 All right, this is Think Tech and more specifically, it's Trump week because every week is Trump week with Tim Eppichella and me talking about what's happened this week with Trump. Hi Tim, welcome to the show, wherever you are. Good morning Jay, I happen to be at the epicenter of the coronavirus-19. I'm in Seattle, Washington. All right, ooh, I'm sympathetic. Maybe you should wash your hands during the show. Maybe we should take a break so you can wash your hands. Don't tempt me. Five by five. So here we are and we're talking about, you know, about Trump this week. But you know what strikes me is this has been a relatively quiet week for Trump and correct me if I'm wrong. I mean things have happened outside of him. I mean CNN and MSNBC are running out of stuff to paste him with because things are happening in other spheres. The coronavirus has taken the news on all the national newspapers and so has the Democratic, you know, Super Tuesday. And so, you know, Trump is like in the back seat this week. Or is he, Tim? He is not in the back seat. He's just been told to muzzle himself because I think his advisors saying every time you open your mouth, you create a new conflict. So I think he's finally, I think he's finally gotten the message that maybe he just should just remain mum a little bit and let the people that he's appointed and let the scientists kind of do the talking for him. Every time he seems open his mouth, there's a contradiction in what is reality versus what he thinks reality is as it pertains to the coronavirus. Well, you know, to me that's real serious because this is a national crisis. He's a national crisis, but this is one that's life and death. And what strikes me is he's really not doing anything much about it. He's made so many, what did you call them, missteps that, you know, you that the average fellow on the street, even in the red states, it's got to be saying, is this guy competent? Can he do anything when called upon to do things in a crisis? And the answer is no. He's advancing his own interest. He's promoting his own craziness. And he's got a government that's dysfunctional because he made it dysfunctional. So, you know, how can you have confidence in that? And then when he speaks, you keep thinking of those 15 or 20,000 lives that he's given us over the past three years plus. And he says, are you telling the truth now? And the answer is he's not telling the truth now. He's been misleading us, you know, in a number of ways about the corona crisis, when the most important thing is developed trust and confidence by the public in this country and outside this country. So you talked about missteps. Can you talk about some of the other missteps? Well, the ones that I think were the most glaring is first off, you know, a few days ago, he said, we've got this airtight. This thing has been handled our, our excellent response to this. We have this virus clamped down airtight. Then you had Lawrence Kudlow come on moments later saying, well, it's we've got to clamp down almost airtight and we've got this thing handled. The bottom line is they never had to clamp down airtight and they simply came out with these statements to try to ease and calm the financial markets. That's why Lawrence Kudlow was out there right behind Donald Trump and in these kind of statements. I think the one that really caught my attention was Donald Trump's insistence that the virus vaccine was only going to be weeks or months away. And that they're working on it and it's going to be out in the, it's going to be out there and this, this, this whole virus is going to be taken care of within months. Well, he has been challenged on that openly by Anthony Fauci Fauci Fauci Fauci. Fauci. Yeah, Fauci. And blatantly multiple times. This director of the National Institute Institute of Disease is saying, no, no, we, we are working on the vaccine. But before we test it, we just can't put it out to human beings before we test it. And that's going to take months. And then of course there's the production of this vaccine. So minimally, we're looking at 12 to 18 months. And Donald Trump just can't get his arms around that number because that means that he's not in control of how this virus will mutate or not mutate and how this virus will either, you know, run his course or not. And he can't get his arms around it. And in the meantime, the Dow drops 3000 points. He knows that his Dow, which he's tied himself to for all these months and years, is directly correlated to his ability to be reelected as President of the United States. Yeah, and then we had the Fed do an emergency reduction of the interest rate. And that's not Trump necessarily, but it's under Trump's influence and pressure. And I'm saying to myself, is that the important thing? It's, then he flies off for a couple of days or more to India to meet with Mr. Modi over there, the Prime Minister, and have adulation from a stadium of 100,000 soccer fans. And why? Why do you do that? Was there any benefit in that? Was there any deal going? Was there any agreement made? No, nothing. I think he talked about them buying arms from us, but you don't have to make a trip for that. So here, at this moment of crisis, where everything is up in the air and his mistakes are being revealed, he's often yawned in India. I don't think he has it right. I don't think he understands, even now, even in the crisis. He pulled the money out of the CDC. He pulled the money out of the epidemic task force that Obama created, because he didn't like anything Obama did. And so he doesn't have the scientists. He doesn't have the staffing. He doesn't have the groups. And so he winds up appointing the vice president, who has the distinction of being the governor of Indiana. At the time, there was an HIV epidemic there, or at least a lot of cases, and