 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Okay, we're back. We're live. It's Trump Week. I'm Jay Fiedel. It's one of my favorite discussions with Tim Appichella and we have on the phone Cynthia Lee Sinclair. Hi guys. Good morning. Okay, big week. Tim, lead off. What do you got? What's your top item today? Well, top item was just tweeted this morning by President Trump is that he's threatened to shut down the southern border between the United States and Mexico if he doesn't get his five billion dollars. Now that is a huge announcement and assuming that Twitter now is his format to make announcements because we don't have press, the press secretary isn't doing press conferences anymore. It was the last time you saw her in the press room. So the tweet seems to be his methodology of getting out his announcements rather than using the Sarah Sanders. More and more this sounds like Germany in the 30s. Honestly, it's dictatorship. But the bottom line is on this is that the amount of revenue and the impact of local economies for a shutdown of the southern border is tremendous. And for him to threaten that until he gets his five billion is very irresponsible. It likens to a child who's three years old that's going to hold his breath until he gets that sip, sip cup of apple juice that he demands from his parents. Yeah, and this is no different. It's a transfer. So I mean, what what does Dr. Sue say about tantrums? How do you handle a tantrum? You know, we talked to Cindy, our floor manager this morning asked her that question. She knows about that stuff. And she said, Well, you ignore him. That's what you do. Problem is, we got to get together all of all at the same time and ignore him. He's the President of the United States. He's not supposed to be having tantrums. No, he's not. Irrational. It's one thing to ignore a two year old or four year old, a separate tantrum, but this is a game that puts people's lives at risk. And so I you know, but with this, we can't ignore this. I think that's sort of what this country is doing. Well, he's not shooting himself in the foot. He's shooting the country in the foot as he has done before in order to get his way. But that's an outrage. It's an outrage. It's it was without advice and counsel. There's so many other things. But let's move on. Well, actually, just one quick second because he's getting support from his new advisor, McVonny, McVanney, McVanney, Mulvaney, Mulvaney, excuse me, McVanney. Yeah, right. And he's saying all options are on the table. Listen, it's the only way we can get the Democrats attention. Really? Really? That's how we're going to get the Democrats attention by shutting down the southern border between the two countries. I have an issue with this. I think anyone who lives along the border and all those economies along the border are gonna have an issue. Not constitutional process. You incredible. Yeah, you take a vote, you go to the legislature, you take a vote, you don't decide to then stamp your feet. I don't think he follows or understands constitutional process. This is a big problem wall or no wall. He declared an emergency that the the Chinese were trying to sell telecom equipment in the United States, like for cell phones. And he put a again, a one person ban. Remember that word ban? He put a ban on importation of telecom equipment from from the Chinese because he thinks it's all espionage. And I think well, according to his tweet, he's making a ban. So that's another amazing thing he's done this morning, an emergency ban already. Okay, but you had more. Let's let's go to Congress or anybody else. Let's go to Cynthia for a minute. She had one on these FEMA camps. I want to know more about that. Well, I'm here in California right now. And I mean, San Francisco Bay Area, but there are these camps that are all over this state. They're in Arizona, Mexico, Texas. They're popping up all over the place. They are these large camps, and they're called FEMA camps. They are heavily guarded, look like prisons. And nobody's really talking about them at all. I haven't seen the photos. It could be could be for disaster preparedness. Yeah, with with with barbed wire around the outside. Well, okay, let's say Mexico says we're no longer going to allow those who are seeking asylum in the United States, they're no longer be allowed to be retained in Mexico. So these are legal silent applicants. So United States, you handle it. What are they for? And why are they so heavily guarded? Right now, all we can do is speculate. What other points have you got? Well, I think this all ties into the government shutdown. And I think it all ties into his demand for funding of the wall. Now, remember, a week ago, he said I will take the responsibility and I'll take the mantle for the government shutdown. Well, he did take responsibility, but he doesn't take responsibility because he's pointing the finger back at the Dems. So the bottom line is people have remembered what he said. And as of recent, Harvard, Cap and Harris poll, 58% of Americans do exactly remember this and he'll hold him responsible for this government shutdown, versus 42% say he should not give in on his demands for the $5 billion. Remember, it wasn't much more than over a year ago, where the Democrats offered $25 billion. But we had been this what we call in a negotiation that there would be provisions for the DACA and the Dreamers. But it was $25 billion. So you know, what a great negotiator he's gone from $25 billion down to $5 billion. I don't know what to say about that. The bottom line is, you don't hold the government hostage, because you're going to have a temper tantrum. That's not a constitutional process. We're going to take a short break now, we'll be right back. For more than 100 years, American Humane Association has been teaching kids to be kind to animals. Those in our homes, on