The Chris Cuomo Project - James Fishback on How the DOGE Dividend Could Benefit Taxpayers

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

James Fishback (Co-Founder and CEO, Azoria Investment Firm) joins Chris Cuomo to explain the “Doge Dividend” — a proposal he created to give Americans a refund check from savings in government spending. Fishback lays out why he believes tariffs, deregulation, and investing in American manufacturing are the keys to rebuilding the middle class. He and Cuomo debate the legacy of Trump’s economic policies, the cost of cheap goods, and whether bold proposals like this can break through to voters. They also discuss the role of AI in government, the opioid crisis, and the deeper tradeoffs of today’s global economy. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Join Chris Ad-Free On Substack: http://thechriscuomoproject.substack.com Visit https://shopbeam.com/CUOMO and use code CUOMO to get our exclusive discount of up to 40% off. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Breaking news, a brand new game is now live at Bet365. Introducing Prize Matcher, a daily game that's never ordinary. All you have to do is match as many tiles as you can, and the more you match the better. We also have top table games like our incredible Super Spin Roulette, Blackjack, and a huge selection of slots. So there you have it. How can you match that? Check out Prize Matcher and see why it's never ordinary at Bet365. Must be 19 year older, Ontario only. Please play responsibly.

If you or someone you know has concerns about gambling, visit connexontario.ca, T's and Z's apply. The Doge Dividend Check. How much would you like money back from the government? The man whose idea it is, it's not Elon, is not Donald Trump, it is James Fishback. And I got him.

Chris Cuomo, welcome to the Chris Cuomo Project. What is the virtue behind the dividend check? How do these tariffs and the Trump administration policies really intend to make the lives of American workers and consumers better? James Fishback is new on the political scene, but he is the big shiny name from the Trump administration, even though he doesn't work for it,

who came up with this idea. Where does he come from? How did he get this idea? And why does he believe that this administration is on the right track? Let's get after it. administrations on the right track. Let's get after it. Mr. Fishback, thank you very much for taking the opportunity.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Chris. I was trying to figure out why I know who you are. I guess the dividend check was really your introduction to us But how did you get into the world of? Doge and Trump and politics. How did this happen? It goes back a long way I Far you're 29 years old. Yeah, just turned 30 So in a new decade Chris, but you know, I guess to answer that question, I have been getting closer and closer to politics now for the last couple of years.

I think it really the most recent chapter was when Bill Ackman introduced me to Vivek Ramaswamy over email in early 2023, just as he announced his presidential run. And then I started spending a lot of time with him, advising the campaign, traveling with him. I'd always been a conservative, but this was the first time I'd actually seen policy and politics up close. And then, of course, when President Trump announced the creation of Doge and Vivek and Elon

as being a part of it, I got more closely involved. And so I guess that answers the question on the proximate cause. James, do you have anything to do with Doge officially? No, I'm not on the payroll at all. This proposal came from our investment firm, Azoria. It, as I brought up, and when we first talked about it, it literally came to me in a dream. I think it speaks to the kind of crazy dreams that I have doing, you know, econ policy analysis and macro investing for the past decade. But no, I'm

not formally a part of the Department of Government Efficiency. I'm a concerned American like millions of us who wanted to put a proposal forth. We did that. And I'm honored that Elon and the president support it. So Mr. Fishback is known for the idea of the Doge dividend check that the American taxpayers should get a check back. Great. Donald Trump's name should be on it. I don't think he'd allow it to go down any other way. Do you think it is going to happen?

And are you concerned that your idea gave an expectation to outcomes that may not be reasonable given the state of play within our government? So much there. Yes, I really do believe it will happen. And I've got unique information because I've been on the Hill for the last two weeks, meeting with members in the House and the Senate, got some really good constructive feedback, but overwhelmingly really positive support on this proposal.

It's common sense, Chris, when the government saves money, the government doesn't make its own money, this is taxpayer money. It ought to send some of that back to the taxpayers who sent it to DC in the first place. And so your second question about an expectation, I would just push back on that respectfully because I am very optimistic this will happen. Of course, there are some folks, Speaker Johnson, I just had a nice little email exchange with his team about some feedback and we're answering that now.

But I got to tell you, when you have the support of a president who won the way that he did, the support of Elon Musk, the support of the cabinet of Secretary Besant of Kevin Hassett, who leads the NEC, we're going to make the best case for this. I don't rest on the laurels of President Trump's support for it. I still have to make the best argument possible. And that's what we're doing. But I got to tell you, Chris, let's be honest. When's the last time an economic policy proposal got this much national coverage from just everyday Americans? Not just folks in my circle or yours, but to have Charlemagne the God, and I'm looking through TikTok and Instagram, there are thousands of videos every day from hard working folks saying, this is why I need a Doge dividend. So I'm not gonna let them down.

I'm working every day. It's the first thing I think about, the last thing I think about every single morning and evening. How can we get this across the line for Americans? How does it, why is it on you though, James? You're not working for Doge. You're not working for the government.

