Transcript: Panel Discussion of Donald Trump, the First Hundred Days

Date of recording: May 16, 2025, The Savvy Street Show

Host: Vinay Kolhatkar. Guests: Ruth Papazian, Ed Mazlish, Roger Bissell

 

For those who prefer to watch the video, it is here.

Editor’s Note: The Savvy Street Show’s AI-generated transcripts are edited for removal of repetitions and pause terms, and for grammar and clarity. Explanatory references are added in parentheses. Material edits are advised to the reader as edits [in square brackets].

 

Summary

In this episode of The Savvy Street Show, the political panel discusses Donald Trump’s first 116 days in office, evaluating his promises and actions. The conversation explores Trump’s strategy in navigating political challenges, particularly in relation to the judiciary and healthcare. The panel also delves into the implications of Trump’s new executive order on pharmaceutical pricing and his approach to Middle Eastern relations, emphasizing peace and prosperity as key themes. The conversation delves into various political and economic themes, focusing on trust in international agreements, the over-criminalization of citizens, tariff strategies in trade negotiations, and the need to defund woke agendas in education. The speakers discuss the implications of these issues on society and governance, emphasizing the importance of clarity in laws and regulations, as well as the balance between wealth maximization and national security.

Takeaways

1. Trump’s first 116 days have been marked by significant activity and promise-keeping.
2. The panelists view Trump’s approach as nimble rather than chaotic.
3. Ruth Papazian highlights the challenges Trump faces from the judiciary and his own party.
4. Skepticism is expressed about the long-term effectiveness of Trump’s Middle Eastern strategy.
5. Trust in international agreements is questioned, especially with Iran.
6. Excess regulation leads to a society where everyone is potentially a criminal.
7. The panelists discuss whether tariffs can be used strategically to create free-trade zones.
8. National security should be prioritized over wealth maximization.
9. Defunding woke agendas in education is a pressing issue.

Sound Bites

1. “He’s had a very positive first hundred days.”
2. “We have such a divided nation.”
3. “He’s trying to create a new world order.”
4. “We need better laws, not more laws.”
5. “Tariffs are a negotiating ploy.”
6. “Maximization of wealth is not the only goal.”
7. “Trump is moving on many fronts.”

 

Vinay Kolhatkar:

Hello and good evening. Welcome to The Savvy Street Show. We have our esteemed political panel again, and this time we were going to discuss “Donald Trump, the First Hundred Days,” but it’s more like the first 116 days. I don’t follow numerology, but maybe 116 is an auspicious number.

First up, we have Ruth Papazian. She is a political consultant who helps moderate Democrats. Some of us ask: “Are there any?” Welcome to the show, Ruth.

 

Ruth Papazian:

Thank you. They’re like unicorns, but I do find them.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar:

That is lovely to hear. We also have Ed Mazlish, who was a delegate for Ted Cruz in the 2016 presidential campaign, and he is a very keen political observer. Welcome back to the show, Ed.

 

Ed Mazlish:

Thank you, Vinay. Good to see everybody.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar:

And last but not the least, Roger Bissell. He’s a musician and philosopher and another very keen political observer. Welcome back to the show, Roger.

 

Roger Bissell;

Thanks, Vinay.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar:

Okay, we’ll jump into it. Ed first, what is your general impression of the first 116 days of Trump in office? Specifically, has he kept his promises? Is he on track? And have any of his actions surprised you either in a good way or a bad way?

 

Ed Mazlish:

My overall impression is that he’s had a very positive and very active first hundred days.

My overall impression is that he’s had a very positive and very active first hundred days. As far as promises, the one promise that he’s kept is to close the border. It’s not that I think that he has broken promises, because I don’t. But I think it’s more of a general thing that he’s just been a very activist president, and he’s shown a real contrast to Sleepy Joe Biden. I think that he’s doing the flip side of the Democrats, who are trying to throw everything they can at him to see what will stick. Trump is basically doing the other side of that, except Trump is on the winning side of pretty much every issue. So, he’s being very active and very agile politically, and he’s winning. That’s my take on his first hundred days.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar:

Terrific. Ruth?

 

Ruth Papazian:

He’s at the early stages of this Herculean undertaking. There are forces arrayed against him that are not going to make it easy.

Trump was elected to tear down every existing system and start over. So, he’s at the early stages of this Herculean undertaking. There are forces arrayed against him that are not going to make it easy. He has an out-of-control federal judiciary. He has a Supreme Court Chief Justice who is loath to take on the most contentious constitutional issues. He has weak-kneed RINOs who are hell-bent on not making budget cuts permanent and on watering down bold proposals like turning the clock back to when you didn’t pay taxes on Social Security. How he’s dealing with all of this is, he tries and discards one tactic after another until he finds the right one for the specific thing that he wants to accomplish. So, when something he tries fails, or when he hits an unexpected judicial or political roadblock, he quickly pivots to another tactic. This isn’t chaos, as the Democrats claim. This is being nimble. Unlike other politicians, he doesn’t give up at the first failed attempt. He has a plan A, B, C, D, and E. This is Trump’s M.O., and I feel it matches the M.O. of the leftists and the establishment politicians in his own party who are trying to slow his roll, because they have an endless supply of monkey wrenches that they’re throwing into the works. What Trump does is retools and moves forward.

