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Feb. 20, 2026 - The Culture War - Tim Pool
26:51
SCOTUS Strikes DOWN Trump Tariffs, Trump Says He Has "Backup Plan"

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26:04
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Speaker Time Text
Slapping the Desk Wave 00:02:08
tate brown
What is going on Patriots?
This is Tate Brown here holding it down on this beautiful Friday.
I'm going to get into slapping the desk.
I think that's going to be the wave on Fridays.
It's really just letting this desk have it.
I don't know.
Do you guys like that or not?
Let me know.
Because in the later, in the second half of the show, we are going to have a mailbag portion.
And by that, I mean I'm going to open up chat against my will because you guys are freaks.
You guys are absolute psychopaths.
But we're going to open chat.
We're going to chop it up.
We're going to mix it up.
And I want you guys to drop in nuclear hot takes.
I'm going to be reading pretty much everything.
Probably not reading an act of threats against my life because that could potentially cause some legal issues.
I've been informed by our lawyers.
But apart from that, I will pretty much read everything.
That would spike your cortisol.
That would spike my cortisol, which would be a big issue.
Speaking of, all I've had, I haven't had any food today, and all I've had to drink is this Yerb.
I'm big on the Yerbs, the Yerba Madre.
They do not sponsor our show, so I feel comfortable slandering them.
This flavor is horrible.
I think I'm going to probably, at some point in the show, vomit all over this desk because like this is all I've had in this day, just water and this Yerba Madre.
So there is a chance that I completely, my innards just, I just vomit them all over the desk.
So we'll see if that happens.
That would be a good clip, I think.
That would be quite exciting.
So with that, before we get into the show, we do have some exciting stories.
Obviously, you guys have seen by now.
The Supreme Court of the United States has weighed in on the Trump emergency tariffs and they have struck them down.
Now, a lot of people are coming completely unglued.
They're saying the country is wrecked, et cetera, et cetera.
I don't think that's the case.
Trump has already said he has a backup plan.
It is true that these tariffs, the specific tariffs they struck down, make up about 70% of our tariff regime.
So it will cause some issues.
That is for sure.
But I'm not completely blackpilled here.
I think we can work around this.
I'll get into why.
Ooh, see, there we go.
I might vomit all over the desk.
We'll see what happens.
But we're going to get into all the tariff action.
I have a few interesting stories, some more cultural stories, seeing as it is Friday, casual Friday, if you will.
That's why I'm wearing a hat.
Rumble Wallet: Control Your Money 00:02:22
tate brown
I got my Clarkson's Farm hat on.
My girlfriend got this for me.
I'm very excited.
I think Jeremy Clarkson is going to stand for MP and Don Caster for Restore Britain to save the West.
I think it would be really something.
So I'm showing solidarity by wearing the Clarkson's Farm hat, Deadly Squat Farms.
With that, we got all our stories we're going to get into.
I'm going to fight the urge to vomit all over the desk.
I think that's actually like a, if you go in Calci right now, probably 20% odds if I had to guess.
Before we get into all these stories today and our mailbag portion, I do have a quick word from our sponsor.
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Why We Should Be Afraid 00:03:04
tate brown
With that, let's just jump right in.
But this first story, probably even of more magnitude than the tariffs.
You know, everyone is saying, wow, these tariffs are a serious blow against the Trump administration.
It's a serious L. How are we going to recover?
That's not the L I'm concerned about.
I'm really terrified by this.
We have from the New York Post, dancers reenact the ice shooting of Renee Goode and Alex Pretty through performance protests.
Quite frankly, this is what really scares me.
You know, the Supreme Court, the judicial system sort of really running the show in this country is not what makes me afraid.
I'm not worried about these activist judges or the Supreme Court giving us unfavorable results.
I am afraid of this.
Take a look, folks.
Oh my goodness.
unidentified
Oh, wow.
Oh, no.
Oh, wow.
Look at this.
tate brown
Oh, oh no.
