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Hello and welcome to the DSR Daily. I'm David Rothkuff. I'm joined by Riley Fester. Minutes Stein. We're here to look at the news.
Let's go and on. As the song says, "Hey, what's going on?" Well, we have some updates on President Trump's trip to China. And he's bringing with him a high-profile delegation of 17 of business executives, including noted, respected figures like Elon Musk and Tim Cook, right, at the recently out-employed
like Tim Cook. Yeah, out-going Tim Cook. And there's, you know, finance executives, all sorts of folks, enjoying this presidential visit
to, like, the first presidential visit to the country in nearly a decade.
Wait a minute, are they all billionaires? You, you know, billionaires or high millionaires.
“Well, that's, you know, but I think we should, I mean, I think people always say these trips”
are, you know, they have a, there's a business mission. But it's not a business mission. It's a billionaires mission. What it is is a bunch of really rich people whose lives do not connect with our lives in any way going under the wing of the president to plead their cases so that they can make
even more billions in China or their work in China can make more billions in the United States. And I, let's call it what it is, right?
These are not business leaders.
These are billionaires. They're not like you and me. And this is just another of the services that the United States government offers to our billionaires as it is cutting back on the services. To us, I saw a story today about has something like one in five.
“I don't know, some, some very high number of people who were on what we call Obamacare”
are giving up their coverage because they can't afford it anymore because the big beautiful bill took away their subsidies. So, fuck you, if you don't have two commas in your net worth. Two. Yeah.
Two, right? All right. Yes. Out. So, you can see by arithmetic skills.
That's at the level that explains why I'm not a billionaire. All right. Well, that's that sucks. But, you know, it also, by the way, I just add one other thing. You know, traveling with these guys, you think Trump's going to go and kick
the shit out of the Chinese and associate all these guys with Trump kicking the shit out of the Chinese and the eyes of the Chinese? I don't think so. He may make, you know, the case for some of the issues they care about. But, he's expecting this to be a love fest with deals signed and prosperity for all.
Well, for the couple of thousand people in the US who are billionaires or other spouses. Okay, man. Okay. I'm a little salty today.
Go on. What are you got? Well, here's the story on something billionaires are not worried about what the rest of us are. President Trump has proposed suspending in 18 cent federal gas tax to provide relief
as the war with Iran drives pump prices to a near record average of $4.45 per gallon. The move aims to boost Trump's approval ratings ahead midterms. Though experts weren't the five months suspension would cost the highway trust fund roughly $17 billion. Trump's latest piece offering us garbage, but express hope that the upcoming summit with
Xi Jinping will help break the maritime blockade and drop oil prices quote unquote like a rock. Oh, man, man, man, are you in an innocent young thing?
Fortunately, you are here every day with me and I can offer you the benefit o...
And let me tell you that Trump's gas tax ploy there doesn't necessarily benefit ordinary people.
“In fact, were it to happen, it would benefit way to minute, are you see that major fossil fuels companies who, you know,”
are among the few that Trump actually works for. You see, if he were able to do this tax and I should add, it's not clear that he actually is able to do it tax credits. Kind of the thing that the Congress does, but if he were able to do it, the benefit would go to the gas companies. It would then be up to them run by weight billionaires and sent to millionaires.
To decide just how much they wanted to spread around, no one am saying. And so once again, this is something for the few not for the many. However, there is one other dimension of this that I would like to say. I was looking at the president's polls to that. And on economic messages, there's a new pull out that shows something like 78% of the American people disapprove of how Donald Trump is handling the cost of living or the economy.
This is by far the worst ratings he's ever had on any of this. And it is what is leading to his very low approval rating, which is about 60. It's about 30% and about 2/3 of the American people disapprove of it. And so you've got to say, well, wait a minute, this Donald Trump. You mean the Donald Trump that in his last term was in Peach twice,
in the Donald Trump who oversaw a disastrous response to COVID,
in which a million people died and scientists suggest that 2, 300,000 of those people wouldn't have died if Trump handled it properly.
You mean the Donald Trump that's shaken down the country for billions of dollars in just this second term, the most corrupt president in US history. You mean the Donald Trump that's attacking democracy, attacking free speech, attacking countries around the world. That is, we're attacking our allies supporting our enemies. Wait a minute. That guy was popular and it's only because the price of gasoline has gone up that Americans give a shit. America, the average American voter is connected to reality by one nerve ending that, you know, connects to his wallet when he's at the gas pump.
That's where we are as a country. It's pathetic. It's pathetic. But it appears to be true. Americans don't give a shit about anything except the cost of living. They don't care about their neighbors. They don't care about their country. They don't care about their institutions. They don't care about the world. They don't care about climate. They don't care about education. They don't care about science. None of those things move the needle.
“Just high gas prices. That's what moves the needle.”
It's it's a poignant commentary on how this country works and why this country will falter because it is so short-sighted.
It is not the most important thing. Does it matter if the price of gas is high?