who had had the distinction of referring everybody to prayer and to deal with that. And that supposedly qualifies him to be the head of the task force. This is really a joke. I mean, Saturday Night Live is going to have a field day with what Trump isn't doing. He doesn't know how to do it. He isn't doing it. He doesn't have the people around him to do it. The whole thing is a mess. Here we are, the leader of the free world, and we don't know what to do. And he's not funding the World Health Organization. He pulled the money out of that, and he hasn't refunded it. The only money he's talked about is he's going to reimburse the hospitals for treating cases. But he's not doing anything directly, and you really wonder why he needs to reimburse the hospitals. Why doesn't he fund them in general? He's been beating up on health care from the outset, and now he's going to reimburse them for handling the cases. I see that as an empty promise, a promise that is cynical. I see that as a promise that won't be kept. So what we have now is a complete route in the federal government not to handle this. Well, he had proposed a $2.5 billion of emergency funds. Chuck Schumer and they got a bipartisan agreement. They have settled on the number of $8 billion. So, you know, even the opposition said, you know, your estimation of what it's going to cost to address this problem is woefully low, and we're going to need a lot more money to address this. Again, I don't want to overly politicize the coronavirus, but when you are quoted to say that it's a hoax, it's a democratic hoax, and unfortunately a lot of Republicans do still believe that. I've talked to some people in red states recently, and they're going, you know, you're all, you're all, you know, concerned about something that's been overblown and it is, you know, it's all blown out of proportion and quit panicking. And you're trying to cause the stock market and the financial markets, the Democrats are trying to cause it to go down so that Donald Trump looks bad. I don't think that's the case, and I wish that Republicans would stop believing in that. But when Donald Trump says it's a hoax, it's a democratic hoax, they listen to that and they march to it. Yeah, tell those people who are terrified it's a hoax. Tell those people who have the disease it's a hoax, who is suffering through it. Tell those people who died it's a hoax. I was really insulting for him to suggest that. You know, just outside the Seattle area, just just outside the Seattle area, we have nine that have perished. And now we have a recent one in California. So this is just the beginning of it. And I have an issue when you you define something as a hoax, which he's done for many things in his administration, and his rhetoric has now gotten ahead of a medical emergency. And that's, that's not where they want to be. They should not be in that position. Well, I think he recognizes he's got two problems going forward to November, maybe more. But he's got, he got the problem of this virus, and he got a problem of the stock market. And frankly, it's likely that between now and November, both are going to get worse. And it's going to hurt him in the election. But let's talk about the election. Because although he hasn't been on the news because he hasn't done much. Let's talk about how the primaries have gone and how Super Tuesday went, and what that means to Trump. Well, you and I basically thought Joe Biden was out of it. It wasn't more than a couple of weeks that we thought Joe Biden is completely out of the race. We weren't the only ones, Tim. We were not the only ones. We were not. But what a turnaround 72 hours has and what a turnaround and an endorsement in South Carolina by Representative Clyburn, get literally turned a candidate's whole whole, you know, world around and propel him into not only winning South Carolina, but also on Super Tuesday. I mean, I just, I've never, and I follow politics quite, quite a long while in my life, and I've never seen a turnaround quite like this. You know, I know Bill Clinton used the term come back kid, but that was nothing compared to what I just witnessed here last evening and South Carolina. Well, I don't write off Bernie just yet. I mean, he still has a lot of ardent supporters. But I guess my question to you is, do we have an idea about what what cost him all those votes, all those states? You know, there's something got to be flawed in his position, his platform, his style that this would turn around and flip on him this way. You're talking about Bernie, I assume. Yes. Well, I'm sorry, but I think the realization that a socialist, whether you want to label it as a democratic socialist or not a socialist is not going to win the country in the general. And I understand that, you know, his Bernie's platform has a lot of carrots and dangling carrots and all sorts of little goodies for those that are on the younger generation, wiping out debt, school debt and free college for all and all sorts of great things. The financial reality reality of eight, would it even pass to Congress, even if it was a Democratic Senate and House, but be where are you going to get the trillions and trillion dollars to fund this. I mean, healthcare for all Medicare for all loan the price tag is $35 trillion. And begin to take a stab at wiping out college debt and education for all, I mean, 35 trillion alone. So let's, you know, put these numbers in perspective and even Bernie Sanders has some difficulty answering the questions when asked, how are you going to pay for this. Yeah, he never did answer that. And what's interesting is that he would, if he won, he would come on to a country that has just, you know, spent trillions of unnecessary money under Trump. So it makes the national debt pretty threatening to have one and then the