This was your idea. Good for you, good idea. But why do you have to lobby for it and in whose name are you lobbying? I'm lobbying on behalf of Americans. I get a hundred emails a day, minimum, from people saying here's my unique situation, here's why I could really use the check. And most people are they're saying I took on a lot of debt, Chris, they say, because of the Biden-Harris inflation. I need to pay that debt off. I didn't take off the debt because Chris, they say, because of the Biden-Harris inflation. I need to pay that debt off.

I didn't take off the debt because I wanted to buy a new Lamborghini or I wanted to go out to eat or go to Vegas. I took on the debt because prices went up so much that my credit card bills and the interest went up as a result. And so I feel responsible to the folks who are reaching out to me.

The second is because I'm a believer that ideas are a dime a dozen. If I just put this idea out there and had nothing to do with it beyond proposing it, I shouldn't get and I shouldn't feel responsible for it. But I want to take this all the way through. I view it as almost a civic obligation to not just introduce something, but I'm a big believer of execution.

Uber, as you know, Chris, wasn't the first company to want to put people in cars and take them from A to B. Their success was execution. Apple, Chris, was not the first company with a touchscreen phone. Their success was execution. And so what will define the legacy of this proposal is not that it got introduced and created a three-week viral moment for Azoria and for me. It's that it got introduced, it got passed, and millions of hardworking folks across this country, whether they voted for President Trump or not,

got a check because they overpaid their taxes, and now they need some support from D.C. Why did you pick the name Azoria? I picked the name Azoria because it's a combination of the old world and the new world. Azoria is the name of an archaeological site on the island of Crete about 3,000 years before the birth of Christ. And it was actually way ahead of its time.

And so I think that we are an investment firm that is both rooted in the old world wisdom of we think for ourselves. And just because Wall Street is having a little bit of a temper tantrum, or is subscribed to a particular popular idea, doesn't mean we should. We truly do think for ourselves in everything that we do. And then that's the old world wisdom, the classic liberalism. But the new world is we're also thinking deep into the future. We're not investing for the next quarter or even the next year. We're looking at Tesla's valuation or America's prosperity 10, 15 years out, and our investments reflect that.

Smart. Criticism of Doge. Finding waste, fraud and abuse, nobody's going to be against that. Nobody's ever been against it. As you know, as a student of politics, people always promise it, especially around entitlements and in terms of what to do. And every time someone looks for it, they never fail to find it.

The criticism would be how Doge is going about it, especially when they're gonna be so dependent on Congress. Do you believe that they should have been quieter about their work, go through, get your list, go to Congress, see what you can get approved, and then brag. I don't. I think they've done it pretty darn perfectly by just rolling up their sleeves and getting the work done. The problem, as you know, Chris,

is that a camel is a horse orchestrated by committee. The more people that you involve in this process, the slower it will be, and the longer it will take to cut the waste, fraud, and abuse and to deliver for Americans. And so I got to tell you, Article 1 gives Congress the power of the purse, not just the power to spend from the purse, but the power to tighten the purse strings. That has not happened. The government is spending literally 50% more today than they were in 2019. We don't have to roll back the clock 30 years to get to fiscal sustainability or to a balanced budget. We got to roll back the clock five years. And so as much as I want Congress to be a part of the solution longer term, presently,

they're kind of part of the problem because there shouldn't even have to be Doge in the first place. Congress should have looked at all this USAID stuff, looked at the fraud in Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security and said enough is enough and really tightened the purse strings. So I think Doge has done it dead right. There's obviously going to be some need for the scalpel, as President Trump said, that there needs to be coordination and there continues to be between cabinet secretaries and their respective funding. But I truly wouldn't have it any other way.

The fact that some people are upset about this, I got to tell you, the Constitution, I have it right here on my desk. I looked at the Bill of Rights this morning when I walked in. There is no constitutional right for a federal worker to keep their job if it's no longer needed. I understand it. I grew up, my parents lost their job in the Great Recession. I grew up for a large part of my life on government programs like food stamps after 2008.

But as the economy changes, the needs of the government change, folks got to be let go. And that makes for a leaner government, and that's respectful for taxpayers. Listen, I'm with it. But isn't there a little bit of a boogeyman in the size of the federal government? It's been basically the same size for the last 30, 40 years. What else can you say that about? In fact, there are fewer employees now than there were at other points earlier in our history. Not to say that you shouldn't lean down, but to point at it like it is the symbol of waste in government, I don't know about that. And my concern about DOGE, so you can address both of these, you know, one, federal workers

aren't the problem specifically. Second, DOGE keeps getting shit wrong, James. And if they just did it and then got it all right and came out with it once, instead of Elon having to wave around a chainsaw, you wouldn't get as much scrutiny. Yeah. So let me start with the Doge getting stuff wrong. Of course, Doge has gotten stuff wrong. I mean, what government agency hasn't, right? What's gotten stuff wrong is the fact that you've got three times as many credit cards as you have employees at some of these cabinet positions. What's gotten stuff wrong was Sesame Street to Iraq. So everyone's

going to get stuff wrong, Chris. What I think the issue is, is that at least Doge is admitting it. When Elon gets something wrong, the website is updated within a couple of days. The fact that we even know that Doge is getting stuff wrong is because they're telling us and updating the site accordingly. So I'm not going to hold Doge, and I don't think any American should, to this perfection standard because no part of government is going to get it right all the time. The second point is, you're right, the number of employees in the federal government certainly hasn't gone up materially. But what we do care about, two things, has gone up. The amount of government spending has gone up,

and part of that is enabled by the number of employees who oversee and execute on that spending. And two, and this is directly tied to employee headcount, is regulations. Regulations have gone up by eight to 10 times since the mid-20th century. So in less than 70 years, we have 10 times as more regulations on the books.

