Transcript: Susan Kokinda: The Economic Revolution Is Already Here

Susan Kokinda [0:07] You've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free. Let me talk about a Fed just gone nuts, all, all the central banks going nuts. So it's all acting like safe haven.

Marty Bent [0:18] I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor.

Susan Kokinda [0:29] I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin.

Marty Bent [0:31] If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.

Susan Kokinda [0:34] Probably should be. Probably should be.

Marty Bent [0:36] Susan Kikinda, welcome back to the show.

Susan Kokinda [0:40] Good to be here.

Marty Bent [0:41] Well, glad to have you back as we approach midterms here in the US. Last time you were here was about 10 months ago, beginning of December of 2025. And I think this is a good check-in period because you made some calls about Q2 and Q3. at that time when we last spoke, and obviously we have the luxury of retrospect today as we speak. So you expected, particularly around the tariff regime and the reindustrialization of the United States, that the tangible effects of the policies that were put in place when Trump got back into power would come in Q2 and Q3 of this year. So With that in mind, how, how has the Trump administration done in terms of the economic policy they laid forth, uh, in Trump 2?

Susan Kokinda [1:29] Well, it's, it's pretty clear, especially since the Dallas midterm convention, uh, that the administration is really drilling down hard on the fact that these policies are beginning to take effect, uh, from the standpoint of Construction jobs, manufacturing, you know, Trump, Vance, they're out there literally every day now, whether it's in Ohio or Alaska or Oklahoma. And they're talking about, you know, the jobs that they're bringing, this brand new steel mill in Iowa, which is going to have 6,000 construction workers and then 1,700 permanent workers ultimately. So that's all there. And when you, when you look at the government statistics, you look at, for example, the BLS statistics, What you see is something very interesting, which is starting when we spoke back in December, since you mentioned that date, I can't believe it was that long.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ What you actually see is what manufacturing employment had been doing up until then, because it's clear it takes time to actually get these things going and moving. But starting in December of last year, it starts to do this. Manufacturing employment steadily growing. Now, Then it plateaus for a couple of months right after the Iran conflict starts. But what's really fascinating, I think, is that manufacturing— the increase in manufacturing jobs only plateaus for a couple of months, and then it starts to shoot up again to where it is today. So part of the challenge that we face in terms of the midterms is obvious. While you've got an underlying fundamental restructuring of the US economy, which is beginning to show itself in these jobs, in the fact that the poverty level is dropping, and childhood poverty and Hispanic poverty are at all-time lows since we actually started counting them.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ In other words, you're seeing a durable shift in the population's ability to have decent-paying jobs. That will actually raise a family. But does everybody feel it necessarily in those terms? Because even— it's not that many people, for example, who've gotten these manufacturing jobs. The trajectory is this way, but it's still a relatively small number of people who are actually taking in those paychecks at this point. And then you've got the headwinds from the conflict with Iran. Or to really put it more appropriately, you have the headwinds from the fact that we've had a crappy economy and we have crappy allies, and that's manifesting itself largely in the price of gasoline and the price of diesel.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ And what I mean by that is the barrels of oil are now coming out of Iran. That's no longer the issue. So why are the prices still high? Well, because the Democrats carried out a war on energy. and shut down our refineries and shut down our producing capacity and so on. Why is diesel high? Trump has said it. The guy that the Democrats put in, basically, Zelensky, is bombing Russian refineries, which is affecting the price of things otherwise. So you have this kind of what I call the pain factor, the pain factor being deployed, I would suggest, deliberately against the American people. So that as we head into this critical 30 days going into the midterms, people aren't looking at the really fundamental restructure— or they hope, let me put it that way, they hope people won't look at the fundamental restructuring of the economy, which means a durable, good future for more and more and more of our fellow Americans.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ They hope that people will just be reacting to the short-term pain at the pump. pain at the pump. So I have a certain faith that enough of Americans are actually going to see this thing through and recognize that you're in the opening phases of an actual economic revolution. The fundamentals are there, but this temporary pain is obscuring it for a lot of people. But I think that's the message that we've really got to drive home on. The economic revolution is real and you should vote for it.

Marty Bent [5:56] Well, I think President Trump was— I forget exactly where, which press conference it was, but he said something along the lines of the GOP or the Republicans have done a bad job of messaging that this economic revolution is well underway. And if you look at statistics like PMI and Labor wage growth, it is up and to the right, a little slower, maybe not as widespread as many people would like. But with 30 days left between now and midterms, how imperative do you think it is to really get that narrative out there and highlight to Americans that this is happening? Because if I'm looking objectively, I think that is the one thing that they've really dropped the ball on is messaging.

