The Supreme Court's Big Tariff Ruling

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1:02and the only precious metals company I recommend to my family, friends and viewers. All right, welcome to the Charlie Kirk show. It is February 20th, 2026. Today's lead is sometimes you have to come up with a lead and sometimes a lead finds you. Sometimes it is thrust upon you with great anticipation. And that is of course the tariff decision that has come down from the Supreme Court. Now we spent the morning pouring over this. We've got Jonathan Carney from Breitbart, who's kind of the resident tariff expert. He's going to be joining us any moment now. So I'm told. But this was a blockbuster decision that we had been waiting for. Now just to set the terms, this was any tariff that had been established by President Trump under what's called the IE EPA, which is essentially an emergency power that the president has been given by the Congress. And he, but it's never really been used to do tariffs. Now it's predecessor. What was it called? It was like the training with the enemy.

2:04The training with the enemy act was used one time in a limited fashion, 10% tariffs by President Nixon. So it's not completely without President, but the, that law had been replaced by the IE EPA. And it had never been used by President in the way that President Trump was using. They have struck down President Trump's ability to do it. But there's so many wrinkles. So this is, we should just just to set the stage here. This is mainly the, this is the liberation day tariffs that were announced with great fanfare and some of the reciprocal tariffs. Yeah, about about 10 months ago, as well as other tariff, the reciprocal tariffs he did. Also, a lot of what he was doing where, you know, you'd see the president goes on truth social and reacts to something and says there will be a 100% tariff on Canada or China until this has changed. A lot of those really aggressive tariffs that he would announce on short notice. That's coming through this bill, the IE EPA, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Yes.

3:04And what the Supreme Court ruled today, and it is a six to three ruling. So that involved of the justices who'd be considered more on the right that we lost Roberts. We lost Gorsuch. We lost Amy Coney Barrett. So that's two of President Trump's yet repics in fact. And they said in essence that basically that the president's claim of power was too large. That he, that the bill is not intended by Congress to allow the president to declare any emergency and thereby impose any tariff. So they imply even in the ruling that if it had been, if it had been more concrete, if he'd said these tariffs are maybe lower or for a more limited duration, it probably would have held up stronger. They seem to take issue with what they say is the president claiming almost total unlimited authority. You might say over the ability to regulate international trade. And I think we have John Carney. Yes, we do. We have him.

4:05John, welcome to the show. I know you got a busy morning. You're in hot demand this morning with the tariff ruling. We've kind of set the stage here while we're waiting for you. The question then becomes what happens next? I've seen rumors that President Trump has a backup plan. Okay, so he can't do tariffs under IE EPA. We could disagree with that. We could agree with that. What happens next? So there are a number of plans. There's, there's actually about six statutes that just on the face of themselves allow the president to impose tariffs. The reason why they wanted to do under IEPA though is there's a lot more procedural hurdles to these ones. So a lot of them, you have to do multi months studies, but usually by the commerce department. Sometimes they have time limits. They can only be imposed for a little bit. So it will be more complex. I've proposed something I call IASIS, which is a licensing regime that would actually link the ability of other countries to export to the US to a license fee that would totally be allowed under IEPA.

5:18So this is another thing that they can do under IEPA that the administration hasn't yet fully considered. The big question to me is what do the other countries do? Remember a lot of them have lowered their own trade barriers, lowered their own tariffs in response to our threatening to raise tariffs. So the question is, do they go back on this? If they do, I think that actually will provide some reason for Congress to actually give this authority to the US president. I mean, in a way to resolve all this, Congress needs to enact presidential terror authority tomorrow, frankly. Yeah, I think that's interesting. So you're saying you could enact an a license fee, which would essentially accomplish the exact same goal here. It would just be under a different name. And that's kind of one of the pushbacks that Kavanaugh who wrote the descent here, which is really fascinating.

