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Todd Zwillich It’s Friday, November 7th. I’m Todd Zwillich in for Jane Coaston, and this is What a Day, the show that knows caring about affordability hits harder when you care about it from a $300 million gold-plated ballroom. [music break] On today’s show, the Federal Aviation Administration cancels flights across the US, they say, to ease the strain on air traffic controllers during the record long government shutdown. And the jury in the case of a man who slung 12 inches of vigilante justice at a federal officer, on multigrain no less, has reached its verdict. But let’s start with the cost of things. Everyone seems to have gotten the message on affordability after Tuesday. Democrats, Republicans, even the crypto king president. For Dems, it’s a no-brainer. The cost of healthcare, the cost of eggs, they pivot to it all the time. So if they can interpret every last vote as being about affordability, even without evidence, they’re gonna. Okay, but what about President Trump? Can a man fixing to fly a $400 million jet gifted from Qatar or trade off of $2 billion in Emirati crypto really know about the price of a Thanksgiving turkey? You betcha. On Thursday, Trump talked about some new data he likes from his favorite donors, Walmart.

[clip of President Donald Trump] They just came out with a very powerful statement. They’ve done it for many years, that under the Biden administration, Thanksgiving meal, a Thanksgiving meal with all the trimmings, costs 25% more. In other words, our Thanksgiving this year coming up will cost 25% less than sleepy Joe Biden’s. 

Todd Zwillich As you can see, Trump super cares about prices now. Only problem with these incredible Thanksgiving savings is, you guessed it, they’re false. Wholesale turkey prices are up 75% from a year ago, according to an analysis from Purdue University. In the store, Purdue predicts the average price of a bird this month will be 25% higher than last year. That’s not Trump’s fault. Things like bird flu have affected prices. The point is, he’s lying. I know. I know. But hey, know what else is expensive? Blockbuster weight loss drugs. Trump went in on Affordability Thursday by announcing a deal with drug makers to cut prices on Ozempic and other meds by next year. One reporter asked about mergers and acquisitions by the very drug companies cutting deals with Trump. That means they also have billions in business pending before the Trump administration. Trump had some advice for the CEO of Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk on how to keep prices affordable. 

[clip of unnamed news reporter] Novo Nordisk is in the middle of a ten billion potential ten billion dollar acquisition for a smaller obesity biotech. They might need your and the FTC’s help to see that through. Do you have any issues with that or Eli Lilly buying a smaller obesity biotec from an anti-competitive standpoint? 

[clip of President Donald Trump] Well, I don’t know, do you want to do you want to talk about that? I’d like to hear it, maybe you should give us a piece of the company like I’ve been asking for. Give the United States a nice big chuck of the company. 

Todd Zwillich That’s how you keep business affordable in the Trump era. Give him a piece and pass the gravy. Trump’s appetites aside, getting by in this economy has been hard for a while. To talk more about the disconnect between what the administration is saying and how Americans are feeling, I spoke with Stacy Vanek Smith, reporter for Bloomberg Business Week and co-host of their podcast, Everybody’s Business. Stacy, welcome to What a Day. 

Stacy Vanek Smith: Thanks. Thank you, Todd. I’m glad to be here. 

Todd Zwillich Even though no one is officially saying it, it feels like we’re in a recession. Layoffs keep coming, we’ll talk about it. Tariffs jacked up everywhere, prices are up. People have been feeling the effects of inflation for years now, and there’s no question that affordability is a massive urgent issue on people’s minds. I know there’s a dictionary definition of recession, two quarters of negative growth, I get that. But why aren’t we saying recession when across the real economy, it really seems like it? 

Stacy Vanek Smith: That is a great question. I think that’s the question that people ask me the most right now is like, we’re in a recession, right? Because like you say, it feels like a recession right now. The job market feels bad. And then there’s such a strange disconnect when this data comes out and says, you know oh, the unemployment rate’s the lowest it’s been in decades or yeah, hiring is really low, but layoffs are also at the lowest level they’ve been in decade. Like it feels incongruent with what we’re experiencing. My personal theory is that we are not living in one economy right now. I think there are several economies kind of going parallel and depending on who you are and where you are in the economy, your experience is just vastly different. I think that’s always true to some extent, but I think it’s especially true now. 

Todd Zwillich So one model that helps explain this or even one letter, maybe if we were on Sesame Street is the letter K. 

Stacy Vanek Smith: Yes. 

Todd Zwillich It stands for the K-shaped economy. Can you explain what that means and how it applies to the different economies that you’re talking about? 