Who enforces those regulations are the people. I think most government workers are hardworking patriots who were put in a position by their bosses to do things that were not necessarily good for the country. So I don't see anybody necessarily demonizing government employees from the top. I see some accounts here and there on Twitter doing XYZ, but most government workers are hardworking folks. A lot of them voted for President Trump. A lot of them actually support this and no one wishes them any ill will. But we just have to be honest that no,

cutting government employees isn't a way to necessarily reduce government spend, but a lot of the government spend in regulation, Chris, that's holding back the country is directly tied to that head count. And so by reducing regulations, you have to reduce the bureaucrats who are overseeing and enforcing them. And I don't talk about clean air and clean water. I talk about the pointless regulations that tell local schools how to run themselves, not from Bentonville, but from DC. And so that's what we get at. I have respect for government workers,

but I think we have to be honest about the system that is just really not working for most people. And part of that is saying, gotta take some people off the court. If we end up putting them back, that's that. We're going to obviously err on the side of taking folks a few more off than we otherwise might have, but we can always hire them back if we need to. But I think that the regulation and the spending is really what we should be optimizing for. Certainly laying off every single federal government employee does not get us to a balanced budget, nowhere near that. But it's the fact that a lot of

the government excess and spending, Chris, is enabled by those employees. At a time of artificial intelligence, I got to be honest, a lot of that work is not just going to be cheaper, but it's going to be a heck of a lot more effective to have AI audit large businesses for fraud as opposed to an individual who's going to have a ton of work on their plate and may see things that AI might otherwise catch. Support comes from Shopify. It's not just about the business,

it's about the business behind the business. Because no matter how good your product or your service is, if you can't get people to take the transaction all the way through from sample to purchase, where are you? Nowhere. So when you think about businesses that are really selling through the roof,

like Allo or Allbirds or Skims, what's the secret in the sauce? They're using Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. And the not so secret secret, with Shop Pay, you can boost conversions up to 50%, meaning way less carts that go abandoned and way more sales that get going. Upgrade your business. Get the same checkout that, I mean, you don't want to be like Skims, you don't want to be like Allbirds.

If it's good enough for them, isn't it good enough for you? Sign up for your $1 per month trial. How about that? A dollar a month. Shopify.com slash Chris C. All lowercase, please shopify.com slash chris c all in lowercase go to shopify.com slash chris c and you can upgrade your selling today where shopify.com slash chris c support comes from beam in america today every day is like this barrage of news, but it's not really even news.

It's more like information, but it's kind of perspective. The people benefiting from all this chaos are counting on you being too tired to know what you need to know and push back against what matters to you. That's why I'm excited to tell you about something that's truly changed the game for me. Beams dream powder. Why? Gotta sleep. It's a must in my nightly routine. Beams given my listeners an exclusive discount of up to 40% off. That's right, four zero percent off of their best-selling Dream powder,

but, but, but, only for a limited time. How? ShopBeam, S-H-O-P-D-E-A-M.com slash Cuomo, use the code Cuomo at checkout. That is DreamBeam.com slash Cuomo. Use the code Cuomo and you get 40% off. You can't stay in the fight if you're too tired to show up. Rest well. Wake up ready. Keep pushing for progress. Okay? That's fighting the good fight. The rest comes first.

Balanced budget five years ago, no. What changed is the pandemic. And there was a huge balloon in payment, right? Dumped a lot of money into the economy several different ways. Nobody complained about that shit at the time. Now we look at it a little differently. I don't remember anybody giving the money back or refusing to take it,

but the spending has kept up since the pandemic. So that is a structural issue for sure, but we haven't had balanced budgets for a long time. And in fact, among Republicans, Donald Trump distinguished himself in 2016 and 2017 by cutting taxes that weren't paid for and spending in a way that Republicans usually don't. How do you see that part?

I see it as, if you look at President Trump's first term, I don't think we could have fully said obviously that we saw the economic benefits of the tax cuts because we had a little thing called the pandemic that hit in January 2020. So you want to talk about, you know, government debt accumulated under President Trump's first term, half of the debt, half of the total debt was due to COVID, half of it. We would have certainly seen the positive economic effects had this once in a century pandemic, not just the virus itself, but the global government response immediately after the pandemic hit that I think really threw

things for a tizzy. How do you know that we would have seen the benefit to the tax cuts when they weren't paid for? And as you know, as a student of the game, tax cuts are completely strategic game. Tax cuts are completely strategic and as effective as they are targeted, right? It's got to be the right time, on the right group, and in the right way. Why do you assume we definitely would have seen the benefits to those? Yeah, that's a really good question. And it's not necessarily an easy one. It's an art, not a science. So the tax cuts were passed in December of 2017. What did the economy do between December of 2017 and December of 2019?

