The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
Sat, 5 Apr 2025
Rachel Maddow looks at ways to understand the scope of the damage Donald Trump has done to the entire world economy, and reminds viewers where the tariff idea came from that has turned Donald Trump into a one-man global disaster.
Chapter 1: Who are Pussy Riot and why are they protesting in the U.S.?
We are members of Pussy Riot, Russian protest group. We've been imprisoned in Russia. We've been persecuted. We are in federal wanted list in our country.
We're members of Pussy Riot, a Russian protest group. We've been imprisoned in Russia. We've been persecuted. We're on the federal wanted list in our country. Pussy Riot are a punk band and a protest group that have been jailed in Russia and beaten up and hounded all over the globe now by Russian President Vladimir Putin. They have been chased out of that country.
As such, they remain one of the last remaining visible, uncompromising and alive elements of the Russian resistance to Putin. Putin, of course, has managed to just kill off so many others who dared to oppose him. But this week, members of that Russian group came here, came to America, to New York City to scream at us, to literally scream at us
in an encouraging way, trying to tell us to act now before what has happened to them in their country happens to us here in ours.
Wake up, America! Wake up, America! Wake up, America! Wake up, America!
Wake up, America. You can see the signs they're holding there, including this one on the left here that says, nothing special. One member of the group, Masha Alyokhina, explained, I think, what they mean by that nothing special sign.
I don't think that there is something special with Russia or Russian people. The totalitarian state can appear anywhere if people are silent.
I don't think there's something special with Russia or Russian people. A totalitarian state can appear anywhere if people are silent. And so that's why they came here. They're persecuted and they've been imprisoned and they are now hunted by their own country.
A dictatorship where it is illegal to use the word war to describe a war, where it is illegal for even one person to hold a protest alone or to hold up a protest sign even if it has no words on it. But here they are in our country trying to sound an alarm to tell us to move fast because your country doesn't come back when you lose it to a dictatorship.
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Chapter 2: Why are there mass protests planned across the United States?
We are whatever the opposite is of giving up. I mean, we are expecting a massive day of protest tomorrow in this country. I want to show you this from TikTok. This is the sort of hype video for the protests tomorrow that has been circulating online, particularly on TikTok.
And it's funny because you'll see here, it's the kind of hook line here is that it's literally about we're done watching the news. We're stopping watching the news. We're going out tomorrow to protest instead. I recognize it's a little ironic for me to be showing you this on the news. But still, I have no ego about these things. And I think you should see it. Watch.
New Orleans with the etiquette of L.A. yelling. My style.
Second bad, but somebody gotta do it Got my foot up on the gas, but somebody gotta do it Turn this TV off, turn this TV off Turn this TV off, turn this TV off Turn this TV off, turn this TV off Turn this TV off, turn this TV off Crazy, scary, spooky, hilarious Crazy, scary, spooky, hilarious Crazy, scary, spooky, hilarious Crazy, scary, spooky, hilarious Crazy, scary, spooky, hilarious
One movement, every state protesting dictators. That is from the 50-51 movement, which started these protests against what Trump was doing very early on in the second Trump term. Remember 50-51 comes from them organizing 50 protests in 50 state capitals all on one day. That's what 50-51 stands for.
But it's them and Indivisible and basically everybody else jumping in together tomorrow in support of these protests. Tomorrow is expected to be the largest day of protests that the country has yet seen since Trump has been back in office. And it looks like it's going to be a really big day.
If the number of protests planned actually does happen, and the number of people who have said they're going to show up, show up, then we are easily looking at hundreds of thousands of Americans who are going to be taking part in nonviolent Trump, anti-Trump protests tomorrow. More than 1,200 separate protests are planned tomorrow in all 50 states.
We're expecting a large gathering in Washington, D.C., but I think maybe every state capital is also going to have a protest, different federal buildings in multiple states, congressional offices, post offices, city centers. Again, we won't know exactly the scale of the protests or their exact character until they happen.
We know the White House has canceled all the garden tours they had planned for tomorrow at the White House. They've moved them from tomorrow, Saturday, to Sunday instead because they are expecting large anti-Trump crowds in Washington. So the garden tours are moved, you guys. All week long, people have been sending us here at the Rachel Maddow Show images of their preparations for tomorrow.
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Chapter 3: How are Trump's policies causing economic turmoil?
In the face of that absurdity, these Maryland residents today turned up at the courthouse. to support him and his family while the hearing was underway. You see the signs, bring Kilmar Garcia home, free our neighbor Kilmar Garcia, kids need their dads. And this one, which is right to the point, all this is sick.
at the conclusion of that court hearing today, the judge hearing the case, ordered the Trump administration that they must retrieve that man. They must get him out of that prison in El Salvador and bring him back to the United States by 11.59 p.m. on Monday night. Go do it. Today, of course, you saw what happened in the markets. The Dow dropped more than... 2,000 points today. Not a typo.
Dow plunges 2,200 points. Yesterday and today are the first time ever that the Dow has dropped 1,500 points or more on two consecutive days. 1,600 points yesterday, 2,200 points today. The S&P 500 dropped 10% in two days. It dropped 6% today alone.
