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Hello and welcome to the DSR Daily. I'm David Rothkuff. I'm joined by Riley Fester and Minestine. We're here to ease you into the week. It's a Monday.
So, Mina, be gentle.
I'm going to be as gentle as adults with our first story.
Yeah, right. President. Morning. Yes. Go on.
This is what he was up to over the weekend. He abruptly rejected Iran's latest piece proposal yesterday calling the offer. Totally unacceptable. And I'll save your ears for not screaming that. But that was in all caps that that was written.
And sending global oil prices up, climbing by more than four dollars of barrel. Tehran's response demanded an N to the U.S. Naval blockade, Common Stations for War Damage, and a resolution to the conflict in Lebanon.
Conditions that clashed with the administration's nuclear first negotiations strategy.
Well, you know, I saw some responses to this on the internet. They were not kind to Trump. Number of them said, I guess we don't hold all the cards. A number of them said, oh, I guess the Iranians aren't desperate for a deal. Trump was going a little batty this weekend.
This often happens.
“I don't think, you know, I think what happens is people don't talk to it.”
You know, and he's like wandering around. I'll go or wherever he wanders around. And he has time on his hands and he starts brooding. And he went into a whole thing about the Supreme Court. Tariffs and how could the Supreme Court betray him so much.
And there was a great line in it. Like, and all they had to do was add a line to the deal. The decision and say, we didn't have to pay back all the money from the illegal tariff, which is just like such a Trumpian way of thinking. Although, you know, that would be fine.
It's completely illegal and contrary to their opinion, but that would make life a lot easier for us. Anyway, so it goes. Trump has a crazy weekend. And you know, what'll happen this week? Well, I'll say a few things in the price of oil.
One way I'll say a few other things that'll go another way. And you know, we won't be much closer to a resolution of this. Of that, I'm fairly certain. What do you got, Riley? Well, it's a tale of two ceasefires that don't really work.
Because a US brokered ceasefire intended to pause the conflict between Russia and Ukraine from May 9th to May 11th has resulted in numerous reported battlefield clashes and drone strikes, especially over the last 24 hours. Ukrainian officials confirmed several fatalities and numerous injuries across multiple regions, recording 180 combat engagements and the deployment of thousands of Russian Kamakazi drones. You know, you're turning into our bullshit ceasefire correspondent.
I know. On a daily basis, you report on ceasefires that aren't really work. It's a full-time job. That's true, apparently.
“Well, because we got this one and then we got the Lebanon one and then we've got the one in the straight of Horde moots, right?”
Yeah, yeah. But I mean, that's the long, short of it. You know, Trump was hoping this would be extended. And it's not even really working as intended now, so there's little hope of it being extended. But worse for Trump, because he's clearly on the side of the Russians as many people have pointed out.
And, you know, let's remember our ambassador to Ukraine quit because she felt that the administration was on the wrong side.
But worse for Trump is for the first time in a long time, there are multiple reports that Ukraine is gaining ground.
That sort of the tide has turned a little bit. And of course, another way the tide has turned also relevant to a story that there's a new prime minister in Hungary's.
Victor Orban is now the former prime minister of Hungary and Peter Machiar is...
And he is not blocking aid to Ukraine.
“And so Ukraine is actually got a little momentum.”
And, you know, as much as Trump may have wanted a ceasefire, you know, in his heart of hearts, he really wanted one that was good for Russia. And that's going to become less likely if Ukraine continues and Europe continues to aid Ukraine. And it becomes increasingly sort of out of the US's control, and I use the term very loosely. Trump is preparing to head to Beijing this week to meet with President Xi Jinping. He's facing intense bipartisan pressure from lawmakers and the US auto industry to block Chinese automakers from entering the American market.
Despite Trump's earlier suggestions that he would welcome Chinese own plants in the US to create jobs, coalition of manufacturers, unions and politicians argue that state subsidized Chinese EVs would decimate the domestic industrial base.
“Lawmakers are pushing the connected vehicle security act to codify bands on Chinese vehicles due to data privacy risk, aiming to prevent Trump from offering market access as a bargaining chip and broader trade negotiations.”