the farms, on the silver screen, and wildlife conservation caring for the world's vanishing creatures. But we can't do it alone. Visit kindness 100 dot org to find ways to teach kids how they can make a more caring, compassionate, and humane world for all of us. There wasn't a woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children she didn't know what to do. She gave them some broth without any bread and kiss them all soundly and put them to bed. Hunger is a story we can end. End it at feedingamerica.org. Hi, I'm Ethan Allen, host on Think Tech Hawaii of Pacific Partnerships in Education. Every other Tuesday afternoon at 3pm, I hope you'll join us as we explore the value, the accomplishments, and the challenges of education here in the Pacific Island. Okay, we're back. We're live in Cynthia. We can't we lost connection with her. So it's, it's just you and me, Tim Epichella, Jay Fidel, talking about Trump week. Let's go down the list of other things we need to talk about today. Alrighty, well, before I go down further, I think you've got to talk a little bit more about this wall, and the fact that we have bad optics, which we talked about before, to the world, to the world, we have a second child that has died in US custody. Yep. Okay. Again, it wasn't good optics to see children running barefoot from tear gas. Yep. It wasn't good optics to have children rip from their parents' arms so they could be detained. Detained in primitive cells, detained behind cyclone fences with nobody to watch them incredible and young children. It wasn't good optics to see, you know, to know that a young girl had died in US custody. It's not good optics to see another young child die in US custody. Finally recognizing the need to bring in medical professionals to be there if in the event someone becomes sick. See, that's too little, too late, in my opinion. It's too little, too late. So what does that say about the competency of what we're trying to do down there? And it's incompetent work that's being performed. It was incompetent to start with. They don't even know where the children are. They haven't been able to respond to those federal court orders. These children are separated from their parents and they may never see their parents again because of the incompetence of the border, border, you know. Well, this gets back to what you were saying a little bit earlier is that this is a knee jerk response, a knee jerk reaction. Things need to be thought out. Logistics need to take place before these executive orders fall into place. And that's not happening. And that's why you're having the tragedies of people dying or, you know, being ripped from their parents arms. This is completely chaos, chaos, running the company in the country with chaos. So I talked to one guy of the weekend, you know, at a party who supports Trump. And he said, Well, the country wanted some disruption. It didn't want same old. So it invited an elected a fellow who promised disruption. And now we have disruption. And the people who wanted disruption, they're happy to see that they got what they wanted disruption. But what about the benefit of the country in general, the greater good disruption is not good, not good for the economy, not good for the social social fabric of the country, not good for the government, not good for global relations. Well, and remember a lot of voters that did come onto the Trump side for this 2016 election, they that was a vote more against Hillary Clinton than it was for Donald Trump. Yeah. So were they looking for this kind of disruption? Were they looking for these kind of statements about Charlottesville and you know, all the many, many things that have been spoken as president of the United States? Were they looking for that? But maybe not. But they're getting disruption. And some of them are saying, Well, okay, I wanted disruption. I'm getting disruption. I like disruption. This is going to help. They really believe that. David, now pertaining to the wall and the death of these children. Is that the kind of disruption they're looking for? I don't think so. I really don't. But he's still got his. But the question is, do you go along with the flow without protesting? That's what's happening. And he's got supporters in Congress who support him. And of course, his appointees tend to support him. So what we have is a one man band. And he has some few supporters, which he parlays and leverages in the press. He's good at that. But you know, he also the base keeps going along with him. I'm waiting for the base to stop going along with him. I'm waiting for the Republican Party to stop going along with him. Republican Party, such as it has changed to whatever that is. Well, the question is, has this base grown from 33% now up to 38%? You know, I mean, where is that base expanding or retracting? I don't know. The polls, yes, and polls. No, I mean, what did I hear about a poll that said more Republicans or Republicans like what he's doing than before. And there was an increase of something four or 5% in the past few weeks. I mean, the more disruptive, I guess, some people, the more they like him. I don't know when this is this is going to get rational. Right. Okay, well, how about some other points about what happened? Well, I think one of the biggest news stories we last spoke 20 points here. Yeah, the biggest news story I think was of course, the withdrawal from Syria and his visit, his Christmas visit to Iraq. And what a disaster that was for a lot of reasons. Name some. Well, first off, you try not to his commander in chief. There's been a long tradition. Try not to politicize any visit of commander in chief to any part of being a Democrat or being a Republican, you're there as commander in chief for the military. You try not to politicize it. Well, that's hard not to do when you're signing an autographing make America