190. Is Trump Already Surrendering to Iran?

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to know the why you get it all in the ft it's a very objective paper and it's lots of fun to read and it makes you smarter i also loved janine ganesh's opinion piece on why must a socialist always be woke and he's making the point that the socialists in america have compelling economic policies but cultural policies that many people in the country hate is there a lane for somebody who is a more culturally moderate socialist i love the ft weekend my very favorite thing to read on a saturday morning no i i love the ft so i just throw that they're a sponsor for the why financial times listeners of the rest is politics us can save over 40 percent on an annual digital subscription to the financial times by visiting ft.com slash trip us that's ft.com slash trip us trip us subject to terms and conditions offer expires october 28th we'll be back in just a few moments with anthony scaramucci of the rest is politics us hello and welcome to the rest is politics us with me anthony scaramucci and me katty kaye anthony you're in hong kong i'm moving around a little bit i'm in hong kong today heading back to new york uh actually here with alistair uh so we're having a little bit of fun together does the world look better from the other side of the world i will say this about hong kong uh they have very good infrastructure here as you know yes very fast trains and uh pretty nice highways so something about their government is functioning which probably could learn some things there i'm sure that both sides could learn things from each other but let's talk about two sides right now caddy that seem to be talking over each other there's escalating tensions with iran looks like the us launched a strike over the weekend they said it was a self-defensive strike what do you think caddy we we lost another plane to a country that has no military because we've estimated their military caddy we've wiped out their navy we've wiped out their air defenses but somehow we lost an american plane so explain that to me and then let's talk a little bit about this potential ceasefire yeah this is a very odd former ceasefire when actually the two sides seem to be hitting each other but the americans in particular desperate to say this is not a breach of the ceasefire which in and of itself may be problematic i think for donald trump when it comes to negotiating because the message he's giving to the iranians is i really don't want to get back into fighting so even if you fire at us and then we fire back at you we're going to call it in self-defense and say that the ceasefire is still holding because i have no appetite for resuming a war although it's hard to know what else you would call this so we are in this strange situation where we're looking at an extension of the ceasefire we're not two months anthony by my reckoning into a ceasefire that was actually only ever meant to last for two weeks which again i think shows you just how much donald trump wants to keep extending this and now we are talking about a deal about a deal basically this memorandum of understanding that apparently the us and iran may be reasonably close to agreeing to but i think it would be wrong to suggest to our lovely listeners that this means that we are about to have a deal between the us and iran because this is really just a deal to start negotiating about the deal um so we are still a way off and you and i were texting over the course of the weekend about what's really going on what this deal really means and what donald trump's motives really are and i thought your analysis was super interesting so i want you to share that with people i said to you over the weekend i'm not sure it makes much difference what the deal is and that's for two reasons one is that all of the iran experts i've spoken to people who actually really are in contact with people in tehran don't think the iranians will stick to whatever they sign their name to so they're not confident that whatever they agree to on the nuclear front in particular they will actually stick to and we can run through this later but i think america's negotiating the terms of its surrender here i think this is a deal that is an american surrender deal america has lost this and now it's just a question of whether or not it's going to be a deal with the us and the iranian government so i think it's a question of how much pain america can accept in the final terms of the negotiation and i think we're a little way off that but whether it's a huge amount of money that america will have to pay to the iranians in terms of unfrozen assets or sanctions relief in order to get the straits of hormuz back open and in order for them to be able to say they got a deal donald trump will try and sell this as a better deal in barack obama's deal but i don't see the win here for america politically i don't see the win here for america politically militarily or financially i don't know am i being too hard on the u.s at this point listen i want to be objective here breaks my heart to say all of this i but i want to be objective here i think also trump lying about it is also hurting u.s credibility but what i was saying to you over the weekend is is what i what i will say here he's trading the market he doesn't have a deal he announces on sunday that the deal is eminent he's trying to get a little bit of a spike in the market so he can trade the market and then of course on monday they announced that he was going to get a little bit of a spike in the market announced