And that's the full picture. Yeah, well, I mean, there's a fuller picture, which is I think a lot of people think Trump's going to go to China and sell out somebody because Trump doesn't really care about anything except his own reputation and anything that sort of, you know, ends up in his bank account. And so the people of Taiwan are afraid that Trump's going to go to China and his trip, by the way, was announced over the weekend, that's going to be from the 13th to the 15th, so it's going to be the big story of this week certainly one of the big stories.
And, you know, there are people in Taiwan are concerned with Taiwan who think he'll give a link and a nod and kind of sell out the Taiwanese and others saying, you know, he's going to give up a lot on the trade front and exchange for.
Chinese promises as we had in his first term to buy billions of dollars worth of your stuff, which they don't do.
You know, the New York Times has some articles that Trump is, you know, the Chinese are prepared for tough talks. They're not going to be tough talks. Trump's not going to get tough with the Chinese. He knows Xi Jinping is more powerful than he is. He knows this is, well, he doesn't know, but let me tell you, okay, this is the first trip by a US president to China, in which it's pretty clear the US president is not the most powerful figure who's going to be in the meeting.
In fact, this may be the first trip in which the US president is not the most powerful person in the world.
That's Xi Jinping certainly on a economic basis, but in terms of relative power, you know, the United States arrows are pointing down right now. Well, the Chinese arrows are pointing up and, you know, Trump has done so much to contribute to the growth and prosperity of China, rather than the US. That in China there's a nickname for him that translates roughly as "comrade nation builder." But what they mean by "comrade nation builder" is not that he's building the US. It's that he's building China.
And, you know, whether it's, you know, not letting smart people come here to study or not putting money into science and tech investment here. Or forcing the United States towards fossil fuels thus clearing the way for China to continue as the world leader in green technologies. Or it's undermining America, standing with our allies or it's undermining America, standing in international institutions. Or it's depleting America's limited military resource reserves in, in, in wars like the war in Iran. Moving military assets out of the Indo-Pacific region into the Iranian region, the Middle Eastern region.
You know, all of these things help China.
“And that's why, you know, they will, you know, offer him some nice bankwits, offer him some nice toast, they'll have some nice meetings.”
And at the end, Trump who wants desperately to distract from the Iran war. We'll try to come up with some deals and say, "Hey, this is a great success." And she's in pain like me and that must mean I'm important. You know, that's kind of where this is all going to go. I have an article about this coming out this morning, Monday morning at the Daily Beast.
If you're interested in it, obviously we will follow it very closely.
But I don't expect, you know, that this is going to be Donald Trump smacking Xi Jinping around.
“Okay, that's not going to happen. Final word.”
As to the story that Minna is talking about, you know, the U.S. auto industries in a tough place because Trump is saying, you know, we're not going to give you some so these freebies. We're not going to help promote your EV industry. We would like you to promote gasoline powered cars. The rest of the world is heading in a different direction. Starting a war in Iran that pushes up the price of gas doesn't help the manufacturers of gasoline powered cars.
But the EV industry in the United States is flawed.
You know, when you have Tesla as one of the leading players. And the technology, the EV technology in the world is being led at a China. Companies like BYD and Xiaomi and others are coming up with faster cars, faster charging stations. You know, they have cars with a range of 1,000 or 1,500 kilometers that can be charged in 6, 7, 8, 9 minutes. Or get to 80% charge in 6, 7, 8, 9 minutes.
So, you know, I understand, you know, the protectionist impulse here.
What the United States really ought to be doing is promoting green vehicles, green infrastructure, continuing in the direction on this that the Biden administration was on.
Understand the direction that things are going in the world. And enable, you know, and attract smart people back to this country to go and innovate. And let's compete on an even playing field. That's, that probably won't happen. But I'll tell you one thing, Chinese cars have a lot of interested buyers in Canada.
They got a lot of interested buyers in Brazil. They got a lot of interested buyers in Europe. So, you know, as far as the security elements of all of this and will they be out there will they be interested. And that's over.
“I think the whole thing is old school protectionism designed to protect a weak industry against a strong industry.”
