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April 11, 2025 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
15:32
Don’t Be Yippy, Be Cool

This is a preview of the Patron-only Weekender episode. To gain full access to these episodes, as well as special post-event and live recordings, and to keep the show editorially independent and ad-free, head over to Patreon and become a subscriber today. Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman try to figure out what the hell Donald Trump is trying to do with the tariffs and the economy and the answer is: enrich himself. However, with growing unrest about the markets, there might be a moment of clarity amongst Republicans. If things couldn't get worse, they turn to our immigration policies and they continue to follow the authoritarian playbook. Oh yeah, Trump is also dismantling the IRS for the upper class and Social Security for everyone else. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Time Text
Hey everybody, welcome to the Weekender Edition of the Muckery Podcast.
I'm Jared D. A. Sexton.
I'm here with my good friend, my pal, my compatriot, my co-host, Nick Hausman.
How you doing, Nick?
Well, you know, when you talk to you, when I talk to you and you give me insight into me, it really is startling how deep that insight goes.
You know, I don't know what I'm talking about, but it's like you are the man who can see me and I feel great about being with you to experience that.
That's what being friends is about.
That's right.
I forgot you forgot.
That's what being friends is about.
And no one has any idea what we're talking about at this point.
But this is the reason why we're able to talk about all this shit, keep some perspective.
And I feel, and I didn't expect to get on here and be earnest, I feel like I walk away from every one of these episodes like I've learned something.
And I think that's one of the reasons why this works.
So thank you.
I appreciate the earnestness, and that's very nice.
Yeah, yeah.
We should all practice that a little bit more in these days and these times.
We need to.
Now, that's as much of the positive You'll gain full access to The Weekender Show, which you're already listening to the previews of.
You'll support the show.
You'll keep us editorially independent.
And this is one of the reasons why we're able to do what we do.
patreon.com slash mycraigpodcast Nick, great news!
Great news.
The economic crisis.
It's completely over.
Mission accomplished.
Get on the aircraft carrier.
Put the banner out.
Everything's fine.
Donald Trump came out and announced that he was putting a 90-day pause on most of the global tariffs that he announced on the so-called Liberation Day.
By the way, he's still going to leave the 145%.
Tariffs on China.
More on that in a second.
The market immediately went into a manic buy phase because this thing is wildly unhealthy and we'll get into more of that in a second.
But as we are recording this on Thursday, April 10th, it's down again!
And who could have predicted, except for everybody, if you actually pay attention to all of this stuff.
Nick, here is the President of the United States of America being asked by his friendly state-sponsored propaganda source Fox News about why it is that he decided to pause some of these tariffs.
Just a few hours later, there was a pause put in on the tariffs.
Can you walk us through your thinking about why you decided to put a 90-day pause?
Well, I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line.
They were getting yippy, you know?
They were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid, unlike these champions, because we have a big job to do.
No other president would have done what I did.
No other president.
I know the presidents.
They wouldn't have done it.
You know, that's interesting, Nick.
I don't usually agree with Donald Trump, but right there, I agree.
He did what most other presidents wouldn't have done.
You know, the addled brain is a fascinating one.
And he obviously means, well, I don't even know what he means, because they wouldn't have done it in the first place.
I think he's saying that they wouldn't have passed the tariffs in the first place.
Oh. Really?
Yeah, and by the way, he's correct.
He's correct in that.
Oh, right, right.
They wouldn't have done this, but I think what he's talking about, what he did and no one else had done was, you know, reverse course, whatever it is.
But you buried the lead, Jared, and it's why I'm really, really fuming upset about this, is he told everybody to buy the dip early in the morning.
Now, that was publicly on whatever social post, but you can imagine he's on his phone all the time with everybody else as well.
So, this is insider trading.
Yeah, it's the definition of insider trading.
And everybody in the Trump orbit, including the family, probably Donald Trump himself, their allies, everyone around it, they knew exactly when to sell and when to buy.
This is the pure, unadulterated...
Definition of insider trading.
And even worse, he was in the Oval Office.
I saw a video where he's pointing out to these champions.
If you don't know, if you're listening to this in audio, he's got all these people in business suits behind him who are probably so happy to be there because they all front-ran on the advice about getting rid of the terrorists and made money.