there's no deal so now oil prices are back up again right i mean yeah this is like a roller coaster except that it's getting boring because it keeps happening yeah he's just trying to move the market so he can make some short-term trades but caddy i i'm going to say something dramatic and if it's overly dramatic you pull me back but i think he has forced a reckoning and a potential rebalance of the whole gulf uh i think that he's exposed a seam of weakness in the u.s military where we're spending a trillion dollars on what lobbyists and equipment makers want but are not necessarily useful for today's warfare uh you've got thad missiles which we can only produce 96 or so of them the last delivery we got was in 2023 we can't get another delivery into 2027 we're shooting these missiles at 5 000 drones that are going up in the sky we blew through 1.9 billion dollars of thad missiles in the four state 48 hours of the war and so i think this is uh accidental of course i'm not saying that he's uh a slave or a knave to vladimir putin and he started the war to cause an american capitulation in the gulf and to unsanctioned russian oil i'm not saying that he did that but i think he's why are you looking at me like that because i'm one wondering if you're thinking that well i'm not saying it let's just put it that way i'm not saying it but you know i just want to go over this with people we're spending roughly a trillion dollars a year on defense it's more than the next nine countries combined we can't build any ships china is producing ships at an accelerating rate we can't do that our munition stockpiles are run dry we helped ukraine for a period of time and now ourselves here uh i guess you'd have to ask the rhetorical question caddy how on god's earth could you spend a trillion dollars and not have a military footprint that could run a multiple-month, possible multiple-year military operation somewhere. We're not making any advanced computer trips on American soil, and I'm aware of. You tell me if we are. We're depending on China for our rare earth minerals that go into our fighter jets and our submarines. I think we're in the beginning of a seam opening for America where you had this veneer that we were a global superpower with this military strength. Our bases were all over the region, and we could flex on you at any time, so therefore you should be deterred by us and sign the JCPOA. Now we flexed on you. It turns out that our flex was fairly impotent, and it's also exposed to this seam of danger now for America, whereas if you were really being honest, you'd say, hey, guys, you're spending money on the wrong type of equipment. Last point, Katty, $13 trillion aircraft carriers can't get anywhere near the theater because the carriers have been made obsolete by the hypersonic missiles. I don't know. You tell me, Katty. How are we doing? I think this is pretty catastrophic for America, not just in the short term, but I think it's also severely weakened America. Look, if we, I mean, zoom out big picture, and then let's focus in on the agreement just for a second. But big picture, we came out of the last century, indisputably the American century, the 1900s. We go into the 2000s, and I think it was a toss-up for the first 20 years of this century. It was a toss-up. Which is it? Which is the economy that's going to prevail? United States or China. It's the battle of the two big superpowers. This venture of Donald Trump's, at least in the short term, and I get it, there's way more intellectual freedom and capacity still in the United States to develop a Silicon Valley-type economy than there is still in China. But they're catching up. They're further ahead on robotics. They're further ahead on agentics. And they are making much more progress, I think, in defense areas than a lot of Americans had initially thought they were. And I think this venture has exposed America's weaknesses, not just because of Donald Trump, but because of actual structural weaknesses that America has. And you've tipped the balance of power. During the course of the last three months, the balance of power has shifted towards China. It just has. I mean, you and I had a conversation right at the beginning of this war, and you sounded pretty optimistic about the idea of America being able to pressure China into getting involved in a way in the Gulf that was positive for America. You thought that maybe Donald Trump was going to be able to pressure China into getting involved in a way that Donald Trump could call up Xi and get him involved. I don't think that's happened. I don't see Xi exercising the kind of power behind the scenes to help Trump that Trump would like and would need, because they don't have to. They don't feel they have to on this one. We don't know. It's a state secret. But they have much bigger reserves of oil and refined fuel than American intelligence thought they did in February, is what I've been told by people in the intelligence community. So they can ride this out for a little bit. They can ride this out for a little bit longer, and now they're getting fuel through other routes as well. So I think if you want to look at the balance of power, it's a win for China. It's potentially a win for Russia, your friend, that you were just mentioning. I really want to know what you actually think, and I'd like you to say that. And it's a loss for the United States. If you had to scorecard this one, this has been a terrible cost. And beyond all of the costs, what are we doing now? We're negotiating. This is the terms of surrender. This is the terms of pain