6:18He basically says, although I firmly disagree with the court's holdings because he was the dissenter, the decision might not substantially constrain a president's ability to order tariffs going forward. That is because numerous other federal statutes authorize the president to impose tariffs and might justify most, if not all, of the tariffs at issue in this case. And he goes on to list, which was, I found interesting because he's basically giving a road map here. Those statutes include, for example, the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, section 232, the Trade Act of 1974, sections 122 and 201. And the tariff act of 1930, section 338. In essence, the court today concludes the president checked the wrong statutory box by relying on IEPA rather than another statute to impose these tariffs. Okay, I guess if we're going to go by the letter of the law and not by the spirit of it, this is probably in some ways you could consider the correct decision. But it's also bizarre and sort of insane, John, because there's other reasons to believe that he could ban all imports. The court is concluding he could just go to China.

7:24He could do that. Yeah, we're going to ban all imports from China, but we can't tear if you a penny. In fact, he seems to have more authority to do that. Yes, and if he was just saying, I'm banning entire industries from coming into America, he could, right? Yes, absolutely. That's a big problem. Kavanaugh actually points this out that there's that the majority decision basically says Trump is allowed to ban whatever he wants, but he can oppose a $1 tariff. That really doesn't make sense. I don't think it's correct as a matter of law. I think that the Kavanaugh, Alito, Thomas had the right view of the law on this, but it is the law now, you know, this is what the Supreme Court says. So the administration will look to all of these other powers and believe me, they already were everybody heard the way that oral arguments weren't went. So this decision hasn't come to us as a surprise to anyone. In fact, a lot of people, I mean, I would say that the consensus was that the tariffs, at least all of the tariffs weren't going to survive.

8:28If there's any surprise, it's just how this is pretty, you know, just says the president can't do this at all. There's a pretty blanket sloped down of the IPA tariffs, but like I said, even under AEPA, they could ban things, they could put license fees on things. So you can't use the magic word tariff. You know, we'll find another way to protect America into John. The online world moves fast and it's moving even faster these days. That's why TikTok approaches teen safety with families in mind from the start because discovery and creativity are both wonderful things, but it's important to make sure that safety comes first as well. On TikTok, teenagers have over 50 built-in protections right from when they join. Accounts routines all start private by default. They're not open to the entire world. And for those under 16, direct messages are turned off. Only their friends can comment on their videos. And that kind of approach matters because feeling confident and comfortable about these platforms your teenagers are on shouldn't mean digging through a bunch of menus and trying to set everything up yourself and worrying that you got it wrong.

9:33TikTok is taking a proactive approach. Their protections are built in from the moment those teenagers join so that safety and peace of mind for parents is there right from the start. All of this is to say when safety comes first, discovery and creativity can follow without fear. Learn more by going to TikTok.com slash guardians guide. That's TikTok.com slash guardians guide. John Carney from Breitbart major authority in hot demand. I called him early, though, and I got him as soon as this came down, I said, John, I need you. And you're like, I think I can make that work. All right. So what happens the revenue? I will say, you know, I'm very happy that you reached out right away because you did get me. You were first right after my own, my own boss, Alex Marlow. Well, listen, he's got to wait. He's got to wait. We have business to attend you. So tell us about the revenue. Where's it going?

10:34So that remains to be seen. So we won't get any more revenue from naipa tariffs. That's done. Those are coming off the books immediately. What happens to the say call it somewhere between $150 to $200 billion that have been collected under these tariffs. So that's only, by the way, part of the revenue we've collected under. I was going to say, say that number again, John, because it's about $300 billion all in. How much was under IEPA? Probably between 170 and 200, but call it 170 as a good estimate. All right. So some of that may have to be refunded, but we don't know that yet. The Supreme Court's decision is actually totally silent on what happens next. Capital is pretty critical of that. He's like, this could be a mess. It could actually take years of litigation, because you'll have to prove that you paid the tariff that you paid the tariff that was at naipa tariff and not a different tariff. And there would be other considerations. It's not clear, you know, that the money is going to go away right away.

