EP 212: Post-Election Recap for Retail

Special Guest: Arick Wierson, Emmy award-winning television producer, political analyst and Robin Report Contributor

There is much speculation about how the recent election will impact the economy, shape the future of America and direct its influence throughout the world. Join Shelley and Arick in a wide-ranging conversation about the potential after-effects of the national election on the American consumer, retail and the business world. They also discuss how retailers can learn lessons from the campaigns about how to use strategic marketing and media to best resonate with consumers, and how research and polling can be misleading. Arick cautions the need for businesses to adapt to a new socio-political landscape, suggesting hiring geopolitical analysts and better understanding how to manage broader geopolitical dynamics as a result of a breakdown of separation between business and politics. There is a lot to unpack in the first days of a President-Elect Trump administration.

For more strategic insights and compelling content, visit TheRobinReport.com, where you can read, watch, and listen to content from Robin Lewis and other retail industry experts, and be sure to follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Transcript

Transcript by Descript: 

 As any given to Americans might say, it's either the best of times or the worst of times, you know, it was a pretty even election. All things being said, I mean, a couple of percentage points here or there.  that, that of course represents not America, but it represents the people that went out and voted, you know, had, had, had every American gotten out and voted when we had, had a different outcome. We'll never know. 

Retail Unwrapped is a weekly podcast hosted by Shelley Kohan from The Robin Report. Each episode dives into the latest trends and developments in the retail industry. Join them as they discuss interesting topics and interview industry leaders, keeping you in the loop with everything retail. 

Hi, everybody, and thanks for joining our weekly podcast. I'm Shelley Kohan. I'm very excited to welcome back Arick Wierson, who is a six time Emmy Award winning television producer and also a political critic. Analysts for Newsweek magazine, where you often interview actually heads of state. You've also served as senior media and political advisor for former New York city mayor, Michael Bloomberg.

And that was for nearly a decade. You also helped mayor Mike get elected in 2001.  You also lived almost seven years in Africa, and that is where you actually started a fashion business. You also started a, your first, private TV network. And you also, wow, you have a lot of things here, Arick, that we could probably spend all day talking about your resume.

You know, Shelley, I haven't told anyone this, but I'm actually 140 years old.  Oh my God. Anyway, so you also managed and started, the country's first fashion retail mall. You're a native of Minneapolis, which is great. And today, what we're going to be talking about is probably the hottest topic in America, and that is the impact of the U.

S. elections. And it's so funny. Arick, when you and I first scheduled our podcast, we thought today we'd be talking about who's gonna win, what's gonna happen if this person wins or that person wins, but we actually already have the results of that. Which is kind of a shock and a surprise because the polling was very different than actually what happened.

And as a retailer and marketer, you know, we have plans, we have goals, we have objectives and they're, you know, pretty aligned, but I just think, where did this come from, Eric? It seems like it,  we're just in a state of shock here.  Well, you know, I, I think as, as any given to Americans might say, it's either the best of times or the worst of times. 

You know, it was a pretty even election, all things being said, I mean, a couple percentage points here or there,  that, that of course represents not America, but it represents the people that went out and voted, you know, had, had, had every American got out and voted when we had, had a different outcome.

We'll never know,  but you know, we live in a divided country. And I think that the Americans spoke very loudly,  with their, with their votes yesterday and, you know, in the absentee balance and the early, early voting. And there's no question that they want change.  and I think that there's a part of the country that  is sort of shaking their heads because they just, they can't understand it.

They don't understand what is it that this other half of the country sees in someone like Donald Trump. I know we have a lot to unpack here in terms of what's going to now come. With the results of the election in terms of the economy, economy, the trade agreements, international. But before we get there, how can the polls be so wrong?

Like,  is it the methodology? Like what's happening there?  You know, that's, that's a really good question. And I think that, you know, the, in the coming weeks, people are going to start,  Really digging into those numbers and trying to figure out where they undercompensating, overcompensating. Cause polls are at the, you know, polls are not just math.

And, you know, an election is actually, is the, is the best poll because you're surveying everyone. what a poll tries to do is surveying a small percentage of that, of that, a subset of that population that you're trying, and then you're trying to glean information about how would the rest.  perform.

