Speaker 1: Week one, with the swipe of a Sharpie, Donald Trump again putting a stamp on the federal government. So fast and furious, he might have actually missed some of what he did in the hurricane of activity. There were pardons. He renamed the Gulf of America. And yes, he did begin a large scale immigration crackdown that includes deporting many immigrants and deploying American troops at the border. But while all of this grabbed attention and headlines, what you're not reading about is what Trump is doing for the economy. Even implementing his beloved tariffs, which he promised to do many times.

Speaker 2: I'm going to inform her on day one or sooner that if they don't stop this onslaught of criminals and drugs coming into our country, I'm going to immediately impose a 25% tariff on everything they send in to the United States of America.

Speaker 1: Or doing anything to end the war in Ukraine, which he also promised to do.

Speaker 2: That is a war that's dying to be settled. I will get it settled before I even become president. If I win, when I'm president elect, and what I'll do is I'll speak to one, I'll speak to the other, I'll get them together.

Speaker 1: So despite all the flash this week, the question is whether the hard stuff can still get done and that whether or not all of this is about a photo op. Joining us at the table is CNN economics commentator, Catherine Rampell. She's a Washington Post opinion columnist. Catherine, I want to start on the economy because we know that is the most important thing to Americans. It's the source of their dissatisfaction with the Biden administration. And they believed Trump when he said he would fix it. I want to play for you what he said at Davos this week about how he would fix it.

Speaker 2: I'm also going to ask Saudi Arabia and OPEC to bring down the cost of oil. You got to bring it down. If the price came down, the Russia-Ukraine war would end immediately. Right now the price is high enough that that war will continue. You got to bring down the oil price, you're going to end that war. They should have done it long ago. They're very responsible, actually, to a certain extent for what's taking place. Millions of lives are being lost with oil prices going down. I'll demand that interest rates drop immediately and likewise they should be dropping all over the world.

Speaker 1: So if you follow that, what he's saying is that he's going to get the Saudis to bring down the price of oil and then he's going to use that to pressure the Federal Reserve to bring down interest rates and that is going to be how prices are going to go down for Americans.

Speaker 3: Look, Trump got elected with a mandate to bring prices down. As I have said many a time, presidents do not actually have the ability to turn the dial up or down on prices. In fact, Trump doesn't even have concepts of a plan for dealing with inflation. He signed an executive order that basically assigned his cabinet members to come up with concepts of a plan for dealing with inflation, for bringing down costs. There is a long history, of course, of presidents begging OPEC to pump more oil and maybe it'll work this time. I don't know. We'll see. But none of that is actually going to address the reason why inflation has been stubbornly high, including that grocery prices continue to be high. Egg prices are now at an all-time high. That's because of bird flu. That's not anything Trump did. But meanwhile, he's telling the CDC to stop issuing data and public communications about bird flu, which is probably not helping the situation. So to the extent that the American public voted for him to deal with prices, I have seen nothing in the agenda so far that would actually achieve that goal.

Speaker 4: Lower gas prices, lower costs. Fuel costs impact everything up and down the supply chain. It's one of the key factors. When price of gasoline goes up, the price of every good goes up.

Speaker 3: Yeah, gas has come down a lot in the past year.

Speaker 4: Sure, and it will go down more if he has Saudi Arabia playing ball. And they showed last administration, Trump, one point, that they were willing to play ball. They came to the table to negotiate with Israel over normalizing relations. They did lower gas prices and increase demand.

Speaker 3: They also raised gas prices when he asked them to, during COVID.

Speaker 4: But they actually, just yesterday, they announced that they're going to invest $600 billion more in the United States.

Speaker 3: That's about as much as they committed to buy in weapons under Biden.

Speaker 4: Wait a minute. We can't have it both ways here. We can't say that it's true that lower costs of fuel bring down prices and yet say as he's hammering on drilling and getting the international markets to increase their supply that he isn't talking about prices. He quite literally is on inflation.

Speaker 3: But I'm saying oil production in the United States is already at an all-time high. We are producing more crude oil in this country than any country has in history ever. The problem is not oil supply at this point. That's not the main issue that consumers are facing. The main issue is that there are other categories of goods and services that have very high prices that Trump has done nothing to do. And in fact, he actually undid a Biden-era executive order to try to cap out-of-pocket costs on prescription drugs, which is something that- Healthcare, housing, rents.

Speaker 1: Yes.

Speaker 3: None of this is going to help any of that.

Speaker 1: I mean, look, just straight up from a numbers perspective, the things that contribute the most to people's pocketbooks are going to be those big ticket items. And it is also true that Trump has said and done nothing to address those things.

Speaker 4: He's been president for four and a half days. He has also talked massively about cutting red tape in the regulatory thing that makes building impossible to help the housing thing, fighting more lands to develop on. He's talked about a bunch about how do we grow a supply base in this country across all sectors, get more people back to work. All those things go to inflation.

Speaker 3: Meanwhile, get more people back to work. I'm glad you brought that up because not only is he threatening to deport a large portion of people who are- Who are here illegally. He's also planning to de-document people. He is cutting off legal pathways to come here. In fact, a few minutes ago, the New York Times just reported that he is ending the parole program that allowed Ukrainians to come in here and potentially causing all of those people to lose their work authorization.