Because certainly the pandemic didn't hit two months later. We have two years of economic data. We added about two and a half million people to the payrolls who weren't on them before. So that's a good check. We wanna continue to see that happening. Of course, the pandemic threw that off. We saw GDP growth continue to tick up

over that two year period. And I wanna point on the unemployment picture for just a moment, because as you've covered, Chris, that the unemployment statistics don't give us the full picture, right? To be considered as unemployed in America, you have to have been looking for work in the past four years. What we saw in the two years after those tax cuts was people who had been out of the labor force, who had not been looking for work for months or up to several years actually come back. And there were headlines

from late 2019 that read that the number of African Americans working relative to the standard, right? The African American unemployment rate relative to the national average had tightened to the tightest on record. At the number of folks with felony convictions, which historically have been stigmatized, I think wrongly. If you made a mistake 40 years ago, Chris, you don't deserve to be punished with unemployment today.

And so by every metric, even progressive think tanks were lauding the tightness of the labor market after the tax cuts. And why is that? Because very simply, when you bring down taxes, you're incentivizing folks to use those savings to expand their business and to bring on new employees. And what better way to bring on new employees than to reach out to people as the labor market gets tighter.

You don't just hire the people who are already hired have been hired. You then reach out to the fringes, folks who had not gotten a fair shot for a very long time, they now get to be part of the picture. And what's awesome, Chris, is the second and third order benefits. When you get somebody who was relegated to eight years of unemployment, who now gets a job, what does that do for them? But more importantly, what does that do for their daughter, their family, her prospects for high school graduation, and so on and so forth?

And so this was a good economy back under Trump's first term. Of course, the pandemic changed all of that. And we can debate the pandemic responses. You are certainly in the thick of it covering it. But at the end of the day, we were on track for a pretty good recovery. And of course, the pandemic was responsible for derealing that. Well, the pandemic had many different effects, right?

Because you wound up dumping a lot of money into the economy that a lot of economists depend on to show the results of the tax cuts. So it depends on how you want to analyze it, but the trend was your friend, you inherited a good economy. So you don't know it, but the trend was your friend. You inherited a good economy. So you don't know if it was the tax cuts because you had the momentum already coming in

since 2007, 2009, right? I don't know if we want to go back all the way to 2009 and President Obama and then attribute for things that happened literally, Chris, a decade later in 2019. No, I'm not. I'm saying starting with the Great Recession, which was a bottom, right? And that was under Bush, not Obama.

But then you started to have the economy rebuild and the momentum carried into the Trump administration. Yeah. I think the issue with that argument is it would be one thing if the momentum continued, but continued at a similar pace or even slowed a bit. It's that the momentum actually inflected upward. And we saw a faster pace of job gains under President Trump's term than we did under the last year or so of President Obama's term. So I don't see how it can be Obama's economy, economic recovery, if things picked up faster

under Trump than they did under the last period of Obama, right? We're not going to compare Obama's first two years to Trump's first two years. But if you look at the immediate period, the last two years of Obama versus the last two years of Trump, rather the first two years of Trump, which is an immediate kind of apples to apples comparison, the economy was in better shape then. But it was a continuation of a trend is what I'm saying. Well, I mean, that's one way to spin it. I think it's a continuation of a trend. But I think that if the trend actually picks up after major policy changes have been put in place, and that trend starts to inflect upward and accelerate more positively, then you have to look at the causal

changes under the new administration and attribute them. I mean, certainly the mainstream media today as the market's selling off is not blaming President Biden that somehow Trump inherited that. They're calling and saying, look, there's a transition period. I'll tell you, even the president is not saying that, right? The president is not saying, well, this is Joe Biden's fault. What the president is saying is we are undergoing a major economic transition, a major economic transformation. And anytime you have that when you wean off of certain policies, like globalization, like offshoring, then there's going to be some

volatility. And I support what the president has said is that we don't really care about the stock market, we care about real economic indicators. That's the right now. Right. Nobody's ever talked about the stock market more than Donald Trump does when it suits him. But that is politics. I don't I don't fault him for playing politics. That's that's what politicians do. But wanting to de globalize, or, you know, the reciprocal way of saying that is to invest in isolationism. Okay, you'll see how it turns out. It's the on-shoring part that I don't understand.

I don't understand when the administration officials say, well, we did it in the first term. No, you didn't. You promised it, but you had the pandemic. But before the pandemic, you were not bringing jobs back because people know why jobs left. It's not just low labor costs, it's innovation.

And there's a lesser need for jobs now of a certain variety. So it's about whether or not you're investing to create those new jobs, which is very expensive and hard to do. But what is the on-shoring part of it? Like what is he doing to make on-shoring a thing? Well, on-shoring, we're not doing it for on-shoring's sake. We're doing it because we want to one,

reduce dependency on foreign adversaries. 90% of antibiotics come from China. There was a huge antibiotic shortage, a huge PPE shortage. Chris, you've covered this in the early months of the pandemic. We don't wanna depend on foreign adversaries in the time of the pandemic or war or natural disaster. So it makes good sense to reduce our dependency

on the world. That's the national security argument. Well, not on the world, on the adversaries. On the adversaries, but also I think generally, I mean, even if you weren't an adversary, you're going to want to hoard things, right? In the time of crisis, if your people need them, we would do the same, right? I mean, we want to reduce that dependency.