 

Ed Mazlish:

Exactly.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar:

Great. Roger?

 

Roger Bissell:

I want to append a comment to what Ed said. I saw a really funny video the other day where Chuck Norris was fighting 500 gorillas. It was hilarious. They were all attacking him in a big horde, and he was just pivoting and wheeling around. They were all trying to tackle him or destroy him, and he just about demolished every one of them. And I thought, that’s kind of like Trump. And the other comment is, we have such a divided nation, and maybe this isn’t the right place for the comment, but Jefferson talked in the Declaration about “a long train of abuses”; and, at a certain point, you say, okay, this isn’t going to work anymore, and we’ve got to throw off the old leaders and the system. But before we do, we have to appeal to who’s running things now, and Trump is trying to do that. He’s trying to work in the system. He’s not out there saying, let’s have a coup or have a military takeover. He’s trying to work the machinery that is in place, and he’s trying to undo all the harm and the violations of rights that have been done by years of GOP and Democrat Congresses and presidents. And I hope he wins, because if this country stays as divided as it has been, I don’t know what’s going to happen. So, I wish the best for him, and I think he’s off to a great start.

 

Ed Mazlish:

If I can add to what Roger said, I think that Trump’s determination to stay within the system is why he seems so unwilling to confront the judiciary. I mean, he confronts them in the media, he confronts them with verbal taunts, but he really wants to stay within the system. It’s weird. It’s almost like he doesn’t remember the lawfare that’s been done against him. If we have any hockey fans that are watching, it’s almost like he thinks it’s a Stanley Cup playoff series, and at the end of every battle, everybody’s going to go through the handshake line. He doesn’t seem to get that the other side is never going to shake his hand, never going to admit that he won. I wonder why he’s so afraid of being called an insurrectionist or whatever they’re going to call him. They’re going to call him a dictator or an insurrectionist no matter what he does. So, he might as well do what he has to do to win the political battle.

 

Ruth Papazian:

Yes, but there’s one thing wrong with that. If you remember, he got impeached several times over nothing last time around. So, if he took on the judiciary, if he ignored rulings, things like that, he might be impeached again, and there are Republicans who would join that effort, obviously.

 

Ed Mazlish:

It’s not so much about ignoring court rulings, though. He’s really good at using the bully pulpit. He should be using the bully pulpit to explain how these judges are doing things that they have no power to do. When you refuse to acknowledge an illegal act, that’s not defiance. The real constitutional crisis is the judiciary, not Trump.

 

Ruth Papazian:

Absolutely.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar:

That’s a very good point. Now, I have seen a new executive order (EO), about the pharmaceutical prices, and I perhaps have the wrong impression of how things work. For instance, what the American company gets by selling drugs in Australia (Australia was singled out) and in the UK is not what the consumer pays. The consumer might pay $35 Australian, but there is a government subsidy that kicks in, and the company actually earns $110. So, I hope we are comparing the right prices. But he’s issued a warning to the pharmaceutical companies about lowering drug prices in the United States. What do you think of that, Ruth?

 

Ruth Papazian:

Okay, Trump describes this EO as giving the US most-favored-nation status, and that means matching the lowest price that a citizen in any other developed country in the world can pay for a drug. So, Trump estimates that the retail price of some of the prescription drugs could drop 50 to 80%. Now, this will not apply to every single pharmaceutical. I believe it’s going to be just the most commonly prescribed ones, like diabetes drugs and perhaps the weight-loss injectables, things like that. The situation we have now is that Americans are subsidizing global pharmaceutical consumption, because our tax dollars are often used for R&D to identify new targets, by which I mean proteins that a drug can bind to, interact with, to either alleviate symptoms or to actually treat the underlying disease. Our tax dollars are also used to go through the regulatory mechanism that certifies the safety and efficacy of a drug. Without our tax dollars, there would be a lot fewer pharmaceuticals available in the marketplace, a lot less innovation, etc. So, I think it’s unconscionable that, on top of that, we’re also paying much higher prices for drugs than any other nation. Just one example: a one-month supply of ZepBound, which is four pens, is $1,300 in New York City and $88 in London. That’s ridiculous.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar:

Sorry, is the $88 what the consumer pays or what the company earns (in the UK)?

 

Ruth Papazian:

Yes, yes. $1,300 is what the consumer pays in New York. I have a couple of quotes here…

 

Vinay Kolhatkar:

Sorry. Let me just make another observation. What the pharmaceutical company makes in the UK is very different from what the consumer pays. They are making substantive profits in the UK as well. Some things have huge subsidies, and some have small subsidies. That’s true in Australia as well. The difference is, you’ve got to negotiate with the government agency (the National Health Service [NHS] in the UK) who has a much bigger negotiating power than any individual consumer when they’re subsidizing the drug. So, 88 versus 1,300 is not the right comparison with respect.