But I understand the politics of it. And I don't know whether progress will be made on this front, but I suspect that in terms of Trump's overall visit. There will be the appearance of progress, but not the reality of progress or any difficult issues being hashed out. Well, well, well, Trump news because we can't can be free of it. And that is the Trump a lashed out at Supreme Court just as Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett last night on truth social.
Calling them a disgrace reportedly as a result of the course February decision, which I guess he's still see thing over to invalidate his authority to unilaterally impose tariffs. His rant was kind of all over the place he went from back to forth between saying they're good people and smart people. And smart people to then saying they're ruining our country, but maybe they don't mean to.
“And his main I think concern here was he's worried they are going to rule against his executive order to end birthright citizenship as they should.”
Yeah, you mean because the plain letter of the constitution. Yeah, it's not really ambiguous not that one. So I mean, they should as Supreme Court just as his rule against it, but nothing is certain anymore unfortunately. Well, no, that's true. Nothing is well, some things are certain death and taxes and so it's not not taxes for the rich. If you're a billionaire, it's not certain, but if you're like regular person death and taxes are still something.
I don't know, I saw an analysis last week that I thought was pretty smart, which said the Supreme Court tends to rule for Trump when it comes to things like executive power. They tend to rule for corporations and against regulations. They tend to rule against things that they see infringing on. And it was sort of the freedoms of groups they care about like white men, so affirmative action and voting rights. But there is one set of things where they have stood up to Trump a few times and where people expected to happen again.
And that is where Trump is going outside his lane and trying to influence or change the role of Congress or you serve the role of Congress like on tariffs or mess with the constitution as in this case.
You know, my guess is it's dangerous to make guesses about spring court, but ...
One thing about the court a lot of people are looking at is will clearance Thomas the longest second longest serving.
So see justice in the history of the court, as of last week, will he step down or will lead us step down, giving Trump the chance to put in some younger people who will be there for what we'll see clearly there's a growing mood among Democrats to look at restructuring the court. So that there might be more seats on the court that there might be term limits and that the power of this small group of right wing activists judges who are trying to change the law and undermine a lot of the progress of the past 50 years in the United States.
“Can can have their power offset in ways that better reflect the real issues of the American public so that's something to watch for over the next couple years.”
Well, this might come as a surprise to everyone listening and on this podcast, but there is news that happens that we don't cover. And today we're going to cover something that's been going on for a while that we haven't talked about and that's that the department of health and human services confirmed yesterday.
The passenger returning from a hand device stricken Dutch cruise ship has tested positive for the virus while a second passenger is exhibiting mild symptoms.
We don't get accused of any fear mongering the virus has a very high mortality rate is caused three deaths. However, health officials emphasize that the risk of the general public is extremely low because person to person transition transmission is rare. Well, that's fine coming from you minute, but you know, the president has said the same thing, and when he says stuff like that, we all get afraid because as. As SNL pointed out in weekend update this weekend, you know, Trump has said this before, and in fact, they played a clip of Trump saying don't worry about hand or virus.
It's under control and then played a clip of Trump saying, well, there's only been one death from COVID in the United States, we have it under control.
And of course, we know million people died of COVID in the United States and his handling that was such a fiasco that he definitely lost the election before because of it.
And I just to be an understand how he could have been reelected after that, but leave be that as it may.
“It's important to track these things and whether hand to virus is ultimately going to be the next big epidemic, it won't be.”
Cutting funding at the CDC, getting rid of people who believe in vaccines, getting rid of programs to create vaccines, getting rid of medical research in the United States, cutting back on the money for that kind of thing. Makes us much, much, much more vulnerable. So believe it or not, as bad as Trump's handling of COVID was, we are now in a much worse position than we were prior to COVID to handle the next pandemic. And here's one thing we do know that we can predict with a hundred percent certainty, there will be another pandemic.
They happen, that's one of the, you know, sort of facts of life on this earth, and we are not prepared. So that's where we are on this, and that's where we are at the beginning of this week. We will cover the China visit, we will cover the Iran ups and downs, we will cover failing cease fires everywhere, because Riley really loves that.
“We will cover disease and plague and pestilences, because that's why we're here, because we're your friends and that, you know, somebody's going to tell you about those things.”
For now, have a good week everybody. [Music]
