Trump’s Trying to Squeeze Canada on Trade AGAIN. Here’s Why it Will Backfire

I'm Aina Garten, I'm my new podcast Happy Hour with Aina, I'm inviting really interesting guests to join me for a drink and a fun conversation at my kitchen table in New York City. I'll be getting personal with chefs, actors, comedians, musicians, and writers I admire, so grab a snack, pull up a chair, and join us. Subscribe to Happy Hour with Aina on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes will be available every Wednesday, starting September 16th. Welcome to Raging Moderate, I'm Scott Galway. And I'm Jessica Tarlith. Please make sure to tune into Raging Perspective tomorrow at noon Eastern time. Justin Aaron will be live streaming on Substack and YouTube every Wednesday. Make sure to hit subscribe to get access to all of our content and help our show reach more folks. Trust into it. The Trump administration is racing toward a deadline. After the Supreme Court struck down Trump's emergency tariffs in February, the White House fell back on a 10% global tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act. But that authority expires July 24th, leaving the administration scrambling for new ways to keep tariffs and the revenue they generate or the revenue they lose. One place they could find a Canada, a Trump signed orders Monday imposing 50% tariffs on a range of Canadian goods, including wine, cement, and get this hockey stick. Someone hurts. Here's Scott Besson explaining the rationale. What is the trade discrimination that is at hand causing the President to hike tariffs here on Canada? Well, I think it's something that we've discussed with our Canadian colleagues for a long time. And they haven't done anything about it. They're highly discriminatory on dairy products, U.S. alcohol and beverages have been a little through Canadian shelves. So, this is really just reciprocity in terms of what they've done to our great U.S. companies. You got to feel bad for Scott. That means the talking points mid-sentence. Let me pretzel myself. After taking our stuff off of what he missed, they took our stuff off of shelves after we decided to declare war on our ally. What are your thoughts, U.J.? You know, it's like really hard to push Canadians to the point where they will boycott you, like what they did with Kentucky bourbon, but we found the way. Right? You have aggravated the nicest people on the planet, basically, and it's such a good opportunity to take the off-ramp, right? Like the Supreme Court has given you the way, right? Just take the win, you know, and then walk away, maybe the tail between your legs a little bit, but this continual obsession with a tool that can be useful, used in small increments, right? For specific reasons, to make it this blunt instrument that is not allistening the kind of results that you want is the height of absurdity. And I say it, I guess I've got a lot of things that this administration does, I just don't get it. Like now on a monthly basis, they are paying more out to companies that suffered from the tariffs and that you're taking in and revenues. It's double in double in June is what they saw. And they're quietly doing these updates to the White House website, like yesterday they admitted that the 50% aluminum tariffs aren't working. They wrote the domestic production and supply of primary aluminum, which is critical to the U.S. economy and defense industrial base is still an insufficient supply. It's not working. It's not working. And no one believes you that we have been taken advantage of brutally at this level by Canada or Brazil. And they certainly don't believe you when you say that you have a problem with forced labor practices. We haven't done anything about what China does, and we talked about this yesterday, like there are a million people that live in a concentration camp there. Nobody cares. So it's just hard to take them seriously and usually Scott Besson is decent in these interviews. But the pretzeling was notable on that one. So they probably have to send James and Greer, the trade representative in to clean up there. But no one likes the tariffs, even the staunchest Trump supporters, like Stephen Moore or Maria Barteromo, people who are economically literate understand that this is not a good idea. Yeah. And granted, it's a high bar. But if you were looking for the first ballot, Hall of Fame, head up your ass decision that weekend or reduce the size of our potential market to sell our goods into meanwhile or while raising the costs of goods for households, uh, sclerotic, inconsistent, irrational tariffs on our largest customer would be a pretty elegant way to do that. But people oftentimes don't realize is that Canada buys more US goods. They're a bigger customer of US products than the UK, France, China, and Japan combined. We obsessed over how much China buys Canada dwarfs China in terms of being our biggest customer. And if you think of America as a business, why would you decide to stick up the middle finger to your largest customer over and over and over about nine hundred billion dollars in annual goods and services across the border. And every tariff ultimately ends up in a reciprocal tariff which decreases the potential market for American business products and increases the cost of the products we bring in. And their claim is that trade with Canada asymmetrically benefits Canadians that they've been taking advantage of us. Others, the math, they sell low margin products into the US timber unrefined oil, low margin call it 20 to 30 points of gross margin products. They sell a hundred dollars of timber