00:08:48.920I think the cabinet, the second term, is much stronger than the cabinet in the first term.
00:08:53.620I think the president has been looking for and has appointed change agents, people that are going in to really make a serious difference in the cabinet agencies they've been appointed to.
00:09:04.020And he's looking for people who are committed to fighting to implement his agenda.
00:09:07.420And I'll tell you, in the first term, he had some people who did that, but, but he had some of his appointments who actively undermine and fought the White House and did real damage.
00:09:16.680And so I think, I think there's a much greater consistency of the cabinet fighting alongside the president rather than fighting against the president in this second term.
00:09:26.480And you asked what the mood was, look, on Air Force One, I've been on Air Force One a bunch of times, the mood, the president was, he was in great spirits.
00:09:47.520And I got to tell you, X, who's four, he turns five in May, as a four-year-old, he was wide awake and running around at two in the morning.
00:09:59.940And in fact, I asked the president, I said, OK, Mr. President, who has more energy, you or X?
00:10:05.740And he just kind of laughed, but it was kind of close.
00:10:08.040They're both at two o'clock in the morning.
00:10:10.400In fact, the president went to the back of the plane and did an impromptu news conference.
00:10:15.480The reporters fly in the back of the plane.
00:10:18.160And he was joking, you know, but before he went in, he was talking with all of us, said, all right, I'm going to go talk to the reporters now.
00:10:23.440And he said, can you imagine Joe Biden doing this?
00:10:25.760And he said, look, Biden would be asleep by like 8 p.m.
00:11:23.440I also think this is something actually he and I talked about quite a bit on Air Force One, which is he's able to accomplish a lot more this term than he would have been if he had served an immediately successive term.
00:11:37.920If he'd gone back in the White House in 2021 in what would have been a close and bitter and contested election, we would not be accomplishing a fraction of what he's accomplishing now.
00:11:51.740It really took the four years of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, the absolute train wreck that they made of everything to make, I think, the American people ready for the Trump administration to implement real and serious change.
00:12:05.560I also think those four years, the Trump team spent that time really thinking and thinking seriously about what they wanted to accomplish.
00:12:15.260And so you look at these executive orders they're putting in place that they're rolling out day after day after day.
00:12:20.940I think if it were an immediately successive term, you would not have seen anywhere near as bold and as effective executive action as we've seen.
00:12:30.900And Trump emphatically agreed that the fact that he was coming after four years of Biden gave him much more ability to implement significant change than if he'd just been serving an immediately consecutive second term.
00:12:46.540So the question I'm going to ask, which is the one I think 99% of the people listening want me to ask you right now is, all right, so did you guys talk about tariffs?
00:14:54.360And so having over a billion dollars of free legal services.
00:14:58.620And I think I think the president was was quite interested and was pretty emphatically agreeing that that is a very good thing to devote a lot of that energy is to negotiate negotiating trade deals
00:15:09.360that benefit America and that that lower tariffs on American goods going abroad.
00:15:14.000Well, you mentioned that there's a lot of paperwork.
00:15:16.460Yeah, there's going to be an awful lot of paperwork because we're now hearing from the White House that they have negotiations that are,
00:15:25.420in essence, underway with what was 40 countries early.
00:15:43.560Well, what do you say to small business owners or even big business owners who say they're having difficulty making long term business decisions because the country seems right now to be run by capricious whim?
00:15:55.460Oh, I don't think at all it's run by capricious whim.
00:15:58.120The way that I would think about it is that in the previous administration, you can sort of say, if you're thinking about it in the football analogy, is that they were running out the clock.
00:16:06.600And what's going on now in the Trump administration is across a wide array of policy areas, we're in a two-minute offense.
00:16:14.040And the two-minute offense is pushing, as you've seen, the reconciliation bill through so that we get tax relief for American people, deregulation, and, of course, trade policy.
00:16:23.220Now, in the trade policy, the whole point of the trade policy is to address the national emergency that we're too dependent on foreign products in the U.S., especially if we were at a time of conflict.
00:16:37.500And the reciprocal act was basically, guys, if you come to the table and negotiate us with us and treat us the same way we treat you, then we'll get your rate really low.
00:16:47.940And so right now, 130 countries have responded, and we're negotiating with them, and they've got their rate down to 10%.
00:16:56.100And so really, it's kind of almost a two-world system.
00:16:59.020There's a process about China, and that's very, very nascent, if at all, and then the process for everybody else.
00:17:06.160So the process for everybody else is orderly.
00:17:15.760I was just talking to the foreign minister of India, and everything is moving forward very quickly.
00:17:21.680And so I guess the bottom line is that the small business owner has experienced over the last few weeks the start of a process that's settling down really quite quickly.
00:17:33.940130 countries are at 10% now, and they're saying they're coming in, and they want a deal done, and they want to get done quick.
00:17:39.260Well, look, and I think that's notable, that the number of countries are coming in, asking for a deal, negotiating, eager to come to the table.
00:17:47.600It's up to 130 is what the White House is saying.
00:17:56.940Now, you and I have talked before about how this administration's approach has been an approach kind of borrowed from Silicon Valley of move fast and break things.