Stacy Vanek Smith: So if you just think of the letter K, there’s the upper arm that goes up and the lower part that goes down. So that is essentially what people say is happening to the economy. One part of our economy is going gangbusters and that part is AI. AI now accounts for up to a third of market value. Like these companies are just making money hand over fist. And the markets have been rising, rising, rising, so people who have a lot of investments in the stock market, who are part of these companies, they are having a great experience in the economy. 10% of the population in the country is now fueling half of all the spending. Now, if you are not in that upper part of the economy, your experience of this economy is totally different. So the bottom part of the K-Shaped Economy, lower income Americans, lower income workers, were doing pretty well during the pandemic. Um. There was a big shortage of workers, so companies were fighting to hire people. Wages started rising. And they were rising especially fast for some of the workers who earned the lowest wages. It was one of the first times we’d seen that in a long time. It was really exciting. That has completely reversed course. Now, those workers tend to be a little more vulnerable when the job market is not great like it is right now. Their wages are not keeping up with inflation. Like you mentioned, inflation is the cost of everything is going up. At the same time, they are not necessarily seeing the benefits of the part of the economy that’s expanding. 

Todd Zwillich It feels like there might be sort of a doom loop scenario to what you’re describing. I mean, AI is booming. At the same time, AI is also driving some of the layoffs that we’ve seen lately. Amazon comes to mind. And we’re told the promise of AI for the future is automation. Like a lot of the jobs on the lower part of the K are gonna be the ones that go. Frankly, maybe some of jobs on the upper part of the K too for lawyers and content creators, I guess. But the thing that’s driving the economy now and keeping it’s like just neck above water might be the thing that drags it down in the medium and long term. 

Stacy Vanek Smith: Well, this is the big unknown and this is the thing that I think could push the economy into a really deep trouble, which is we don’t really know what AI is gonna do. We don’t know which jobs it’s ultimately gonna replace. I think we’re starting to see some of that happen, but most companies don’t even know how to use AI yet or not to its full potential. So, we’re seeing AI kind of start to affect the economy, but a lot of this is speculation. A lot of these companies, there’s worry that they could be way overvalued. And if that corrects itself, that could be a really, really dark stretch for us as a country. Um. But yeah, you’re right. And while AI does seem to be coming more for white collar jobs, as they call them, like the knowledge economy, people who are higher earners, they tend to just have more flexibility and more options. 

Todd Zwillich So I wanna talk a little bit about the politics of all this. We’re hearing so much about affordability and those concerns are real. But in the last sort of third of the Biden presidency, there was this phenomenon where a lot of the country was straining under high inflation. Everybody knew they were doing poorly. And here was the Biden administration and the president himself saying, what do you mean? Look at the employment numbers. Look at the numbers on this spreadsheet I have. Everything’s great. And nobody bought it because they weren’t feeling it in their lives and they really said so at election time in a lot of ways. Then this very week, the exact same questions for Donald Trump just lost an off year election and he is absolutely certain that he has saved the economy and just the rest of us don’t get it. Is it happening again? 

Stacy Vanek Smith: I mean, I feel like President Trump does this all the time. Like, he sort of tries to speak things into into reality. But you make the really smart point that the Biden administration was doing the same thing, where they were saying, no, no, look at the data, look the data. It’s true that workers were getting wages, it’s true that the job part of the economy was pretty hot during the later part of the pandemic. It was also true that prices seemed to be rising faster than wages. So even if we were getting raises, they didn’t feel like raises because it bought less and less. And you know when eggs are tripling in price, and that’s the cheapest form of protein and you’re trying to feed your family, you know a 10% raise isn’t gonna make up for the amount that we’re seeing prices rise across the board. I think we’re seeing exactly the same thing. I mean, President Trump largely campaigned, well, one of the things he campaigned on was groceries. We’re gonna make groceries affordable. But the economy isn’t really cooperating. Groceries are less affordable than they were. Tariffs obviously aren’t helping that situation, but a lot of other forces are working too. So we’re seeing inflation rise and people I think are increasingly feeling like they’re getting left behind by this economy. And the upper part of the K, feels like it’s getting smaller and smaller. 

Todd Zwillich Well, if you ask Democrats this week after winning the election, they might say that the K-shaped economy, the K stands for kick Trump’s ass. In other words, this is why–

Stacy Vanek Smith: [laugh] Yes. 

Todd Zwillich –we won these states, right? This is why we shifted blue in every county because of affordability. I wanna test that theory. Look, there’s no question that affordability is super important to Americans, but it’s also kind of the only language Democrats really know how to speak. And it makes me wonder if there’s not kind of a confirmation bias here, that Democrats really love talking about the price of turkeys and the price of healthcare, therefore affordability is why we won. 