into us. They make, they hold on to 20 or 30 dollars. We sell iPhones and services. We sell Apple and JP Morgan, things that have 60 plus points of gross margin. In addition, every dollar of gross margin that American companies receive from Canadian purchases of American goods translate to 20 or 30 dollars of shareholder value. Apple trades at a PE of 31 timber and oil companies trade at high single digit multiples. So when we sell a dollar of iPhones into Canada, an American company will recognize about twelve dollars in shareholder value. When they in turn sell a dollar of timber into the United States, they get about two dollars in shareholder value. If there's any asymmetry in the trade with Canada, it wildly skews towards the benefit of Americans. And to give, it reminds me of that animal house line where Otter says to his fraternity brother or the pledge, she was stupid enough to let the brothers borrow his parents car and they trash it. He says, you fucked up, you trusted us. That is effectively how Canada must feel right now because eighty percent of their export market was going into the US. Why? Because they fucked up and trusted us and thought, okay, we share the largest, undefended border in the world. We look smell and feel like each other. We like each other. We go to Disneyland, you watch Maple Leafs and Raptors games. We followed you into every war or we're there before you, including World War Two or Afghanistan or Iraq or Gulf Wars one and two. We thought we were close friends and now you are basically taking a knife and going for our jugular, but before that stabbing yourself in the gut. This is, it is absolutely baffling how we could be this stupid that we have taken a country that simultaneously our largest customer, our largest ally, perhaps our most loyal ally. And then all of a sudden for no reason decided that there are biggest villain. The transition from, oh my god, we put on this incredible world cup as North America, right? Like this, this was the unified front to the day after we hand over the trophy to the Spanish team and there's, I think, unilaterally good vibes and good press about what just transpired. To then say we're going to hit you with a 50% tariff, feels even more insane. Like that there's a deep rot in this man and this man, I'm talking about the President of the United States, brain that he could go from such a high point moment where he was clearly enjoying himself, right, on that reception line with the Canadian and Mexican PM and President respectively. So that transition feels like a bit of whiplash. And I was interested in the FT reporting on the new tariffs where apparently officials within the administration are very concerned about this because they know that liberation day for Trump was basically the Afghanistan withdrawal for Biden where the approval rating went down and it never came back up that they dug this hole that they can't get out of. And so it'll be interesting to see if they have any sway with him on this, they're paying attention to the polls, they're looking at the midterms, Laura Ingram, last night you had a turn on. log to say Republicans need to get out of the war in Iran, the gas now on a national level above $4.00. You can't win a midterm under these circumstances. So the battle is beginning with the internal pushback, I guess, against President Trump, as he sits there gleefully signing away our economic future and pushing Mark Carney even further into the loving arms of Europe. We have a new prime minister, our seventh in just a decade in Britain. Andy Burnham is officially the new prime minister during his first cabinet meeting today. He declared we need to be a cost of living government. President Trump took the truth social to support Burnham's plan to accelerate oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, but also called the UK a poverty-stricken disaster. Let's listen to a bit from Burnham yesterday on his first day. In the 1980s, Britain took some wrong turns. Political power was centralised, economic power privatised, large parts of the country deindustrialised and they still haven't recovered. Many feelers are there still in decline and they don't have the ability to turn things around and that's why we will change politics and we will take power out of here and carry it into every postcode in the land so that they can do more and in doing more build a new economy. It's kind of of me saying how no matter which country you tune into, they're having the same conversations right now, right? Anyone who's winning an election is saying the same thing about cost of living. The question will be who can actually fix it. I did love that he started off his first day as Prime Minister at a homeless shelter making breakfast for the folks who are there. This is a cause near and dear to his heart. He donated 15% of his salary every year when he was mayor of Birmingham to homelessness charities and his big thing is that he's going to end rough, they call it rough sleeping. Our homelessness and the first policy that he's enacted is a VAT cut for domestic energy bills. A cost of living focus, all to the good. I wonder if you're coming seventh in a decade, how do you think you would be thinking about it? Because there's a part of me that thinks you should just have in the back of your mind. I could be another six or 12 month notch, right? Or I could really be the one to break this streak and this pattern and deliver for Britain's. It certainly seems from his speech that he wants to do these big things and to make this massive change. Yeah, it feels to me like that is all weak saw, some