11:37And so, you know, that money won't come out of the US treasure, I'd say, for quite a while. If I were a business entitled to the tariffs, what you did is you basically made sure you had records showing exactly which tariffs you paid so that you can then come to the court later and say, please refund these. But it is going to be a mess. So we've got that. What number is that guys? I want that that that's the the refund. Quote from cabinet. Get me that. Get me that. Well, this is so by the way, there's I believe this is Wharton School has done this. Yeah, Wharton, you pen has done this. This graph is an estimate of iipa revenue and it has it at about 164.7 billion. A monthly revenue of 20.8 billion dollars and they have it cumulative through January. So it's about a maybe is about a month delayed. So you're probably right. About 171.75 on the I want to say I just did that off the top of my head.

12:39So the fact that the Wharton School came in almost at the same number, I feel pretty good about that. That's pretty good, John. So you think this is going to be litigated. And apparently Wharton School school is saying that importers generally have 180 days after goods are liquidated to protest and request refunds from US customs and border protection. So this is a mess. Right. So the process is people paid the tariffs they had to have submitted a basically a piece of paper saying, I don't think I should have paid that tariff. One unfortunate thing about that is look, the really big importers, big companies, Walmart, the international companies that import stuff into the US, they've already filed that paperwork. It's really actually going to be the small guys who really get kind of messed around with here because they probably didn't file the paperwork and or some of them didn't luckily look you get 180 days.

13:40So some of the tariffs that have been paid will still be eligible for refunds, but we again, we don't know what the refund process will look like. As far as I know, we've never had anything miss being where, you know, 150 billion dollars, 170 billion dollars is potentially being refunded to the people who, you know, who paid the tariffs in the first place. Yeah, it's, it's a, I think Kavanaugh refers to it as a mess. He does. And he even flags, you know, there's issues. A lot of importers probably already passed costs on to consumers at some point here, but now they can double dip from that. What does it do to all of our trade deals with other countries that were premised on these tariffs? Do those stick around? He really just, the truth is it seems we don't know what is going to be unleashed by this. This is, I will say that if other countries start to start to say, no, no, now we're taking back. We're going to raise our tariffs again. We're going to raise our trade barriers.

14:40That will at least be a moral victory for Donald Trump because he'll be able to say they did this because I imposed the tariffs. Now they're taking it away because the Supreme Court took away the tariffs. And that should be persuasive to Congress to actually absolutely come back because this. Remember the court here did not say the president could not do this under the Constitution. They said that the statute didn't authorize it. So Congress with one word insert tariffs into IEPA. Just one word amendment and Trump would have the power to do it. Yeah, it's literally because the, in some of the oral arguments, as you mentioned, they just said, well, it doesn't say tariffs. So that's the whole point, even though like in the spirit of the law, it certainly indicates that he would be now. So just to read exactly what Kavanaugh said, I got the quote here. In the meantime, however, the interim effects of this court's decision could be substantial. The United States may be required to refund billions of dollars to importers who paid the IEPA tariffs.

15:40Even though some importers may have already passed on cost to consumers or others. So, you know, their whole argument was that Americans absorb these taxes. That is probably not 100% true. It's probably about an 80, 20 import to American consumers, 20%. But if, let's assume that they were right about that, then Americans are basically going to get double tax because of this. This court decision, which is hilarious. Yeah, as you go as acknowledged at oral argument, the refund process is likely to be a mess. Last word to you, John. And it will, a lot of this money is actually going to leave the US altogether because a huge amount of imports are actually done through foreign companies and their US affiliates. So it's actually going to be payments going to foreigners as well, which is really unfortunate. It'll be a drag on the economy. And like, like, like, Justice Cavano said, it's going to be a mess going forward, but I imagine that we'll get very soon Trump announcing the new tariffs because they've been working on this.