Just for context, I mean, whether or not you watch the markets, whether or not you have any money in the markets or retirement account or whatever, just to get a sense of the scale here. I'll give you two metrics here to get a sense of the scale. The first one is the circuit breakers. Do you know about this? The markets have circuit breakers that kick in when things go off a cliff.
That's a mixed metaphor, but I think you know what I mean. They call them trading curbs, and they're these shutoffs that kick in automatically and basically stop the market. They stop people from trading for 15 minutes when things have gone unbelievably wrong.
And where those circuit breakers kick in, like the threshold of how bad it has to be before the circuit breakers kick in, is when the S&P drops 7% from the previous day's close. Today, the S&P dropped 6%. Had we got to 7%, we would have hit the circuit breaker. They would have turned the lights out on the market to try to save us from ourselves.
That's one way to understand the severity of what's happened here. And here's another. Look at this. This is the VIX index, V-I-X. Unlike the stock market graphs where you can tell things are bad when they go down, with the VIX, it's the volatility index, it goes up when things are terrible. It's like the economic crisis meter. And you can see there are just a few big peaks there over time.
The first huge peak, that's 2008. That was the global financial disaster of 2008. The worst financial catastrophe since the Great Depression. That's the first big peak. The next big peak is March 2020. That's the equally huge global disaster, right? When the COVID pandemic overran the world, killed millions of people, and basically shut off economic activity like there had been a power outage.
So those are the first two big peaks there. But now look, new peak. That's now. That's now. That one not caused by the biggest financial catastrophe since the Great Depression or a global pandemic that's killing millions of people. That one caused simply by Donald Trump being president. Again, with his great ideas.
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Chapter 4: What was the origin of Trump's tariff plan?
At one point, Ron Vera wrote in the memo that Trump could, quote, ride the tariffs to victory. Problem is, Ron Vera doesn't exist. He never has. The economics expert that Peter Navarro has long cited to explain why he's so gung-ho on tariffs, this person, Ron Vera, is a made-up person. He is a fictional person.
Peter Navarro invented Ron Vera as his expert source so he could quote this expert source over and over and over again in his crackpot books. Who is Ron Vera? Ron Vera is an anagram of Navarro, which is his last name. I mean, my name anagrams to Macho Wadler, but I don't see myself trying to talk you into doing what Macho Wadler wants, right?
But that really is how the Trump administration crafted its tariff policy. That's where Trump came up with the tariff idea. circulating a fake memo from a fake person with a fake email address in order to make it look like this was a serious issue being debated by real experts.
Chapter 5: How did Jared Kushner find Trump's economic advisor?
That is the intellectual basis on which Donald Trump today wiped $6 trillion of wealth out of existence and crashed America's markets and brought America and the world to the brink of a self-inflicted, on-purpose, global Great Depression along the lines of what we had in 2008 and what the pandemic inflicted upon us in 2020. This time, the global disaster is Donald Trump's big brain.
And Donald Trump may think it's all going to work out. The American people are awake and well aware that this is not going to work out. New Reuters Ipsos polling, to which I would like to bring your attention. Do you approve or disapprove of Donald Trump's handling of his job as president? Disapprove by a 10-point margin.
Do you approve or disapprove of how Donald Trump is handling the economy specifically? Disapprove by a 15-point margin. Do you approve or disapprove of how Donald Trump is handling the issue of international trade? Disapprove by an 18-point margin. Do you approve or disapprove of how Donald Trump is handling the issue of your cost of living? Disapprove by a 27-point margin.
Is the Trump administration competent or incompetent at running the federal government? Incompetent by a 20-point margin. Is the Trump administration competent or incompetent at rolling out new economic policies? Incompetent by a 25-point margin. Is the Trump administration competent or incompetent at downsizing government without affecting vital services? Incompetent by a 25-point margin.
That's before the markets did what they've done in the last two days. The American people get it. They get it. They are awake. They are not giving up. And tomorrow, a lot of them are going to show it. Senator Mark Kelly is here tonight. Ezra Levin from Indivisible is here tonight. Stay with us. So they are soldiers from Lithuania. There's some others from Germany as well.
But look what they have tucked into their pockets. They have little American flags just below the flag of their own countries sewn onto their sleeves.
In the capital city of Lithuania yesterday, thousands of soldiers and dignitaries and also just ordinary people lined up in the streets to pay their respects and to honor four American soldiers who died in Lithuania this past week during a training exercise. The ceremony was attended by the president of Lithuania who gave a speech on the occasion.
He said that for Lithuanians, serving your country is not just a duty but an emotion. And you could really see that among the people who gathered. Lithuanian citizens were moved to tears, moved to genuine grief. But again, this was a ceremony for Americans, for American soldiers.
Officials arranged for an archbishop to bless the motorcade before it drove to the airport to start the process of returning those remains, returning those soldiers to the U.S. In our country, of course, it is a sacred tradition that when members of the armed services die in the line of duty overseas, their remains come home to the US in what's called a dignified transfer.
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