Susan Kokinda [6:47] Yeah, I know he's— the president said it, JD has said it, they've said it more, we say it. It's why we do what we do, because I think we message better than the administration, you know, in terms of these questions. Um, but I think the president's going to take every single day between now and November 3rd to find some way, you know, to really make that message absolutely clear. And who knows, he may have some of his own October surprises up his sleeve. in terms of maybe some of these conflicts being resolved. But at the same time, he was also very clear at the United Nations where he said, I'm not making my decisions on Iran from the standpoint of the midterm elections.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ There's something much bigger involved here, and I'm not going to sacrifice that for short-term political gain. So, you know, when you think about it, you think of all the people throughout their lives who probably said at one time or another, gee, I wish I had a president who acted on principle and not pragmatism. And that's what this president is doing, and now people are complaining about it. You know, some people have to do a little bit of a mental recalibration there themselves, I think.

Marty Bent [7:56] Yeah, and I, I think I'm excited to get, get you on now because there's so many balls in the air with the reindustrialization of the US here domestically. I know you've been covering the Thucydides problem between the, the Thucydides trap between the US and China, where that may end up, obviously. We have riots in France. You have the spread between the French OATBAN and German Bund blowing out to Greek credit crisis levels. And then Canada to the north, they're making moves. I believe Quebec is voting today on whether or not they will secede from Canada or at least move in that direction. And then obviously Iran, Ukraine, Russia still on the borders, a ton of balls in the air.

Marty Bent ⋮ And I think you do an incredible job of Weaving them all together into a coherent narrative. So no direct question other than what is the best way to look at all these disparate events happening globally and where we may be in terms of coming to a resolution with any one of them, or what are the motives behind these different proxies going on around the world?

Susan Kokinda [9:10] Well, I think it's actually good that you throw them all out there at once, because I think it does illustrate a more fundamental point, which is for literally 125 years, I mean, I date as a certain marker 1901. It's when McKinley was killed, assassinated, our last American system president. And if you think about it, there's a certain symmetry to this because that is literally halfway between now and 1776. So take this last 125 years. What has characterized most of that 125 years? The United States was increasingly coming under the thumb of British imperial policy. Coming out of World War I, you look at things like the Round Table, you look at institutions that are set up like Chatham House and other institutions and discussions in Britain among the elites, they were all basically saying the same thing.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ Okay, we're not going to defeat the United States. We tried that a couple of times in the last centuries and it hasn't worked. Now we have to capture the United States. Now we have to make the United States our dumb giant enforcing our imperial policies. And one of the key elements to that was you take that knowledge away from people. In other words, the fact that there's an independent American economic system, an independent American foreign policy, which is based on national sovereignty, you write that out of history. And what dominates certainly the policymaking elites in this country for 125 years, and then increasingly just sort of the common discussion within the population, is this idea that running the world from the standpoint of private financial interests, running the world from the standpoint of British geopolitics, you know, countries being maneuvered against each other to keep the elites on top, this entire British matrix has basically gone largely unchallenged.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ You know, a couple of presidents stepped out of line. One of them was John Kennedy, and we know what happened to him. But what you've had, again, for 125 years is a system of central banking and wars run on behalf of the empire to keep the central bankers and these powerful financial interests in power. So along comes Donald Trump, and this is what he is disrupting. He started to do it in his first term, but they were kind of ready for him, and it was limited. what the president could actually accomplish in his first term. Some of it had important effect, but nonetheless, it was limited.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ And they were assuming, we've taken care of Donald Trump, we don't have to worry about him again. But here he is back with the 2024 victory and with a cabinet that is completely in sync with everything that he is trying to do, which is overthrow the last 125 years of British imperial policy. Now, you know, and obviously the economic side of it is repealing the whole free trade policy and reindustrializing the United States. This takes time. And again, we're just beginning to see the fruits of it. And the other part of it is dismantling these imperial institutions. My colleague Barbara Boyd just made an interesting comment in a discussion we had.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ She was talking about the elections in South America, and of course, in you know Brazil, Bolsonaro is leading. It's going to be a runoff, but you know he's ahead of Lula. And this just is a pattern of nationalists winning throughout South America. And she made a very interesting point: this has all happened since USAID was dismantled. So you know maybe you dismantle these forces that go in and intervene on behalf of. the globalist system. And all of a sudden you see nationalist governments, you know, having the opportunity to actually win in South America. And everything else that Donald Trump is doing, pulling, you know, pulling back, pulling out of some supranational organizations like the Paris Climate Accords, pulling back from NATO, pulling back from the United Nations, and establishing these bilateral foreign policies where it's simply nation to nation.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ Trump's relationship to China is not as 2 pawns on a geopolitical chessboard, which is what it has been in most of the post-war period. It's Trump saying, I'm going to do what's right for my country, and Xi Jinping saying, I'm going to do what's right for my country, and Donald Trump saying, that's okay with me, we're going to fight it out, because on that basis we can do something. And that is how he is reshaping things. So all of the things that you mentioned are just— what you're actually seeing is the turbulence that is coming out, coming about over the fact that you have an administration which is literally undoing the architecture of the last 125 years economically and strategically.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ So it gets a little messy.