And so that's the first thing. The second, and that's a national security argument. The second thing, Chris, is we have a choice when it comes to trade. We don't have free trade right now. I'm all for free trade. We don't have free trade. We don't have free trade when Canada is charging 250% on certain dairy products.

We don't have fair trade when our auto manufacturers can't sell into China unless they're forced into a disadvantageous joint venture with the Chinese country, where they pretty much have to sell off the farm in terms of intellectual property. That's not free trade. So I love the idea of free trade that you and I studied in our Econ 101 textbook many moons ago. We don't have that system. And so what Trump is saying is, if we're going to get back to that system, we will.

But in the meantime, in between time, we have to adjust and to remove effectively the rigging of the global economy against American workers and against American companies. China, China, I'm with you. You got to figure that out. I don't know what the answers are. I'm not in the answers business. Canada, I don't understand as an analog. Canada's our number one customer. 99% of the goods that go between the two are un-tariffed. The 200% number that you cite is accurate, comma, but misleading. Because as we both know, there's a quota involved. And until the quota is reached, there is no tariff. Above that amount, there becomes a tariff, which is high. And that is Canada's choice in terms of how to protect

its industry the way we do with softwoods and other things with Canada. Why are you painting Canada as a bad guy? Like they're like China when they're not like China fishback. Why are you Chineseing the Canadians? Not Chineseing the Canadians. You're Chineseing the Canadians, fishback. I just want to know why. No, go ahead. Go ahead.

Make your point. I'm Chineseing the Canadians. You can have that. You know, Chris, I think that, no, Canada's behavior is not on the level of China's behavior. But I don't want to give Trudeau and now Prime Minister Mark Carney a free pass on this. Here's the truth. The number of border crossings in Canada from the northern border went up not fivefold or

tenfold. They went up 50 fold under Biden over the past five years. Fentanyl, as a result, went up more than a hundred fold. And you say, well, it's only 50 pounds or whatever. That's enough to kill 5 million people in America. So as you know, and you've covered Chris, the fentanyl picture is not to be minimized or explained away by pounds or ounces. This stuff is so deadly that it's killing 200 Americans. It doesn't take a lot. You're take a lot. Most of whom. You're right. Right.

Most of whom, Chris, don't even know they're taking fentanyl. Right. It's that heroin that got adulterated or in the case of a young kid who thought they were buying an Adderall or a Percocet to try something and look, it's a dumb decision to make, but you're allowed to make dumb decisions in America and not end up in a body bag for it. Agreed. So Canada is responsible in large part for not securing its northern border for the flow of people and the flow of drugs.

They're clearly not at the level of China. But this back and forth, look what Ontario did. That was completely inexcusable. I mean, that in another time, Chris, is almost an act of war, is to withdraw and to embargo the flow of energy, the flow of electricity to a neighboring country. So we want to put these things in context. President Trump has a trade negotiating strategy. He's privy to details that just you and I aren't.

And so we'll let that be. But at the end of the day, we have a choice. Do we want to prioritize cheap goods from China or Canada or wherever? Or do we want to prioritize every high school graduate in our country having gainful employment? Because I don't think you can have both. I don't think you can say,

we want the cheapest air fryers and the cheapest sneakers, and also say the men in Appalachia and the women in Monroe, Louisiana, they also need to have good paying jobs. Nike makes exactly 0% of their shoes in America. New Balance makes exactly 25% of their shoes in America. Chris, if you and I were to take a stroll down to Westfield and lower Manhattan, you know there's not a big discrepancy between those two. They're both good quality shoes. I would argue that New Balance is higher quality.

Yet one in four of their shoes is made right here in America. If New Balance can do it, so can Nike. If Tesla can make every single car they manufacture and sell in America, is manufactured in America, so can Toyota, Honda, and Ford. So we've got to be honest about the fact that yes, innovation manufacturing is not just it's not like a theoretical it can happen in America. It is happening in America, but companies have the wrong incentives in place and tariff is just a disincentive.

It tells companies, if you want to keep doing things that are disadvantaged, that are going to disadvantage Americans and the American economy, go ahead and keep doing them, but we're going to collect revenue. If you want to hire in America and you want to build in America, there's a benefit. There's a benefit to that, Chris. The opioid crisis, Chris, can we be honest? The opioid crisis, there are 7 million working-age men in America who are not working. Half of them, according to Princeton University, the late Alan Kruger, he studied this, half of them are taking daily opioid painkillers. So there is a correlation and a causation between the lack of manufacturing jobs in

America and opioid addiction. We would not be losing 200 Americans every day if a large portion of them actually had work to do. They don't. Maybe. Correlation's not always causation. You know the same trite but true thing. Lot to unpack there.