that America is in. America has to accept. It's a question of how much frozen assets does Iran get? How much sanction relief does Iran get? How much enriched uranium is it going to get to keep and where? Trump said it had to be out of the country, but guess what? On Monday, he's also suggesting that it could be in the country. How much control will Iran have of the Strait? You can call it an environmental cost, but it's actually control of the Strait that Iran has and that they can resume at any point they want to. How many proxies can Iran continue to fund with all of that cash that it's about to get as a bribe for reopening the Straits of Hormuzna and allowing Donald Trump to say that this was a win? This isn't looking good. Well, I want to be balanced because I do think that to use a Hegseth term, which I despise, but it has some relevancy, war fighting. The U.S. knows how to do war fighting. Maybe war fighting with the wrong kind of weapons, with outdated weapons. Yeah, but what I think what the U.S. doesn't want to do is actually war fight here, right? Because I'm sure they have these plans. You could put 500,000 troops and mobilize them into the region and try to take the Strait of Hormuz back and, you know, maybe you need 150,000 Marine Expeditionary Force and others, 101st Airborne, et cetera. And they'd have to stay a while, right? They'd have to stay a while. This is not a one and done. That's a 10-year, that's a, you know, look, we've stayed a while in Europe, right? We've been in Europe for 80 years after the Second World War and look at what we've done. Since 1953 in Korea. So this is a stay a forever of a while, but then you'd have the Strait open. But again, I want to be fair. So in the research and preparation for the podcast, let me just go over a couple of things. 38 days of major combat ends April 8th. Khamenei's killed. 40 plus people are killed at the top of the structure. 85% of the Iran's defense industrial base is destroyed. That's empirical data from Europeans assessing it, not American propaganda. Iranian Air Force flights were anywhere from 30 to 100 a day over the 38 days. They're down to zero. 150 warships across 16 classes were destroyed. All the submarines are gone. If you were the Americans and you're working for Pete Hegseth, you're making those announcements, right? But then you're saying, we really depleted ourselves while we're doing this, right? 50 to 80% of the THAAD interceptors are gone. 45% of the precision strike missiles are gone. 50% of the Patriot interceptors gone. Now be a defense analyst and let's say that you were going to President Xi Jinping and you were saying to him, what about the American military? What would you say, Katty? What you mean in terms of how well positioned the American military is? Yeah, so I'll start. I would say President Xi, I'm worried about their AI capabilities. I'm worried about our missile defense systems because they didn't work in the first couple of days of the war. I'm also worried about the way we're using AI relative to the US Pentagon's use of AI. But they are thin, are they not? From an arsenal perspective, are the Americans thin? No, I think they are looking thin. And I think they've. They've used an awful lot of weaponry and munitions and missiles up but haven't defeated the opposition. I mean, that's the problem. That's why we're now in a position where the choice is between a long-term ground forces commitment, which the president doesn't want to make, more bombings, which has no guarantee of producing a better result than we've got right now, or a negotiated deal, which is what Barack Obama did. Over 20 months, and we'll end up with something that looks very similar to the JCPOA. Congressman Mike Turner, who used to run the Foreign Relations Committee, said to me very clearly, the one thing that Trump doesn't want is to be sending pallets of cash to the Iranians like Obama did. It's the thing that he keeps mentioning. And it's no surprise to me that over the course of the weekend, Donald Trump is putting out cartoons denigrating all of Obama's negotiators because projection or confession, this is what Trump does when he's in a difficult position. He attacks the people who have been in that position before, but they did release frozen assets, and he's going to end up doing the same thing. He's going to end up releasing frozen assets because it's going to cost him. It's going to cost him. This defeat is going to cost Donald Trump in money and in uranium. And I'm not sure that he's going to get the uranium deal that he thinks. He's not even going to be able to come out of this and say, we got that enriched uranium out of the country, because I think it's going to end up. It's going to end up with the Iranians quite possibly watering down the uranium inside country, and then they can spin it back up again quite quickly to get to weapons grade. And at the same time, not to mention all of the costs that you outlined. Kenny, where do our Gulf allies stand? Where do you think they stood at the beginning of the war? What do you think the realism of the war has that altered where they stand? And then where do you think they stand right now? In terms of the peace process? So at the beginning of the war, the UAE did not want this war. They realized that they were in a vulnerable position. Once the war had started, they wanted America to prosecute the war fully to make sure they eliminated the threat and didn't leave them sitting next to an even angrier tiger. So they are in a position now where they've actually been pushing Trump to go further and make