The following is a transcript from the Pro America Report.
Welcome, welcome, welcome. Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. We’ve got a lot to cover. Very interesting guests coming up today.
Senator Phil Gramm, the former senator from Texas. He’s been out of office for 20 years, actually, but he’s only just turned 80, so he left office as a young man. I didn’t quite realize that. And he’s written a book about how messy and backward and deceptive some of the statistics that are used by the government, especially in the census, what they do to say something about inequality that he says is misleading. We’ll talk with him about that, his new book, with two other economists. He wrote that.
And also very interested to talk with retired Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller of the United States Marine Corps. You may remember him. He’s the guy that put out the video when he was frustrated with what happened in Afghanistan last year. And he put out a video, basically lost his job as a lieutenant colonel of the Marine Corps because of that. And he’s written a book called Crisis of Command. Crisis of Command: How We Lost Trust and Confidence in America’s Generals and Politicians. We’ll talk with Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller in a moment.
But first, what you need to know today what you need to know today is it’s 1894.
Now, stick with me, because what I’ve been seeing and I’m going a little bit maybe I’m going a little too far, but I don’t know that it’s true. I think I’m in the right direction.
In 1894, America was in an off year election. The party in power was the Democrat Grover Cleveland. So the Democrats were in power. And in 1894, the country was in the throes of what was later called the Panic of 1893.
The Panic of 1893 was a horrendous economic depression that struck like every part of American life. Now, remember, it’s 1893. We’re just in the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, or not, maybe in the middle of it. And we’ve got, they call it the Gilded Age because there’s been so much economic growth and expansion. That was the, I think the 1880s is the sort of famous time, 1870s, maybe 1880s, the Gilded Age. Lots of growth, lots of rich people.
And we’re in this period where more and more industrialization has poured people into the cities, and we are now facing this incredible panic of 1893.
They call it the Panic 1893. But when you look at it, what it really was was just what we’re in right now.
Everything about it was higher. There had been a crisis in agriculture. I think it was in wheat, and so there was a shortage of food.
Then there was a problem with inflation. Then there was a problem with low wages.
There was lots of work, but people were being underpaid and couldn’t sort of figure things out.
There was a problem with silver. People had been hoarding silver, and there wasn’t the same currency. And so there was the idea of trying to change the laws to protect that.
Anyway, the fact is, and the stock market tanked, banks failed, businesses. I think the number here, I’m looking at 500 banks closed. This is an 1893. There wasn’t that many banks. 15,000 businesses closed. People were losing their farms. Unemployment, this is the one difference from today. Unemployment was up in the 20s in places. But my point here is it was economics.
It was economics. It was the way people were living and the depression they were in. And so they went to the polls in 1894, and they punished the party in power.
The party in power was the Democrats, and they just pummeled them in ways that nobody expected. Nobody thought that there could be that big a swing, and it was massive.
Here’s my point. It’s 1894. The fundamentals are so clearly off. The media is so desperate to distract us. They want to talk about Trump’s documents. They want to talk about abortion. It doesn’t matter.
It may matter in 2024. If Trump is on the ballot, people may vote against Trump. There’s a bunch of people that will do that.
But right now, people are not voting – Trump’s not on the ballot. They’re looking at the cost of gasoline. It’s up. You can say, oh, well, it’s gone down a little bit in the last three months. It’s still way up.
Go to the store, go to the grocery store. If you haven’t been in a while, go and look. I watch things like bacon, but the bacon that I buy my family is up about 30%. Milk is up. Bread is up, everything’s up. I went to buy two tomatoes, and I looked at it closely in the package. It was like $4.80 for two tomatoes.
So people see that if you don’t have a fixed mortgage, if you have a second loan, for example, if you have a second mortgage, it’s almost always on an adjustable rate. It’s going up, up, up.
Your home value is stuck now. It’s stalled now because you can’t move houses as much.
And so we are in a full blown economic, I don’t know, recession for sure. It feels more like a depression. And with Europe on the brink because they don’t have enough fuel, they don’t have enough oil and gas, and we’re watching the cost of energy go up.
They’re talking about how to do price caps, try to manage the economy. The Central Bank of Europe is going to raise its rates, which is going to ripple across all the economies. So we are in a full blown economic recession. Technically, I would say depression. And I am telling you right now, you are going to see the people of this country absolutely punish the party in power. It’s not even going to be close. It’s not going to be, and so people are saying, now what’s going to happen?
What’s going to happen is the Republicans are going to win. There’s polling. . . . Frank Luntz, no fan of Trumpism and America First, and it’s sort of insider’s insider has a poll. I think he put it out that ten days ago, Federman was up by 13 in Pennsylvania, now he’s up by three. And they’re lying. Federman’s losing. You may not like Oz’s politics. He’s made for this moment. He’s a doctor, cardiac thoracic surgeon. He’s done TV, he’s a communicator. He’s moderate looking on certain issues. He will win by 5, 7, 10 points.
Up in Wisconsin, Ron Johnson, who’s supposed to be beleaguered, he’s too Trumpy, he was too far out on Covid and fighting against Covid restrictions. He’s up. The guy running for governor in Wisconsin, he’s up.
Down in Georgia, they’ve stopped reporting. Stacey Abrams is going to lose by double digits and Hershey Walker is going to win by 5, 7, 10 points. It’s an absolute red tsunami.
By the way, it doesn’t solve a lot of problems.
You still got to get in power and see what the Republicans can do. But they are going to, in the era of lots of information online and lots of understanding what’s going on, people are going back to just simply choosing against the powerful, choosing against the incumbent, and that’s who they associate with power.
And if you don’t believe me, again, go over to Italy and look at what Meloni did. Giorgia Meloni. Her choice in the last four years was to either play along with the Italian government, which is very common. You enter the coalition or stay as an outsider, stay as the opposition.
The opposition, by total contrast, that’s what she did.
She went from 4% last election up to close to 30%, and she’ll be prime minister.
So in 1894, Republicans won over 100 House seats. They won a net of 110 House seats. So they won they picked up 110 in the Senate election. They only won two. They only won two. Excuse me. They only picked up two. But it’s going to be more than that. It’s going to be more than that. A lot more.
It’s going to be a red tsunami. You heard it here first.
Call it 1894.
Not 1994. Not 2010. 1994 was 50 years, I think, 48 years of Democrats in power in the House. They finally wanted to go with Republicans after the beginning of the Clinton era, and so they went with Newt and the gang.
It’s not even 2010 where Obama had done the stimulus and wasted money and all the Solyndra and all that stuff, and in 2010 they punished him and switched out a lot of people. It’s not even that.
It’s 1894.
Go back and look, because it’s not just the Tea Party of radical stuff like Obamacare. It’s not just 1994, which was after twelve years of Reagan / Bush, we got Clinton, and we don’t like what we see.
No, it’s more dramatic. And the drama in it is the economy, uncertainty in the future, a wrong track for the country, economics off. Go look.
I hate to tell you, don’t do it if you’re not strong. Go look at your retirement. I look at mine. In just three months, it’s down about 25%. I can’t stand to look at it.
So that’s what Americans are feeling. It’s 1894, not 1994. Watch for it. All right.
We got to take a break. We come back, we’ll talk with Senator Phil Gramm about his new book, as well as Colonel, Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller. Be back in a moment.
It’s Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. Talk to you in a moment.