 

Ruth Papazian:

Well, I want to quote White House Health Policy Advisor Callie Means. I have notes here. She had a post on X. It says, “The U.S. is less than 5% of the world’s population but produces 75% of worldwide pharma profits. That’s not the free market. It’s rank corporate capture.” That’s my answer to that. But how did this happen? How did we get here? Other countries are bulk buyers of pharmaceuticals, and neither Medicare nor Medicaid directly dictates drug prices for enrollees like the health bureaucracies in foreign countries. They just don’t do that. They don’t negotiate prices.

I don’t know if you read Scott McKay in American Spectator, but he had a fantastic analysis of this, so I just want to read that, too. He said, “There’s a lot of price setting happening in the international pharmaceutical market. It just happens everywhere else but here. What Trump is attempting to do is play the same game as those countries play to cram down drug prices. It isn’t an assault on the free market. There is no free market in prescription drugs. Since World War II, it’s been a cartel market, and it’s simply been the American people getting hammered by it.” So, that’s my view. I thought his article was brilliant, actually.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar:

Thank you. Roger, anything to add there?

 

Roger Bissell:

If Ed has something he would like to add, I will yield my time to him. He wrote something a few days ago I thought was excellent, and if there’s anything Ruth didn’t cover that he would like to join in with—have at it, Ed.

 

Ed Mazlish:

Well, thank you for that, Roger. My take on this is that the issue here is that arbitrage has been prohibited by law. And what do I mean by that? When a drug is $88 in London and $1,300 in New York, the free market would solve that problem by having entrepreneurs purchase large quantities of the drug for $88 in London and bring it back to New York and sell it for somewhere between $88 and $1,300, starting with $1,200, and then, as more competition joined the fray, it would be bid down to $1,100, then to $1,000. I don’t know where, no one knows where it would end up, but that’s what arbitrage is. When there’s a differential price in two different markets, it’s a business opportunity to buy low and then sell high. The excess buying of the low will push the price of the low up, and the excess selling in New York would drive the price in New York down. Now, that can’t happen because re-importation of drugs is prohibited by law, so the free market doesn’t exist. There is no free market at all, because that would be the mechanism by which the free market would deal with the problem that Trump is trying to deal with.

So, when he says he wants to have most-favored-nation status, and he defines that as you sell to us at the lowest price that any other developed country sells, he’s trying to mimic that arbitrage process, which the law now prohibits. It would be great if Congress would repeal that [law]. But even if Congress repealed it, you would still have to deal with the issue of contracts between the pharmaceutical companies and the British government, where the pharmaceutical companies might try and prohibit resale of the products. Now, whether they could do that or not is another open question, but part of the executive order also empowers the FTC to investigate whether enforcement actions for price gouging should be considered.

Now, from the pharmaceutical companies’ perspective, they only can get away with this because they recover all their R&D costs, as Ruth said, from the American public. And not just R&D, but the cost of trials and testing, all of that, is borne by the American public, by the American consumer and the American insurance companies that are third party payers for drugs, including Medicare and Medicaid. Once the drug is approved for sale in the US, the marginal cost of another unit is infinitesimally small. That $88 vial probably only costs about $5 for the pharmaceutical company to manufacture. They’re still making a big profit when they sell it for $88. The marginal cost when you take out all the fixed costs is much lower. So, they’re able to make a profit, The game that’s being played makes it look like socialized medicine can produce better drug prices than a free market can, and that’s entirely not the case. It’s only because we have this rigged market that allows the socialist countries to take advantage of marginal cost pricing, where the arbitrage system is prohibited. So, I think that this is a fantastic executive order. I think that the arbitrage system is the way the free market would handle it, and because that system is banned by law, something needs to be done to work around that, and Trump is trying to work around that.

 

Ruth Papazian:

That was a great analysis.

 

Roger Bissell:

I will add to that. Trump just barely got started in his first administration pointing out that Europe was not bearing its share of its defense, that it was being heavily subsidized by what the US was providing, with the nuclear umbrella and the relative proportion of contributions to NATO. I don’t know how many areas of government or industry that the subsidization on the US taxpayers’ backs occurs. But this is a huge example, too, Big Pharma and how we are subsidizing so much of what the Europeans benefit from these drugs that we pay huge prices for, and they get for quite a bit less. I don’t know who is guiding him in this, but remember, 30, 40 years ago, he used to be talking about how the US is taken advantage of by other countries, and he said it so many times, it just sounded like a catchphrase or a truism that he was saying, and people would say, oh, that’s just Trump ranting about the US being taken advantage of. But subsidization is pretty monstrous if you think about it. We’re so generous over here, but you know, that should have ended a long time ago once everybody got on their feet from World War II, but it’s still going on.

 

Ruth Papazian:

Exactly. Yes, between all this subsidizing and the fraud, waste, and abuse that DOGE is finding, and our taxes getting jacked up almost year after year, there will be a revolution in this country if this stuff doesn’t stop. I mean, how much more can you squeeze the middle class?