16:42Well, exactly. Trump has a backup plan. Everybody, he has a backup plan. I would also say that we have just gotten word that he has a 1245 Eastern press conference that we're going to be looking for on this tear of decision. 1245 stay right here. We'll have it on real America's voice. John, I know you got to go. You've got you got Marlow, probably screaming at you already. So tell him hi for us. Thank you for making it here. We know you got a busy morning. Jonathan Carney, bright part, economics editor. There you go. All right. So we got an email. Kathy asked is the possibility of refunding tariffs to the importers. A lot of them have passed costs on to consumers. Do the consumers get a refund also? The answer is no. No, no, wait, no, it's consumers. The old man gets screwed. This is, this is here's the thing. Cavano went through trial by fire. The whole, what was her name? Betsy. Oh, what was there? Christine Blossy Ford. Christine Blossy. Two front doors. She, the whole thing, you know, that where he went through a trial by fire. The guys got steel down his spine now. Everybody doubted him at first.

17:50Meanwhile, Gorsuch and ACB to other Trump appointees going against the president. Listen, you could make the argument that perhaps this was texturally just the right decision by the letter of the law. But it's, there's a, there's a let a measure of insanity to it because you could just ban all the imports. You can't tear off a single penny. If you knew Charlie Kirk, you knew this. He was a connector. Charlie believed in finding good people and connecting them with other good people that he cared about. When someone truly took care of him, Charlie would never hesitate to recommend them. Andrew Del Rey and Todd Evakian were two of those people. They personally helped Charlie and Erica with their mortgage needs and Charlie trusted them completely, whether it was a home buyer trying to qualify or someone needing to consolidate debt or see if they could get a lower rate in payments. These were the guys Charlie sent people to and right now timing matters. The market has shifted and rates have come down. There's more inventory bidding wars have cooled and buyers finally have more control.

18:51But that window won't stay open forever as rates come down. Competition will return. That's why being prepared now is so important. Andrew and Todd at Union Home Mortgage bring over 40 years of combined experience and guide you through the process clearly. No pressure, no guesswork. These are the people Charlie trusted and they're the people you can count on. Reach out today to get approved for mortgage financing with Andrew and Todd at Andrew and Todd.com or call triple eight triple eight 1172 with 40 years of experience. They really are the experts and they make it easy because they keep everything in house called triple eight triple eight 1172 or go to Andrew and Todd.com that is Andrew and Todd. Joining us now is Mark Halperin, a great great political analyst and commentator and a friend of the show. Mark, welcome back to the show. Lots to discuss this morning with the you know the Supreme courts ruling on President Trump's use of tariffs. I have all this other stuff I was planning on talking to you about and then this came across the wire. Give us the political implications. I know there's questions about can he still do tariffs. Can he use other mechanisms. What do we do with the revenue that came in. What happens with that as it go to a lower court, et cetera, et cetera, politically. What does it mean?

20:08Well, first of all, let me just tip let I miss you guys. I haven't heard from you in a while. Haven't heard from you in a while. Good to hear from you. I'll call you every week, Mark. I'll call you. We'll have you. We'll just make a standing invite. Good. I'd like that. So my first thought just trying to be in the mind of the president is he's going to be super annoyed at the chief justice, but he didn't pick the chief justice. He inherited it. But two of the three justices, the president put on the court voted against him. Gorsuch and Coney Barrett. So my suspicion is the president probably will vent that on truth social. But the larger issue, more than as you pointed out, all the mechanical things involving tariffs, which are super important is this is the first time the courts really weighed in substantively on the president's powers. They've done some procedural things, but they've ruled against him. And there's a ton of pending cases in other areas, not about tariffs, where if the same justices or even a five four vote against him decide they're not afraid to vote against Donald Trump.

21:09Everybody likes to pretend these are legal decisions. They're political almost always. It's really disheartening because they should be legal. Justices are pretty political. Not just the not just the current ones, not just the ones picked by Republicans or the ones picked by Democrats. So if I were the president's political team, I'd be worried that they're in the future when some of these other cases come up. That they may be on the short end of five to four or six to three decisions that will really be impactful for what the president can do. I agree with that. And it also, one of the thoughts I had this morning was, you know, we hear about Democrats wanting to pack the courts wanted to call it a lawless court. And here you go, them doing exactly the opposite of what the president was lobbying for. Will that inspire any trust? I don't think so. They'll still pack the court. Go ahead, Blake. Just real quickly, I would concern the other way that we know the president was very invested in this terrif case. I don't know that it would be an exaggeration to say it was his top personal brand is top priority. He's really fulminated on truth and other venues about the importance of this case.