And I think what they're finding is that they're, they're not very good at figuring out how a certain subset and that subset basically are people who,  are not frequent voters or people that are not politically engaged, people, that are really hard to come across and that they're actually coming out for Donald Trump.

There's something about Donald Trump that draws these people out. And I think that it actually raises some interesting questions. I know that this is principally a, you know, a retail, oriented audience. and I think it actually raises some interesting questions in general about the entire industry of market research.

You know, politics has a lot of problems, but one of the best things about politics is that there's a final exam and that final exam is the election. So you can have all kinds of polls and you can have different methodologies and you can do this and you can do that. But the other day you have an election, then you really find out how were those polls doing?

And you can measure their efficacy and their effectiveness.  You know, in the, in the business world, it's a little bit more muddy. I mean, certainly you can look at things like, you can do market research and you say, well, this product's gonna do this or that, and so on and so forth. And then you have sales.

But then there's all these other things that get in the way from, and that's one of the reasons that marketers are the first ones to say, oh, it's really hard to measure ROI in marketing because of this factor. Oh yeah.  One of the greatest excuses I think that, you know, that, that CMOs have is, well, you can't, you know, we don't really know, you know, we bought this ad on tv, but did it translate to sales?

We don't know.  The bottom line is  that,  you know, I think this is, this was such a big miss by the, the professional,  surveying companies, the professional market research companies and the pollsters that I think it's going to cause a lot of people to say, not only maybe it's not working in politics, but maybe we should really look at this in industries in general, even in the business world. 

Well, what about the alternate medias that's being used in terms of elections now? How does that play into everything? That's a great question. You know, I think one of the things that is being talked about a lot today, and again, this, we're still, you know, we're in the Monday, Monday morning quarterbacking phase of this whole thing.

But,  one of the things that's being talked about a lot is, You know, the, the, the Democrats have always prided themselves on having this great ground game, this great, you know, door to door operation. People go knock on your doors. And for 20, 30 seconds, tell you about the candidate, try and make sure you went out to vote, trying to get a sense of who you're leaning towards, that kind of thing.

And I think that up until 20 years ago, I think that was a very viable and a very effective way to make sure you get people.  to the polls and you should get a sense of, you know, what the issues are and so on and so forth. I think we live in a different era and I don't think the Democrats on a national level have really figured that out yet. 

you know, people were on the, you know, if you look at sort of left leaning or progressive media, we're really chastising and ridiculing,  Elon Musk sort of America pack operation. Oh, he, you know, he thinks he, because he runs Tesla and he sends rockets into the sky and then, you know, he's, he owns Twitter.

What does that mean? What does he really know about,  excuse me, about,  door to door sort of operations. And you know, what do you, you know, how effective was that at the day? I don't know, but one of the things that certainly, you know, is, is a takeaway that we can almost sort of certainly say was one of the contributing factors to Trump's victory yesterday.

Is that he really understood and his team got him on very interesting alternative forms of media. He was on these podcasts. I mean, the fact that he went on, I mean, a lot of people, what would Joe Rogan is he was on, he was on Joe Rogan, but there were, there was another, I could, I could give you the six, seven different names that you probably wouldn't, you know, the average person probably wouldn't recognize who those people are, subsets, principally for young males in his case, that's where he targeted, that's where he went on.

He wasn't going on. Massive programs like the view where he was doing, you know, some of these big talk shows like Colbert  or, or, you know, or Seth Meyers or whoever, he was really being very specific and niche and talking to the subset of people he wanted to talk to in a medium that was very comfortable to those people.

And again, I, one of the things I'm going to try and do today is make some sort of, you know, linkages between this and, you know, maybe what's going on in the business world. I also think that's really interesting that there's a lot of there. I think there's a group of brands and marketers across different industries that get that.

Those are the ones that are supporting some of these podcasts and these things. And there's a whole nother sort of group, I think a much larger group that still looks at that stuff as sort of, Oh, that's really high risk, low return, alternative media. But, you know, and, but I think that's the shakeup that we're seeing in this political election actually might have repercussions across the business world as well. 

Oh, I definitely see that. I mean, I think you're basically saying that Trump ran a better campaign. And he got to people more directly and segmented people very specifically.  I think that's part of what I'm saying too. I mean, I'm not going to say that that's the sole attribution as to why he won this race, but I think that in that respect.