 

Vinay Kolhatkar:

I think we will move on to the next question. But before we do, I want to keep that point alive, that it enrages the American consumer to find out that the UK’s paying $88 on something that costs [Americans] $1,300. The pharmaceutical company is not actually earning $88; it would be more like $800 (including the NHS subsidy which the NHS pays the pharmaceutical company). That’s still a substantive difference, [however,] and the difference is because of the negotiating power of the [UK] NHS, and the same with Australia and other places. So, you have to compare the right thing, the apple with the apple, and it’s that equality I think it’s fair to aim for and ask for. If the UK wants to subsidize [their customers], that’s their problem.

Okay, let’s move on to Saudi Arabia. I see Trump’s pivots to Saudi Arabia as essentially isolating Iran. But is there more to it when he’s saying there could be a one-trillion-dollar or an 800-billion-dollar investment from the Saudis into the US? Is there another game there which has to do with perhaps the recognition of the Abraham Accords or something else? I’ll start with Roger on that one.

 

Roger Bissell:

I think there are two prongs of his strategy, and they’re peace and prosperity, and the world is going to be okay if people are oriented around: stop the fighting and start making deals to make things that people want. I heard people treating his hanging out with the folks there in the Middle East as if it were Rocket Man Chapter 2, How he’s making nice with these monsters. Well, yes, he’s trying to establish peace and productivity or prosperity, where people are actually cooperating with each other instead of helping terrorists that are shooting missiles at their neighbors. And the deal with Syria, taking the sanctions off of Syria, everybody is excited about that, but there are people in the US who think that’s just terrible, we’re making nice with these monsters. Well, in order to get peace instead of war, you have to stop snarling at each other, and you have to stop acting like you’re ready to stab the other person when their back is turned. So, I’m all for what he did. I don’t know too many details, but it sounded huge.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar:

Okay. Ed?

 

Ed Mazlish:

I think that Trump has made a calculation that he can get the terrorists and the murderers to trade their guns for commerce. I am deeply skeptical of that.

I think that Roger is correct. I think that Trump has made a calculation that he can get the terrorists and the murderers to trade their guns for commerce. I am deeply skeptical of that. I’m willing to let Trump test it out, and my skepticism is sort of nuanced because I think one of the undertones of this trip is that Trump is so powerful of a personality that he intimidates them all. I suspect that we’re going to have peace in the Middle East during Trump’s term, but I’m deeply skeptical of whether somebody who follows him is going to be able to keep these countries in line. You know, the Qataris where he just was and he was in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates—those are countries that are very wealthy. Qatar in particular is a big supporter of Hamas, a big supporter of terrorism, and yet they’re extremely wealthy. If you watched any of the video footage of Trump being there, it looks like the roads are almost paved in gold. I don’t think that lack of wealth is behind their turn to terror. Leaving aside that it’s just sort of a standard leftist explanation for crime domestically, I don’t think it’s any better an explanation internationally for terrorism. But I do think that Trump is such an intimidating presence that it will work during his administration.

Secondarily, I think that it’s also just a recognition of reality. I mean, when you have trade deficits, where is the money? You know, they send us oil or they send us products, and we send them dollars. Well, what are they supposed to do with those dollars? They can either buy treasuries or put it in the bank, or they can invest in the US. And Trump is also trumpeting how much investment they’re going to make in the US economy, and of course that’s good. But what’s going to happen five years from now when, not just China, but Qatar and Saudi Arabia and all these other countries suddenly have large swaths of assets, including real property and real assets, in the United States? Are we going to feel comfortable with all these Muslim countries owning substantial amounts of land in the United States? I don’t think I’m going to be comfortable with it. And I don’t see anything from Trump, not that I’m asking him for it, but I don’t see where he’s trying to tame Islam or encourage any kind of an Islamic reformation that’s going to fundamentally change who they are. I just don’t think that giving terrorists and killers more money and more wealth transforms them into Thomas Jefferson. So, I’m skeptical of it.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar:

That’s a good point. I don’t know whether the reform of Islam is possible even. It’s a difficult problem. Some, like Poland and Hungary, I think just say, we don’t want Islam here at all. They openly have a different view, and maybe they openly question whether Islam is a religion and can qualify as such at all. What’s your view, Ruth, on that whole Middle Eastern pivot?

 

Ruth Papazian:

You know, in our last podcast, we discussed whether Trump was trying to create a new world order, and I think his forward-looking trip to the Middle East is proof positive that he clearly intends to create a new world order that isolates and diminishes both Iran and China. His speech in Riyadh really laid out his vision for the new way forward in a region that’s just mired in ancient and sectarian rivalries and combat. He said, and I’m just going to quote here, “A new generation of leaders is transcending the ancient conflicts and tired divisions of the past and forging a future where the Middle East is defined by commerce, not chaos, where it exports technology, not terrorism, and where people of different nations, religions and creeds are building cities together, not bombing each other out of existence.” I think that he’s really serious about creating that beach resort in Gaza, and he’s going to rope in a lot of these countries to do it. All these deals he made, hundreds of billions of dollars of Middle Eastern investments into the US, lifting the restrictions on the sale of advanced semiconductor chips to the UAE and Saudi Arabia, that’s a blow to China’s ambitions. It was obvious from Trump’s interactions with these leaders that he had years-long personal relationships with them. So Ed, I don’t think it’s a matter of intimidation per se, although with Trump, that’s always the undercurrent because the one thing that scares people about him is, when he says everything is on the table, he really means it.