sure the regime doesn't hold and get. get rid of the missile threat, which they are concerned about. And they want the Straits of Hormuz opened. They also want the nuclear threat off the table. So they've been pushing for that. doesn't look like they're getting that, so they're trying to make alternative arrangements of their own. You've now got a split in the Gulf between the Saudis and the UAE, which makes less of a coherent alliance for the United States. Meanwhile, you've got the Israelis telling everybody who will listen, we were closing up with the UAE and making Netanyahu visited there at the beginning of the war so that we could give them our defense capabilities, which puts the UAE government in a vulnerable position as well. There isn't a chance. Donald Trump was raising it over the course of the weekend. There isn't a broader Abraham's Accord with the Saudis signing up, the Pakistanis signing up, the Qataris signing up. I don't see how that happens right now. There's too much crumbling of UAE, of Gulf alliances, and the Saudis have no interest, signing up to an Abraham's Accord at a time when the Iranians could be getting stronger. I think that which was on the table, it was certainly very much on the table before October the 7th because actually a lot of work that the Biden administration had done, the Biden team had really pushed the Abraham Accords and got it to a position before October the 7th where it looked like a realistic possibility. It now doesn't look like a realistic possibility, whatever Trump says over the course of the weekend. Is that about where you think we are? I think so, but I want to be devil's advocate. We'll give Trump and Jared Kushner credit for the Abraham Accords. I think the idea of that was very positive. The move was to eventually have Saudi, where Mecca and Medina, the holy shrines are, and they're the caretakers. The royal family is the caretakers of the most important religious sites. We're going to get them to eventually acknowledge the state of Israel. As a result of that, I think the militias backed by Iran, funded by Iran, Hezbollah, attacked on October 7th and went after the Israelis. The idea was to create a reaction from Israel that would be overwhelming, that would obviously create tension among the Gulf states and to more or less end the Abraham Accords. I don't know if it ends the Abraham Accords because actually they haven't pulled out. I mean, one of the interesting things that the president, to his credit, did point out in all fairness this weekend is that none of the original signatories of the Abraham Accords have pulled out of the Accords despite pressure over the attacks of October the 7th. What has ended, I think, is the possibility of the Saudis joining the Abraham Accords. Yes, but I think the point I'm trying to make, and I'm interested if you agree or disagree, is that there was a strategy by Iran to block the Saudis from, getting too close to Israel by executing that terrorist attack. Was that or was that not successful? Yes, it was successful. They got what they wanted. Okay. And so now Trump ramming down the throat of the Gulf nations over truth social that they need to join the Abraham Accords. Your point, you don't think that's going to be successful. And so we're sitting here at the end of May, we're about to start June. Is that straight going to get opened? Will there be some type of formalized peace? And I'm going to say something that President Xi is probably thinking, which we reported a few weeks ago, which is, hey, I know you need my help, but I don't really need to help you because I'd like to embarrass you further and I'd like you more weakened. I don't want to blow up the entire global economy, but my oil is coming through the strait. You guys are letting that come through the strait for obvious reasons. And so I'm going to let this, this thing go for a little while longer. And Katty, you know, is that $200 a barrel of oil by the end of the summer? If this thing continues on its current trajectory or what do you think happens? Well, I don't know. I mean, this is your world, Anthony. One of the perplexing things is why oil hasn't gone much higher. We can talk a little bit more about this in the second half when we talk about the economy and the politics of the economy. But the only answer that I've had from people who are in the oil markets or people who are on the national security side who watch the news and are surprised by this as well is that this is short-term trading with traders making a bet that they are buying Donald Trump's argument that in two weeks' time, it's going to be over. Now, how many times have we heard that in two weeks' time, it's going to be over? We heard that at the end of February. We heard it in the middle of March. We heard it at the beginning of April. We heard it at the end of April. It's always just about to be over. And yet traders seem to be happy to make short-term trades that are propping up the markets. People who are in the oil industry, not people who are on the politics side, are saying, well, in June, they think that global supplies will be severely depleted that are out there. The tankers have now reached their destinations. And that will then start to have more of an impact on prices. But let's see. Let's see how much traders just seem to want to make a quick buck and what they like is the volatility, which is what gets back to you were saying to me over the weekend that Trump is enjoying the volatility. This suits him very well. Yeah, I know. Look, I think he's obviously trading the market. But I guess