He's like, well, this guy just made $4 million today, and this guy made maybe like $100 million.
I can't remember what he even said.
Some outrageous amount of money.
And we know that there are whales out there that completely capitalize on this, and it's too big.
Uncanny, the timing of all this stuff.
When are the hearings going to happen in Congress, Jared?
Yeah, they're not.
I don't think that they are.
I mean, if we had a working Congress, if we had a working Congress, he would be impeached tonight.
But, like, they did the whole 12 investigations on Benghazi.
They're going to have to, no?
Sure. Absolutely.
No, this guy should be behind bars.
Also, Nick, how's it feel to have the President of the United States of America talking like the Reddit, subreddit, WallStreetBets, like holding GameStock and being like, I mean, and saying, be cool.
Everybody be cool right now.
Hold the line, everybody.
Oh, we're getting a little yippy, so we're going to have to reverse course.
Nothing I like more than that, than watching the intentional destruction of an economic and political system with a guy who is literally handling this in the way that somebody trying to game a system, because that's what the stock market is.
It is a big, giant scheme, and they manipulated it in that regard.
And by the way, this thing's not over.
This is not the end of the situation.
The market, and I always have these moments, Nick, where I want people who listen to this show.
To make a little mental note in the back of their head.
Because in America, we move so fast that you can forget things.
I want people to remember what happened in this little two-day span.
When he announced the 90-day pause on everything but China, the market shot through the roof because, as we talked about when these tariffs were announced, the stock market and the people who game it, and basically it's like a slot machine that they pull, and it just...
it wins every time, right?
Those people were so desperate for hope in the midst of chaos and destruction.
That they were like, oh my God, it's all over.
And then suddenly the infrastructure and the institutional conditions showed, hey, this has already caused enough of a problem that this issue is not going to go away.
It's actually just creating.
Created more and more opportunities for this whole thing to fall apart.
Well, let's get a little bit wonky because what's weird is that obviously I'm outraged by everything that they do.
And when they get to the human rights stuff, that is what we need to be the most outraged by.
But there is something about this for whatever.
Maybe you can help me figure it out.
I almost feel more angry about this than anything else because it's so blatant.
But what was so dumb about all of this was that, OK, I truly believe that the reason why they wanted to tank the market was to make the 10 year notes yield go down and then they could refinance and then supposedly save all this money on the debt.
And so that that was an interesting take.
But what they didn't realize, which anybody could have told them was, well, if you do that in conjunction with terrorists that are now going to be painful to people like Japan and China,
And when you sell bonds like they do, and they have a lot of our debt, that makes the rate go up.
And then they were literally, we were probably within a few days of an absolute recession or depression because of that.
We still are.
That's why he had to blink and then to pause the tariffs.
So one of the things that happened, and again, this is, I just want to say, this is one of the reasons why we exist as a podcast.
Is because this is the type of stuff that we can pay attention to that doesn't necessarily sink down to people who pay a lot of attention to it, but they're not like paid to study this stuff, or maybe they don't have time to study this.
One of the reasons why this pause happened is because everything about our economic conditions got sideways in a weird way.
And it happened before he even put the tariffs out there.
Like stagflation is literally, you know, I have this sweeper, Nick.
And this sweeper that I, every Sunday, I sweep the house, right?
And there are moments with the sweeper where I'm like, oh, this thing's working the way it's supposed to.
And then there are moments where it'll make a sound or it will do something.
And I'm like, oh, things are actually screwed up here.
this isn't supposed to be happening, right?
It's like a signifier that there's something wrong with the internal system that needs to be addressed.
Stagflation is one of those things.
It is a moment where you say, oh, our economy is not working the way it's supposed to.
Then all of a sudden, in the midst of this economic crisis, Nick, the bond market went fucking nuts.
And for people who don't understand this, the United States runs a deficit.
And what have we done for years?
Because the United States of America was seen as the most trustworthy partner that you could have.
It was good to get on our good side so that we could have good trade relations and that we could have back and forth economic activity.
On the other hand, we were seen as being good to pay our debts.
You could deal with us as a trusted partner.