Marty Bent [14:37] Well, let's dive deeper into the relationship with China because I think the mainstream narrative is particularly focused on the race with artificial intelligence, now superintelligence after last week's press conference or the week before. Many people, many pundits here in the West say it's an existential race to win, to get to AGI first. that you can have one or the other be the predominant superpower in the world. But following your commentary in recent weeks and months, it seems like it's not all what the mainstream will lead you to believe in that terms. And to your point, it's more of a sort of nationalist US saying, hey, we want to take care of our interests. China similarly saying, we want to do the same. And this ties back to the national security strategy that was released last year, which is why you came on initially 10 months ago. Um, but what are the misconceptions in, in the mainstream in terms of what is happening between the US and China right now?

Susan Kokinda [15:44] Well, I think the main problem is not even a misconception. I mean, most of your mainstream media of both varieties, left and right— Fox is just as wacky on these questions as MS Now, you know, is, is this British Great Game geopolitical concept that there are always going to be permanent enemies, you know, or, or there, there is an enemy of the day which has been picked by the man behind the curtain, basically, to keep the world constantly— keep the superpowers constantly at each other's throats so that this little financial and imperial elite sitting on top somehow still maintains all of the control? And that's how China's relations with the United States are constantly being presented, that this is going to be an existential enemy forever and ever and ever.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ Now, you know, the Chinese Communist Party is, you know, not an entity which we want here in the United States. But it's also important to remember it hasn't been around that long. It really has only emerged in the past 80 years. And this is in 80 years that once again, these British geopoliticians have very much been in the driver's seat. And again, from this standpoint of Soviet Union versus the United States, Communist China versus the United States, and again, in the meantime, they're sitting up on top. But go back a little bit further in terms of China. Go back to China at the turn of the 20th century and the founding of modern China with Sun Yat-sen.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ Sun Yat-sen was a passionate follower of the American system of political economy. He understood it far better than I'm sure your average American understands today. He was a follower of Abraham Lincoln. His 3 principles of the people were based on by, for, and of the people. the Gettysburg Address. You have a tradition in China which is historically very close to the United States. What else do you have in China? You have the fact that they were among the world's most biggest victims of British imperial policy, namely the Opium Wars back in the 19th century. So it's important when you're thinking about China, to realize there's another tradition there besides the CCP.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ And these things don't just disappear. They're there. And I think what the president is very conscious of, whether it's precisely in the historical terms that I just outlined or not, is that in every country there is probably something which genuinely represents the national interests of its people, aside from whatever ideological superstructure is sitting on top of it. And that's what he's trying to speak to. And I think he probably believes that Xi Jinping is the closest representation you're going to have of that inside China, which is why I think he goes out of his way to give him the bolstering that he often gives him, because he recognizes that this is a man and a grouping in China That we can at least peacefully work out our differences with, as opposed to let's say if we were in a world between the John Boltons of the world and the hardcore CCP of the world.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ Yeah, we probably would be in World War Three, not you know not too far down the road. So I mean people have to think not from the standpoint of things China bad. You know, it's like people who still carry over Russia bad because it was the Soviet Union. Well, it's no longer the Soviet Union. It's no longer communist. And actually, it's probably more Christian than the United States is right now. So why are you carrying over this idea? Russia actually grew out of communism. Maybe China can too. You know, did people see that happening in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell?

Marty Bent [20:05] No.

Susan Kokinda [20:06] Very few people saw that. I happened to work for one of the people who did, but very few people saw that. So maybe President Trump is looking at some kind of future like that down the road in terms of his relations with China. And in the meantime, yeah, we probably shouldn't blow up the world over Taiwan.

Marty Bent [20:21] Yeah, and I think turning this to, to Iran now, because I think that's where— and I've been doing a Monday show, you know, with my partner John Arnold, and we've been covering the Iran situation closely, and it seems like Iran being used as this leverage point, obviously in the Middle East, but also with China to get them to negotiating table, particularly around oil, diesel as well. And so how does Iran play to this? How do you see Iran playing out in the next few months? From what I can see, it looks like oil is making its way through the strait. Yes, prices are still Elevated, but that probably due to the refinery issue, which you described earlier.

Marty Bent ⋮ And it seems like it could be solvable if flows out of the Middle East continue apace and get back to pre-war levels, which on some metrics they are. The refined products, not so much, but the raw crude is definitely getting to pre-war levels in terms of supply hitting the market. do you see happening in Iran through the rest of the year?