Ontario, I explain as the don't start none, won't be none. You know, you can't do what Trump is doing and expect everybody to just take it in the high knee. You know, somebody's gonna, they're gonna muscle up, especially that guy up there is a little bit of a tough guy. Also, we learned about him through his brother, right? And his ill-fated demise, Rob Ford. So Canada is complex because Trump is messing with an ally

in a way that we haven't seen before and we'll see how it plays out I am all with you and I wish the president were all about this as well But I do not know which is Capitalism good Capitalism America the two go together have to go together. Okay period now within that, what is capitalism? Here's what I don't believe is capitalism, which we allow to be.

You, at Azoria, start hiring thousands of employees. Half of them are on food stamps. There is no fucking way that capitalism embraces us subsidizing employees for successful businesses who distribute profits. Should you be able to distribute your profits to your shareholders? Of course you must.

But when your profit margin involves a condition where your workers are being subsidized by the rest of the taxpayers, that's not capitalism. So I am with you, I am with you. I will pay more for those sneakers. Because if you're making them here, they're gonna cost more than making them in China. I will do that.

People are gonna be price sensitive. I think that might be good for America. I think that you can invest in a lot of people's ideas that maybe we have too much shit. Maybe we have too much cheap shit. Maybe if Americans had to pay more for stuff, it would be worth it on balance of what you get in terms of high paying jobs.

I'm with you, I'm with you, I'm with you. I do not know that the Trump administration is going to be different than any other administration in going after the dynamic that you and I have both identified. Well, I think that the tariff policy is going after that. It might seem chaotic day to day, but we got to zoom out and look at the big picture of our trade deficit and the fact that large parts of this country have been hollowed out. Go to somewhere like East Palestine or the outskirts of New Haven and see what were once textile mills where shoes were manufactured, where goods were manufactured.

Your point on correlation causation, I would just push back on that respectfully and say that the hardest hit areas in the opioid crisis used to be manufacturing powerhouses across this country. So there certainly is causation there that when you unemployed people and send their jobs overseas to make cheaper sneakers and goods, that they now turn to this poison, which by the way, they're enabled

because it's so much cheaper. Because of the- I'm with you, I'm with you with despair. And unfortunately, I will, given your age and your success already, I doubt you have the experience with the drug world that I do, but let me tell you, fentanyl is the boogeyman of all boogeymen.

It is cheap, it is deadly, and it is so easy to make. I've never seen anything like it. And there's no question that it's uniquely pernicious, but I'll tell you two things. One, more fentanyl goes from the US into Canada than the other way. But it's still a border issue that they have to deal with. I don't have any problem focusing on the Northern border.

I think we have ignored it for the wrong reasons and for too long. Also, the good news is, fentanyl overdoses are on the decline. Why? Awareness, one of the good things about the media, awareness, Narcan, and a little bit enforcement. Very, very, very little.

It's more people becoming savvy, who are the kids who are going out, who are thinking twice about taking a pill. So more of a complex picture. I don't disagree that despair is an absolute avenue to addiction. I'm with you. And fentanyl is an easy reach,

because it's so cheap, and it's so many different places that it's having a disproportionate effect. I'm with you. However, explain to me how the tariffs do more in terms of bringing back good paying jobs than they do just raising prices. Well it's Econ 101, Chris. If you're a company and you are saying, we used to make these shoes, we used to make these goods here in America. If we continue to make them in Vietnam or in China, we're going to have to pay 25 percent more.

If we make them here, we're going to have to pay 10 percent more. The obvious trade is to reopen that factory and keep it going. It's also, Chris, an incentive for startups all across the country to say, Hey, look, my competitor continues to rely on essentially slave labor Yes. in Guangzhou or in Shenzhen or in Xinjiang. And my competitor is now being appropriately taxed to reflect the actual cost of these goods.

And then now their goods are 25% more expensive. Guess what? I could start a company, I can make these shoes only 10% more expensive. And that's the difference. I love your point, by the way, on materialism and consumerism. We so quickly turn to Uniqlo or to Forever 21 or H&M and buy this cheap t-shirt and then throw it away in 6 months and buy this cheap dress shirt and throw it away in 8 months. Why don't we get some high quality dress shirts made right here in America that are going to last 3 times as long? And you know what, Chris? When something lasts 3 times as long, it should be 3 times more expensive. But you and I both know making

a dress shirt right here in America would not be three times more expensive. And so we got to zoom out, look in the mirror and say, so much of our consumption is linked to cheap crap coming from China. But I got to tell you, James, I think we lose. I think if there is a fish back for whatever and I'm one of your advisors and we're pushing this, I think we get our ass kicked by a guy or a woman who says, look at fish back in Cuomo trying to make you spend even more money for stuff that you could get cheap now.

I feel like we lose. How do you win with the pay more argument? Are we betting too much? Are you and I too romantic when it comes to our notions I feel like we lose. How do you win with the pay more argument? Are we betting too much? Are you and I too romantic when it comes to our notions about patriotism? And that people will be like, fish back, I love you.