great again hats, any handing them out. I don't know if that was planned or not, but that was a brand of hats, didn't they? He didn't go at Christmas. The tradition is the president goes at Christmas and talk to the troops. He didn't go at Christmas. He didn't do anything. Not a peep at Christmas, not a tweet at Christmas. It was after Christmas that he went to find that very himself. Second, second really amazing point is that he didn't check in with with the government in Iraq. That's correct. And they said enough on him. Let's get your troops out of here. All of them you want to you want to get out of Syria, get out of Iraq. Well, first off, he snubbed him because he didn't visit with him. I think there was a plan meeting, but of course, something happened that didn't happen. But you know, in in those cultures, believe me, if you're in your backyard with what you didn't get asked for their permission, and then you leave without meeting with them, that's that's a snub. It's a snub. And that doesn't sit well with a lot of elite and any leader not to mention the leaders in the Middle East. This is this is cultural. You do not treat people that way. Well, I think it was a complete disaster what he did in Iraq, complete disaster. And it doesn't it doesn't help one bit to justify or defend which is what he tried to do is action in pulling the troops out of Syria. Right. But worse yet, what he said is we can use Iraq as a land base to cover Syria. Should we need to do so? Okay, did you pass that by with Iraq at all? Did you talk to the Prime Minister saying we're now just going to be a satellite base permanently for us to engage into Syria? Did you talk to his own joint chiefs of staff about it? Did he have military back in doesn't have a state department anymore? These things out of a dark place. Bracky Palmer, Parliament has they're gonna set up a vote that vote may well say we want your 5000 troops out of Iraq. That's what they say. So we'll see if that's gonna happen. Let's talk about the stock market for a minute. We've had a real roller coaster lately. It's been pretty scary. I mean, running 800 points on a day coming back. But I don't think they're coming back is is the is the default here. I think it's gonna go down. I think it's gonna go down more. And maybe it's a metric. It's a canary in the coal mine about how well he's doing among the people who know own stock and trade stock in this country, which may not be his base. But but the fact is, if you keep on losing money, ultimately, it does affect the economy. You know, people wonder, and a lot of talk in the media about how there's a, you know, a decoupling of the stock market and the economy. I don't think that's really true. I think it's a question of public confidence. If you lose public confidence in the stock market, then probably a recession will follow. A recession may follow anyway. You know, speculation is that in six months time, we're going to see a real Lulu of a recession. And this stock stock volatility is probably going to accelerate that. Now, he's going to say, oh, it's somebody else's fault, you know, it's Fowler's fault. Because, you know, he raised interest again. I wish he'd take responsibility for what he's doing. He takes credit, but not responsibility. And that's the sign of a bad leader. He hasn't learned that there is a brick wall between the executive office and the Federal Reserve. He just doesn't get that point, unfortunately. You know, it's not the Fed's, you know, their mission statement to accommodate the president. And that's what the president complained about a week ago. They're not accommodating me. Well, they're not supposed to. That's not their job. You talked about public confidence. It's not a good strategy when the markets are jittery. And you have this volatility of up a thousand down 600 up, you know, these huge, these huge margins of volatility. And then for Treasurer Mouton, to call six leaders of major banks, Bank of America, Citibank, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and saying, Hey, guess what? Liquidity is good here. Well, why are you calling us to talk about liquidity? Where you already know that? So when the word gets out that our Treasurer is calling all these major banks to talk about liquidity, that makes the market very, very jumpy. In fact, on that day, I believe we lost 600 points because because he tried to that was Christmas comment and uses calming his calming action attempt to comment as a news point, the political point. Never say relax when the market is jittery. Right. Don't do that. Let it go. Let it go. Just to get a little bit more about the stock market. I think there is concerned from Wall Street that, you know, with Trump administration, there may be some of the finer good points of the Frank Dodd provisions, you know, that regulatory thing that was passed in the Obama administration. There are actually good stop gap measures that keeps Wall Street a little bit more honest and controlled. And one of them is liquidity and the reserves requirement for liquidity and, you know, these stress tests that banks have to perform to make sure and give confidence to the market that liquidity is abundant and that if there is actually a major crash that they'll have enough in their margins and their liquidity to call on it. Yeah. And so, you know, are those provisions going to be eroded because that's not good for the market? I don't think each one of these spontaneous, what do you want to call it, impulsive things that he does has an effect on public confidence. But we live in an interconnected world and the question is whether that effect on public confidence is limited to the federal establishment. Does it cover the whole country? I think it does. And does it cover the world? Because the world is all connected. And he's done a lot of things to, you know, destabilize