Scott and Ed discuss Trump’s decision to invite the top holders of his memecoin to a private dinner, Boeing’s first quarter earnings, and a new report underscoring the worsening wealth inequality in the U.S. Then, they explore how Trump’s policy reversals are undermining America’s global reputation in the markets. Finally, they break down Tesla’s first-quarter report, why the markets reacted so positively to the terrible results, and the key moments from the earnings call. Subscribe to the Prof G Markets newsletter Order "The Algebra of Wealth," out now Subscribe to No Mercy / No Malice Follow the podcast across socials @profgpod: Instagram Threads X Reddit Follow Scott on InstagramFollow Ed on Instagram and X Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is Trump's latest meme coin dinner controversy?
I think the Democrats have what I call low-grade co-corruption, where Speaker Ambrose Pelosi trades stocks for tens or hundreds of thousands or maybe millions. And he's like, if you're going to be corrupt, go big and create a vessel. And somebody pitched him on this, and he said yes, where you can make billions. And that's what he's done here.
And I hope this thing gets a lot of attention and a lot of people start focusing on what is – easily the greatest financial grift in the history of presidents. I can't think of, I mean, it just cracks me up that people were pissed off about Hunter Biden going on a board, which he shouldn't have been on.
We need to know what he was doing in China and Russia while his father was vice president and or while his father was preparing to become the president. This is corruption at its core. Folks, this is what people hate about the swamp. This is a part of how Donald Trump won in the first place, saying that we're going to get rid of these sweetheart deals.
We're going to make sure that we clean up the axis of power in a place like Washington, D.C.
And yet we have a meme coin And he's inviting people to the White House for the dinner. I don't know. I find the whole thing. It's verging on comical if it wasn't so tragic.
I think that's exactly right. I think this is the most egregious act we've seen from this administration so far. And we can talk about the tariffs and the deportations and... the threats to Jerome Powell, etc., none of that's good, but you can at least begin to fashion an argument as to why, in some version of reality, it might be beneficial to the nation.
You couldn't make a good argument, not a rational argument, you couldn't make a sane argument, but you could try to make the argument. You could try to say, we need to reshore jobs, etc., There's no argument for this. You can't even attempt to steel man this.
It is pure grift, pure corruption, using the White House, using the presidency as a vehicle to shake down regular investors, not wealthy political donors, which you can make the argument that maybe the Democrats do, but retail investors, in order to raise money, again, not for some greater cause, not even to fund some political campaign, but purely...
to enrich your friends, to enrich your family, and to enrich your allies. This is completely unheard of. And I just want to highlight that lockup period, which it was a three-month lockup period. It basically meant that the insiders of the coin can't sell until the period expires. So this is very important. And we said this, we need to pay attention to when the lockup period expires.
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Chapter 2: How are the wealthiest Americans accumulating more wealth?
Well... I was thinking, listening to this show, we've been talking about that the long-term damage here is to the erosion in our brand equity, which decreases our margin in millions of different ways that we'll never know directly. I think our allies are just less likely to share information with us. I think...
As someone who is asked to deliver weapons to what might be a terrorist, I was less likely to call the American embassy and say, hey, I saw this. I think people are less likely to send their best and brightest to the U.S. when PhD students are being sent errant emails asking to self-deport. And those types of injuries, it's like having a high blood pressure.
It's just at some point it creates an opportunity set or a corpus that is just more prone to bad things to happen to that person. And that's what's essentially he's giving us really high cholesterol or high blood pressure, making us more vulnerable to opportunistic situations. Can it be repaired? Sure. I mean, we've had really dark moments in our history.
I think a Democratic or a different Republican in the White House, and maybe even some learning that comes out of this, and seeing Americans kind of rise up and realize that their rights are not foregone conclusions, and then leveraging the Democratic process to change direction... You know, I think our allies will forgive us. I think we have a longer history with them than that.
And that's the real damage. The damage and the opportunity is that to tear up 80-year alliances and erode that goodwill is just stupid. And it's sort of been something we've taken for granted. The good news, the good news is I think a lot of that ill will has been ring-fenced to one man. This guy will go down as the stupid presidency.
It used to be coarseness and cruelness, but he had a certain feel for the markets. People thought he was a good business person. The markets did do well during his first term. A lot of people from different cohorts did well. Now, granted, did we spend...
$7 trillion in additional deficits or $8 trillion, yeah, but it would be hard to punch too many holes in the economic record of his first administration. Now this one just seems like, okay, how do we go out is just really stupid. But I absolutely think we can repair this, and I think the upside is that a lot of the O.L. is not towards America, it's towards one individual.
Yeah, I think we're sort of in a race against China to get the world on our side. And I think I'm with you. I think people would be faster to renormalize relations with the US than they would with China. But having said that, China is trying. I mean, they just lifted these sanctions on the EU. They just sent their trade delegations to Sweden, to Hungary, to Norway, to Germany.
They are certainly trying to rekindle those relationships. And I think for US investors and US companies, the question is, can we normalize our relationships with other nations faster than China can? I think we probably can, but it's four years. So, you know, we're definitely running against the clock here. And that is going to have a massive impact.
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