Stacy Vanek Smith: I think you’re right. I think the Democrats need to be a little careful not to spike the football too much because prices are going to do what prices are gonna do and while politicians can have some effect on that. Ultimately, it’s not an elected politician, even a president that has a ton of control over something like inflation that’s more like the Federal Reserve’s territory, which is part of why Trump is obsessed with controlling the Federal reserve. And I feel like the economy is one of the easier things to talk about. It’s tangible, there are numbers with it, like eggs have gotten more expensive. But I think sometimes these are, these become kind of symbolic of other things we’re feeling. It’s like the way that we can express it or the thing we can pinpoint. That helps us kind of articulate what we’re feeling. 

Todd Zwillich And if affordability, egg prices, and healthcare premiums are your love language, well, that’s the one you’re gonna speak, right? 

Stacy Vanek Smith: Yes, and they are the, you know, these are important love languages, right? 

Todd Zwillich Sure. 

Stacy Vanek Smith: We all care about, you know, we all care, about acts of service, eggs, and um and health care. 

Todd Zwillich But–

Stacy Vanek Smith: It affects us all. 

Todd Zwillich –politics like love is way deeper than the one thing you want to talk about. 

Stacy Vanek Smith: Yes. Yes. I think what’s so interesting and why I do like the term vibe session um is that there is something that’s not entirely tangible about why our feelings shift. It’s like just a, a vibe. The country’s going in a certain direction and it doesn’t feel good. And there are different reasons as to why. And I think you’re right. It is easy to point to one thing, but I don’t think it’s one thing. I don’t think the victory of Mamdani in New York, where I am from um is is because of entirely affordability or rent or any of that. I think it’s a mix of things. 

Todd Zwillich What do you think happens next? We don’t know where prices are gonna go, but what do you expect to see next? 

Stacy Vanek Smith: I mean, as far as prices, I think the Federal Reserve is in a tricky situation because generally if the Federal Reserves raises interest rates, which would keep prices in check, it’s bad for the economy that has sort of this domino effect in the economy, that tends to slow things down. The Federal Reserve’s not going to do that. It’s it’s made it pretty clear it’s prioritizing uh jobs for right now and jobs are not looking great. I think it’s the highest rate in years and years of layoffs, almost a million layoffs I think according to Challenger Gray & Christmas this year so far, which is just a lot. And if the Federal Reserve decides to address that and cuts interest rates, that’s going to mean prices rise. As the tariffs continue to kick in, also that’s gonna mean prices raise. So I think affordability is not going to improve anytime soon, unfortunately. I mean in New York, Mamdani’s you know saying he’s gonna freeze rent and things like that, and the government can do things like, but price controls historically have not been a great idea. They have not worked out very well. And I just think some of the forces in our economy are pushing prices up and are gonna continue to do that. 

Todd Zwillich Stacy, thanks for joining us. 

Stacy Vanek Smith: Thank you, Todd, it was a pleasure. 

Todd Zwillich That was my conversation with Stacy Vanek Smith, reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek and co-host of their podcast, Everybody’s Business. We’ll get to more news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break] 

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Todd Zwillich Here’s what else we’re following today. 

[sung] Headlines. 

[clip of Sean Duffy] People have asked me why don’t you find money for air traffic controllers like that’s the purpose of a shutdown, I don’t have access to money. I can’t find dollars to pay them because the congress said there is no money and so we can’t break the law and so I can’t I can’t pay them I’d love to but I can’t– 

Todd Zwillich Transportation Secretary and former real-world Boston star Sean Duffy joined Fox and Friends on Thursday to lament the longest-ever government shutdown, and with good reason. Hundreds of flights across the country have been canceled because of the FAA’s order to reduce air traffic at the country’s busiest airports. Major hubs, including those in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, are among those facing 10% reductions in air traffic. The cuts are meant to take pressure off of air traffic controllers who’ve gone without pay during the shutdown. The administration is also increasing pain on Americans, hoping it will put pressure on Democrats to reopen the government. Duffy says some have even started working outside jobs to make sure they can still put food on the table. The shutdown has already led to a ton of flight delays. So what does this mean for holiday travel? 

[clip of Sean Duffy] As we come into Thanksgiving, if we’re still in the shutdown posture, it’s going to be rough out there. Really rough. Um. And we’ll mitigate the safety side, but will you fly on time? Will your flight actually go? That that is yet to be seen, but it there’ll be more disruptions. 

Todd Zwillich As for Congress, according to two people who spoke with Politico on condition of anonymity, Senate Majority Leader John Thune told Republicans in a private lunch that he plans to hold a vote today that could pave the way to end the shutdown. And there is some good news, kinda. A federal judge in Rhode Island on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to fully fund benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP for November. The administration has been trying to hold back some of that money. Of course, they appealed the decision immediately. 