 

Ed Mazlish:

He’s a wild card.

 

Ruth Papazian:

Right, exactly. But he has warm personal relationships with some of these leaders going back decades. So, there’s personal diplomacy going on here as well. I think that the closer that we get to the Gulf States, the bigger a wedge, the more diminished that China’s influence on trade and on policy will be. In this trip, he basically set his sights on Saudi Arabia and Syria to join the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco in signing the Abraham Accords and normalizing relations with Israel, and that will isolate Iran and diminish its influence in the Middle East. And it redirects the conversation away from Palestinian grievances towards regional peace and prosperity.

Trump made a point of acknowledging the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza. This surprised me.

Now, having said that, Trump made a point of acknowledging the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza. This surprised me, I have to say, because he’s taken a hard line, and there was really no daylight between him and Israel on any of this. All of sudden, he’s at least acknowledging it, partly maybe because of where he was and it was the politic thing to do, the polite thing to do. But when I heard him say that, I said to myself, “Gee, what are all those idiots rioting on campuses going to say now? Trump is acknowledging their point.” That one surprised me a lot. But I think that the more countries in the Middle East that adopt Trump’s vision of what that region could become, the more leverage he has to offer Iran the same peace and prosperity in return for giving up its nuclear ambitions.

 

Ed Mazlish:

Why would we trust any piece of paper the Iranians would sign?

 

Vinay Kolhatkar:

If you get rid of the religious theocracy, it might normalize Iran.

Yes, I mean, with the Iranians, you have the mullahs in power. It’s not a classic democracy. If you get rid of the religious theocracy, it might normalize Iran. That speech you spoke of, Ruth, it was very close to the speech he made in 2017. The first country he visited in his first term was again Saudi Arabia, and that speech was also in Riyadh, and the speech expressed very similar sentiments: let’s stop being terrorists, let’s become businesspeople trading with each other. It’s a long-standing, centuries-long problem. So, like Ed, I’m all for trying out different ways to overcome it. I personally would be even more explicit on the discussion of Islam, but that can lead to other problems. You can only open so many battlefronts at the same time.

 

Roger Bissell:

I wanted to add to what Ruth said several minutes ago. She was talking about the wedge that Trump is trying to push between these nations and those nations in regard to economics. I think there’s also the currency issue. The BRICS nations are a rising power, and this move toward involving as much of the Middle East in this new economic development idea and program as possible is going to put some pressure against the BRICS development. I don’t know if it will be enough to damp down what they’re trying to accomplish, but they really are trying to replace the US dollar. Whether it should be replaced is another question, but I think that he’s always looking for wedge issues, and this is another very important one.

 

Ruth Papazian:

That’s a great point. Just to also expound on something else, I think that as the region becomes more unified and as peace and prosperity is becoming normalized, the Iranian people are going to see this, and they might finally rise up against the mullahs and overthrow them and reclaim back their country.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar:

That would be great, because they’re certainly in very bad shape. Anyway, moving on to Ed on this, to the over-criminalization issue; I read maybe in the White House EO or on the Heritage Foundation description that there are 175,000 pages of regulations, so that no individual citizen can hope to read it [all]. I think one of them gives you an example of how silly a federal crime can be. If you are in a national park with your dog, if your dog barks, [and] if that scares any wild animal in the park—how do we know it didn’t scare off some insects or snakes or whatever?—then you have committed a federal crime. It’s that kind of ridiculous level we’ve gone to. That means everybody is potentially a criminal, and the government can go after them. And I certainly love the executive order to try and reduce regulations substantially. Do you have anything to add on that, Ed?

 

Ed Mazlish:

Well, there was a book written many years ago called Three Felonies a Day. I forget who the author is.

 

Ruth Papazian:

Isn’t that Harvey Silverglate?

 

Ed Mazlish:

I think that’s right. This executive order basically takes that thesis and says, “that’s wrong, and we’re going to fix that.” And what the executive order does is to require every federal agency to go through all of its regulations and specifically set forth where the criminal penalties are, what specific actions by private individuals or citizens will trigger a criminal penalty. I think it’s an attempt to validate the thesis of Three Felonies a Day and to try and fix the problem that was identified in that book. Insofar as it actually succeeds, that’s fantastic because law shouldn’t be a trap for the unwary. We shouldn’t have to sit in our homes and read every federal regulation just to make sure our dog doesn’t bark in a park the way Vinay just described.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar:

Thank you. Ruth, is there another solution there which is to get rid of some regulators entirely? And then all the regulations go with it?

 

Ruth Papazian:

For years, I have said that we don’t need more laws, we need better laws, because a lot of the laws we have now are either vague, unenforceable, or have unintended consequences, and they need to pass new laws to fix the old laws that were flawed, etc. It’s ridiculous. Harvey Silverglate is a civil rights attorney. It wasn’t just that we are breaking three laws a day. We don’t even know we are doing that. Trump’s EO was beautifully written. It’s almost like when you have a press release and you have a backgrounder on something. He should put this out for all the American people to read so they understand the problem: there are too many laws, hundreds and thousands of obscure regulations, that carry criminal penalties. The thing that shocked me was that a lot of these regulatory crimes are what they call “strict liability offenses.” That means you could be convicted without even having the intent to commit the crime.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar:

[Indeed], there’s no mens rea.