populist blah, blah, with no actionable strategy. Prime Minister Starmer, Kirschstarmer, had nice vibes, said the right things and couldn't outline what he stood for. Principles or actual programs are going to enact. Britain is desperate for the type of, I'm in first off, he just historically gets it wrong here. The 80s and 90s were actually arguably boom periods. I've been going to the UK since the 70s. They want to return to the glory of the 60s and 70s when they were just a meddling power in what felt like an inexorable downward spiral. It was stature and I would argue Tony Blair was strong private property laws that attracted a lot outside capital and London had a boom and if he wants, if he wants a demon in terms of a moment, he should go to Brexit, which arguably was the greatest own goal in the history of Europe. I mean, at some point there's going to need to be a leader that stands up and says, we screwed up with Brexit, we need to reencorp, we need backseat and we need growth again. Britain is a case study and what happens when a country loses productivity growth. UK productivity growth has been essentially flat for a decade. GDP growth is projected below 1%. Real wages are about the same as they were before Brexit. Public services are under pressure despite historically high tax burdens. Britain keeps changing prime ministers because it's easier to replace the CEO than fix the business model. The political instability isn't the problem here. It's or the disease. It's the symptom. The disease is stagnant productivity and somebody is going to have to actually take an popular view and say, Brexit was stupid. We need to reintegrate into the EU and expand our market while lowering the cost for our consumers. We need to jumpstart growth or invest in technology or find ways to attract more business and more capital here. Also, the non-dom tax policy is just so indicative of England and Europe. In Europe, they'd rather be more equal even if it comes at the cost of the whole. In the US, loosely speaking, we're comfortable with inequality as long as as a whole we're doing better. I would argue that's no longer happening. The inequality has gotten so out of control that it's actually now eating its own tail and costing the whole. The non-dom tax policies that were enacted I think was 24 months ago, they want to tickle the censors of the upper middle class and understandably say the rich should pay their fair share and if you've relocated from Hong Kong, at some point you need to help, you need to pay your fair share. That theoretically makes all the sense in the world. The problem is the tax, the treasury is going to collect less receipts this year than they did before because these millionaires are mobile and just as they choose to relocate to London, they're now choosing to relocate to other places. But the European and British people would rather feel good about themselves and about these principles than have the revenue for the NHS and food stamps for the poor. This is just the story of Britain, just a series of own goals, whether it's IPOs that they decide are not ethical so they find other markets to go public in, whether it's an inability to maintain tech companies because of regulation. It's such a tragedy because the UK has all of the underpinnings of what could be one of the most robust economies in the world, incredible intellectual property, fantastic, some of the best educational institutions in the world, an incredible culture and culture does compound. People do move to a place they want to live in and yet they can't get out of their own way and cost of living, he wants to call himself the cost of living government. Cost of living isn't solved by speeches, it's solved by productivity and there's absolutely no programs he has proposed that would result in capital formation or something resembling an increase in productivity. Let's give him more than 24 hours. Fair enough. Fair enough. We'll see what comes. Big shakeups in the cabinet as well as to be expected though keeping some like the home secretary is staying on. I thought that the, you know, change in approach to oil and gas was notable. President Trump likes it. He's already on true social saying people are dancing in the streets because the new Prime Minister Andy Burnham has stated that he'll be opening up all the way, the invaluable North Sea oil. We'll see what that is. Keir Starmer, at least by the time he was leaving, had figured out how to deal with Trump. It will be interesting to see what Burnham does there, but I love the idea of him coming out and saying, we're going to try to unravel Brexit. Whether I like Brexit, but however you want to do it, I think it would be such a relief to the Brits to hear that there is someone focused on this. Now that it's, I think about 60%. It was like 53% regretted it right after it happened and I think it's up to 60% now and be hard-pressed even get a good conservative defense of it and the implications. They're obviously immigration issues and all of these countries and they're paying attention to it, but I think that that would be a very smart hill to die on if that's what happens or just, you know, something to anchor yourself in and make you very popular from the Gecko. But a new era. Hi, I'm Bella Freud. Each week on fashion neurosis, I invite guests from the world of fashion, art, film, music, sport and literature to lie on my couch and explore the connection between identity and fashion. This week on fashion neurosis, I welcome Antony Vacarello. Lethics was kind of fetish for me. It's true that yeah, I'm starting to twelfth turn