Definitely.  you know, he was smart not to do a second debate. He saw how the first debate went that, you know, doing that again.  you know, they say you, you try the same thing multiple times, and you get this, you know, you get the same result, that's the definition of insanity. I think that would have been insane for him to go up against Kamala Harris in the second debate that didn't bode well for him. 

but certainly, you know, he was very strategic and smart about where he spent his time and the types of outlets where they actually advertise and they, you know, they were very in the time how they advertise to, I mean, one of the things, and I'll bring this up because I think this is a really great example. 

Of the, the, the cognitive dissonance between sort of Democrats and Republicans.  How many times did you see a little, you know, most, most Americans, even those that really follow the news, I would say most Americans didn't watch too many Trump's speeches or maybe even too many Kamala's speeches for that matter, you know, end to end, maybe you saw one or two, or you saw, you saw highlights of others, but oftentimes. 

Progressive media or left leaning media, or even centrist media would play these, little sort of snippets of excerpts of a Trump rally. I think you have to see all three parts of that to really understand how that became an effective message. And then you overlay that on top of, you know, going after Latinos who tend to be more conservative, again, conservative in terms of their Catholicism or other groups that just generally tend to be more conservative.

Then you actually are creating sort of your fomenting kind of some of these,  sort of baked in beliefs.  Yeah, that's a lot, Arick. And, we could probably spend the whole podcast continuing to go through these examples. And at the end of day, it was an unconventional, you know, political campaign. It was unconventional.

It was like nothing we've ever seen, I think, before, but let's talk about the business side. And I'd love to start first with, having your views on the impact internationally. You know, what does that mean for, you know, U S retail, U S businesses, the industry. So let's start international as our first kind of topic.

Sure. You know, I think that we're on the precipice of a major global realignment. You know, I think Trump. Has been running essentially ever since he came down the golden escalator at Trump tower back in 2015, it announced his candidacy. He's been running basically on a America first anti globalist agenda.

He wasn't terribly effective at that because I think he realized once he got into the white house and he started to get his sea legs, and of course he had a lot of traditional,  you know, Republican, you know, inside the beltway government types around him. I think he realized it was, Sort of harder than he thought to extricate yourself for world affairs.

You just don't sort of flip a switch and suddenly the U S is back to being. You know, in isolationist country. I mean, our tentacles we're, we're in everywhere.  but certainly that's continues to be one of the threads that, you know, has continued throughout,  his time at the, at the winter white house in Mar a Lago, as well as now, as he head back, heads back to the real white house, in Washington, DC, and I think you're going to see, there's going to be a lot of overtures.

One of the things that he campaigned on very hard is a promise he made. And I know that a lot of people are going to hold him to the fire on this is he said he would end the war in Ukraine. On day one, how do you do that? Well, frankly, it's actually not that hard. I don't think, you know, you basically, he has a majority.

There may or may not be a house of representatives to put him in check. We don't know that yet. There's certainly not going to be a Senate to put him in the check. And he certainly has. The courts on his side, he is going to use his, the strength of US foreign policy.  you know, I think when it comes to international security agreements, I mean, certainly Trump was never a fan of NATO.

And I think that, I'm not sure how quickly he'll be able to extricate himself from something like NATO, but certainly there's going to be a lot of talk about do European allies need to form their own security block independent of the United States and so on and so forth.  Certainly the Paris Accord is going to be on the table.

As you know, the next, the next,  big, big, cop, environmental meeting is going to be in Brazil. Will the U S even be, you know, be party to that at that point? You know, that's a, that's a very big open question.  I think that there's other little issues around the, around the world. I say little, but there actually have super huge geopolitical consequences.

Taiwan and China, for example, Venezuela in that region. I mean, I think that we're, we're in for a big new world order. And I think the businesses that are going to be affected by that multinational corporations that have interests in these different countries are really going to have to really bone up on, on how they think that the Trump administration can do some gamesmanship and figure out, you know, how, how will the,  the second Trump administration, how, how will that affect, you know, their bottom line? 