the thing that I'm worried about as an investor, as a global citizen, is the quagmire. What I'm worried about is Rubio saying, well, if it's not a strong deal for us, we're not going to do the deal. I'm just worried. I mean, we can break and talk about the economy in the second half. But I don't see, as you and I are sitting here right now, the outcome. The markets are saying, you're right. It's going to be a perfectly fine outcome. That's why stocks are so buoyant. But I don't see the outcome. If because of his own sense of hubris and antagonism towards Barack Obama and his own sense that he had to be better than Barack Obama, he would never have pulled out of the JCPOA, which was actually working and containing Iran's nuclear program. But he pulled out without consulting experts because he doesn't believe experts know anything. And he thinks he's right. But if he hadn't pulled out of the JCPOA, we'd be in a much better position than we are today. And it would have cost an awful lot less to Americans, both in blood and in treasure. Okay, now I've got that off my chest. Let's talk more about the economy after the break. I can't wait to see you there. We have fun doing these shows, right, Anthony? This is fun. It's a great chance for us to meet you. Frank, for you to ask us your questions live. Anthony occasionally stays on script, but not very often. It's good. The only thing I don't like about the shows are the introductory takedowns, okay? Because you know what? We really get the honest take of what our producers really think about us, and it hurts. They're mean. Yeah, maybe for these shows, we insist, we put it in our very extensive riders because we're such divas that they can only do little videos that are incredibly flattering and complimentary and only use photos of us taken from before 20 years ago. Well, all I know is that there's this beautiful actress that plays the queen on The Crown playing you on Saturday Night Live, and then they have me taking a dump on the Special Forces show coming out of the dumping. It's not flattering. It's flattering to you. It's just not flattering to me. It's fine. So, guys, if you want to know what on earth Anthony's talking about, get a ticket, and we'll show you the video when you come and join us. Okay, we're talking about the economy. I thought this was worth doing, Anthony. I want to touch on this because, of course, we had Kevin Walsh confirmed last week, now installed as the country's chief central banker. He handpicked by Donald Trump with one mission, which was to bring down interest rates and not be a too-late Jerome Powell. Who was a thorn in Donald Trump's side. All presidents want their Fed chairs to bring down interest rates. It's the way it goes. And I think that, actually, Kevin Walsh, over the last year, as he was auditioning for the job, and make no mistake, he was auditioning for the job, as he was auditioning for the job, he kept going around earnest think tanks and the International Monetary Fund and groups of high-net-worth individuals, making the case for why it was time to reduce interest rates and the possibility that America, the American economy, was going to go down. So, I think that's the way it is. The American economy was ready for a reduction in interest rates, but bang, he gets into the job. And what's the first thing that he's going to do, Anthony? I think he's in a tough spot, by the way. So, I mean, you know, do you think he's going to lower rates right now? Because that would really freak out the bond market. I think he might even have to raise rates. Possibly. But I think the first thing, you know, yeah, it's a political job. We like to say it's so independent and so forth. I mean, he's being accused by Elizabeth Warren of being a sock puppet. For Donald Trump, I guess he's going to do very little in the beginning and probably write some speeches and probably leave rates where they are, even if he needs to raise them. I don't think he's going to raise them because of the overwhelming political pressure not to. From the White House. Yeah. But, Cady, when he was brought into the White House last week, this is the first time a Fed chair was sworn in at the White House since Ronald Reagan swore in Alan Greenspan. Way back in April of 1987. Of course, a few months later, six months later, we had the stock market crash, 22.8% decline in October of 1987. Do you believe Donald Trump? Donald Trump looked over at Kevin Warsh and said, I want you to just go and do a good job, Kevin, and I want you to be independent. And then you saw the guppies going. Do what you need to do. And then the guppies were clapping like, oh, you see, he's. You really believe that? You believe that? I don't believe that for a second. I mean, Donald Trump, he's no dummy. He knows what's happened to the economy because of everything we were speaking about in the first half. He can see what's happened to gas prices. I'm sure he doesn't go around and fill up the beast very often with gas. But if he did, he'd have heart failure because it would cost him so much money. But he has enough people around him telling him that gas prices are high. I filled up my car in Washington last week. I was stunned. Petrol was at. $6.50 a gallon. I mean, that's super high for Americans. It's not very high for Europeans, but it is very high for Americans. And he knows that. He knows that people are not happy about the gas prices. He knows they're not happy about inflation. And when he says the fact that he turns to Kevin Walsh and says to him, okay, you can be independent. You do, Kevin, what you need to