at Salon when I understand that you can twist things that seem classic. It took me a while to understand the code of Salon and that Salon was mostly playing with code with the good taste and bad taste and that Lethics collection was like a deliverance to me to be able to explore things that was not able to do it before. Find fashion neurosis on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. Hey there, it's Sue Bird. You know the drill. Another week, another new episode of Bird's I View. This week I'm thrilled to be joined by Australia's most notable women's basketball player and my former Seattle storm teammate Lauren Jackson. She talks about the pros and cons of going pro at 16, the Opel's legendary Thieber World Cup run in 2006. and how her role on a team differs between international tournaments and the WNBA. Plus in Sue's view I answer your questions about the Yukon documentary that came out. Make sure to check out Bird's Eye View on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. What's up everybody? It's Kim Hayward, Steelers captain and host of Notches Football. We just sat down with Aaron Rodgers, four-time MVP, Super Bowl Champion, Future Hall of Famer for one of the most open and honest conversations we've ever had on the show. There were so much to get into, we had to split in the two parts. Part one is out right now and trust me, you don't want to miss. Aaron gives us his real story behind coming back for one final season. We also talk about how he was ready to retire once Mike T stepped down and how reuniting with McCarthy changed everything. We get into playing with Mike T for one more year. This year's squad, the old team narrative, who stood out this summer and what it's like to be in the quarterback. Aaron also opens up about what he still has left to have accomplished this season and what it looks like when he hangs it up with it. And that's only part one. Part two drops this Thursday. That's when we go beyond football. The media, the conspiracy theories. What people still get wrong about Aaron Rodgers, his legacy, Super Bowl ring, the Goat, the Bay, and the overrated and underrated where things really get off limits. Part one is out right now. Part two drops this Thursday, September 10th. Watch Not Just Football with Cam Hayward on YouTube. Or listen to Spotify, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. We're joined now by Senator Mark Kelly, Arizona. So, Senator, thanks for being here on Raging Modders. Good to be here. So, today's a primary day in your state. We're now 105 days out from the midterms. What are the Trump endorsed Republicans running on your neck of the woods? What are you expecting to see tonight? Well, we've got primaries on our side. Primaries on their side. There are some Trump endorsed candidates, two House members. I think they're trying to out-magga each other here. And then see if they can get through a general election, which I find very unlikely. Our governor, Katie Hobbs, has done a good job. She's solving the problems that the people in Arizona are dealing with. But we have House primaries as well. There is candidate that I endorse in CD1, Marlene Galan Woods, who I think is the right person to solve some of these really tough problems that we have in this country. She's an experienced journalist. So, she has experience holding people accountable, politicians accountable, locally, in general. But I think it's the right moment for somebody like her to serve in the United States Congress. The kind of the big story in New York has been the rise of the Democratic Socialist wing of the party. Are you seeing, and to be fair, that feels like part of the energy right now is on the Democratic side. Are you seeing any sort of similar trends in your home state senator? Well, we haven't seen a ton of it. Not like, you know, what we've been seeing in other places. Though I think when you see that in places like New York City and, you know, other, you know, maybe in the Midwest. I think you're seeing a reaction to just the challenges that regular people have right now. And that the government just isn't stepping up to meet their challenges. And what we see with this administration is they're looking out for the rich people. For billionaires, for Donald Trump's friends. For the people who have written the million dollar check to be a member of Mar-a-Lago, or the bigger check to fund his ballroom. Those are the people they didn't take care of. And hardworking middle class people are just left behind. And if you're a young person in the country today, I mean, what opportunity do you have to, let's say, buy a home. Last October, I took my 30-year-old daughter to see the house that we lived in when I was 30 and she was one. She doesn't remember the place. It's near the Navy base where I was stationed for a bedroom house. Nice neighborhood. End of a call the sack. We knock on the door. The guy sold the house to the 1990s. He was still there. And he recognizes me, cited to see me. We go in. I think your show, the five was on, on Fox. But he was happy to see me. We walk around the house and we get in the car. And the first thing my 30-year-old daughter says to me is she says, "Dad, I don't understand." You were able to buy that house in that neighborhood. And you were my age. And you were in the Navy. What the hell happened? I mean, that's not for her and her friends and her husband. People who have done everything right. That's not like in the world of possibilities for them. And you can multiply that a million times across the country. So this government, and it's not just Donald Trump. It's governments