No, no, no.
Wow, this is powerful.
This really is powerful.
Oh, no.
She's down.
unidentified
Oh, no.
tate brown
Protests are down.
She's being ascended, I presume, hoisted into the heavens.
It's a bold acclaim from these protesters.
Now they've taken the tires.
So I presume this is reenacting Detroit.
Oh, my gosh.
Oh, no.
This is the Alex Party.
So as you can see here, you know, this is in our nation's capital.
Obviously, as you saw, this was taking place outside of the Kennedy Center.
This has to strike fear into the heart of the Trump administration, strike fear into the heart of patriots everywhere.
The performative dances have begun.
I didn't think the left would go there.
You know, they've been terrorizing conservatives, you know, political violence, you know, law affair.
We've seen all sorts of things, the Biden administration, the evil actions that they conducted.
But quite frankly, this is crossing the line, I would say.
This is really a petrifying situation.
They have engaged in a performative dance protest.
And I have to say, I'm really nervous.
I don't know about you guys in the audience.
You know, again, like I said, we've withstood a lot.
And I'm not afraid.
You know, I'm really not afraid of all these threats made against us and these sorts of things.
Again, I'm not afraid.
I'm willing to stand for what I believe in.
I'm willing to die, quite frankly, for this country, for my beliefs.
But this, this really is absolutely petrifying, quite frankly.
I was shaking like a Parkinson's victim.
I'm absolutely terrified of this.
And we really need the DOJ to act swiftly here because, quite frankly, this can't go on, these performative dances.
I mean, this is going to sway even the most loyal of Trump supporters, even the most loyal plan trusters, I think, might see this and they might be swayed over to the left.
Really petrifying stuff.
So, with that, I wanted to re-emphasize that this is truly what's important.
This is truly what we need to be worried about as MAGA supporters, as Trump supporters, or anyone just concerned at the country at large.
Something Not as Important 00:08:21
tate brown
Something not as important as the Supreme Court's decision today.
You know, it's whatever compared to the performative protest.
Okay, what?
A bunch of people in robes made a decision on what Trump can do.
Okay, big whoop.
All that to be said, this is quite a serious situation.
So, the SCODIS ruled against President Trump's tariffs today.
Again, is it an incorrect decision?
Okay, who knows?
Neither here nor there.
There's fairly interesting here.
So this is from America First Insight.
This is the commentary they put together.
There's a 6-3 ruling.
SCOTUS struck down the Trump tariffs.
They struck down a portion of the Trump tariffs.
So the Trump tariffs that he used, that he implemented using emergency action, that is what they struck down.
Again, this makes up about 70% of the tariffs.
I will open up the stats here real quick just to really hone in on this.
So 70% of new tariff value was under the EIEPA, which is again like emergency tariffs.
This is what you see, the 10% universal tariff, and then the country-specific tariffs, like the 25% to 35% that we saw in Canada and Mexico, the 30% we saw in China.
So there's two other sections of tariffs that were not, that are unaffected by this ruling, which is Section 232, which is sector-specific.
So that would be like 50% tariffs on steel, aluminum, copper imports, 25% on auto parts.
The other one's section 301, which is continued China tariffs.
That's about 10% of the remaining tariffs.
That's also not affected by this SCOTUS ruling.
This affects entirely the IEEPA, which is the emergency tariffs.
So this is from America First Insight.
This is the commentary they put.
This is a great account.
Actually, I need to be following what's going on here.
Embarrassing.
I'm not following him.
I am now.
This marks the first major legal defeat for the Trump administration, but it also is certainly not the end of tariffs.
I think this is absolutely correct.
As with the Biden administration's student loan forgiveness, the policy can be re-implemented with a slightly different legal basis and probably go through the whole song and dance.
Again, SCOTUS did not touch the idea of refunds for tariffs.
So if you look here, here's the 6-3 decision.
Obviously, these people are useless, Gorsuch and Barrett.