do. Completely different, by the way, from what he said to Jay Powell, which was bring down interest rates. I think it is a reflection of the fact that even Trump. Trump realizes that Walsh is in a difficult position and may not be able to bring down interest rates. And if he's looking at the polls, there was an extraordinary CNN poll out just recently showing that he's 70% disapproval of Donald Trump's handling of the economy. In his first term, he never got below 50% disapproval of his handling of the economy. So in that 70%, that's not all Democrats. There are some independent and swing and possibly even Republican voters in that 70%, right? That's a pretty low modern number. I mean, we're down at Herbert Hoover levels, but let's just talk about a few things that Kevin Walsh will likely do. Number one, he's got to give a speech. And I think he gives a speech that tries to differentiate himself from Powell. He doesn't want to be a Powell clone. So he's going to probably talk about restraint or a doctrine of restraint. I think number two, I think he's got to take an opinion on the oil shock. And my guess. My guess is knowing Kevin, he's going to look through the oil shock and not chase it. But I think in the speech, he's going to say that we've got to reset the dot plot in June. And it's just for people listening, what is the dot plot? They have inflation, expected inflation, and then actual inflation. And these are dots on their economic or econometric model. And then based on the data, they make decisions on rates. And I think he's just got to simply say that the. March plot that they've been looking at is quite stale now. It was written before crude peaked at $138, or at least Brent crude peaked there. So I think he's got to get into that with the people and explain to them that he's modernizing this. And I think he's got to signal to people that, listen, I'm looking past the oil shock. You're going to get at least one cut this year. And the goal is to cut twice in the first quarter of 27. And I think if he says that. He's not going to get overly criticized for that, because that's really what the market is seeing. Okay? And so that's where I think he's going. And I think if he says that, I think he gets Trump off of his back pretty early. So those are some of the things that I think he will do. And the last thing, Caddy, is that if you go back to the 1996-1999 productivity study that Alan Greenspan commissioned. So Greenspan was like, we're having massive. productivity gains in the economy as a result of the internet. Let's call that Web 1. And so Greenspan took the position that that was deflationary. That technology typically brings prices down. And I think Warsh is probably going to pull that playbook out. Yeah. And he's probably going to deploy that playbook. I don't know that he will commit to cutting rates this year. I think that will depend slightly on what does happen, even if he doesn't want to talk about it with oil. And that depends on the Straits of Hormuz. If we are really now only entering another 30-day ceasefire, and we're not going to get to even negotiating the opening of the Straits of Hormuz until the end of June, that is knocking up against the midterm election. So let's see what he does about that. I think he's going to commit to a quieter Fed. It's something that he has talked about a lot, where the Fed is not on the front pages all the time. Maybe good luck with that. It depends on how Donald Trump takes to him and whether he manages to keep Donald Trump happy. I think you're right. He's going to talk about an AI productivity boom. He's been talking about this a lot and making the case for the strength of the American economy and bringing down rates based on that AI productivity boom. We're going to be talking about that in our bonus episode for our founding members, because actually there is starting to be a big political story around AI. It is not just the Pope that is talking about AI and ringing some alarm bells. You're starting to get college campuses where AI is being booed every time it's mentioned by speakers, whether it's in terms of productivity or creativity. You're getting in certain states where there are a lot of data centers. You're getting huge pushback from voters left and right against the data centers. People don't like living to them. They make this loud humming noise. They drive up electricity costs because they consume so much energy. I think data centers could be a sleeper issue in these midterm elections in the states where they're being built. So he may have to be a little careful in the way that he talks about AI. That may be something that American politicians are just going to have to start to moderate a little bit on. But whatever Kevin Walsh says, it doesn't get to the fact that Donald Trump is suffering and he's suffering because he failed to deliver on the promise he made the American people. Voters get upset when they think that a president isn't doing the job that they elected them to do. Look at Barack Obama in 2010. He was massacred in the midterm elections because he had spent from 2008 to 2010 focusing on health care and Americans had elected him after the financial crash to come in and do something about the economy and to stimulate growth and to stimulate jobs and to rescue them for the financial crash. He focused on health care instead and it really cost him in terms of the midterm elections and political capital. I think that's what you're getting and the worrying signs. This is not just one poll. The problem for Donald Trump is that you're seeing it in repeated