22:13Should there be any concern among people that the president might up rhetoric on actually, I don't need to listen to the Supreme Court on this sort of thing. Would you think there's any hazard of that? I mean, I know that's talked about a lot, particularly on the left and amongst others. I just don't think so. I just don't see any indication. There have been a few things like some of the immigration orders, like the planes that were in the air on the way to Venezuela, where people have sort of tried to suggest that that was lawless and violation of a court order. That's a close call. I don't think so. I'll tell you, though, the other political thing that's where this decision is in the president's interest. And I don't mean Blake, give short shriftier question, but I hope I sufficiently answered it. But, you know, before the Supreme Court decision, there were three big pieces of economic news that we're going to I think really do harm to the markets and and for if you count what was happening in the last day with oil markets because of worries about Iran. First was yesterday this firm blue owl capital made some decision about about investors and money that really were spooking people and getting people to talk about is this the first sign like we saw in 2007 leading into the economic crash of 2008.

23:24Then this morning we had to horrible economic numbers for the country and for the president politically, a lower than expected GDP number by a lot higher than expected inflation number. I will never know what the stock market would have done today had had we not had the Supreme Court decision on terrorists, but as I look down now, the Dow is up and the Dow is likely to end really far up because although this is bad news politically for the president, the markets love this decision. And so if you talk about the implications politically for the president, if he if you hadn't had this decision, he'd be going into the state of the union with a lot of negative negativity about the economy. Now a lot of people at least in the markets are going to be positive about the economy into the weekend and into next week because they don't want the terrorists and a lot of Republican politicians are going to be happy to because they don't want the terrorists. And that's a good point, Mark, because we always have to kind of, I think in our mind, we have to bifurcate between normie and politically plugged in right politically plugged in.

24:25They're really into the DC of it all. They're into the tug of war, the political jockeying, the normies just want more money in their wallet. They just want to they just want to make sure that they got a job. They just want to make sure they can go to their soccer practice for their kids. Those are the storylines and I've sort of learned to think about it as what breaks containment, right? The economy breaks containment. This is what I knew about the halftime show that we did. It broke containment because you know, I'm getting hit up by you guys, you guys didn't have time. We did a halftime show with this whole thing, Mark. I'll tell you about it. I heard a bit of I heard a bit about some guy wore shorts. Sorry. Yeah, they're called shorts just to be clear. June shorts, it's a whole thing. Anyways, when you you can see these things when they break containment. Now, the economy is just one of those things because it's a lived experience that breaks containment. It has this, I think downstream effect, knock on effect politically. And yeah, there could be unintended consequences that are positive for the present. I think we need to keep that in mind. But it's also important while we don't know what's going to happen to the tariff revenue that's already been collected, which is in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

25:29That's going to be kicked down to a lower court and we're going to find out what happens that whole other hill take another year. Yeah, exactly. But one of the things that I wanted to get to you was this incredible tweet that you had earlier. We covered it on the show, but I'm so glad you get to put added layers to this. You were talking about pollster and strategist Tony Fabrizio, Charlie Love Tony. He comes in with 25 slides, a bunch of the cabinet are there about 7500 people. You even mentioned that what they ate. I love that. I love that. I felt like a very marked detail to me. They had their check it was great buffet. So he's going into what men moderate and true independence are the true persuadable voters. And you said housing affordability. You also talked about these key and I saw the through line here. Mark, these are populist sort of you get you get a scalp issue, right? You said messages that break through banning stock trading for Congress, transparency on health insurance data, including the pricing and claims reimbursement, lowering prescription drug costs and the Trump tax cuts.