Susan Kokinda [21:32] Well, I think there's— I mean, I think there's 2 things, you know, and Scott Bessant has been very clear on this. This has been a very deliberate strategy. Um, you know, would—

Marty Bent [21:42] would—

Susan Kokinda ⋮ do we all hope that the IRGC had thrown in the towel after the kinetic phase of it? Sure, we all hope that. Uh, but it didn't. Um, you know, as my friend General Holt always says, in war, the enemy has a vote, and the IRGC keeps voting. because they're just not going to give up. So we went from the kinetic phase to the blockade phase, and now we're in the economic strangulation phase, uh, with Operation Economic Outcast. And I think that that is what is now going to be the killer blow in terms of this regime, because they simply cannot survive what the United States is doing to them economically at this point.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ The IRGC is not just military. I mean, they ran 60% of directly, officially ran 60% of the Iranian economy. And that's precisely the sectors of the economy that, um, Bessent and the Treasury are targeting. So they're strangling that regime in a way that I don't think they can escape. Now, President Trump has been very clear. He said on a number of occasions, this thing's going to end after the midterms. Now, why does he say that? Does he have some 30-day military strategy? No. He knows that the IRGC is hanging in there, hoping that the Democrats are going to win the midterms. I mean, that's why the IRGC sent this letter to the American people a week ago, you know, saying you have the chance to change things.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ Now, what's actually very interesting about that letter, and I just did my Monday show on it, is unlike a lot of people who saw the headlines, I read it. And it is— I really wonder if somebody in Iran wrote it or somebody at Chatham House wrote it or the Council on Foreign Relations, because it completely rewrites the history of Iran and the United States. It blames the United States for the overthrow of Mosaddegh when everybody knows this came from— I mean, yeah, the Dulles brothers went along, but everybody knows this was British policy because Mosaddegh had nationalized British Petroleum, Anglo-Iranian Company it was called at the time.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ This entire 25-page screed put out by the IRGC talking about the entire postwar period never mentions Britain once, never mentions what the actual history of this region is, which is that Iran is one of many, many, many different proxies. that the imperial elite have used to keep the Mideast under their control, constantly at these levels of warfare, sometimes simmering, sometimes, you know, the history of the perpetual wars we've seen since the 1990s, where tens of thousands of our people are casualties and millions of people in the Mideast are casualties. The president had been very deliberately pulling the plug on all these imperial proxies, going all the way back to his first administration when he went to Saudi Arabia as his first foreign trip and told the Saudis to stop supporting Islamic fundamentalism, and they did.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ You know, he's been very— and then he set up the Abraham Accords, and now we have the Board of Peace to try and actually resolve the crisis in Gaza All of these things are moving, but sort of the last hardcore proxy that the British could push that button and get the response they want was the IRGC. And I think Trump is taking it out. But again, the IRGC pretty much said it. Oh no, we're going to wait out through the midterms because we want to try and hurt Trump. We want this to play into the political equation in the United States. So that maybe we'll have a lame duck president and we'll have a lot more people who are more friendly to us.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ Will they last through the midterms? I'm not really sure, given what Besant is doing economically. But those are the different elements of this thing. It's, it's not as it's portrayed by the idiotic talking heads in the press.

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Marty Bent ⋮ And it seems like there's a realization happening across Europe and Canada that their lack of investment in an actual economy over the last 3 to 4 decades is coming to bite them in the ass as the US isn't here to bail them out. And I think you would portray the European Parliament, European Union, and Mark Carney as sort of shoo-ins for the City of London or fronts, facades for the City of London. How desperate are they right now?

Susan Kokinda [29:16] Oh, I think they're very desperate. Because look, think of it. Think of the old adage, you know, empires rise and fall. And they do. And there's a reason for that. Because imperial economic policies are based on looting and stealing, not building, not growing. There's never a future for an imperial system if it doesn't have some new place to go loot, because it just eats its own population. And that's what you've seen in Europe. That's what you're seeing in Canada. Where they foolishly continue, or criminally continue, to impose insane ideologies like free trade, where China's taking advantage of it and it's wiping out the European auto industry.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ The green policies, which have destroyed their ability to produce even if they weren't competing with Chinese EVs. Uh, so what you're seeing in Europe and Canada, uh, is countries which are being literally sacrificed on the altar of these globalist policies by leaders who care nothing about their populations. And you can see it in Canada with Carney in these trade negotiations. It made no sense for the Canadians to walk out of those trade negotiations. It made no sense economically. It only makes sense politically when you understand Carney's portfolio is to try and stop Donald Trump. And so he's trying to use the tariff retaliations coming now from Canada to, again, damage Trump going into the midterms.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ And his industry minister came right out and said it, Mélanie Joly. She came right out and said, we are targeting these tariffs politically against specific states. I mean, she's come right out and said it. So, so they're trying to hurt Trump politically. And of course, what's the impact on them economically? Well, one of their big Ontario steel plants just announced they're laying off 500 to 900 people. And across the board, for all of Carney's huffing and puffing about Canada Strong, their economy is just a an extractive economy where everything gets shipped out of the country, raw materials, just like a colony, and the population itself is collapsing.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ So that creates a certain kind of desperation among the European elite, among Carney, because they're trying to confront this change that Donald Trump is leading in the world with Not too many arrows in their quiver, which is why the danger of war with Russia is definitely something people should not be ignoring. The Europeans and Carney are just going to keep egging Ukraine on— excuse me— to the last Ukrainian because a defense mobilization might be the only thing that saves their economies. But they are very, very desperate. There's no doubt about that.