Europe. We know that. And Europe, the financial affairs in Europe are really in trouble now. He's had a tremendous effect on cutting the cord, if not getting into a war, a trade war with China. One thing after another, these are destabilizing events. And they do not bring public confidence anywhere, anywhere in the world. Now, a few people can say, I like a strong leader. I back up a strong leader or I like a disruptive leader. I back him up. But the fact is that the people who... Markets don't. Markets don't and rational people don't. Right. And so I think the public confidence is failing. The question is, and that's going to affect the economy. I'm telling you now, it's going to affect the economy. The question is, does this question of confidence apply to the Republicans? Now, you mentioned to me that there was a House Oversight Committee which sent letters to agencies requesting documents. Elijah Cummings. It's kind of a breakaway thing. Everywhere, some of the committees, maybe it's a change of power in the House. Some of the committees are speaking up. There'll be more of that. Maybe some of the Republicans break away in Congress. I think there'll be more of that. And after a while, he's going to lose confidence right now. It feels like he's at the end of his Heather. Doesn't it? Doesn't it feel that way? He doesn't think so. No, he doesn't. He'll double down. And the people who like double down, they'll hang in with him. But a lot of people have got to be questioning what he's doing. Now, you know, these requests for documents always take time. And of course, these committees have been denied because they were, you know, they weren't in control of the House of Representatives. It's certainly not over these committees. So, Elijah Cummings, who has been in the House of Representatives for a long time, he's now the oversight chair, as you mentioned, and he's going to specifically focus in on a few things. One is he wants to find out a little bit more about Hurricane Maria and how that affected or how we did not respond to Puerto Rico, as well as we might have. Oh, yeah. Number two, he's going to look at the how we came to the family separations during that the southern border. Oh, yeah. He's going to look at the misconduct of government officials. Specifically, remember Tom Price from the human human services and all his private jets and things. And how did that happen? Look, you know, maybe those aren't earth shattering investigation, but he's going to least request these from the from the EPA, Department of Homeland Security and Department of Health and Human Services. I think bottom line is he's going to really look at payments from foreign governments to the Trump organizations and how that did or did not work its way into the election. So these are these are 51 letters he sent to the head of the all these agencies and getting documents that he's been previously denied. So when this stuff starts to trickle back in, we'll see how that affects the news cycle. I think it will. This tells me and I maybe you have more information on it, but that, you know, we see Trump's stonewall and, for example, on his tax returns. And we see him calling a war on the press and calling the press names and manipulating the press conferences and and even who can appear at a press conference. But I think there's something else too. His agencies are shutting down the press. They don't tell you. They don't tell you what they're doing. They don't tell you why they're doing it. These are his appointees. So I think the war on the press goes further than what we see in, you know, in his nasty remarks about and to the press. I think it's the whole it's that part of the government that he controls is is shutting down on giving information. These items that you mentioned, you know, ideally the press would have been able to cover those items before. You know, why did we do this? And why do we do that? What was the background? What was the process? But I have a feeling they couldn't get any information. So that's why the House Oversight Committee is so important. They're doing work that maybe the press should have been able to do before had their had there been openness and transparency in the Trump government. Well, remember, he's replacing everyone that felt they had a duty to honor what their mission statement is for that agency. But now, even though they were appointed by him, they have disappointed him. Okay, because they're doing what their mission was. Yeah. And that is to be a steward of that agency. But remember, the top priority is not your mission to the agency, your top priority is loyalty to the president of the United States. That's the way it seems to be. And so now that seems to be the way it's working because you're right, there is a bottleneck of information that's coming out. And no one's really knowing what's going on in our government, not as well as we ought to or how we used to. Again, when's the last time we've seen a press conference with Sarah Sanders? It's been a while. Sarah Sanders, unfortunately, she lies. And we all know that she lies. I know, but you at least want to have the opportunity to find out what she's lying about. I mean, I don't I don't feel the press has access to sufficient information to report on so many things. And I don't feel the public is as informed as it should be. And I think we are living in a dark age in terms of public, you know, public information and transparency of the government. And I mean, we're seeing such a, even though we see it all day long, and the New York Times and the Washington Post and so forth and the Guardian, you know, one article after another about him and you know, the machinations of his administration. But I still think we don't get enough information. We don't know what's going on in the government. We get it. We get it only by hook and crook. And