Yeah, should we not be in this war? Yeah, is the price of gas going to remain high for a while because of the stupid fucking war? Yes, but that's not my point. My point is that for the guy got reelected after being impeached twice, doing the COVID thing, being the worst president in American history, according to multiple polls of historians. Because there were enough people, 77 million Americans. The thought, yeah, I don't care. He's a racist. That's what I'm looking for. He's a misogynist. That's what I'm looking for. He's not one of those Washington dudes. I hate those Washington dudes.
“That's what I'm looking for. And they were fine with it until the price of gas into their F-150 went up.”
I'm real real close to fuck 'em all. On my mood barometer this morning. Real close. And push me over the edge here, Rowan. No, but I'm going to take us across the pond to a leader who is facing a lot of problems right now.
It's a big stormer who is facing an internal rebellion.
A lot of a lot of brits with disagree. I think he will be there much longer because over 80 labor lawmakers are calling for his resignation, following record low approval ratings and humiliating a midterm election performance.
I've also seen several ministers resign in the last 24 to 48 hours. And the economy to add on top of it is slumping. And the British pound is slumping.
Starmer for his part is remaining defiant and saying that he's going to stay and challenging his party to trigger a formal leadership contest and arguing that the country needs stable governance to navigate the drama, which they have pretty much said they don't want his stable governance. It doesn't seem very stable either. Exactly. I mean, he's not providing stable governance and it's not providing stability and he's not providing governance. And some of the people who have left are, you know, among the members of the labor party that I respect the most.
You know, they're like, you know, this something's got to change. It won't change or it'll change slowly. And what's Britain going to end up with Nigel for Raj, the Donald Trump of British politics, the reformers who were the people who brought you Brexit, the dumbest big country decision of any major nation collectively is a separate electing Donald Trump.
“And, you know, I think the punchline of this story is everybody knows that in the 19th century the Sun never set on the British Empire, the British Empire, was the greatest empire in the history of the way the world Britannia ruled the waves.”
And then it started to decline and throughout the 20th century it declined and it became a middle power as they call it even though it has nuclear weapons and a fairly big economy.
But, and here's the point folks. And if you don't think this is a cautionary point about the US as well as about the future of the UK, please note, the decline is not over. The decline can keep going. You make people like Nigel for Raj, the prime minister of the United Kingdom. And it will accelerate. That's not to say you should keep care starmer. He's doofus and he is not a good leader that you like my political vocab, but that's, you know, that's, that's the reality folks. Britain is in free fall, not good for the US, by the way, because, you know, they've always been an important ally.
But these are self-inflicted wounds, just like the self-inflicted wounds that we are carving into our own flesh each and every day here in declining America.
Well, I have a story to bring down the mood.
Everybody's like, I'm switching this off and see if the gas still works in the stove, and right, I'm going to put my edit, okay. The energy was way too peppy, so. Yeah, okay. The Supreme Courts conservative majority. I hear Riley leaping softly in the background. Yeah, come on.
“Honestly, just saying the Supreme Courts conservative majority is enough to make me distressed, but.”
Yeah, fortunately. Any sentence that begins with the Supreme Courts conservative majority, inevitably ends badly. Well, this time, they cleared the way yesterday for Alabama Republicans to use a congressional map that reduces the number of majority black districts from two to one. The Supreme Court follows the Court's recent ruling, which limited the use of race in redistricting and has sparked a nationwide Republican effort to redraw maps mid-decade. Liberal justices dissented warning that reverting to the old map, which a lower court previously found intentionally discriminatory will cause significant confusion for voters just a week before the state's primary elections.
And the Supreme Court actually traditionally followed a principle that said you don't mess with elections right up close to them because it's confusing. But do they care about that? No.
“Did they use to make decisions publicly with, you know, major deliberations and so forth as opposed to on the shadow docket or as just a scavenal wants to refer to the interim docket?”
No. They didn't do that kind of thing, but and they certainly blocked it when the Democrats wanted to do this in ways that benefited voters in the past.
Now they have departed from tradition in order to benefit, not just the Repub...
But to benefit their primary cause, and when I say cause, I mean the the mission of the Roberts court.
And that is to promote discrimination in the United States to promote division in the United States to promote the primacy of white Christian men in the United States.
“Because that's their job, that's what they do every day. That's why they're blowing up voting rights. That's why they blew up row V weight. That's why they're blowing up, you know, the impediments that companies face to, you know,”
more riches for the very rich, like, you know, the regulatory regimes that they blew up with, you know, the Chevron case. So we are in a moment where the Supreme Court is actively and daily working to reverse the progress that the United States has been attempting to make since the civil war. And at the heart of this, the people most negatively affected by this are people of color and women. Every single time get rid of affirmative action, get rid of the right to vote, get rid of autonomy over your own body, these are all elements of the agenda of this court.
“And it's, it's happening before our eyes, rights that Americans had are being stripped away. And you know, and this has happened before in our lives, in our lifetimes.”