Marty Bent [32:34] What do you think the likelihood— I mean, they're desperate, few arrows in the quiver, so I, I'm assuming war with Russia is like the nuclear option. Okay, let's send them in. What do you think the likelihood of that is at this point?

Susan Kokinda [32:47] Well, it's, you know, you have to be quite mad to, you know, to push it that far, but desperate people are mad. I mean, I'm not ruling it out. Um, you know, I'm not one of, you know, people running around saying we're going to be at war with Russia tomorrow, because part of it is Putin— Putin also understands the dynamic. He understands it's coming from Europe. He understands what Trump is doing. He gets along with Trump when it comes to standing up to the globalists. Putin and Trump are pretty much on the same side. So I think the major mitigating factor in all, all of this is 2 things.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ Number one, Trump is going to pull the string back wherever we have the power to do so. And Putin also understands just how crazy these people are and, and hopefully is going to give Donald Trump the time to actually end this war and to really shut down the system that is creating these imperial puppets. you know, who are driving us toward war. But it's something that people should not ignore. It's real.

Marty Bent [33:55] Yeah. And bringing this back domestically, how, how much credence can we put in polling data that's coming out leading up to midterms? I think there's been a lot of discussion I've been following on X. It looks like, uh, I forget if it's the House or the Senate, uh, one of the— looks like one of them will say with the Republicans and one is going to go towards the Democrats, but I've learned to not really trust the polls. But then you read the tea leaves of public sentiment on X, and it seems like Gen Z is a bit disenfranchised with everything that's going on and everything that has gone on since Trump started his second term.

Marty Bent ⋮ A lot of the younger generation, and particularly the males who were hoping that immigration policy would be aggressive and immediate, has not met their expectations, and this is having knock-on consequences in the sense that they can't get good jobs. At least that's their perception. What do you think about the polling heading into midterms? Is it accurate? What should we be looking at? And what would you say to—

Susan Kokinda [35:02] No. I mean, have the polls ever been accurate? Have the polls ever been accurate related to Donald Trump? No. No, I mean, I dismiss the polls. Completely. Now, that being said, do I— am I going to make a prediction myself? No. But what I will say is that if the administration continues what it has kicked off since the Dallas midterm convention, where it is going to be out there every single day painting a picture for people of what this nation is becoming, you know, and again, this is the challenge. The enemy is hoping that people will vote from the standpoint of what I feel today.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ But a citizen of a great republic should be voting from the standpoint of, where do I want my country to go, and is it going in that direction? And I think the administration is going to be spending every minute of the next 4 weeks, you know, delivering that message. which I think is more subjective. It's as much subjective as it is objective. Everywhere they go, they're going to point to some big economic win. In Ohio, it was Stellantis, Bayer, and some aerospace company. But there's a subjective side to it. D. Vance said it, and I think this gets to the Gen Z question. When he was in Texas and he was talking about the new shipbuilding facility that's going to be built there and it's going to employ 10,000 people.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ He said, it's not just 10,000 jobs, it's 10,000 boys and girls who are going to look at their parents and see them having a productive life. And I think that's extremely important. And I think that is the problem with Gen Z. Gen Z has never lived in a productive society. I mean, the ones behind them even less so. But the funny thing is when you look at When you kind of look at what's going on between Gen Z and the younger ones, the younger ones are actually a little bit more optimistic because they're kind of experiencing a sense of Donald Trump's world. But think of your Gen Zers, right?

Susan Kokinda ⋮ Their grandparents lost their jobs because of NAFTA. Their parents lost their house in 2008 or their pension, and JP Morgan got bailed out. Then, you know, maybe they were getting a start in life and then COVID hit. Right? They've never seen a society that works. It's one of the toughest generations to get across this idea of a productive society and a society where you will have the opportunity to make your life better. You're going to have to work hard and it's not going to be instantaneous, but that opportunity is now there. They've never seen that. They've never had that opportunity. So it's always been, how many gig jobs can I put together so that I can maybe get a mortgage when I'm 40 years old?