Heidi, it's very concerning for any international businesses based on everything that you said. And I know that this is what they're thinking about, but you also have businesses that might not be. Global businesses are international, but do a lot of sourcing or do a lot of, manufacturing overseas. And so I have to ask you, of course, the trade agreements, what's going to happen with trade agreements and pricing and all of that, I'm sure retailers and brands are top of mind on, you know, cost of goods, what, what is this going to do to cost of goods?

Well, you know, I, I actually, you know, for all the bluster, I actually don't think that Trump is going to put these tariffs on, like you said. I think that was something that sounds good. You know, if you don't, you know, it sounds good. If you're not someone who really thinks about economics and how pass through pricing works and stuff like that, it sounds good.

Oh, you're a lower my taxes, make my life easier. And then you're going to, and then someone else can reflip the bill. I mean, essentially that's, that's the bargain he was putting up there. Of course, many companies have already come out and said, either, you know, on the record or through a third party that of course they're going to pass on all.

In fact, some might even take advantage of a tariff to justify even higher price gouging, if they can get away with it.  so, you know, it essentially becomes a tax in the middle class. People that have, you know, less disposable income for many products. but I don't think Trump's gonna actually gonna be able to do that because I think that would, that would send the economy spiraling out of control.

And the one thing he prides himself on is having a strong economy. I think in the short term, there's going to be a lot of liquidity in the market. I think we've already seen that. If you look at what's going on in the NASDAQ and S& P 500 just today, I think you're going to see this sort of, you know, a, a, a Trump boom for the next couple of months, and maybe even in the first hundred days,  But he's going to have to, he's going to have to come good on some of these reforms and he's going to have to show that he's able to, you know, use his expert negotiating skill to actually, you know, get some of the, some of the promises in, in, in the place that he's been talking about during the course of the campaign. 

And what do you think the long term impacts will be on the economy?  That's too early to say, I think, you know, I, I, the one thing I will say is that,  you know, you think about it, he's just, he hasn't taken office yet. He's 90 days. He's going to be in office. And then you got four years, like, Oh my gosh, that's a long time.

But the bottom line is this, he actually only has about a hundred days once he takes office. So, you know, he takes office on January 20th by July, August. When we come out of the summer recess, summer from summer vacation, suddenly You're starting the midterm. It sounds crazy to believe, but in this country we're run for office more than we are in office.

It seems like  candidates are going to start talking about the midterm elections in 2026.  And so that, that, that's going to be basically the first referendum on how is the party in power doing, particularly if he has all the levers of government, if he wins the house, which right now it's not clear if he's going to have control of the house, but if particularly if he does have the house, and I know that there's a lot of Democrats in Washington and around  That are really secretly hoping that he actually does get full control of government, because at that point he will have absolutely no excuse.

If he doesn't deliver, if, if he doesn't have the house, but he has the Senate and he's got the judiciary, he will obviously try and ring, you know, any disappointments or any failures to deliver around the necks of Democrats in Congress, but if he has control of all. You know, three branches of government, plus the, plus, the courts, particularly the Supreme court, he is going to basically have no excuse if he doesn't deliver.

So,  to the extent that he's able to really effectuate change at a really rapid pace. I mean, that certainly wasn't the hallmark of his first administration. Or, you know, a lot of that had to do with, again, like I said, came getting his sea legs, not understanding how Washington work, not understanding actually the mechanics of government.

Lots of people that were, you know, kind of, you know, wanted to work with him ideologically, they were Republicans, but they also sort of, you know, at the end of the day, wanted to sort of protect the traditional guardrails of government. Now he's going to be putting all the people that he wants. He's going to be able to pick the people he wants.

He's has the enough margin in the Senate to get anyone approved to work at it as any secretary or the white house or any other key positions that he wants. He's going to be able to make all the key decisions and choices that he's always wanted to make. And how that goes is really going to fall out of his shoulders if he's not able to deliver. 

Wow. Tell me a little bit about, so when we think about kind of this new age, and I really do believe that the country's going to be going through quite an adjustment over the next six months, you know, what should businesses and brands be thinking about?  Number one, if you don't already and you can afford it.

You need to hire an on staff geopolitical analyst, analyst. You need to have someone who understands, you know, you may not, you may say, Oh,  we don't do government contracting. We don't even have offices in any of these places you're talking about in Europe or Latin America or anywhere else.  You need to understand this new world order that's coming because it ultimately will affect you.