 

Ruth Papazian:

Yes. That’s contrary to our whole system of jurisprudence. He wants to ease the regulatory burden on Americans to help ensure that they cannot be prosecuted for violating a regulation they didn’t even know existed. He wants to make sure that government officials cannot unjustly target people and weaponize the criminal code against them, which has happened. Trump promised to take on the two standards of justice and the weaponized prosecutions when he ran, and I think that with this EO, he’s taking steps to fulfill this promise.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar:

Thank you. Roger?

 

Roger Bissell:

That was one of the features of the real totalitarian governments; it encouraged people to snitch on their parents, on their spouses, on their neighbors, and nothing good comes from that.

Sure. In olden times, the problem with not having the laws clearly spelled out and in low enough quantities that everybody could know them and learn them and understand them, was whatever would displease the king, then the king could haul you in and have you flogged or whatever. Now, instead of having to guess or not know what might set the king off, there are thousands of laws no one can learn and understand. What it involves is the people who have nothing better to do, and this leads to the whole question of another divisive factor in our society. Some people will just say, look at this, I’ll bet there are lots of people in my neighborhood that do this. So, if they have it in for you, they can just turn in an anonymous report, and you didn’t even realize you were breaking the law. You know, maybe you had a little puddle out in your backyard, and you put some dirt on it and, hey, he filled in a wetlands. Just the idea that it attracts people to turn on each other. That was one of the features of the real totalitarian governments; it encouraged people to snitch on their parents, on their spouses, on their neighbors, and nothing good comes from that.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar:

Thank you. Moving on, this is probably one of our biggest topics of the day, [the] second-last question. Ruth, there is a certain way Trump has played the tariff game, if I may call it that. Frankly, I’m disappointed. A lot of those conversations could have been had [behind closed doors] without declaring tariffs, then a pause, then it [the tariff] goes up, then it goes down [again]. Do you think he’s playing the tariff game the way it should be played?

 

Ruth Papazian:

First, this is going back to my opening comment on the first question about how he’s going to just use one tactic after another until he finds something that works. I’m a little bit amused by free-trade absolutists because they have to confront the reality that free trade does not exist in a world with trade barriers and tariffs and Temu [an online seller]. It’s like being in a faithful marriage when your spouse is hooking up on Tinder. Now, in some cases, as with the UK and India, Trump will be able to achieve something as close to a bilateral free trade zone as possible, and that’s already happened in those two cases. China is going to be a tougher nut to crack, and they’re going to have to come to terms on tariffs at some point because, according to their own data, the US accounts for something like 2.84% of their GDP—that was last year—and almost 15% of its exports were sent here. That’s a huge amount.

But with tariffs and with a lot of things that Trump does, there’s always another angle or a larger picture. In this particular case, he has a very ambitious tax-cutting plan that he’s approaching on multiple fronts. One thing he’s doing is wringing out fraud, waste, and abuse from federal spending with DOGE discovering and spotlighting them to shame lawmakers into rescinding these ridiculous expenditures. That’s one way of spending less. But revenue from tariffs? Tariffs used to fund the entire federal government before the Revenue Act of 1913 which established the federal income tax system. So, those nations that don’t play ball with Trump will be subjected to the tariffs, and this revenue will help fund the middle-class tax cut that Trump is proposing. The figure changes a little, but what he would like to see is that the first $150,000 to $200,000 in income is exempt from taxation. That would be huge for the struggling middle-class in this country. Now, I have to be honest. I feel more strongly about taxation being theft than I do about bilateral free trade, so I agree with getting revenue from tariffs to make a significant tax cut possible for the middle class.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar:

Okay. Roger?

 

Roger Bissell:

One of the tactics that Trump has used that alarmed so many people or that they pointed to as an example of how erratic and extreme he is, like the 240% tariff on China or whatever the amount was, this is a standard or typical negotiating ploy. You put the most extreme demand on the table just to say, now that I’ve got your attention, let’s sit down and talk about where we want to go with this. If you’re just going to say, well, instead of 15%, let’s make it 17%, how do you like that? Well, that’s not going to move the needle. Another question is, why are you putting tariffs on countries like Vietnam? Well, because they are a third party that China funnels its things through in order to try to evade the tariffs. I don’t think there are any neutral parties in the world, and if there are, they don’t amount to much. But when you have a country that you do a lot of trade with, and you wonder, why are you putting this big tariff on them when they’re not tariffing you? Well, the reason is that they are a kind of under-the-table party that a country like China uses.

Until we get the federal government small enough that it will fit in my bathtub—that’s an exaggeration—I don’t think we’re going to fund it with tariffs.