Susan Kokinda ⋮ Well, it's understandable why they're disenfranchised. And I think they're the ones who are the most susceptible to what is clearly this whole psychological warfare campaign. Trump hasn't done this. Trump hasn't done that. All the things they're saying Trump hasn't done, either he never said he was going to do, or he's done. like immigration, massive changes in immigration, or H-1B visas, which he tried to do one way and the court struck it down, and now he's doing it another way. I mean, he's actually doing these things. But if it isn't immediately affecting especially this generation, then I think it's easy for them to play on that.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ So, you know, I believe there is absolutely a pathway And I'm working on it every hour of every day to win the midterms, both in the Senate and in the House. But I think it is going to be a product of how many people are out there actually radiating out this sense of the reemergence of the United States as an industrial superpower, as a proud sovereign republic, in a world of other sovereign republics. If people get that idea in their heads, or let's add the icing on the cake, what Jared Isaacman at NASA is talking about, you know, not just a permanent industrial economy on the Moon, but moving on to Mars, moving on to the moons of Jupiter, for heaven's sakes.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ I mean, we actually have missions planned to explore the moons of Jupiter. You know, people start thinking once again, In terms of what, what is this essential human quality of, wow, there is an amazing universe out there, and I'm going to spend the rest of my life figuring out how it works and making it a better place. That's how we used to think. That's why you can tap into that with some of the older generations. But that Gen Z generation never had that. And I think it is the toughest nut to crack. Um, But I think we're going to win a lot of them over anyway.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ I think one pathway in is letting this generation know that you don't have to go to college to have a good life. In fact, if you go to college, you're probably going to have a crappy life because of all the debt that you're going to carry with you to your grave. You can have a great life becoming a skilled tradesman. You can make a quarter of a million dollars a year As a CNC operator who knows how to use SI, AI, SI, right? The more that we get out the fact that there is a different way of living your life than what you've been sold or what you've been scrambling to do, I think we're going to rescue more and more people from that generation.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ How many of them we rescue between now and November, I don't know. But, you know, I, I, there, there, there is a pathway, a very clear pathway that I can see. To winning these midterms.

Marty Bent [41:08] Yeah, I mean, that's been, that's been another knock I've seen on X in recent weeks is that comparing Democrats and Republicans around election season, the Democrats are much better at mobilizing the vote compared to Republicans. And do you think Republicans are learning that lesson? I think many people are. I think so. Like, Cernovich has been very vocal that they haven't, but I think that, uh, that'll be—

Susan Kokinda [41:37] No, I think there's— yeah, I think there's a lot of, you know, doom-telling in terms of this. Uh, you know, I, uh, people— a lot of people are mobilized. Obviously Elon Musk is out there. Um, Trump is out there with his super PAC. Uh, there are ground games going— I mean, again, I'm here in Michigan. You know, there's layers of ground games going on. The Senate candidate Mike Rogers has got a complete statewide operation going on, which is going to pull all sorts of other people along with him. The party's got operations going on. Musk has got operations going on. Turning Point's got operations going on.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ It's much improved from what it used to be. And also the fact that the Republicans have gotten over the fact that, uh, you don't just vote on Election Day. We all wish it was just one day. The president just pointed out that— I think he said India had elections yesterday and the votes are all counted in one day and they do it at the polls, why can't we? We want that. We don't have it. So until we have it, you fight on the battlefield you've got. And Republicans are now saying, yeah, get out there. Get your absentee ballot. Go to early voting. Don't leave it till the last day when the Democrats might shut down your polling place or something like that.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ So I think overall, they've gotten much better.

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Marty Bent [45:19] You can access it for free at simplemining.io/tftc. That's simplemining.io/tftc. One way to convince people to get out and vote is to paint the picture of the productive, industrious United States. Another way is to present the opposite of that or the alternative to that. And what is the alternative in your mind? if midterms don't go in the direction of Republicans?

Susan Kokinda [45:50] Well, let me, let me just say this, and I don't want to take any pressure off of anybody. I think Donald Trump is going to be able to continue to rule and govern and do amazing things no matter what the outcome of the midterms. Now, obviously, if the Democrats take both the House and the Senate, there's going to be a lot more roadblocks and nothing will happen in the Congress except for bad stuff. president is just going to continue to govern through executive orders, foreign, you know, foreign relations, and so on. So, you know, I just want people to sort of have that in mind because you fight the wars and sometimes the battles don't turn out, you know, the way that you think they will.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ I think it's going to slow down the economic progress that this administration is taking. But I think the real danger, and it's sort of implicit in your question, The real danger is that it will continue the consolidation of this Democrat socialist communist phenomenon in the United States, which is obviously extremely dangerous and is very much just one more product of how the British Empire has created ideologies and organizations to destroy the American system. I should mention at this point, again, my colleague Barbara Boyd has just written a pretty substantial pamphlet or a short ebook, however you want to look at it, which is on the Promethean Action website, which goes through the actual historical origins of communism.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ And it's not what people think. It was created by the British and it's always been deployed against the idea of the American system, our unique form of economics, which says production rules, not money. British system says money rules. The American system says production rules. Communism was created to attack that production rules kind of ideology. And she traces over the last 200 years how that has actually played itself out. That to me is the biggest danger. That, that, that, that a victory for the Democrats is going to continue to build up this phenomenon in the United States. And the purpose of that, that, that movement, as this administration has made clear, is to destroy our very form of government.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ I just think that what it's created to destroy is even bigger than just our form of government. It's a form of economy, which is the only form of economy that's ever going to give anybody a future. So that's the danger. The danger is this phenomenon that's being built up through these midterms and which could take on further growth were they to prevail. And I think most of the Republicans are doing a pretty good job of Identifying at least the political danger of that. I think where it really needs to be deepened is what the economic danger is, which is to turn us right back into a junk heap where we're a bunch of victims and losers on the government dole, and the government decides who gets to live and who gets to die, like they do up in Canada right now.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ You know, that's ultimately where this thing goes if you don't stop it. I think we can stop it.