I mean, Roberts, at this point, we know he's a liberal.
He has no teeth, these sorts of things.
That's not surprising.
But again, every time you see Gorsuch and Barrett switch sides here, it's really offensive.
It really is.
And it's just like, what's the point?
I mean, Kavanaugh, for what it's worth, he's received a lot of ire over the years, but fair enough.
He has voted to keep tariffs.
And if you go and I think it's worth reading Kavanaugh's dissent that he wrote on this decision, he basically lays this out, what America First Insights is saying here is they're saying this decision is not the end of tariffs by any stretch.
And Kavanaugh actually lays out the other avenues that Trump can do to, again, re-implement these tariffs, but in a legal manner.
Let me find it here.
I had it.
I had it in the stack.
I don't know what happened to it, but that's effectively what Kavanaugh is doing.
Kavanaugh is just laying out, you know, just re-implement these.
You can re-implement these, you know, sign the dotted line on a few different forms, and we should be able to re-implement these tariffs.
It is really not the end of the world.
Some people are engagement farming on Twitter today, and they're coming out and saying the country is ruined, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
The tariff regime is over.
This is like the end of our economic policy.
That is really just not the case.
Again, Trump himself said here, this is good.
Kellen put this in the stack.
Trump are brutally lawmogged by Scotus for tariff maxing, a decision that is sure to specify the White House's cortisol.
All this is true and it's in jest.
Trump has already said here, he has a backup plan for tariffs after the Supreme Court ruled his tariffs to be illegal.
Again, his entire team has anticipated that this would happen.
So again, they have the wherewithal.
This could take a few months, certainly, to reestablish these tariffs, but I am not terribly worried.
Also, if you look in the ruling, they don't actually address, you know, people are saying, well, you know, Trump's going to pay back, you know, all the money that was extracted using these tariffs.
Again, the Supreme Court didn't really touch that.
The Supreme Court didn't seem to be Terribly worried about it.
You can see here, this is in the ruling.
The United States Supreme Court has stated that refunding billions from Trump's legal tariffs collection is likely to be a mess, but may be required.
To me, that is the kind of language that indicates that they just don't actually know how to even possibly handle that.
Matt Forney puts great commentary here.
In other words, Trump is just going to ignore the ruling because it's impossible to comply.
This is the language courts use when they want to sound tough, but they know they have no enforcement power.
This is the strategy the left uses.
MAGA wins.
Again, this is true because, again, tariff collection is likely to be a mess, but may be required.
Okay, what is that going to look like?
They don't actually outline that.
They don't actually outline how that would be implemented, how that would work, why that would be needed, these sorts of things.
So I really don't think this is the doomsday scenario, like that people are saying.
I don't see the sense in dooming right now.
Rand Paul here, for what it's worth, he puts this statement out.
And I think this is a weak statement.
In our defense of the Republic, the Supreme Court struck down using emergency powers to enact taxes.
This ruling will also prevent a future president, such as AOC, from using emergency powers to enact socialism.
So Rand Paul, obviously, as everyone knows, is a libertarian.
So he's never been in love with tariffs.
He's not been a big fan of tariffs.
This language right here, I really hate this.
And we've gone on and about this on Timcast on our various shows.
So you guys are quite familiar with this argument by now, where he says this ruling will also prevent a future president such as AOC from using emergency powers to enact socialism.
No, it won't.
No, it will not.
Again, you could ask Phil Levante.
He will go on and on and on about this.
You should not make decisions fearing potential retribution from the left because they don't really care.
I mean, again, we saw with the Biden student loan forgiveness, no matter how many courts weighed in, he would just use other legal pathways to make this happen.
The left, again, would not be hung up on this Supreme Court ruling.
And this is why I think this was excellent commentary from the White Papers Policy Institute.
Regardless of your opinion on these tariffs, this is a terrible take from Congressman Rand Paul.
You should want to win and to govern, not doing things because the other side might do it is ridiculous.