We live in an integrated economy. If you can afford it. And you, can find the right person to manage that person. So you find the right person to fill that role, I should say.  you know, you need to hire someone that has that geopolitical expertise to help inform the decision making that goes on between the board and the CEO and the executive suite, because there are going to be a lot of decisions.

This is all, you know, Trump represents volatility. I was talking to.  Someone today who's has a risk, a risk analysis, risk mitigation company that works a lot with financial institutions and so on and so forth. He said he had 400 people on their weekly conference call today.  all representatives of all his clients from all over the world, people were, are, are deeply, you know, perplexed by what happened last night, but the same token, they're nervous.

They don't know what to expect. Trump is not, doesn't play by the traditional playbook and you need to be ready. You need to be sort of gaming out different scenarios. You need to have contingency plans and you need to have a plan B, C, and D.  and so I think that, you know, the, the number one thing I'd say is that companies of all ilts, all industries, all sectors, all sizes, Need to be a lot more aware of what's happening outside of their, their particular sector and their particular niche.

I think they need to be much more,  aware of, of how geopolitical trends that seemingly are on the other side of the world and in a different sector might sort of blow back into their industry and it'll affect their supply chain or affect their pricing or effect, in fact, the economy and their consumers.

So, I think that, you know, there's, it's going to require companies to be a lot more professional and be a lot more organized going forward.  So Arick, like five years ago, the hot job in retail was a data scientist. Now the hot job in retail is going to be geopolitical analysts. I think he'll come up with a better name for that, but it's basically that role.

You know, the, you know, the, the chief geopolitical officer or something like that. All  right.  that's very interesting. So aside from that, when we think about. You know, what's going to transpire over the next six months. Is there any other  advice that you would give to retailers and brands and how they should be thinking about, yeah, you know, actions to buy?

Well, I would say, I would say this, this is something that I think each brand needs to think about is, and I think for some brands that are particularly ones that are more B2B, it's probably less of an issue.  but I think what we saw in the results of yesterday's election,  Is a clap back on woke ism, a clap back on me too ism, a clap back on hyper sort of sensitivity about different, you know, identity politics, a clap back on frankly, and I think in my particular case, my personal opinion, unfortunately, a clap back on the environment.

You know, we are going to, we are entering a new arena where these things are just not going to have the same importance, or in some cases they are actually become enemies of the state. I, for example, I don't think the environmental question is going to go away, but it's going to be very much sort of de emphasized.

It's not going to be something you hear a lot about. It's not going to be something that's going to be front and center like it has been. frankly, certainly during the Biden administration, but just as a broad trend, even going back to the Obama years.  so,  I think that companies that have really positioned themselves around some of these issues, whether it's like, let's say,  inability and the environment, they're going to have to really rethink, well, what does that mean in this new environment?

And it could be that there's an ab reaction to that clapback. It could be that. You know, I think, I think personally, and there's a lot of data to support this, that no matter your politics, I think there, there is a sizable percentage, well over 60, 70 percent of the U S population believes in climate change.

And they believe that we need to do something about it. Otherwise we're not going to have a planet to give to our grandchildren, our great grandchildren.  And so I think that, you know, there may be an ab reaction if, if the Trump administration goes too far in, you know, I mean, I certainly he's talked about, he's going to do more drilling, but you know, I do think that, you know, the companies need to be really aware that I think some of the social mores that were sort of the, the foundational sort of aspects of a lot of these brands that have really become popular over the, in recent years.

I really gonna have to take a look and say, you know, how,  not only what government does, how's that going to impact me, but what the voters said they wanted in government. What does that say about voters and those particular voters when it comes to those issues, it could be that, you know, they say that progress is usually.

You know,  two steps forward and one step back, I think maybe last night represents that step back. And I think that, you know, brands that are really leaning into this, maybe a little too much, you know, may, may find themselves, you know, having to recalibrate some of their strategies.  yeah, I think that's going to be what's going to be happening over the next six months, everyone's going to be looking inward at their own companies and, and their structures and really trying to figure out the impact here.

Before you leave, I would love for you to talk about the consumer. How is this going to impact the consumer? And I don't know if you know this, but I'm going to throw it out there. What's your take on holiday? Do you think this is going to ease holiday revenues for retailers and brands? Do you think it's going to have more people be concerned?