26:36These are all issues where you get to go, we got the bad guy. And that is very populist. And it's a conservative tinge populist where it's we're not anti business, we're anti fat cat, we're anti oligarchy, we're anti corruption, right? And so I thought this was a very interesting through line that is a way for you to sort of bridge this conservative populist divide your take. I like the way you framed it. I think it's just right. History as I said at this meeting. And again, this was the president's sort of political high command briefing the chiefs, the chiefs, the staff, the cabinet members, their chiefs, the staff, their other senior aids. They have history against them. History would suggest that that it's going to be difficult to not lose control of the House and maybe the Senate. And the president's poll numbers currently are horrible. And so this is a group of political advisers who are battle tested. They're not they're not a bunch of chickens with their heads cuts off. And they're coming in there to make the best case to this team about what to talk about where they can have a comeback.

27:36There's some tactical things they could raise more money than Democrats. They can try to make mischief and democratic primaries to nominate people who are less electable. They can do opposition research on some of these democratic candidates. But in the end, they're swimming against two big tides history and the president's approval rating. At the same time, there's a long time to go. And they're going to look to see to see what they can do again, particularly raising money. The one thing they said at the meeting that I think has not gotten as much attention as I thought it would. Is they said in the meeting, these are the right issues to talk about the ones you listed about health insurance and about the Trump tax cuts, et cetera. They said, that's what the data shows. That's what you all should talk about when you're out campaigning when you're on media, when you're on programs like this. They said, there's going to be a whole other campaign that's run by our best athlete, Donald John Trump. He'll talk about whatever he wants. Don't don't think don't think there's one campaign where the president's leading. There's one campaign he does. And then there's the parallel campaign that all the folks in the room say we need to do. And the president's going to talk about the 2020 election. He's going to talk about Joe Biden. He's going to talk about, you know, Liberace's hair.

28:42He's going to talk about where he likes to eat when he's in Dayton, Ohio. They said, you just can't worry about that. Don't that's not the role model the way the president does it. He'll do his thing. But they're hoping that these issues that test very well, very popular with voters. As you said, they're populist. They play well with MAGA, but they play well with the center voter too. They're hoping that that's the message that they can drive through their advertising and through the surrogate activity during during the fall. Do you think Mark that we might actually see action on some of those items that one of those ones that sell banning stock trading for Congress? I've been hearing about proposals along those lines since the big crash in08 people are talking about members of Congress getting rich off that sort of thing. I guess the problem is the member people getting rich off of this are the members of Congress. But is there a serious proposal to take action there? There is and as you suggest, please been around forever. Maybe it'll pass this year. One of the big questions that's going to come out of the state of the union on Tuesday is our Democrats willing to vote for stuff that they believe in that they think be good for their constituents, but it will give the president a political win.

29:49Things like on housing. There's a big housing bill in the house and the Senate both past separate bills are different, but there's some overlap. Our Democrats are going to vote on final passage, so Donald Trump can have a signing ceremony and say he did something to make housing more affordable. Would they vote for the stock ban and the president sign it where he gets the front of the parade and gets credit? We're going to have to see. And on that on the stock trade thing, we'll have to see if Republicans want to vote for it because plenty of Republicans have opposed that as well. Well, yeah, you see you're asking the fundamental Patriot question. Do Democrats love America more than they hate Donald Trump? Yeah, it's a huge question. And that's a huge question. And to some Republican House members like their vacation homes more than they like doing what the voters want regarding transparency on the stock trade. We are equal opportunity offenders when it comes to corrupt Republicans, Rhino Republicans. And listen, this is central to Charlie's legacy. He wanted a Republican party that was as conservative as its voters that was loved its country as much as its voters. And so these are questions that we're going to see come to the fore and we're going to be pounding that drum.