The left is going to do it anyway, play to win or get out of the way.
I think this is absolutely correct.
Again, we're playing for keeps.
We should be operating under the assumption that if Trump loses, or I should say, if I guess if JD Vance loses in 2028 or whoever the nominee is going to be, again, a lot of things can happen.
Presumably JD Vance, let's just say a Democrat comes into power in 2028.
It's over anyway.
This, in many ways, MAGA, Trump, et cetera, is our last stand.
We're running out of time.
We kind of ran out of time like 10 years ago, quite frankly.
So this idea of operating out of fear of what the left is going to do rather than operating that we need to win now is just ridiculous.
He puts it perfectly.
You should want to win and to govern, not do things because the other side might do it.
And I think that is absolutely correct.
And that is a very salient point.
And yes, so if you want to get into the nitty-gritty of this ruling, Tim did like an hour-long live stream earlier today on it.
And he had some different perspectives on it.
He's a bit more fearful of the implications of this decision.
Again, I would recommend going and watching that after the close of this show if you haven't seen it already.
Because, you know, from my perspective, this is my analysis so far, but there's a lot that's going to shake out.
Again, we have people combing through the decision and they will sort of uncover maybe some of the hidden mechanisms that could be activated here.
But again, Trump has said we have a backup plan.
He said this before.
He said back in November that he anticipated potentially this happening and that he would have what he called game plan B that he could implement in this situation.
So I am not panicking yet.
I am not super fearful.
I don't think this is the end of tariffs by any stretch of the imagination.
I think this is a minor setback for a major comeback.
I just think that the Trump administration is going to rework these.
You know, there's different forms, different avenues.
Why Hipster Culture Matters 00:03:09
tate brown
Who knows?
I mean, I'm not holding my breath on this, so I wouldn't sort of bank on this, but Congress could just get some backbone and make this happen.
Because what the SCODIS decision effectively was doing was saying, no, Congress is the one that levies taxes, not the executive in this situation.
And so, who knows?
Maybe John Thune grows a backbone.
Not long on that.
I think the Trump administration is going to have to be the ones that make this happen.
So, again, no sense to panic.
No sense.
We don't need to turn out yet.
We're going to be okay.
That is my assessment.
So, with that, we have some more stories we should get into.
What should we get into here?
I had this was quite interesting.
Where was it?
This was quite interesting to me before we get into a more serious story.
This was from Tasteful Lindy.
This was the post they had to put up.
Every once in a while, you run into the aging millennial in New York City, now balding with a beard, clinging to the days of his hipster youth.
Hasn't realized the era has changed like the Japanese soldier who didn't know the war was over.
And he put up this clip, and this is really a fascinating clip.
unidentified
It's a different time.
tate brown
A hipster kind of vibe.
unidentified
This was all over.
All over.
tate brown
So, I think you guys probably remember this.
This is really fascinating cultural moment that we had about 10 years ago.
And what's interesting about this, again, it's Friday, so we're kind of coming in more with the cultural stories here.
Is from my perspective, from my analysis, this sort of hipster granola culture, whatever you want to call it, that was like the last explicitly like Anglo-cultural movement that we had in the United States.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this really seems a big, this was like the last, like, distinctly, unmistakably like Anglo-white sort of cultural moment that we had in the United States was this hipster millennial thing that happened.
And so, it's kind of interesting because a lot of people are kind of coming back and dunking on this.
They're saying, Well, this is so cringe, et cetera, et cetera.
I'm sure it's dated, but there's something to be said about the fact that like these cultural movements that we have now are sort of not.
Like, here's a good example: like country music now.
Country music is the culture that I think a lot of white Americans are rallying around.
They kind of feel like this is, you know, something that's sturdy that can sort of preserve them, these sorts of things.
But when you listen to it, there's a lot of other elements that are sort of blended in.
Like, the biggest country act right now is Morgan Wallen by far, just by streaming numbers alone.
