'd look extremely stupid because that's what these policies really, the way he has carried them out, that's, that's what this has been. Well, the trouble is, on the former, he could do it. Yes, he could unilaterally do that. And the Supreme Court gave him a kind of off-ramp, but he didn't seem to want to take it. On the second, even if he did say, okay, we're getting out of Iran, which is sort of what he sounds like he was saying to Axios last night, we're, we're like going slow or something or low-keying. We're low. We are now, America is now low-keying Iran. I really don't really know what that means, but anyway, they are low-keying Iran. Crucially, without a nuclear deal. Without you. Yeah. But even if he was to say, okay, it's all over, we're bringing all the troops home, done, no more even threat of bombing Iran. We still have the small issue, which is that the straight would be controlled by Iran, which would tariff people and cause havoc, which may mean that gas prices don't come down below $4 a gallon for a while. I assume. I mean, I think the second is a pretty hard one to do. I think that Iran could continue to implement fees, but I think that gas prices would, they would come down substantially because ships would be allowed to pass through the straight of Iran and that's the real problem is that Iran just on a dime will just say, no, nothing's allowed to pass. And then all of these ships are very concerned about the idea of passing through the straight of Iran. But what would happen is Iran might or might not implement some sort of fee, which would mean that gas prices would be slightly more elevated than they were before all of this thing unfolded. The real problem is how he'd look. I mean, he could try to do that to try to win the midterms because he decides that price and affordability is a real problem. But if he would reverse his decisions, cancel the tariffs, cancel the war in Iran, I can't believe I'm saying those words, but that's what it would look like. Then again, he would look stupid and he wouldn't win the midterms. So I think that he has put himself into a profoundly difficult position. I think that he has made some very, very, very bad errors. Personally, I don't think he can come back from them. I think that the American people have seen what the effects and the ramifications of this kind of leadership really is. I think they've seen the corruption with the truth API feed where you pay $100,000 a month to get early access to his tweets so that you can inside a trade and the crypto and the Trump coin where hundreds of thousands of Americans lost money. I mean, I could go on, but I think they see what's happening here. And I don't see a world in which he comes back from it. You're right, because so much for the K-shaped economy being over, you've just pointed to another way in which some people are getting very rich at the moment and other people are not getting very rich. Stealing. And I suspect that the worst jobs report of the whole of the president's term may have just and the Spared Trump Arrate Rate Rate. price, six weeks before the midterm elections, which could, again, juice the economy, make rich Americans richer, make people with assets richer, but we know that the majority, particularly of working class Americans do not have money in the stock market, so it may not help them. It might help them a little bit if it brings down the price of their mortgages or the price of their car loan, but it'll juice the stock market, which is what he wants. 100%. Edelson, thank you very much for joining me. Thank you so much for having me. So loved having you on the program. Do come back, please. I would love to, and I can't wait for your North America tour. I will be there in New York and maybe I'll follow you around and maybe I could be the groupie for a few weeks if you and I think we're like, come and be a groupie, come and be a groupie. Neither of us can sing. We're not a rock band, but do come and be a groupie. That is all for the day. Join Anthony and I. This Wednesday for the third episode of our series on JD Vance. This week we are getting into how JD Vance sold his soul to MAGA. You can sign up, of course, at the rest is politicsus.com and you can take advantage of our summer sale and get a third of our annual membership as well. Here is a clip from the series everyone who enters Donald Trump's orbit believes there are the exception. I love Donald Trump and I am very loyal to Donald Trump. But in the end, they all end up in the wood chipper. So what makes JD Vance think he can survive? He didn't start out as a believer. I'm a never-trump guy. I never liked him. And you said he could be America's Hitler. I can't stomach Trump then. Something changed. Back to the first year of President Donald Trump, we are rebuilding the American dream and we're taking back this country. Trump's fiercest critic became his most loyal defender. Have you said thank you once? The President is right. I wasn't always nice. He looked like the future of MAGA, but if history tells us anything, that's exactly when Donald Trump turns on you. If it doesn't work out, I'm blaming JD. You better be careful JD. This is the story of how JD Vance became Donald Trump's heir. And why he could end up as his next victim. Sign up to become a member at the RESTISPoliticsUS.com to hear the full series. Hope you enjoyed that. Thanks everyone for listening. [BLANK_AUDIO]