The other issue about taxes versus tariffs: until we get the federal government small enough that it will fit in my bathtub—that’s an exaggeration—I don’t think we’re going to fund it with tariffs. But as we all know, the last hundred years has shown an enormous growth in things that we don’t think that the federal government should be doing. If you cut that by 50 percent, cut that by 75 percent or all of it, yes, tariffs could do it. But people have said, well, if you put tariffs on another country, then you’re just shooting your own citizens in the foot. Well, yes, but this is a conflict, and we’re trying to get them to stop abridging free trade with their tariffs, and we’re doing it in retaliation. Adam Smith said, if you use it wisely and temporarily, then it might be a successful way to get people to negotiate a lowering or an ending of their trade barriers. So, here’s the deal. When you’re in a conflict, whether it’s a kinetic war with bullets and missiles or with tariffs, there’s going to be a cost [in taxes or tariffs]. And if people are whining, you’re making my t-shirts cost more, you’re going to have fewer dollars to buy your t-shirts with in a kinetic war, too. The point is, is your government big and strong enough to get the other party to stand down and stop aggressing with their tariffs or with their bombs and missiles? And if you are strong enough, and Trump seems to think we are, then it will work. 90 days—maybe that’s enough to get it done.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar:

I certainly think so, but I personally would have had a ratcheting game maybe or a direct, behind-the-scenes negotiation game, than going to 200%, coming back to 15% or 20%. It’s all over the place. The markets are getting spooked. How would you have done it, Ed?

 

Ed Mazlish:

Well, I think that I’m going to be the dissenting voice on this panel. Let me stipulate at the outset that voluntary trade increases the wealth of both parties and in fact does maximize worldwide wealth. But maximization of wealth is only one policy consideration. It’s an important one, but it’s not the only one. And everybody can see that in our individual lives. We don’t work 20-to-22-hour days, seven days a week. We give up work opportunities. We give up opportunities to make more money in order to sleep, in order to spend time with our families, in order to take vacations, in order to have hobbies, in order to have friends. There are a whole host of reasons why we don’t maximize wealth. And everybody understands that it’s obvious at the individual level. And somehow the Austrian economists and the free traders have convinced people that, at the national level, the only thing that matters is maximization of wealth. Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t think that’s right. Look at the difference between how we treated China and the embargo we placed on Cuba. Cuba is not a threat to the United States. China is. What’s the difference? We engage China commercially. We allowed China to obtain the benefits of free trade. Yes, we got richer too. We got lots of iPhones, lots of electronics, lots of crappy stuff, but some good stuff too, and undoubtedly our wealth was maximized, but our security was minimized.

And it’s not just security. I mean, as you guys have discussed before me, sometimes these countries are using tariffs against us, and Trump is using tariffs in a way that Adam Smith sanctioned; [he] said that we can use tariffs to try and lower other people’s tariffs. That’s fine. That’s a legitimate use. But even beyond that, you know, we deputize the government, for instance, to defend us, to engage in national defense. Well, how can the government be in charge of national defense without knowing what a weapon is, what is needed to make weapons, whether we need steel, whether we need computer chips, whether we need bullets, whether our people need food, or whether we need pharmaceuticals. Why is it smart to let an enemy country or even a present-day ally who could become an enemy [manufacture all that for us]? Iran was an ally under the Shah, and then overnight it became one of our biggest enemies. Why should we rely on a country, on any other country, for food, for pharmaceuticals, for the steel and electronic and computer know-how that’s required to produce weapons and to protect our population? Our government’s job is to protect us. And if that’s accomplished through protectionism, so be it.

Like I said at the outset, maximization of wealth is an important goal, but it is not the only goal. neither at the individual level nor at the government level. And I am perfectly happy with a government that tries to maintain as much free trade as possible, but within a greater context of saying, we are going to protect our people. We’re going to make sure we have the industrial base to be the arsenal of democracy, to be able to defend ourselves, to build ships, to build warships, to feed our people, to have antibiotics, all sorts of things that, yes, the government can know. And if they don’t know, to me, if you’re going to make the argument that the government can’t be picking any winner or any loser, that’s not for limited government. That’s an argument for anarchy, and I just can’t see anarchy as a successful political strategy.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar:

Thank you. Very comprehensive answer. I’m not an anarchist either. I think you have no dissent probably on this panel. Last question of the day, we’ll start with Ruth. And I’m talking about defunding woke agendas and not just about what DOGE found. What DOGE found was a lot of criminal action. Besides that, you have this Columbia University protest for pro-Palestine; but in general, that education has been socially engineered to have a compulsory K–12 system itself to me is a violation of how education should be. If one university wants to take someone who has done physics up to year nine, but he’s brilliant, let him stop [and start university]. It should be individuated, and all this wokeism that is going on through the humanities, through the universities, has to be somehow defunded completely, because it doesn’t have a natural job market when the bureaucracies that give them jobs are also being cut down. So, how far can this administration go in defunding the wrong education and woke agendas?