before them have failed hardworking people. And the 1% now owns as much of this country as the middle class. Think about that for a second. That is not a healthy place. So I think what you're seeing is a reaction to the reality of the lack of opportunity in our country today. Senator, it's great to have you and obviously following your work for a while. And I do want to dig into that lengthy Atlantic profile, which was an incredible read on a number of levels. But I want to talk first about your new legislation. This is, you know, right up Scott's alley. Could you talk a little bit about the legislation and how you formed the bipartisan group to get this done? So you don't hear that term very often. That something bipartisan is actually happening. Well, it's too specific pieces of legislation. And it's actually directed at solving the problem of too few men in the classroom. I had a male teacher in the fifth and sixth grade. There weren't a lot of male teachers back then either, but there were more. It was like 35% now it's 25%. The number is going down. Young men and boys need good male role models. I had them in my life, coaches, teachers. When I got in the Navy, my department had a commanding officer. I think my one of my first commanding officers in a Navy squadron was a great role model. For me, his name was Terry Tom's. So I've had great role male role models. So we need more male teachers. So one piece of legislation provides training where you can be paid to get training so you could become a teacher for men. Similar thing in mentorships. Having programs like AmeriCorps as an example prioritize the recruitment of men. There's a long list. I mean, the list of young boys or boys and young men signed up for mentors is much longer than the one where girls are signing up for mentors. So we have this lack of mentorship. So it solves those two problems. One thing on the mentorship side and not the teaching side is bipartisan. We're working on getting Republicans on board with the other piece of legislation as well. We have a lot of young people, especially a lot of young men and women who listen to the show. I saw that for the first time the armed services met its recruiting targets for the first time in about a decade. I'm curious, when someone approaches you, Senator, and says, you know, I'm looking for something to do. Quite frankly, I'm looking for purpose. I'm looking to advance my skills. I'm looking for a place to be, a place to make some progress as a young man or woman. And they say, what kind of person is the armed services suited for? And just as importantly, what kind of person is it not suited for? What advice do you give the young people regarding service? Well, I think public service is so important, and it's not just about helping your country. I think often it helps the individual, you know, to have that experience, to do something and be involved in something that's larger than themselves. You know, I experienced that in my 25 years of active duty, you know, multiple jobs that I've had in the United States Navy, including, you know, going to war for our nation in 1991, the first Gulf War. So I think people get something out of that kind of service. I encourage people to go into the military. I am not a supporter of a lot of the actions that the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is taking within our military. I find a lot of it very troubling and concerning, but I still encourage people to serve. I was recently talking to a young guy who was about to graduate from Yale University. That because he spent some time in England, he was thinking about maybe going into the British military. And I told him, "Hey, we need you. We need people like you in the U.S. military as a U.S. citizen. It's got dual citizenship." And I convinced him to, you know, stay on the path. He's about to go to infantry school. He just finished basic. Graduate of Yale, we need smart people who are mission-oriented and mission-focused. That's the kind of folks we want in the military. One problem we have now in recruiting, and you do say the numbers are up, and that's the numbers reported by the military right now. And I do, to some extent, believe that. One of the challenges we had previously in recruiting is, you know, a lot of, you know, maga kind of folks and Republicans were just overinflating this whole wokeness within the military. I never saw that. I think it's a bunch of crap. But I think it did to some extent. extant depress, you know, recruitment. So the recruitment numbers are up. That's great. We want people to serve. One of the challenges we have is how many people are eligible to serve in the United States military? We got folks that can't pass the physical, can't pass the medical, and can't pass the written exam, 'cause they can't read well enough. You have to be able to read a decent level and pass the ASVAB, which is the exam to get in the military. And one way we can solve that, and we've tried to address this before. I brought it up in the Armed Services Committee a number of times as pre-K. Because if you go to pre-K, you're more likely to be able to read in the third grade, and if you can read in the third grade, you're probably gonna be able to read at a high school level and graduate from high school. That's a really good point that you're making about depressing military signups in the year before this. And it is a good thing, obviously, when people are signing up and want to serve our country, and I certainly share your critiques of what's going on at the Department of Defense. By extension of what you were just talking