And Nick, real fast before I continue, who bought up the majority of those bonds?
So everyone's saying it's Japan, but I certainly think that China has to have at least as much, or if not the same.
Those are two of the most major buyers of American bonds.
So let's say all of a sudden that you declare a trade war with everybody in the world.
All of a sudden, then not only do you have a problem where there's uncertainty in the market, you're pissing people off and you're also being chaotic.
So on one hand, if people are pissed at you, why are they going to buy your debt and help you out?
And on the other hand, if you're chaotic, how do they know that those bonds would have any value whatsoever, especially when you have an asshole who has a lifetime reputation for not paying his debts?
So when you take a look at all of those things,
And it was like, oh, this thing, it isn't just an economic revolution, which is the purpose behind it.
It's not just freeing capitalism, which is another purpose behind it.
All of a sudden, you're like, oh.
This whole thing is a house of cards, and that house of cards is teetering right now.
And that situation has put us like in such a bad place that at that point, there was no other choice besides to do something like this, at least for a moment.
By the way, that was really great because when you look at it as a guy like Trump who doesn't pay his debts, this whole notion of trying to get rid of our debt and what they're trying to do here, that's such complete and utter BS. It's not a total bullshit.
That's why this is complete and utter corruption and enrichment.
So they don't care about debt.
They never really have anyway.
And they knew that they can mess with the markets.
It was a test when they did it last week when they kind of dipped their toe in maybe like pausing these things and to see what the rates are because the market shot up on Monday because of that, right?
The slightest rumor.
So that's what that was.
And then they knew by today or yesterday when they did that.
And guess what?
He gets to now crow about the largest Dow improvement or jump in one day ever.
And now it's gone after today.
It's now another 1,000 points.
So it's like...
You know, and to show you how ridiculous the market is in general anyway, it never should have gone up anyway on Monday at all.
There was nothing in the news or the reality on the ground that would have anything but the worst Monday, the worst Black Monday ever, and yet it did rally on that bullshit.
And what's worrying about Worsham now is that we won't have a Black Monday.
We're going to have a Black April.
Well, and I'm glad that you put it that way because one of the things I've been talking about a little bit is there was this belief when it came to the Great Depression or the Great Recession of 2008 that it's just a downward slope, right?
Everything just falls apart.
No, it goes up and it goes down and it goes down and it goes up a little bit.
It's almost like being in a plane that's in severe turbulence.
like oh we're trying to bring this thing in for a landing but you know it can go badly and if you take a look at all these components nick i look at this and people are still in denial about what has happened here and part
of the reason is because we look at the stock market the wrong way you brought up this is the thing that pisses you off right and i want to i want
It's sort of backbone.
It... Really is not a solid thing.
It's been fine-tuned to the point where it's a casino that you go into and you win, but a lot of it is emotional, right?
You know, a lot of these people like to talk about this like it's a hard science.
No, we're watching right now with the stock ticker.
It is basically...
Revealing the emotional truth for people, right?
Which is, oh, I guess things are fixed.
It'll go up.
Oh, my God, it's not actually fixed.
It's going to go down.
And when people realize that things haven't gotten fixed, and we brought up the bonds, Nick, but also look at this.
Will any country, while Donald Trump is the president of the United States of America, see America as a trustworthy partner?
No, not at all.
Not a one of them.
Two, we rely on supply chains for the entirety of the economy as it exists in order to create, produce, or consume everything, correct?
Correct. So in an uncertain environment, what's going to happen in those supply chains?
They're going to fall apart.
They're going to fall apart!
Because people don't know what the rules are.
They don't know what's happening.
They don't know if they can trust one another.
That debt purchase is going to get interrupted.
So what actually has occurred here is the damage has already been done.
A load-bearing wall has been removed and now we're waiting on the house to fall.
And I do think that the pausing here was not just to avoid the bond crisis that we were talking about, but also for these assholes, it's the opportunity.
For the thing to fall apart and them to be like, well, we didn't do it.
We paused the tariffs.
But they went ahead and they created the situation that's going to cause the problem.
And to go back to what you said about how it upsets you, the easiest thing in the world for a president of the United States of America to do is to leave it alone.
We'd really appreciate it if you could give it a try.
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