Marty Bent [49:27] No, I think the DSA is filled with individuals who have bloodlust for, um, for certain, certain archetypes of, of Americans and successful people. And it is incredibly dangerous. I think Canada's MAiD system is, uh, a walk in the park compared to what some people would like to happen here. Uh, I mean, you hear—

Susan Kokinda [49:49] Would like to have— and in Canada, 1 out of 10 deaths are assisted— 1 out of 20 deaths are assisted suicide. And some of those are people who are not terminally ill. Some of those are people who just said, I'm lonely, I want to die. And the government says, okay, let's— here, let's hurry that process up. They, they— their parliament actually did a cost-benefit study of how much money they've saved because people killed themselves. So yeah.

Marty Bent [50:15] It's very disgusting. Um, bringing this back to immigration, but moving Back to Europe. And again, I think that's a broader City of London question I have is, do the people in Europe and France and the UK right now specifically, are they subjected to this City of London rule too? And are they beginning to wake up? Again, going back to the French protest, I'm sure you've seen the video of the police escorts of the illegal immigrants who landed on the coast of the UK.

Susan Kokinda [50:48] Right.

Marty Bent [50:49] Over the weekend, and who knows if I have a certain algorithm that's just feeding me this and I have confirmation bias, but it seems like people in Europe are beginning to wake up to the ills of this sort of open borders economic policy and beginning to—

Susan Kokinda [51:06] Oh yeah. I mean, look at the votes in Germany for the AfD. It's now the leading party. in a couple of the areas of Germany. Marine Le Pen's party is— the elections are next year, but they're on a trajectory to win despite the fact that they threw her in jail and tried to silence her and so on. No, I think there's tremendous opposition to this, and I think there's opposition to it in Britain or in England. The challenge in most of these cases, and I think this is going to get us back to Donald Trump, is It's not enough to just be against the bad stuff.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ That's a necessary first step, right? But you also have to have some kind of— you have to be ready to govern, right? You have to actually have an idea of how do you extricate your population from this looting, financialized, parasitical system, and how do you start to build again? And I think the weakness throughout Europe is there's not enough people who are conscious of those kinds of policies that can do more than oppose the bad stuff, but actually give people a pathway to see how you build the good stuff. And, you know, that's where Trump is so important for the United States and in a certain sense so important for the world.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ And the rest of his administration as well. D. Vance, whether it's the trade rep, Jamison Greer, whether it's Scott Bessant, they're openly reviving Alexander Hamilton and the American system. I just posted on X, there's a new fellow who just got appointed some assistant under whatever secretary in Treasury, And he's— I guess he was being sworn in or welcomed, and he's proud, and it's under a painting of Alexander Hamilton. And he says, what better way to get sworn in than under the watchful eye of Alexander Hamilton? This is extremely important. This has not been part of our economic or policy dialogue, as I said, for 125 years.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ So it's really, really critical. that the alternative to the globalist system, which is not some crazed free market, everything goes, we all get to make as much money as we can and we don't care what the consequences are, but rather this American system that says, no, we do care about the consequences. The consequences are you have to produce, you have to grow, you, you have to actually make your decisions from the standpoint of the future, not from how much money I'm going to make today. only, right? That alternative has to be put back into the policy debate in Europe. And I think it's going to be a real challenge in Europe until we see more of that.

Marty Bent [54:07] Yeah. I mean, speaking of the Treasury and appointees, bringing in Judy Shelton was a bit of a shock last week. It's a shock. As a sound money advocate, I was happy to see that because Judy is a Very staunch advocate of a gold standard.

Susan Kokinda [54:26] And somebody who actually understands how the Bretton Woods system worked and what a disaster it was that it was dismantled. So, you know, the obvious question, it's not just sound money, it's somebody who— are they actually thinking of how do we recalibrate back to a saner international financial system? Is that something that could be on the agenda for the last 2 years of the president's term? That appointment certainly is intriguing from that standpoint.

Marty Bent [55:01] It is. I mean, it's Scott Bessen, famously at the Manhattan Institute, what was it, July of '24, saying he wants to be part of the global economic reordering and help the president navigate this. That's right. And then you have, I mean, in my world, in the world of Bitcoin and Via extension, broader crypto and stablecoins specifically. It looks like despite the Clarity Act not passing, the executive has given all the agencies, the SEC, the CFTC, the OCC, the go-ahead to rulemake around there. And I think it's pretty clear if you're paying attention that stablecoins have a role here on the monetary side of things as well.