about, what service did for you and for so many others, what do you think about a system of mandatory national service for the country, not necessarily that you have to go into the armed forces, but some give back function and some call it our gap year or our two years before you go off to college, where you do something that supports the country. - I think we should do it, whether it's, and it doesn't have to be serving in the military, that should be one of the options. It could be AmeriCorps, it could be Teach For America. It could be, maybe we create a program where people go into like caregiving. We've got a lack of well-trained sufficient, caregivers for an elderly population. So that's something we could do as well. And what I've noticed about this is it does seem to have strong bipartisan support, but we've never been able to get the appropriate legislation across the finish line. But thank you, I think it's a reminder that we need to continue to focus on this, because I think it would make us a better country. We're also deporting a lot of our best caregivers with revoking the TPS programs. For instance, the Haitians are incredible caregivers. I'm curious, what do you think is gonna happen with the war in Iran? - It's hard to say, I mean, because Donald Trump got himself into a position, he's finding it very hard to get out of. We don't know for sure why he started this thing. Initially he said it was about regime change. We're gonna bomb for a few days. There'll be new government. They're gonna be friendly to us. He doesn't listen to people around him. And I don't think he thinks very strategically. When it was obvious to him that that wasn't gonna happen after the first few days, then he transitioned to, this is about enriched uranium and nuclear weapons. The Iranians were not racing to get a nuclear weapon. That bullshit they say about, well, that he says about in two weeks they were gonna have a nuclear weapon, that is not true. Then it became ballistic missiles, then the Navy. So he is flailing on this and either he didn't hear it or they didn't tell him or he didn't take it seriously that the Iranians can shut down the straight or hormones pretty easily right now. So now he finds himself in a spot where he's gotta evaluate like bad choices. Probably the only deal he can make that they would accept is something that was better than the one he tore up in 2018. And I don't think this president's gonna want the criticism he's gonna get from that. He tore up the JCPOA. It had enrichment below 4%. I think he would like to go back to where we were in February. The problem is it's very hard to put the ship back in the donkey and you can't just undo this stuff, right? So now he could walk away from it but then they have control of the straight or hormones. The other option is he could escalate this and invade Carg Island or do some ground invasion over the Iranians. Here's the problem. Presidents like Donald Trump and people that go into this government often think you drop a bomb on something and that solves your problems. Air power is not the solution to strategic problems. It just isn't. And the addition of ground troops, we'd be seeing thousands and thousands of dead Americans. I don't think that's the answer either. But I'll tell you what definitely isn't the answer is having his son-in-law and his buddy negotiate this thing. Find people that have experience. It's not just like this coincidence that the best person in the country to negotiate it happens to be a son-in-law. We need experienced and serious people doing this. And then the other thing I think he could do and would be figure out what levers you have to put more economic pressure on him. And at this point, I would suggest we just stop killing people. I know Pete Hegseth, he's made it very clear. He likes to kill a lot of people. He ran around on a stage saying maximum lethality, we're gonna kill people and setting records on bombing stuff. But that is not working. So if the thing you're doing is not working, do something else. Senator, you've become one of the Democratic Party's top fundraisers, raising roughly 25 million and contributing about 10 million to other candidates, which shows a remarkable ability to raise money, which is a precondition or a criteria for running for president. And I'm trying to think of an elegant way to get to whether or not you're running. Just do it, just say it. Get, follow me here and see if this works. As someone who has constantly mentioned on a short list of people who would get a decent amount of support to run for president, invite us into the decision process of someone who is obviously called on a lot, has the ability to raise money, has seen as a viable candidate. Has, you know, you're out of central casting to be a candidate. What is the decision process that someone goes through on evaluating obviously what is a pretty significant decision for you and your family? Like, give, let us, to the extent you're willing to let us. What is your decision process around this? Well, I usually give a very short answer to this. And I know you're not looking for that 'cause you asked a long question. Haven't decided. Which I'm fantasy. I'm a science data facts person. I'm a little bit unusual in this whole political world. You know, I think there's two or three engineers in the United States Senate, I'm one of them. You know, I've always made decisions based on what are the facts. You know, what are the numbers show? I care a lot about numbers. So we're taking a look at, you know, whether there's a path, whether I'm the right person for the job right now. And