other and Bernie's programs are going to cost so much money. Anyway, let's, let's take a short break, Tim, because I, you know, I'd like to wash my hands if you don't mind. Well, we'll take a short break. We'll be right back with Tim Epicella and Trump week here. And we'll discuss some of Trump's foreign policy issues and actions this week. We'll be right back. Yeah, the beat goes on. Trump week with Jay Fidel, that's me and Tim Epicella. And we're talking about what happened this week. And, you know, a lot of it is under the radar because we have these two big things happening, coronavirus, which we're not done with at all. And the, you know, the Democratic primaries and Super Tuesday. But, you know, behind behind the door, there's Afghanistan. And in fact, Trump seems to have made a deal with Afghanistan. And so many deals, you know, the art of the deal, or as I call it, the art of the nondeal. What kind of a deal was that? And how is it going to play out? The art of the deal is things that Donald Trump criticized Obama for, and that is announcing a timetable of withdrawal. This is a ceasefire. It's a 14 month timetable. You know, we've been at war in Afghanistan now, I believe 18 years. And, you know, we spent trillions and trillions of dollars on this. And the question is, what is going to be the peace dividend? Well, hopefully we get our, we get our boys back, you know, we get our troops back. But it's also not just a withdrawal of the United States troops. It's a withdrawal of our U.S. allies, private contractors, our partners, you know, the, everyone that's involved with war. And eventually we're going to be in the next 14 months withdrawing out there. Right now it's about 8600 troops. And then there were the prisoners. Can you talk about that? 5,000 of them. Well, the question is, have they already been released before this deal was announced? We really don't know if they were released or not. The Afghan government, Afghan government never bought into any of this. Exactly. But you know, this isn't a conventional war. This is a war on terrorism. And as you know, we still have people down in Guantanamo. And the question is, are they going to be treated like regular, you know, war prisoners that would be released, or are they going to be treated as terrorists that cannot be released? Yeah, here we are with an agreement that is, okay, the boys come home. The Afghan government doesn't agree, so our relations with Afghanistan are seriously tarnished. They must be really ticked off at us about this. And, you know, we are leaving the field to guys who will be able to start it up in a moment again and do the same thing but worse, because we're not there. There's no deterrent force in Afghanistan. They'll have their way. I'm saying to myself exactly what is the benefit. You know the slogan about bringing all the boys home? You know, that really reeks of nationalism and reeks of isolationism. I mean, we've been the leader of the free world for a long time because we have to some extent been the world's policemen going in, stepping in to protect people, to offer a moral influence, you know, to keep the world reasonably secure in general. And to let it go this way, even, you know, cynically, against what he did when he criticized Obama for, really seems very opportunistic. At the end of the day, Afghanistan is not over. It's going to be a mess still. There's no way he can control it diplomatically. He has no real relationship with the Afghan government and he has no real relationship with the Taliban. So where are we going from here, Tim? You got any predictions? Well, you know, a lot of times I like to look back at history. Now I know history doesn't always exactly repeat itself, but I do believe history does have some kind of reflection. And the reflection I recall is the peace agreement reached in Vietnam with the North Vietnamese and lo and behold, before you knew it, Saigon had fallen and the United States helicopters were on the roofs and taking off every flight they could as full as they can be. And that wasn't very much long after the ceasefire was signed. And I'm not so certain or I just don't know if we're going to have a situation where the Taliban comes back in force. And here we go all over again. I don't know if the Taliban can really be trusted in this ceasefire and this peace agreement, but maybe they're tired too. Take these moves that he's made over the past six months in Syria, Syria and Turkey and all that, remember? And take these moves he's made with Iran who has its own problem with coronavirus right now. And these moves now with Afghanistan and Iraq too. I mean, has there been any benefit to the United States? Has there been any benefit to the region? Is the region more secure in any way? I think you have to look at what he has done or not done by the result. And the result is no good thing. I think one thing you could say is he brought some boys home. But I don't know how they feel about it. If I were in the Army on the ground, I don't know if I'd feel too good about this because it means, you know, have to go back and go back and have, you know, less of an opportunity to perform the mission. So I mean, what's the future of the Middle East thanks to Trump and his non-foreign policy? Well, it's the inconsistency that muddle it. You know, I admire Donald Trump, believe it or not. I know you're going to fall back in your chair when I say this, but I admired it when this campaign speech and a couple of times as president saying, you know, let's not be in a big hurry to get into war. War. Who? What is it good for? And, you know, I admire that. But at the same time, he's itching to start a war in Iran over absolutely nothing. You know, a major general that could easily spark a complete conflict with Iran. So again, this inconsistency