Speaker 5: And the majority of Americans, as Harry Enten reported on this network over the past couple of days, not only support deporting illegal immigrants- These are legal immigrants. Why don't you let me finish talking, Catherine? Because you interrupted me and I want to finish what I have to say. Not only do they support deporting illegal immigrants, people who have committed crimes, but they also support less immigration as a whole, which was something surprising to many people as that poll came out. In the past four days- This is a bait and switch. This is a bait and switch. This is not a bait and switch. This is a total bait and switch. This is the reality. You just don't want to hear it. No. In the past four days, President Trump has done more than Biden did in four years. That's the reality. He continues to keep promises that he made to the American people when we talk about oil and gas. He cut burdensome regulations. Hold on one second. Just in those first couple of days, in the long term, will help on the gas prices.

Speaker 1: Madison is pointing out that on the immigration issue, Trump ran on the most extreme of plans. And the American people knew that. They voted for him. Yes. However, he also did, the economy was a central, maybe the central issue in this country. And again, he's done a lot of things this week. You mentioned a bunch of things that he's promised to do, but has not actually done. But one of the other things, I mean, this conversation just reminds me that this is a flood the zone moment for the country, okay? And here's what James Carville had to say about how Democrats ought to be handling it and are handling it.

Speaker 6: Because usually people would put something out and it would be the story of the day, and then you could follow that and they'd defend the story or people would attack it and you'd go ahead. Now he has 10 things out there. Of all of the things that you mentioned, what should the Democrats focus on? What they will end up doing is what they always do. They will focus on all 10. And they will do no good. Steve Bannon, I think the guy was right. He said, we're just going to flood the zone with shit. And we're now flooded with shit. And we just don't have a response. We just don't.

Speaker 1: Have Democrats basically failed the test here? I mean, Trump was basically trying to give them so much stuff to deal with that they can't hold any of it in their hands at the same time.

Speaker 7: Well, God, for me, be the one to defend Democrats. When I was going to lead this segment and you stole my thing on the fast and furious meets dumb and dumber. And I think that what we've seen is a whole bunch of stuff that is crazy. And look, at the end of the day, to your point, if he did have to almost at a bad word, if he did have the stuff that he said he was going to do, I'd be all in. And I don't wish him any ill will. I just think that I've done this long enough. And I grew up on a farm in East Texas enough to just know what I see when I see it. And he says what people want to hear. And when it comes down to doing it, there wasn't a bunch of workers behind him at the inauguration. They were the richest five people in America for a reason. That's because he's going to take care of those folks. And maybe he takes care of some working folks. Well, I hope that he does. But when he don't, this is when these chickens are going to come home to roost because there's a midterm election in less than two years. And we will see.

Speaker 1: But he's also doing a lot of stuff just for show, OK? Let's be honest. Right. It's red meat. The flights, the deportation flights, big tweet from the press secretary today saying they're starting again. They didn't really ever stop, except that now they're happening with military flights, which, according to DOD, costs, by my count, I'm not good at math, three times at least as much as a private charter flight, which is what the government usually spends. Well, especially if they can't land. The C-130E. I mean, those numbers are astronomical.

Speaker 8: If I could give the Democrats some advice right now, it would be weird advice. I would actually tell them to do less. The Democrats have so many problems in their own house. There's such a crisis of leadership there, messaging there. Deal with that. Do less. I personally believe that a lot of the Trump agenda is going to be catastrophic for America. I think you're going to see prices raised when you look at farms all over the country with not having workers. These farmers, some of them Trump supporters, have already said this. I think you're going to see people actually be uncomfortable with some of the images that they see coming out of these ICE raids. I think you're also going to see Americans not just inconvenienced in these ICE raids, but also potentially harmed, detained, hurt. So I think a lot of this stuff is going to backfire. And if it's me and I'm advising them, play it a little slower.

Speaker 5: I think we saw him on the campaign trail repeatedly make promises about, here's what I'm going to do immediately when I get into office, when it comes to the border, when it comes to immigration. A lot of what Biden did getting in is what caused us to see those numbers go up so much. What did Trump do as of the past four days? He declared a national border emergency. He ended birthright citizenship. He ended catch and release. He reinstated remain in Mexico. He designated cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. The list goes on and on and on. But we're seeing those numbers come down already. We'll continue to see them come down. And what did the Biden administration and Democrats do when supposedly Democrats on this network arguing, hey, we had the list of these people before. Why were they not gone before Trump took office Monday? These are criminals, a lot of them in gangs, and they do not belong in this country. Because Venezuela won't take them back. And we'll see the Supreme Court will ask a question about that. But it is a promise he made.

Speaker 1: I just want to ask you one quick thing, because we've got to go. Are you OK with the White House using the most expensive means to deport immigrants just for a photo op?

Speaker 5: I want them out of the country. I want to see our communities safer. I've talked to people who have been impacted by this, who have been victims of violent crimes at the hands of illegal immigrants. We have a crime problem in this country as it is. We've talked about it on the show. And the last thing we need is people who aren't even legally supposed to be here adding to that problem.

Speaker 3: They can't even land the military. NBC reported earlier today that Mexico turned away the military jet that was carrying the deportees because it was an insult to Mexico. Then they'll go elsewhere, but they're not going to stay here. They're Mexican nationals, but they're not Americans, and that's not where they're going to be. That's not how the law works. Thank you.