30:51And I love the way you framed it. Here's the other thing. You said the border closing the border doesn't rate that well. It's and I remember this from Trump 1.0 once we kind of got the border a little bit under control and all the craziness was done. It stopped even coming up in headlines. You know, it's like we had this huge fight over the wall and then it kind of fell off the map. It's a weird issue like that. Yeah, you guys are too young to remember Janet Jackson, but she has on called what have you done for me lately. And that's that's that's what the research shows. It's just, you know, yeah, glad you close the border, but that's done so now what are we doing next. And so you'll hear people talk about it. It won't be absent from the rhetoric. The president certainly, but it's not a silver bullet. It's not something that they think should be at the centerpiece of making the argument for the midterm elections. Mike Lindell and my pillow employees want to thank you for your great support this past year. And they're looking to make 2026 the best year yet as a thank you to our listeners. My pillow is exclusively offering free shipping on your entire order and at wholesale pricing.

31:55That means they're bringing back the mega sale exclusively for our listeners. For example, the classic my pillows are regularly 4998 and now are marked down to only 1498. Turn any mattress into the best mattress ever with the maid in the USA, my pillow, my mattress topper and save up to $100. Get a set of my pillow, Giza dream sheets for as low as 2998 or the six back towel set for only 3498. Order now and your entire order ships absolutely free. Go to my pillow.com today and use promo code Kirk. Don't wait. Be sure to order now call 800 875 0 425 or use promo code K IRK. That is my pillow.com promo code Kirk. All right, Mark, just real quick here. There's a EJ and Tony tweet who you might remember EJ and Tony was up for a spot in the admin here. He said growth came in at just 1.4%. But here's why government purchases tanked almost 5.1%.

32:56Pulling the headline number down almost a full percentage point. This is good news. And another sign the economy is being reprivatized. Is this coped spin or do you see any truth in that? There's some truth to that. There's also some truth to the president's spin from earlier today, even before the numbers came out, which he's really not supposed to do. That the government shut down, which he blames on the Democrats also aid into the GDP. But again, I've talked to a lot of economic experts since the numbers came out. And they're not great. It's arguably the worst single day of economic data since Trump returned to office. And you can always look at the data. People in CNBC were remarkably unopset by it. But you can always look at the data and poke holes in it. But overall, no, the number was expected to be higher even with those caveats. Got it. All right. Now two questions. We're going to get into ice fallout, the Minneapolis fallout and the de-escalation by Tom Homan.

33:58What are the ramifications ongoing? Is it something voters are going to forget? Secondly, Iran. So you can take the potential kinetic activities in Iran first or second and the ice Minneapolis de-escalation question first or second. I think the main implication of ice is that I think Trish McLaughlin will probably replace Blake on the show. It would be my guess. Hey. Don't you think? Wow. Don't you think? That's a really, you know. I just, Blake, you know, I prefer to go back to it. Blake wants to go back to a quiet life of anonymity. YouTube will like Trish a much better. Yeah. Mark, I reached out to you to start bringing you on the show and you carry the knife and try back. No, no. I'm trying to bring you back to your quiet life that you used to love so much. Oh, it's sudden. It's like you get, get on camera on all of a sudden. It's like Trish McLaughlin out of my way. We've unleashed the monster in Blake. Yeah. This is true. Well, yeah. Trish is leaving the DHS on the market. Yeah. I texted Trish. She said that that plan had been in place before and that she actually stayed on longer than she was anticipating just to make sure that the Minneapolis thing was handled well.

35:07Yeah. All right. That joke inside. We just wish Trish or the best. She's a great person. I think that the main impact of it is the Democrats are fired up. I don't know how the government normally I can make up a scenario for the end of government shutdown partial or full. I don't know how this one ends because the Democrats are so fired up in Washington and around the country. And again, one of the criticisms you guys have heard me make many times of the left is Trump to arrangement syndrome and just anger about present Trump. They don't understand the other side. They don't listen. Folks come on two ways sometimes they do. But in general, they're not, they're not sensitive to it. So I always say to folks in MAGA, you get so frustrated that the left doesn't understand why you support Donald Trump. You all need to understand they're really upset about those two people being killed really upset and they they're upset about a different way than President Trump says he's upset about it. They're upset about it because they think it's a manifestation of a lawless policy that's still largely in place, even though even with the withdrawal from Minnesota.