of rhetoric about, you know, let's be careful if you'll restart a war, but then he's more than happy to start a war. And who knows where the next tinderbox is in the Middle East. It's everywhere. Is it between Turkey now and Syria? Do we get involved in that? You know, that's bad. We started it because we pulled out. We exposed the Kurds to the onslaught and slaughter from Turkey. And, you know, we're going to have all sorts of tinderboxes in the Middle East. So I think the troops are going to probably be parked somewhere in Saudi Arabia just in case. Yeah, don't forget Israel. Israel is under great pressure and threat right now. And Trump has exacerbated it. His phony baloney peace proposal, his support of Netanyahu has destabilized the government, his designation of Jerusalem as the place for the American embassy. All those things are finger in the eye to Palestinians. And, you know, he hasn't made peace. Not on a neutral basis, anyway. In his own mind, he's made peace. Anyway, enough with the Middle East. Suffice to say that while Nero is fiddling. One thing is I think what's coming off the table rapidly is the two state plan. And I thought that had the greatest chance of not necessarily obtaining complete peace in the Middle East, but certainly a settlement, a cessation of hostilities with a two state plan. Do I see that option now evaporating, if not already evaporated? I wonder if the people, you know, the base, his base, if you will, appreciate how little he's done. Because, you know, he doesn't always tell the truth, may I say. I mean, for example, the number of American wounded after the attack on the U.S. bases from Iran. He lied about that. So we don't know if we have a clear picture. And they don't know, and they go on some kind of gut reaction thing about how strong and wonderful he is. But the fact is he hasn't done anything good, and he is completely ill coordinated, and he doesn't have a foreign policy. Or for that matter, a State Department. So all this leads to, you know, leads to greater problems in the future. I think a government without, you know, critical agencies, without experienced, you know, governmental leaders is a government at great risk. So really the question is how does that, how do all of this affect the election? Will the base care about what's happening in the Middle East? You know, how, everything we've talked about, coronavirus, the, you know, his action on that. The Super Tuesday votes, the emergence of Joe Biden. How is that going to affect the election? Where are we now in the context of November? I did just from my conversation with Trump followers outside the 38 to 40% of his loyal base and no matter what he does, no matter what happens, they'll vote for him. But outside that 38 to 40%. There are a number of Republicans, Trump Republicans, if you will, that will not follow him if their 401ks plummet. If they seek catastrophic losses to their 401k, that may be the end of it for them. Yeah, and we got to see how well, two things, we got to see how well Joe Biden does. We were looking at him for his health, for his articulate power, or at least reasonably articulate power, looking for him for his positions, his comments on how the Trump government is doing. And even more, we're looking for what the media says about him, because the media is a player in all of that. The media has huge effect, whether they're right or wrong about a given report. And what people say, what they say on the street, how they react. There was terrible bashing going on against a number of those candidates, including by other candidates. And I think that has a sort of a wild card effect on the Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden contention. So where we are now is, okay, Biden has emerged, but then that makes him a bigger target. Remember that Trump is causing your friend William Barr to do an investigation already. We need an investigation of Biden. If Ukraine wouldn't do it, well, William Barr will do it and find out what terrible things Biden has done. So I mean, the beat goes on and you don't know how Biden is going to fare. And so you can, but you do know that Trump will try every dirty trick he can possibly muster and social media campaigns and encouraging Russia to do social media campaigns. And oh my God, there's no certainty here at all, is there? Well, I'm not betting man, but in this case, I put everything in my wallet on the table, because I know for a fact that Joe Biden is going to be referred to by Donald Trump as Old Sleepy Joe. Absolutely. And he may fall into that characterization. So, you know, by no means is it over. It's not over in terms of the possibility that Joe Biden will misstep in some or many ways. It's not over in the possibility that Trump will misstep and probably will misstep. It's not over in terms of these third party things like the coronavirus and like war in the Middle East, which are out of our control. You know one thing though, you know one thing going forward. It's a prediction and a statement of fact. He will blame someone else for every failure and he will take credit for every success no matter by whom. And we can expect that for the next six months. Okay, say goodbye, Tim. Goodbye, Tim. Very nice. You wanted to add one point. Add it now. Real quick. Remember, Donald Trump was elected because people couldn't stomach Hillary Clinton. It wasn't a vote for Trump. It was a vote against Hillary Clinton. I guarantee you that Joe Biden was a lot more palatable for independents and Democrats, and they will vote for Joe. I think that's very wise and thoughtful and a good prediction of the future. Thank you so much, Tim. I'll see you next week. Thank you. On Trump week and I'll see you next hour on our new show, Corona Watch, right now. Here on Think2. Aloha, Jay. Aloha. Thank you.