Glad you're so successful. Keep your hands out of my fucking pocket. I'm buying my cheap ass sneakers from China. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah. There's two things there, Chris. The first of which is I don't even wanna concede that they're gonna pay more really because I mean because new balances aren't more expensive than Nike's

and that 25% of those shoes are made here in America. So let's not even concede that point. The second point is, ultimately, I don't want to rely on this patriotic buy because it's America and pound your chest on July 4. Do what's right because it's right for you. You know that Chinese crap is going to break down in six months. Why not buy an American-made good? Teslas are the best cars on the market. I think it's not a coincidence that they're also made in America. My car, my Tesla Model 3, drives me everywhere. There's no car from Mexico or China, whether it's from an American company or not, that could do that.

And so there's a benefit there. By the way, the Tesla Model 3, it's $29,000, Chris. I mean, it's a cheap car. Some of these electric cars from GM and others, they're 50 grand and they don't have the type of autonomous technology. So actually, it's actually cheaper in some cases, and even a better quality product. And then the last point is I say to you, okay, maybe you do pay 5% to 10% more. You're not going to pay it as often, but you're going to have 7 million people potentially have jobs that otherwise might not. What do you tell a person who's not making anything right

now that, yeah, you'll have to pay 5% more for something, but it'll last you three times as long and you get a job as a result. So let's not speak, and I hate to use this left as terminology, but let's not speak from a place of privilege, Chris, and say that we are assuming that the folks who are having this conversation are already gainfully employed,

and we know that millions of Americans aren't. They deserve gainful employment in our country. The last point I'll bring up is we are not a goods-based economy. Only 10% of what we buy are goods. I didn't buy a single good today. I didn't even buy a single good, I think, in the past week. I got an overplaced latte here. I went to lunch. I took the bus and I took an Uber today. That's all I've done. Most Americans are not buying air fryers every single day or tennis shoes every single day. What do we buy? We get haircuts, we have childcare, we take an Uber, we go out to eat, we go to the grocery store. Most of that stuff is right here in America. So let's not overstate

the fact that we are somehow overly dependent on goods consumption. Ten cents of every dollar of the average American is spent on imported goods. If that goes a little bit higher in the short-term to reflect a major economic adjustment so millions more people can have a shot at gainful employment, I think that's the price to pay. Ultimately, as Thomas Sowell reminds us, there are no solutions, Chris. There are only trade-offs.

Are you willing to temporarily trade off a slightly more expensive t-shirt and air fryer that, by the way, is perhaps more expensive but of a much higher quality, in turn for millions of Americans to get jobs? If New Balance can make a quarter of their sneakers in America, so can Nike. If Tesla can make every single car they sell in America and manufacture it in America, so can Chevy and Ford. And let's hold companies to those standards. And the ripple effects, Chris, are huge. That despair is linked to economic poverty. When we bring people jobs, they're less reliant on fentanyl. They're less likely. The idle mind is the devil's playground. The idle mind is fentanyl's favorite place to be. And so think about all of the good we can do for society

that is beyond quantitative economic metrics that will come from giving millions of people the dignity and purpose and self-respect that comes with holding down a job, what that does for their families and communities. I think Tesla is a good example of the present, but also what you need in the future, which is, you're right, Tesla disproportionately

compared to other automakers is domestically based. But when you get into the parts of the Tesla that make it arguably better than other cars, you're now dealing with more and more foreign sourced technological components, which Tesla uses. And I'm not criticizing Tesla, everybody does. Those are the jobs, those are the jobs.

The jobs of the present and near and midterm future are the technological jobs and near and midterm future are the technological jobs that even Tesla has to buy a lot of that stuff abroad. And that's part of the riddle here of how do you get more of those jobs? You know, interestingly, Trump and Republicans should all over Biden's chip act, which was really a step in the right direction.

And if Trump did the exact same thing, he would love that he did it. So a little bit of this is just, you know, the sport of who you get, who gets to get the win. But what do you do with that part of it? That it's, I don't wanna make sneakers. I wanna make chips. I wanna make technology,

because those are the jobs of the future. What do you do about that? Well, what you do about it, same way you do about everything is you make the case for companies to hire and to build in America and you can use the tax structure, you can use tariffs to do that.

These tax cuts and job back extension, what it does is it lowers the tax rate. If you're a company that hires Americans, that builds in America, that manufactures here, you should have a lower tax rate because you're contributing to our welfare, contributing to our workers in a way that a company who's employing entire foreigners is not. I think the point, by the way, I disagree with your point on the CHIPS Act. I think that the CHIPS Act was largely a failure. I think that there's a difference between

wanting to build CHIPS in America and then paying companies like Intel, which just been disastrous over the past two years for doing that. Look at what the Taiwan Semiconductor did just last month. A $100 billion investment in America, what Microsoft and OpenAI and Nvidia have done with Stargate, a $500 billion investment. There's been $1.7 trillion of investments since President Trump won in November that had been made in America. Not one of them, Chris, was enticed with more government funding.