It hasn't because we've been adding to the rights people. As it happened in our history periodically, yeah, periodically in our history, there have been governments that have promoted racism or promoted discrimination against groups. Most often in the past against immigrant groups, as in the Wilson administration right around the first war war and thereafter, or in the late 19th century with the discrimination that was okay against Chinese immigrants, for example.
“But you know, all these threats come together in the Trump administration where the hatefulness of the worst of America for the past 200 years has been combined into one administration that is promoting the negative agenda here in this country.”
See my earlier point about decline, as I pointed out in the daily beast column that I did yesterday about the president's upcoming trip to China.
Most powerful man in the world is about to hold a summit this week.
He's meeting with Donald Trump. This is the first trip by a president of the United States to China in our lifetimes, in which the president of the United States is not the most powerful man in the world. The relative strength of the United States has plummeted under this administration plummeted under this Congress plummeted under this Supreme Court and the beneficiary in almost every respect has been the people's Republic of China. I learned a lot of their growth. I don't think we should take that away from them. But Xi Jinping is going to welcome Donald Trump and his little traveling crew of billionaires with pump and circumstance and politeness, but the thing that you should look at is confidence.
He will be very confident. He will feel very secure in the position of China and where it stands now relative to the United States.
And it's all because these people have been setting off bombs at the foundations of our strength for years and years now. Okay, this is going great. It's going great, guys. Well, I have an uplifting story because it shows that our president is truly focusing on the things that matter and that is painting the reflecting pool blue. Or I should say, excuse me, forgive me, American flag blue in the words of you're not a patriot. Thank you for correcting yourself. It's not just any, I mean, if it was any blue, I could see why people would be upset. But American flag blue, you're a comi, if you don't want those.
It wasn't artists.
I had no idea. Let's send a note to the Pantone people to make sure that they list that color properly going forward. So what is this fiasco costing us, Riley? I mean, what's going on with this?
Well, the cost has reportedly ballooned over $13 million. And that we know that from the lawsuit that has been filed by the cultural landscape foundation against the National Park Service, the Department of the Interior and Interior Secretary Doug Bergum. And of course, attempting to halt this because it would be ugly and a waste of money, but you know, we might already be past the point of it being a huge waste of money. No, we're not, I mean, this is Trump's whole thing. He starts digging and then he has permission.
Because it with the the ballroom, although apparently, you know, now that we realize that the company, the 400 million dollar ballroom, which is being paid for with billionaire donations, which is to say payoffs to the government, there is a one billion dollar substructure that is supposedly related security, which we're all going to have to pay for.
“The problem is, there are even some Republicans who realize how disgusting this is.”
And whatever the administration may try to do to say this has to do with security, everybody knows they could elect well enough along.
They could elect the East Wing in place, but they started to dig up long before they had the right to do so. It's pretty hideous, but, you know, Donald Trump, as tone deaf as he is, was last night, releasing the weirdest pre-China trip memes that you could imagine. And one of them, there was a picture of like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden up to their necks in the reflecting full pool, and the reflecting pool was full of sewage.
“And Trump referred to them, I'd said something like the Democrats like swimming in sewage or some other kind of thing like that.”
Who's that even for? Well, it's it's his base who referred to them as the Domo Crats referred to us.
I'm a Democrat referred to us. Well, unless until there's a better alternative referred to us as the Domo Crats. But this is crazy, you know, and it's I mean, it's it's a maniacal behavior. Some day, they're going to be some really interesting psychological studies of a president who was unable to do anything, but build archers, paint reflecting pools, you know, build ball rooms to build the oval office of the United States name the Kennedy Center after himself name Palm Beach airport after himself wants to name dollar airport after himself.
This guy is not just an narcissist. He is a delusional, megalomaniacal nutcase, and he's spending our money without our permission. And frankly, if I was an American and I was a little pissed off that the price of gasoline is six bucks for premium or seven for premium or diesel in places like California. And I saw the president was, you know, putting gold leaf on everything, you know, in his orbit and at the same time building ball rooms and painting reflecting pools blue, I'd be kind of pissed off.
Because this is definitely Marie Antoinette, let the meat cake behavior. And before I get a lot of comments, I know Marie Antoinette didn't say, let the meat cake. I know that she was not responsible for a lot of the things people accused or being responsible for. She was used as a symbol for political purposes. In this particular case, our president Marie Antoinette is responsible for these things and it's really gross. Well, there is good news. Is the good news that I'm getting my own ball room so that when I'm frustrated with this news, I have somewhere to go.
“I guess if you want to throw ball, who throws balls anymore? But, you know, I mean, sure. No, no, it's a president's leaving the country.”
It's China's problem for a while. Hey, the ball of the castle have a nice trip. You know, America with Trump someplace else is a better America. So enjoy it while it lasts folks. It's going to be a short trip.
He'll be over there and we'll be here all along.
Can't be worse. Enjoy it and we'll be back tomorrow to talk about it until then. Thank you, Riley. Thank you, Mina. Thank everybody. See you soon. (upbeat music)