then the family thing is a big piece of this. You know, I take this stuff very seriously. I really do. It is a lot different than making a decision to run for Senate. Which by the way is not something I, you know, I had, you know, thought of my entire life. The people used to talk to me about it after Gabby was injured and I was living in Arizona. But it wasn't something I really took seriously. Until I had this young woman who came up to me who had a kid with Down syndrome and she told me, she thought her kid was gonna lose his health insurance. And she asked me if I would consider running for the US Senate. So I told her I would and four months later, I was a candidate. So it's kind of like that. I think some of these people who run for president have been thinking about this since they were in the third grade. That is not me, you know, I wanted to go to, you know, I wanted to be the first person to walk on the planet Mars. I failed miserably at this. I didn't get close. There is still time. So I haven't made a decision yet, but I do things rather methodically. - Just last question for the senator. - It's not really a question, more of a statement. I just wanted to say that I think that Gabby would be an incredible first lady if that is a decision that you choose to make. And I think that your example in service and also in love and humanity is an incredibly important one for us here in America and globally. And I'm just very appreciative of what you two have done for the country. - Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. Thank you. - All right, let's leave it there. Amongst other things, Senator Markelli succeeded at the highest level in three elite professions, Navy combat pilot, 39 combat missions during Operation Desert Storm, NASA astronaut who flew four space shuttle missions and commanded the final flight of endeavor and a U.S. Senator from one of the country's from their swing states. I was described as one of the few people. I think the only person in the Senate who has capped in a vehicle of 30,000 miles an hour, Senator Calibur very much appreciate your time today. - Hey, thank you guys. - So like any good millennial, I have a love-hate relationship with Gen Z. It's the phenomenon rattling millennials. - They just look at you. - They want something bigger themselves, lifestyle's a priority. - The motivation is being inspired. - But regardless of how you feel about Gen Z, it's undeniable that they're changing national politics. - Generation Z is increasingly showing less loyalty to traditional political parties. Many now more likely, to identify as independent. So what is going on with the kids? I think the biggest misconception about Gen Z's politics right now is that all of a sudden they're all socialists. That is just not the case. Yeah, yeah. They are embracing candidates who are offering new bold ideas in the absence of those ideas from establishment Democrats. This week on America actually, Gen Z researcher Rachel Jemphazza joins us to separate Gen Z fact versus fiction. It's not rocket science and this is, you know, I keep saying like young voters aren't that complicated after all. It's pretty simple. Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. You've DMed me at 2am asking if you should panic about your 401k. You've paid an advisor a thousand dollars for one question. You've googled what is a rollover for the 10th time and still aren't sure. On this week's episode of Network in Chill, I'm revealing my biggest secret. I finally built something to help address your finance woes. It's called Astdali, short for dollar and it's about to become your newest financial companion. Astdali diagnoses your financial strengths and weaknesses, answers your toughest money questions and makes economic news headlines actually relatable and connects you to real human certified financial planners so anyone can make the right financial move regardless of their bank balance. No jargon, no judgment, no, you don't have enough assets for us. I'm breaking down exactly how Astdali works and why I built her on this week's episode of Network in Chill, you're not going to want to miss this. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts are on youtube.com/yourrichbf. Is the U.S. military facing a leadership crisis? It would be an obligation on the part of Secretary of Hegseth and President Trump to say, "Look, here's why these officers didn't meet our standards." And it can't be because they were politically aligned with somebody they didn't like. I'm John Feiner and I'm Jake Sullivan and we're the hosts of The Long Game, a weekly national security podcast. This week, Admiral Bill McCraven joins us to reflect on the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and what the firings and resignations of senior military leaders mean for the Armed Forces. Search for and follow The Long Game, wherever you get your podcasts. Just thoughts on Senator Kelly as a presidential candidate? Worthy of being on that stage, for sure. I like that he said, you know, "I'll look at the facts and I'll look at the data." And the data is that this guy wins a state that we need to win the same calculation, we'll be going through Josh Shapiro's mind, right? There's no route without Pennsylvania or very limited. So I liked him a lot and we're, you know, we co-host a show called Raging Moderates and that's what Mark Kelly is. So it was very cool to have him. I've wanted to talk to him for a long time. What were your thoughts? Well, I'm a big fan of the centers and I'm really excited about this legislation to try and get more, more males in the teaching