polls. There's a CBS poll showing that he's even underwater with white non-college educated voters. Only 46% approve of the job that he's doing. He cannot be underwater with that group of voters and hope to do well. Now, maybe he doesn't. care. But when he is talking about Iran and he's talking about the reflecting pool and he's talking about the ballroom and he's talking about the arc to Trump, it's no surprise that you've got the Wall Street Journal writing editorials saying that he's lost the governing plot. But I mean, maybe you're right, Anthony, he doesn't care. Maybe he doesn't care about any of that. He cares about the fact that his family's making money, his cronies are making money, but it's not good for the country. I don't think he cares. He wants to make money and he wants to leave monuments to himself in Washington. He's decided that he's stuck a finger in everybody's eye in the establishment and he wants to continue to do that. But here's another irony that I think we should point out to viewers and listeners is that Kevin Walsh is an establishmentarian. And when you go to the people that were in the swearing in ceremony, they were all establishmentarians, okay? Condoleezza Rice, who wrote that big letter for him and put out all those letters, she wrote that big letter for him. She wrote that big letter for him. She wrote that on social media, has been at the Hoover Institute with him. He had Stan Druckenmiller there who he's worked for. My mentor, Ken Langone, the founder of Home Depot, who was on the board of the New York Stock Exchange and the board of General Electric. He's now 90, so he's more or less in retirement. They were all there. And I like that. I'm going to tell you why I like that, because I know guys like Druckenmiller and Langone, and they would be telling somebody like Kevin Walsh, hey man, you don't want to come across as an Erdogan sock puppet employee of Donald Trump. You don't want people to think that he's now captured the money the way Erdogan did in Turkey, where you're experiencing 73% inflation. And Walsh will outlast Trump, right? He knows that. No question. No question. He knows that Trump is there for two years and he's there for another three years after that. Those weird. Washington caddy where the establishment got Trump. And what do I mean by that? George Walker Bush, Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, Glenn Youngkin, any one of those as quote unquote, the Republican president would have picked Kevin Walsh. Bill Clinton, believe it or not, would have picked somebody like a Kevin Walsh. He reappointed Alan Greenspan. And so this is one of those things about Washington where the players, played Trump and got themselves the person that they wanted as Federal Reserve. And so I wish him Godspeed. I like Kevin and I want to see him do well. I know you have a personal relationship with him. And to me, I think he's a very competent, safe pair of hands. But that doesn't mean that he's not going to be tripped up by the current supply shocks that are in the marketplace because of the Trump-Iranian war. He's going to have to have a political mantle of steel because just Trump likes him now doesn't mean that Trump won't turn against him. Trump appointed Jay Powell and turned against Jay Powell. Trump appointed Chris Wray as director of the FBI, and then he turned against Chris Wray. He's quite capable of deciding at the flick of a switch that he doesn't like somebody anymore. And he'll give Kevin Walsh a certain amount of leeway because he wants to show everybody that he made the right choice. But Walsh is going to have to figure it out. And I'm sure he's been having conversations. In fact, I know he's been having conversations with people before he was sworn in how to deal with Trump were Trump to turn against him. I think this is the point. He's an establishmentarian. And like Palin Wray, the gun could get turned to him. We'll have to see what happens. Okay, we're going to leave it there. If you would like to hear more about ICE and the detention centers, that story has not gone away. And it is really important, I think, to keep on it, the situation in those detention centers, the conditions in those detention centers, and how members of Congress are being turned away from trying to do their due oversight from those centers. We'll talk about that in our episode with our founding members. And as I mentioned, we're also going to be talking about AI, which is becoming a political hot potato in the run-up to these midterm elections. Of course, you can become a founding member by joining us at therestispoliticsus.com. We would love to hear from you. And we will take your questions. We will be back with more of the news later this week. Will you be back from Hong Kong? Will you return from Hong Kong by then? I will be back from Hong Kong when we'll be ready to do our next episode. We'll have to see what's going on in the world at that moment, Katty. But as they say, we live in interesting times. We live in exhausting, interesting times. As George W. Bush once said, that's some weird shit, Katty Kay. That's some weird shit. But that's where we are right now. And we'll leave it there. Bye, guys. Bye. Bye. Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile, with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment. Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three-month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. Starting a business can seem like a daunting task, unless you have a partner like Shopify. 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