36:07So they're going to raise money off of it. They already are. They're going to have their base fired up for the midterms. They're going to be on the right side of some immigration issues. Most of the things that Republicans are criticizing in the proposal put forward by Senator Schumer and Akim Jeffries are popular. They're not unpopular. Democrats have gone from being the party on the wrong side of immigration related issues to being party mostly not entirely on the right side of immigration related issues. So that's a big, that's a big political fallout. And I don't know where it's going to go. And I think just to a large extent, whatever impact it has on the midterms, the story will be told to degree by how this partial government shut down. So there's, you talk about how we don't understand each other. I understand why they would see those images and get fired up about them. There seems to be zero acknowledgement of how we got here that, you know, 10 to 15 million illegal storm the border and we just basically said to hell with our immigration laws for four years. 100% understanding about that.

37:08And zero understanding that sanctuary cities refused to cooperate. Although I would say Tom Homan has, has made some, some progress there in Minneapolis and Minnesota broadly, but okay, I digress. There's, there's, no, there's also a little appreciation for the fact that they want people whose families are docs, who are docs themselves, who are under threat of whether trying to do their jobs and not protected by local law enforcement to just go up there and walk around and let people try to run them over or shoot at them. Or, or harass them while they're having dinner. So no doubt. But, but again, this is the sort of trap that both sides red and blue fall into. You're pointing out things that are true, but you're pointing those out instead of saying. I guess maybe I don't have the full appreciation for why they're so upset about those two people being killed because if I did, maybe I'd say, well, let me read Senator Schumer's proposals and see if any of those things would keep anybody else from being killed. Again, they're just just a part of my job is to try to explain right to blue and blue.

38:09I understand. They're really, they're really upset in a profound way that transcends their failure to close the border or appreciate that the border was open and that's led to this. It does strike me. It does feel like politically, as your tweet showed, there's this big difficulty in the president and the Republicans harvesting winds off of some of their biggest successes. As you said, the border shuts down. No one cares right away. We seem to have net outflow of illegal immigrants, and it's like people forget about it. And I'm thinking about also, apparently we are some of the lowest, we might have the lowest murder rates since the 1950s. That's a very big shift from early Biden. Yeah, massive drops in all of the in like in major crimes in big cities, and it coincided with that push from the president. And he doesn't seem to be reaping much political benefit from that either. Well, I think if you look at sort of below the radar of the numbers of the president, mostly it's the economy. I think if the economy was positive and people felt the Trump economy was way better than the Biden economy, which they don't think some poll show they think the bottom economy, Biden economy was better.

39:13Then I think the president is getting a lot of credit, about 80%. The 20%. It's a loss immigration because of because of large of Minnesota. And and I'm not convinced people aren't seeing. Well, people aren't. I'm not convinced he's lost the issue wholesale, not forever, not forever. No, not forever. But, but the numbers are clear. His standing on, do you approve of disapproved of the president's immigration policy? The numbers slipped dramatically, dramatically. So that's just a reality of where he is. He's not being able to offset the low numbers on the economy with high numbers on inflation on immigration. No, fair enough. All right, Iran. 60 seconds. Iran. You know, people should be thinking about this not as a binary attack or don't attack. It's attack. Big attack a little or don't attack. And he could attack tomorrow. He could. My sense right now is so wait 10 days or so to give the Iranians a chance, maybe one more chance to prove their serious about negotiating. But if they don't come back within a week or so with a pretty serious, not a, not a, a stall ball, but a serious proposal to deal at least with their nuclear capability.

40:21I don't know yet about missiles. But if they don't come back with a serious proposal, I do think there'll be a substantial attack. And I think no ground troops, no nation building, but there'll be a substantial attack to try to degrade not just their nuclear and missile capability, but to undermine the regime. I think, yeah, I, I would anticipate ahead of the snake operation similar to Venezuela. They're going to do it. Mark Halperin to a TV. Thank you, sir. Excellent. Great to see you, gentlemen. Thank you both. We'll see you next week. Great to see you, gentlemen. Thank you both. We'll see you next week. Great to see you, gentlemen. Thank you both. We'll see you next week.