 

Ruth Papazian:

Well, again, Trump is moving on many fronts. He’s trying to get biological men out of women’s sports. He’s trying to get DEI and Critical Theory out of colleges and universities. But how far he can go remains to be seen. Again, Biden repeatedly ignored the Supreme Court ruling on student loan forgiveness without getting impeached, and not a single one of the 680 district court judges reprimanded him or issued a nationwide injunction against that forgiveness of student loans. Trump can’t make a move without some judge in a handpicked jurisdiction enjoining him from carrying out a policy. And in some cases, it’s jaw-dropping, demanding that actions that have already been taken have to be reversed. So, like the firings of redundant federal employees or deportations of criminal aliens, those have to be reversed. It’s just stunning.

So, the Supreme Court has two choices. They can reprimand the lower court judges for overstepping their constitutional authority and order these rulings voided. Or they can take up a case, and I think they’re doing this with the birthright citizenship case, and reassert not only Trump’s but every president’s Article II powers and duties. But the thing is, we have Justice Roberts there, and he conveniently seems to be classifying many, many infringements of Trump’s Article II powers as political disputes so that he can sidestep the constitutional issues as much as he can. Now, Congress also has a role to play. Under Article III, Section 1, Congress has the power to establish this lower court system, the district courts, the appellate courts. So they could pass a resolution censuring these judges. They can also, if Speaker Johnson has the stomach for it, decline to fund the judiciary. Will these things happen? I don’t know. I don’t see a lot of profiles in courage out there. Trump is laboring mightily against judicial and political headwinds.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar:

Roger, how would you defund even more woke agendas?

 

Roger Bissell:

Well, I’d step way back from it and say what should be funded and what shouldn’t. And we have a long tradition of looking very sternly at anyone trying to use federal dollars, tax dollars, to fund churches and church activities. That’s one reason why tax credits for education and that kind of thing has had such a headwind to fight against, because of people trying to make that a separation of church and state issue. But if you look at education, if you look at pharmaceuticals, if you look at lots of different areas in social life which are not core government functions like the police or the courts or the military, you’ve got to ask: shouldn’t we have, for instance, separation of education and state? Yes, I think so. Absolutely. And you can go down the line. Of course, the anarchists want to go all the way. There should be no state period. You should not have people in power dictating how the courts are done. We do have separatist powers in the Constitution to try to preserve some kind of independence of the courts. However, as Ruth pointed out, Congress does have the power to defund those lower courts, and I think that they should use that power if the lower courts are abusing it.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar:

Okay. Ed, any additional solutions to what Trump [has] already proposed?

 

Ed Mazlish:

Before I offer my own insights, I just wanted to make two quick points in response to Ruth and to Roger. Ruth mentioned that Chief Justice Roberts is making this out to be political questions. Insofar as it’s a political question, the court has no role in political questions. The court should not be deciding any political questions. Those questions are reserved for the elected branches, and there’s a political question doctrine that the courts readily invoke to avoid stepping on the toes of the elected branches. The fact that they’re not doing it here just shows that they’re trying to overstep their authority. And Roger, you mentioned the separation of education and state. I don’t see how that’s applicable when the federal government is funding [education with] billions and billions of dollars. The federal government routinely puts strings on all the monies that it sends out, whether it’s highway funds or education funds or anything else, so there’s no issue of separation of education and state here. If Harvard doesn’t want the controls that are being demanded by Trump, their alternative is to turn down the money. It’s not [theirs] to say, we’re going to take the money, but not the strings. They can’t do that.

 

Ruth Papazian:

Yeah, but they’re suing. They’re suing for the money.

 

Ed Mazlish:

Right, I know, and I think that they’re wrong. And I don’t think it’s an issue of academic freedom whatsoever. As far as the issue as a whole, I think it implicates the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. Up until 1974, presidents routinely impounded funds that Congress appropriated but that presidents thought were inappropriate or just bad ideas for spending. The executive branch controls the treasury, and the president routinely directed the treasury not to spend certain monies even though Congress appropriated them. That was an ongoing battle for 175 years or so until the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which was passed over a veto, and that prohibited the president from doing that. It’s never been tested in the courts. I don’t know how the courts would respond to it. But to me, I think it’s within the president’s power under Article II to impound funds that he believes are improvident for purposes of federal spending. And I don’t think it’s a judicial question. I think it’s a political question. I think Congress’s only recourse against impoundment would be impeachment, and let Congress have the balls to do that. Whether the courts would agree with me or not, I don’t know. I suspect they would probably disagree with me, but that’s what I think is the correct position. I think that’s what the Constitution says. If Trump wants to make that argument on constitutional grounds, he should say, we’re not spending this money, unless Harvard promises to protect its Jewish students, and to not have DEI and whatever other strings the Trump administration thinks are consistent with a congressional appropriation and with the Civil Rights Act. So, that’s what I think should be done, if he’s listening to me.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar:

Thank you. Yes, the more strings that are attached, the better it is. I would also favor stopping the money altogether to these kind of institutions that are so far gone, like the Ivy League, that it’s almost impossible to bring them back to a kind of pro-western-civilization institution.

 

Ed Mazlish:

Right, so defund them.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar:

Yes. [Our time’s up unfortunately, and] I wanted to say thank you to everyone for being here today; we’ve had a very good round. And to The Savvy Street Show listeners and viewers: I hope you enjoyed this. Keep tuning in to become savvy and to stay savvy. Thank you and good night.