00:22:36.520We need to make semiconductors because if we don't own semiconductors here, remember, virtually all semiconductors are made now in Taiwan and they're finished in China.
00:22:48.880And so the president is going to come out with his policies on semiconductors and pharmaceuticals.
00:22:55.000They're going to be outside the reciprocal tariffs.
00:22:57.140And he was just making sure everyone understood that all of these products are outside the reciprocal tariffs and they are going to have their own separate way of being considered.
00:23:06.960But wait a minute, I'm asking you about the exemption, not about, I mean, the notice that went out Friday night saying that electronics, a wide range of electronics, including smartphones, including components used to make microchips, that these are now exempt from the reciprocal tariffs.
00:23:49.600The president's going to do it for pharmaceuticals and he is going to do it for semiconductors.
00:23:53.700So all those products are going to come under semiconductors and they're going to have a special focus type of tariff to make sure that those products get reassured.
00:24:05.380We need to have chips and we need to have flat panels.
00:24:07.980We need to have these things made in America.
00:24:09.860We can't be reliant on Southeast Asia for all of the things that operate for us.
00:24:15.260So what he's doing is he's saying they're exempt from the reciprocal tariffs, but they're included in the semiconductor tariffs, which are coming in probably a month or two.
00:24:28.680You shouldn't think this is really outside of it.
00:24:31.440Really think of it as being included in the semiconductor space, much like pharmaceuticals.
00:24:37.420These require special attention and the president is on it.
00:24:40.820So you're saying that the big tariffs on things like smartphones and laptops, iPhones, all those iPhones built in China, that those tariffs are temporarily off, but they're going to be coming right back on in another form in a month or so?
00:26:03.720He's trying to say, hey, we're still moving forward, but we're also having to make sure we don't do too much at one time that can hurt people.
00:26:29.120He's a smart, very effective business leader, and he's joined a team that is drinking from a fire hose.
00:26:36.660So they're trying to do an awful lot all at once.
00:26:38.640But I have to say the result is the rules are changing, and they're changing very rapidly, which makes it incredibly hard for anyone to know and predict what they're going to be tomorrow and for them to deploy capital knowing what the rules are going to be.
00:26:57.840There's a bigger problem, which is the question that was being asked is the administration announced this week that for smartphones and laptops,
00:27:08.640and electronics, that they were exempt from the tariffs announced, including the tariffs in China, the 145 percent tariffs.
00:27:16.900I got to say that that's a policy a lot of folks are quite rightly pointing out, that that benefits gigantic tech companies that have armies of lobbyists in Washington,
00:27:28.940whose CEOs were arrayed on the stage at Inauguration Day.
00:27:34.900But it doesn't do a whole lot of good for the little guy.
00:27:39.160You know, I'm hearing from Texas small businesses that are manufacturing goods, and some of the components that go into the goods they're making are coming from China,
00:27:48.820coming from other countries, and they're facing very significant tariffs.
00:27:52.920And the small business is not getting an exemption.
00:27:55.000And I got to say, the argument that, well, yeah, we gave a gigantic gift to Tim Cook and Apple,
00:28:03.420but don't worry, in the future we'll put some different tariffs on semiconductors.
00:28:09.420But we're not going to tell you what they are.
00:28:12.440And at some point in the future they'll come.
00:28:14.200But presumably they're going to be a lot less than the 145 percent on China that everyone else has to pay if they're not in big tech.
00:28:24.360I mentioned that there is an ongoing battle within the administration.
00:28:30.940I think this policy is a consequence of that ongoing battle.
00:28:34.540I'll be clear, I am not a fan at all of sectoral exemptions that essentially benefit, that pick winners and losers.
00:28:45.360I think, you know, when you talk about the swamp, when Washington decides to say, okay, you're the winner, you're the loser, you're the winner, you're the loser,
00:28:55.220that is a really dangerous and slippery slope.
00:28:58.360And if you're going to do it at all, if you want to make an exemption, make an exemption for small businesses.
00:29:07.360If you want to say a small business with revenues below $50 million or $100 million, a small manufacturing business is exempt from paying the tariffs,
00:29:18.560that might make sense because we're going to see some of those small businesses that are really import dependent potentially go out of business.
00:29:24.240And if you wanted to make an exemption, rather than do it for gigantic companies, I'd do it exactly on the other side and look out for the little guy that is more vulnerable
00:29:38.640to the immediate vicissitudes of the changes in policies.
00:29:44.140Yeah, and like you said, they're drinking from a fire hose.
00:29:55.280Is this really what the, like, as you put it, the small business owners need, which is the reason why we have this conversation every day.
00:30:02.060I want to move to this other big issue also that we mentioned earlier, and it was a massive victory for the Trump administration
00:30:09.960when it came to an immigration judge doing a major ruling on deporting students that are advocating for the death and destruction of students on campus,
00:30:19.700that, by the way, are Jewish, are advocating their support for terrorist organizations.
00:30:25.480And this all comes out of Columbia University, where it has become a major point of, all right, who's going to win this?
00:30:32.960Is the Trump administration going to win this, or are the radicals on the left going to win?
00:30:36.800And it was a big win for Donald Trump this week.