Susan Kokinda [55:38] Yeah. I mean, what's clear is that this administration, this gets back to the AISI question, I mean, this administration is staffed with people who understand you're in a new world. A lot of people say, well, let's just go back to what Abraham Lincoln did or go back to what Alexander Hamilton did. Well, in principle, yes, in terms of national banking, in terms of the fact that you want to have sovereignty over how your credit and your currency is issued and deployed. But how does that work in the 21st century? That's a very, very different question. So you can't just cookie-cutter the national bank in the form that Hamilton had it or the national banking system in the form that Lincoln had it and just plunk, we're gonna do that again in the 21st century.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ What is national banking in a 21st century with the kinds of things that you're talking about? I don't have an answer to that. D. Vance, Judy Shelton, and others who have probably thought more about that than anybody else on the planet.

Marty Bent [56:53] So— Awesome. Well, I know you're an extremely busy woman right now, so I want to be respectful of your time. Um, any final Parting notes, thoughts, words of wisdom before we wrap up here?

Susan Kokinda [57:08] Well, I, I often go back to a quote that Scott Bessant said where he said the Democratic Party strategy is to compensate the loser. Um, you know, first they make you a loser and then they compensate you, you know, by throwing you welfare checks or drugs or, you know, gambling apps or whatever to keep you pacified. The— as we go into the midterms, I think it's extremely important for Americans to ask themselves the question, am I going to make my decision on these midterm elections from the standpoint of being a perpetual loser and just hoping that somebody will lessen the pain for me in the short term?

Susan Kokinda ⋮ Or am I going to make my decision from the standpoint of somebody who sees The golden age that Donald Trump sees. And I know people get kind of irritated when he talks about it because the price of hamburger is still too high and diesel is too high, and here he is talking about the golden age. But honestly, the man's mind is in the future, the future that he is fighting very, very hard to create. And I think if enough Americans put their minds into that fight and that process and try and paint for themselves a picture— of a proud United States, which has sovereignty over the key elements of its economy, where one income can raise a family, and when you can look at your kids and your grandkids and say, you do have a chance at a better life than I had.

Susan Kokinda ⋮ If people rediscover that identity and, and make their decision in November from the standpoint of, that's what I'm going to fight for, And honestly, I'm going to fight for it whether I even see it in my lifetime. Now, I don't think we're talking something terribly long-term, but I think that's still an important concept. You fight for something important because it's important and it's good, not because you're necessarily going to feel the benefit of it today. I think, you know, people just sort of have to take a deep breath and think about those two identities and decide which one they want to be.

Marty Bent [59:19] Yeah, it reminds me, uh, of a tweet I saw over the weekend, that, uh, quote from Augustine, and it plays into the never doom and it's all a mindset thing, but it's bad times, hard times. This is what people keep saying. Let us live well and times shall be good. We are the times. It's, uh, it's, uh, that's been sitting with me for the last few days because, uh, you get consumed by all the doom and The algorithm. But at the end of the day, it's a decision to be productive, to go do things. That's right. And you can change your mentality and change the world.

Marty Bent [59:53] That's right. Susan, really appreciate you. I'm sure we'll check in at some point. Hopefully we don't have to wait 10 months, but thank you.

Susan Kokinda [1:00:03] I was going to say, I was shocked that it's 10 months. We don't have to wait that long.

Marty Bent [1:00:07] Well, thank you for coming on. Thank you for the work that you do. I deeply enjoy it. It's incredible analysis. You bet. Unique analysis that you won't get in the mainstream. So, if you're listening, make sure you go check out Promethean Action. Check out the YouTube channel as well. It's a different name, right? It's Promethean.

Susan Kokinda [1:00:25] Promethean Updates. Updates. Yeah, the channel is Promethean Updates.

Marty Bent [1:00:31] Awesome. Well, until next time, Susan, thank you and peace and blessings.

Susan Kokinda [1:00:36] You bet, Marty.

Marty Bent [1:00:37] Okay. Thank you for listening to this episode of TFTC. If you've made it this far, I imagine you got some value out of the episode. If so, please share it far and wide with your friends and family. We're looking to get the word out there. Also, wherever you're listening, whether that's YouTube, Apple, Spotify, make sure you like and subscribe to the show. And if you can leave a rating on the podcasting platforms, that goes a long way. Last but not least, if you want to get these episodes A day early and ad-free. Make sure you download the Fountain podcasting app. You can go to fountain.fm to find that.

Marty Bent [1:01:15] $5 a month gets you every episode a day early, ad-free. Helps the show, gives you incredible value. So please consider subscribing via Fountain as well. Thank you for your time, and until next time.