profession. I think that it's just nice to see, I think the dialogue has come so far and it's nice to see our elected leaders actually proposing specific programs in legislation to address the issue instead of acknowledging it or not acknowledging it or turning it into a culture war. So I'm appreciative that the Senator is a person who listens and then says, "All right, what can we do about it?" I think that if he doesn't ultimately become the nominee, he's probably going to be number one or number two on everyone's short list to be their VP pick because of the reasons you stated, military service swing stay. America has a tendency to go in a very different direction from a personality and political leaning standpoint when it goes from one president to the other. So military service, I think the most accretive thing about his presidency would not just be that he seems like a reasonable guy who has good relationships in the Senate but that he wouldn't be in our goddamn face every day. I feel like the biggest tax cut would be an emotional tax cut where we didn't have to hear from the fucking president every goddamn day on everything. It just feels like a pollutant that we're gagging on and he doesn't strike me as someone who needs, who's always jonesing for the camera or needs to comment on the Taylor Swift tour. So I think that would be, I hope and wonder if the American public is ready for literally a 180, not even from a political standpoint, from just from a complexion or a personality standpoint. The difficult thing is that I don't know, Senator Kelly strikes me as someone who just does not have the desire to be big on social media and that's just not him. And I wonder if he has what I'll call the social media or the new media Riz. He's not prone to dramatic statements. He's not prone. He's not good with 15 seconds sound bites. He's the kind of guy who's a thoughtful, measured, you know, adult. And I wonder if our media ecosystem has left that behind or if that person can be a small donor recipient. That's my only, that's my fear around handicapping the race that one end, maybe America will be very much drawn to a different type of person. But I wonder in this era of a clip economy, if he's, if he's cut out for it. I think he'll be cut out for it if he has a great editor who can splice this stuff up. I mean, just in talking to us, he dropped a couple well time bullshit. I mean, his fight with Pete Hegseth is the stuff of social media dreams, right? That it's not only, you know, pointed and accurate criticism, but that he has the bonafides and the swagger to back it up. I mean, I reference that profile and the Atlantic of him, which is worth everyone's time. But it's all about how this guy's not scared of anything. Like, how do you think that you're going to scare the pilot, right? The combat veteran pilot or the astronaut or the guy who was told that his wife was dead and had to live with that for 20 minutes and then wait for a week for her to wake up. And it's still being asked things like, do you think America is ready for a disabled first lady? There's a tough guy thing going on with him that and how much is bottled up in that person, how many dimensions there are to his level of expertise and to his personality? I think he could thrive. It will not be as inherently oozing out of him as like a Gavin News song, but I think that people who are looking for swagger will see it in Markelli and he will be an interesting entrance if he is going to on the more moderate side of the field, squaring off of against if it's AOC or whoever will be the progressive standard bear. Yeah, and I now wish I'd brought it up, but it just seems so insane and it seems pretty obvious. And I would argue Fox does this. They assess and the public and party assess who the most likely or most viable candidates are for president. And then, you know, it's one thing when Fox attacks them every day as they did with Secretary Clinton as I believe they're doing with Governor Newsom now, but when the administration goes after, you know, basically a combat veteran who is, you know, whose life sort of is synonymous with service and accused them of sedition, which is a crime punishable by death. I'm just really shocked that more Republicans and veterans didn't come out and say, okay, this is this is just, this has gone way too far. Do you, you were probably following this clip more closely than me? What did you see his reaction there? I saw it, you know, Republicans treating Trump with kid gloves, but also not piling on, right? Because it was the group, the sex, the seditious sex or all veterans. So I think that they were basically like, this is going to be better if we back off of it. And you didn't see the usual, oh, he's got a point. They shouldn't have done it. And it was coming. And I don't talk about that story that much anymore, but this was right after the taking down of the fishermen in the Caribbean, right, that we were blowing up Venezuelan boats and claiming that they were narcoteric and that the admiral in charge of Southern Command left his job. Designed. Right. Yeah. So I think that there are moments where certainly the veterans in the Senate and the house on the Republican side think that it's better to say nothing to get it to go away, rather than inflaming it into a bigger kerfuffle. But it would have been interesting to ask him also what kind of private support he was getting during that because they got tons of death rats. A list of slokkin was saying that her dad, a week before he died, was swatted, actually, and he said he wanted to come back, so wow, next time.