When you have a better economic backdrop, when you have less regulation, when you have the prospect of a more pro-growth president, that is how you incentivize new investment in America, new hiring of American workers, new manufacturing opportunities. And so I think you can do that, not with the carrot, not with the stick, but by changing the paradigm for what it means to invest in America. And then I think the second point is, look, I don't want to speak for the president, but if every car company said that we're going to do final assembly in America, which is obviously not the case today, we're going to do final assembly in America. And some portion of the parts are

going to come from overseas, reflecting the obvious realities that some companies are better, some countries are better positioned in making those particular parts. So be it. Right? So be it. But final assembly, the vast majority of assembly is possible here in America. The car started here. More cars have been made in our history right here in America than anywhere else. And that can continue to be the fact. And again, Tesla is a shining example of that. The smartest, most autonomous, most futuristic car in the world, Chris, without a doubt, whatever you think about Elon Musk on any given day, the most futuristic car in the world, Chris, without a doubt, whatever you think about Elon Musk in any given day, the most futuristic car in the world is built either in Fremont

or in Austin at Tesla by American workers who are actually getting a living wage. But yet, where is Bernie Sanders and AOC applauding Elon for making a great car at a great price and having his workers earn a really good wage in the process. They can't applaud him because they operate in a system with teams. And it's the same reason that Republicans and Trumpers these days, because now, you know, the party's been consumed by him. They don't applaud the left.

There's no percentage in cooperation. The political commodity is opposition. Let me ask you this, as the creator of the idea, the Doge Dividend Check, do you believe that that winds up being a reality at any real scale for Americans, or do you think that even if there are, you know, surprising identification of waste, fraud and abuse, that the lawmakers will use it to lower spending or to use

it for spending? Well, certainly that was the default position was to use this to lower spending or to cover things elsewhere. For all this talk about how we're some debt-fueled economy and we rely on China to finance us, the numbers don't bear that out. So here's the truth, Chris. Over the past five years, the government has spent about $30 trillion. I'll just ask you, how much of that do you think was borrowed money? A lot of it.

Of the $30 trillion we spent, how much was borrowed? A lot of it. Just guess, rough number. We spent $30 trillion. The overwhelming majority was just three out of every $4. Okay, not true. 70% of it came from American taxpayers. Only $9 trillion of it was directly borrowed. We have this idea that we are somehow this massive... Oh, I thought you meant how much of what we spent was on debt, meaning servicing our debt and buying treasuries to cover

our spending. I'm sorry, I misunderstood your question. But go ahead, make your point. I guess the point is, is that 70% of what the government spends is funded directly by taxpayers. So when there is waste, fraud and abuse, when taxpayer money is misused the way it has been, when folks feel like they've been cheated, then it's time to pay them restitution, not just for restitution's sake. But if you're a government, don't take your taxpayer for granted.

Don't take that hard work in mom in East Baltimore or that hard work in dad in East Palestine. Don't take them for granted. For the first time in our 250 years as a country, we're gonna tell the taxpayer, we're sorry. We misspent your money. We abused your gratitude. We don't make money on our own. We rely entirely on you.

It's time to send you back some of the savings. It's just good math. And I would say to anybody, and I've said this to send you back some of the savings. It's just good math. And I would say to anybody, and I've said this to members on the Senate and the House, is that if you have some degree of savings, you got two choices here. Do you want to send it back to hardworking taxpayers who represent 70% of how we spend and how we fund our government? Or do you want to send it to Beijing to cover some bill that we have with them? Let's, I mean, the truth, that's the truth, Chris. If you are saying you want to send it to Beijing to cover some bill that we have with them?

That's the truth, Chris. If you are saying you want to entirely pay down the debt, by the way, we say 80% of it should be used for debt and deficit reduction. But why can't 20% of it? For every $5 we save, $1 goes back to taxpayers. Why do all $5 have to go to the Chinese who hold our debt? Let's send it back to hardworking taxpayers who sent it to DC in the first place. They did not send it to be abused. And so that's what I would...

And those are the competitions I'm having with folks who are pushing back. And we're going to try to win hearts and minds. I'm a high school debater. I was a national champion many moons ago. My emphasis has always been, may the best argument win. And Chris, I tell you with humility, I think we've got the best argument. We've got the winning argument on our side for the Doge dividend. And I got to make that argument as far as many people as possible.

And I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity today to do that. Mr. Fishback, you are always welcome to make your arguments. And there are tougher arguments to make then, do you want to check back from the government? It's whether or not the lawmakers will do it. But right now you're in a climate where people don't trust government. They're being told by their president and the administration not to trust government.

So we're in a disruption cycle. People will be uniquely motivated to get something back right now. The question is, how does it work out for everybody? As we get more facts on the ground, Mr. Fishback, you are welcome back here and with me at News Nation to make the case. I appreciate it, Chris. Thank you very much for the opportunity. Interesting.

Would you pay more if it meant more good paying jobs in America? Do we need less cheap shit? It's weird. It's a weird thing to think about. I don't know about politically. What do you think? Thank you for subscribing and following. Please get your free agent gear. Cheap shit made in China. But it sends the right message, which is that you are an independent critical thinker. You're a free agent. Not co-opted like some lemming whose party first, thinking second.

Thank you for checking me out on News Nation at 8p and 11p every weekday night. And if you like the podcast but you don't like the ads, subscribe on Substack and you'll also get all the stuff I'm doing to get in shape for bikini season and all the longevity stuff I've learned about my long COVID and managing it from my own doctor who is a research expert in the area of long COVID. My friends, the challenges are real. Let's get after it.