But if you listen to Morgan Wallen music, it has like the hip-hop style hi-hats.
There's often there's rap verses on the song.
So, there's a lot of like infusion of black culture in country music today.
And so, I think it's interesting that this sort of culture, this sort of, I guess, aesthetic, for lack of a better word, received so much vitriol.
Because, again, this kind of seemed like the last sort of explicitly like English, like white cultural movement that we had in the United States.
You know, people dunk on the burger restaurant where it's like a $30 burger and the guy has like black nitrate gloves that makes it, and the fries are sold separately and these sorts of things.
Taking Back Harvard 00:07:43
tate brown
But, you know, you're going to kind of miss it when it's gone, I think.
And it already is kind of gone.
So, that was kind of my analysis of that.
Wanted that to be said, I wanted to defend the hipsters a little bit.
I think it's kind of sad to see that it's gone.
So, with that, Kellen just put up an update here, which is quite interesting.
President Trump will hold a press briefing on the Supreme Court tariff decision at 12:45 p.m. Eastern Time.
So, maybe we jump to that at a certain point.
We'll do mailbag for a little bit and then jump to that.
They're late a lot, but if we get it, we'll pull it up.
Yeah, so maybe we go to mailbag early.
I don't know.
Let's see.
I have one more story here, a few more posts here that I think we can get to.
This is, again, why I don't think, I don't think now is the time to panic right now in regards to the performance of the Trump administration.
This was a really good report put together by the White Papers Policy Institute.
Well, it's by the Niskanen, I think is how you say it, the Niskinen Center.
And they were providing their commentary on it.
This is quite interesting.
This is a white pill coming from the Trump administration.
Visas granted abroad are down across the board.
A lot fewer people are being allowed into America.
A 19% drop in H-1B visa issuances is the most notable.
Should still be abolished, I agree.
H4 visas, which is family of H-1Bs, are down 20%.
K1 and K2 visas, which are family visas, are down by 52% and 48%.
So again, you know, there's this narrative right now that, you know, Trump, the mass deportations aren't happening and that we're flooding the country with H-1B visas.
We're flooding the country with Chinese students.
But if you look, visa issuances are down across the board.
So again, I understand why people are a little frustrated, but you got to understand there's a difference between data and a difference between like vibes or commentary.
And again, you see some statements from the Trump administration every once in a while that's quite worrying, you know, where they will go to bat for, you know, migrant visas like over the farm workers, that sort of thing, which is pretty much entirely the auspices of the USDA.
But even like with the student visas, these sorts of things, visas are down across the board.
You see a few pop-ups every once in a while, but these are visas that are not commonly issued.
So there's sort of some other explanations why you see spikes in these visas.
But again, look at this.
This is read across the board.
This is very encouraging stuff.
This is why I just don't think it's, I don't understand this narrative that, again, Trump is like, okay, he's supporting legals, but he's allowing all these H-1Bs to come in.
A 19% drop.
It should be 100% drop, right?
I'm not saying this is like, you know, perfect.
This is not perfectly executed.
But H-1Bs, everything is down.
Everything is down across the board.
There are less people coming into the country.
We are at net negative migration.
That is absolutely massive.
That is a policy.
And I say this all the time.
It is a policy that if you were to just advocate for it five years ago, you would be ostracized from the conservative movement.
If you were to go on a conservative panel in like 2019 and say we should have net negative migration, they would lambast you as like a, you know, someone like an unserious person, I guess for lack of a better word.
They would ridicule you.
And now it is the official policy of the United States entirely because of President Trump and the Trump administration.
So again, this is why there's no sense in blackpilling over these sorts of things.
And there's still so much work to do.
I'll read this real quick and then maybe we can get into our mailbag portion.
This was interesting.
This was an expose.
So this is where I still think there's some work to do is on the affirmative action front.
Helen Andrews put together a really good report here.
Harvard did not stop discriminating by race.
This is what she wrote.
It simply stopped doing so against Asian.