[clip of Nancy Pelosi] I have truly loved serving as your voice in Congress, and I have always honored the song of St. Francis, who would make me an instrument of thy peace, the anthem of our city. That is why I want you, my fellow San Franciscans, to be the first to know I will not be seeking reelection to Congress. 

Todd Zwillich Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi is bringing her storied career to a close. Pelosi, who’s represented San Francisco for nearly 40 years, announced in a video on Thursday that she won’t seek re-election to the U.S. House. Pelosi was the first woman in the Speaker’s office, and at 85, remains a political force. She wields influence and power like few politicians in Washington. Pelosi was an architect of the Affordable Care Act during the Obama administration and was largely responsible, behind the scenes, in maneuvering a stubborn Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 presidential race. Her decision comes as a seasoned generation of political leaders is stepping aside ahead of next year’s midterm elections. So what’s next for the people of San Francisco? California Attorney General Rob Bonta was quick to tell Politico, that he’ll endorse California State Senator Scott Weiner. Weiner spoke to What a Day’s Matt Berg on Thursday about what he would do if he were elected. The state senator said in addition to quote, “saving the country from this  psychopath in the White House, he would focus on what matters most.” 

[clip of Senator Scott Weiner] Which is the cost of living um around, you know, housing and health care uh and um transportation and energy and issues that I’ve worked intensively on in the legislature and delivered on, and we take that national. 

Todd Zwillich Weiner said back in October that he would run for the seat. He’s among several Democrats vying to succeed Pelosi. The Supreme Court handed President Trump a win on Thursday. It allowed his administration to enforce, for now, a policy that blocks transgender and non-binary Americans from selecting passport sex markers that match their gender identity. The unsigned order from the court’s conservative majority pauses a lower court ruling that required the State Department to keep issuing passports with male, female, or X-options while the lawsuit plays out. In its opinion, the majority said that listing someone’s sex at birth, quote, “no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth.” The three liberal justices dissented warning that the policy could expose trans people to, quote, “increased violence, harassment, and discrimination.” The decision marks the Trump administration’s latest victory on the court’s emergency docket, and follows a similar ruling upholding his ban on transgender military service. John Davidson, senior counsel for the ACLU’s LGBTQ and HIV project, said the ruling is quote, “fuel on the fire the Trump administration is stoking against transgender people and their constitutional rights.” 

[clip of Sean Charles Dunn] And I am so happy that justice prevails in spite of everything happening. 

Todd Zwillich A man who threw a sandwich at a federal agent during President Trump’s law enforcement surge in Washington, D.C., has been found not guilty of assault. The viral video of the sandwich toss back in August made Sean Charles Dunn a symbol of the resistance. Here he is speaking to reporters Thursday after being acquitted. 

[clip of Sean Charles Dunn] And that night I believe that I was protecting the rights of immigrants. And let us not forget that the great seal of the United States says e pluribus unum. That means from many, one. Every life matters no matter where you came from, no matter how you got here, no matter how you identify. You have the right to live a life that is free. Thank you. 

[clip of unnamed news reporter 2] Sean, what does that have to do with throwing a sandwich though? 

Todd Zwillich While there was no question of whether Dunn threw a Subway sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection agent, his lawyers argued the act of protest was a, quote, “harmless gesture” protected by the First Amendment. Dunn had also chanted, quote, “shame” toward the agents who were in front of a club hosting a Latin night, and according to police, he said, quote, “why are you here? I don’t want you in my city.” The Justice Department initially sought a felony assault indictment against Dunn, but the grand jury refused to sign off. The office of U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro then charged him with a misdemeanor. Dunn’s acquittal on Thursday is just another setback for prosecutors. And that’s the news. [music break]

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Todd Zwillich That’s all for today. If you like this show, make sure to subscribe, leave a review, and be mindful of your topping choices when assembling your next advocacy projectile and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading, and not just about how the federal agent that Sean Dunn targeted with a 12-inch sub testified in federal court, how the impact filled his nose with the aroma of onions and mustard and the sandwich quote, “exploded all over his chest,” like me. What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Todd Zwillich reminding you to eat fresh. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producers are Emily Fohr and Chris Allport. Our video editor is Joseph Dutra. Our video producer is Johanna Case. We had production help today from Greg Walters, Matt Berg, Caitlin Plummer, and Ethan Oberman. Our senior news producer is Erica Morrison, and our senior vice president of news and politics is Adriene Hill. We had help today from the Associated Press. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka, and our production staff is proudly unionized with Writers Guild of America East. [music break] 

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