that's not the way it should be. There should be openness, much more openness than there is. And the question is, will that work? You know, I'm reminded of you, we long in West Louisiana governor the old, you know, you can fool all the people some of the time, some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all of the people all the time. And the question is, I mean, in our great Democratic Republic, that should be happening, should happen soon. But will it happen next year? Will somebody say, wait, you can't fool all the people all the time. We're going to rise up. And that may be a function of the mother investigation. What do you got on that? Well, not much more than we talked about last week. Again, he's been very, very, very disciplined. And we've seen the indictments come out. But he's, you know, he hasn't said a whole lot more and nothing really a whole lot more to report on that. Except for what I said before is that we should hold back this talk about impeachment, because a lot of people and myself included, I don't feel the payments to Stormy Daniels is enough to impeach a president. It's just not it's not good to lie about it and have it funded and direct people on how you fund these kind of nefarious, you know, things that behind the scenes in order for you to become elected, but it's not impeachable. Is it a high crime in Mr. Meener? I don't know. But with the report that's going to come out and it will come out, will that detail more high crimes of Mr. Meener that both the House and the Senate will have to look at and examine and either stand up or not stand up? I think they will. Okay. I mean, I'll go with that to a point, but I want to add a thought here, which a lot of people have expressed. That is, all of that is about the past. All of that is how we got elected and the kinds of things he did to get elected and the suppression of information and buying people off and all that, including the bone spur this week. Oh, that was incredible. You know, inherent in the story that he got the bone spur diagnosis as a favor from a doctor who was his father's tenant. It was obvious what was going on there. The core of that story is he doesn't have a bone spur. He never had a bone spur. This is all false, you know, and his public life, really, his life with the country is all posited on a falsehood and his existence, the failure of this draft system, you know, his way of beating the draft with a lie. I mean, it's just awful. But anyway, you know what I mean? He may not have a bone spur, but he has a lot of skeletons in his closet. Oh, good. I like that. But you know, what I'm worried about is you want to wait. You want to wait, you want to see what Mueller has to say. You want to be measured about this. Right now, you know, he's doing new normal on international relations and on for that matter, national programs. He's pulling the wings out of the Obamacare. He's making it very hard for social services, social services, you know, to go to disadvantaged in the country. He's doing terrible things on immigration to people, immoral things, awful things, not worthy, not worthy of the country or the presidency. This is now. This is not the past. This is now. And I suggest to you, Tim, it's going to get worse. Whatever Mueller says, Mueller is going to be talking about the past, not now. I think the damage is happening right now. The damage is happening in international relations, international trade, international geopolitical maneuvers and wars. I think he's really dangerous and he's really hurting us. And we have to look at that, not the past. So you're saying stop it as fast as you possibly can before more damage can be done. That's what I'm saying. And by the time this stuff does hit the table, it'll be all passe news. I don't know if that's what you're saying, but I don't know. Maybe it'll be grounds for impeachment. It'll be hard to get an impeachment unless you get both out. What about a censor? Is that possible? A censor doesn't really help much, does it? He's going to be in office. He'll deny it. He'll say it's a conspiracy against him. It's a witch hunt, whatnot. You know, that's not going to stop him from doing his thing. I don't know how you stop him. I really don't. But I'd say that it becomes increasingly important to stop him from what he's doing that damages the country and its relationships with the world and therefore global peace, tranquility and economic stability. Yeah, I think when the new house was formed with a majority of Democrats, you're going to see them start passing bill after bill after bill that's going to address the middle class. And when those bills don't go any further than the house, they go to the Senate and they're defeated time and time again, Americans may see, hey, we do have a government that can get something done, but we have an obstruction to the Senate that's a majority of Republicans that aren't passing bills that's going to benefit my life. And so we'll see how interesting that turned out. What it is, so this is actually at the end of the day, it's not Trump and his machinations. We know he's going to do these things worse and worse. And it's not the Democrats, they're going to try to do the right thing, they're a little disorganized, they're going to try to do the right thing. It's the Republican Party, such as it has evolved to. And it's up to those people, those human beings, those public officials who took an oath to defend the Constitution, it's up to them to stop this train. They don't do anything. I'm really worried about the country, but that's just me. I would share your concern. Yeah. Well, thank you, Tim. We had a lot more on the list. We'll have to do this again. Nice to see you as always. See you next week. Happy New Year in the meantime. Let's see what happens between now and then. Got it. Trump week, every Friday you got it. Aloha.