Affirmative action continues, but now it is entirely at the expense of one race instead of two.
So again, everyone was popping the champagne over the Harvard ruling and they were saying it was the end of affirmative action.
Affirmative action is dead, but that was premature.
So I want to read here.
This is a snippet from Helen Andrews' piece in the Compact magazine.
Since the ruling was issued, the share of Asians in Harvard's freshman class has gone up from 26% of the class of 2025 to 41% of the class of 2029.
But the share of whites has gone down.
White students were 47% of freshmen in the class of 2025 and approximately 31% of the classes of 2028 and 2029.
Harvard published percentages for every race, but white for those years and 8% of each class reported no race, making the white share a matter of inference.
Black and Latino shares have stayed roughly the same with small fluctuations.
So Harvard did not stop discriminating by race.
It simply stopped doing so against Asians.
Affirmative action still continues.
So this was interesting.
I'll just go back to White Papers Policy Institute.
They've been doing fantastic work.
And hopefully we'll get their spokesperson on soon because they're doing incredible work here.
Harvard was so upset when they told they when told that they could not racially discriminate that they decided to be more vindictive and racially discriminant, but only against white Americans.
The dropped admissions of whites by 60%, their own data shows in a merit system, whites would be 50% of freshmens.
Again, that is the important number here.
Their own data shows that if they had a pure meritocracy, whites would be 50% of their freshmen.
Right now, they're like 31%, I believe, is what the data, the number was from Helen Andrews.
So this is really shocking stuff.
This is why, like, okay, so I agree, you know, on the visa front, things are moving in the right direction, but there's still so much work that the DOJ specifically needs to be doing in holding these universities accountable.
You know, you could say, well, it's Harvard.
You know, we shouldn't even be going, we should let this school die.
But the reality is, I think Elon Musk demonstrated this very well when he took over X, is some institutions can't be replaced or displaced rather.
Some institutions cannot be displaced.
Okay.
That is just the reality of the situation.
It's unfortunate.
You cannot build another Harvard.
That's just the reality of the situation.
I wish it wasn't the case.
You know, this is not, I'm not happy to say that, but you cannot build another Harvard.
You cannot replace Harvard.
Harvard is Harvard.
Yale is Yale.
And if we are truly trying to restore the country, we should be trying to restore our great institutions.
And Harvard and Yale are great institutions, historically speaking.
They are the elite institutions of the United States.
And again, we're not going to not have an elite.
Every country, every society in human history has an elite class.
The goal should be replacing the elite, right?
We should be putting our elite, we should be putting our people into the elite class and taking out their people from the elite class.
How do you do that?
That's a big part of it, is taking back institutions like Harvard.
And so when you see open discrimination like this and nothing is, you know, Harvard literally had a SCOTIS ruling go against them and they do not react.
They're still discriminating more viciously, quite frankly, towards white Americans.
This is where you need to concentrate fire.
This is why I said Elon Musk demonstrated this very well, is I think it became quite obvious.
You know, we tried to launch as conservatives, we tried to launch all these different alternatives to Twitter, but we realized Twitter is Twitter.
You're not going to replace Twitter.
They've built up the infrastructure.
It is where people go.
It is the public square.
Elon bought Twitter and just took it back.
He restored that institution and made it something that would be viable for conservatives.
Everyone got unbanned, these sorts of things.
So again, Elon Musk has demonstrated the only pathway forward, the only pathway to victory is restoring these institutions.
We just can't, some institutions we can't rebuild.
Maybe your local private school, you could, you know, you could displace, but Harvard is Harvard.
We're not getting rid of Harvard anytime soon.
So I think it's a very salient point that this needs to be more concentrated fire on, again, the DOJ specifically.
I'm sure they are, you know, have some sort of plan together, but this is the type of stuff that you really need to send a message on because this is the elite.
We're talking about the composition of the elite in the United States.
We need more right-wing, normal Americans in the elite.
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