I think that, you know, Trump wants to bring more liquidity into the market. Once he gets, I mean, obviously he's not going to take office until January.  but I think that, you know, if you are someone that already has investments, you've got, you know, whether it's via your 401k or you actually have a portfolio or you have other types of investments, I think you're going to find yourself a lot more flush with cash, which should generate some more movement into the economy.

I think if I was a betting person,  which I guess I am, but only once or twice a year, when I go to Las Vegas,  I would, think about  looking at, at, at more higher end brands, because I think that's going to be a lot of growth when it comes to luxury markets. So, you know, looking at the LVMHs of the world and that, you know, those types of brands are going to do very well.

I think during the Trump era, there's going to be tax breaks at the very highest levels that are going to trickle down to a certain extent, although I don't really buy into the, the economic benefits writ large of that, I do think that there's going to be some, some, some stat substantial, windfalls that are taking place at the, at the upper brackets of, of, of income earners. 

I think so, you know, the consumer, I think, in general, at the higher end is going to see the benefits immediately. The tougher nut to crack for Trump and his, you know, and his government is going to be, can he actually get that to translate to the people that put him in office, which are people that are struggling?

And that's the reason they voted for him.  That's the big question out there, right?  Absolutely.  Arick, any closing thoughts? It's always a pleasure having you on. You're a wealth of information and we're so appreciative for you to come on and talk to our listeners about this very important topic. Yeah. We should do this again.

I mean, I think the next time to do this. Would actually be right around the time when he's either about to take office around inauguration, because at that point, I think he will have unveiled his transition team. There'd be a lot more plans out there about what he intends to do, how he's going to do it.

There'd be a lot more to go through and dissect. I think this is the type of thing, frankly, you know, I, I gotta tell you a little, a little story.  I was, talking to someone the other day and, and you're talking about what do you do for a living? And I said, well, I do this, I do that. But you know, one of the things that I'm probably most known for, although it frankly doesn't generate a big chunk of my income is I go on TV and talk about politics and he said, well, I don't have anything to do with politics because I'm in business  and I want.

Give, say more than that, just because I don't, you know, I don't want to reveal who this person is. I mean, this was a very senior executive at a, at a  senior executive at a, at a, let's say a 50 million a year company. And I said, how do you possibly think you've got nothing to do with business? And if you think that up until the point where you are at now, that is about to change because now politics is going to be everywhere because that's, that's what Trump does and now, and now you're going to have an unbridled Trump.

And so. You know, I think, I think my closing remark would be people need to become a lot more savvy in terms of following what's happening in the news. They need to be much more savvy about interpreting how that's going to impact their bottom line and their operations and their structure and their employees.

Frankly, I think that, you know, a lot of the companies around the, Country. I mean, one of the things I would say right now is if I was running a multinational corporation,  and I had a, and a big percentage of, excuse me, women that work in my company, would I be thinking about, even if there are tax incentives, moving to Florida, would I want to move them to Florida where there's an all out abortion ban that failed, even though 57 percent of the population voted for it yesterday? 

You know, would I want to take my company and force my employees to be in a situation where they might be.  you know, they, they might not be able to get the healthcare they need because of some sort of, you know, draconian policies, that particular state. Those are the types of things you need to start paying attention to because things are changing.

And obviously the repeal of Roe v. Wade,  that, the Dobbs decision, I should say that was, that's just one example.  Yeah. And I think you're right. I think in the past, a lot of the retailers and brands kind of stayed neutral on politics, not trying to, you know, get too involved and kind of staying back a little bit, but you're right now.

You have to be very involved and you do have to understand the geopolitical impact that's going to impact business. I don't think you can separate business and politics anymore. The real question I'd say from, you know, let's take a five to 10 year horizon here is can his movement.  Exist and thrive and become a viable political movement in this country without him.

And I think obviously the air to that movement at this point is JD Vance is vice president was young.  will he be able to sort of take that mantle and run with it? my guess is no, I feel like maybe a little bit, but not really. I think Trump, you know, for better, for worse is sort of. You know, the singular presence that's, you know, once in a century type presence in,  in, in the, in, in the, in the world, and I think that.

You know, it's very hard to replicate that. And, you know, he can get away with stuff that no other person, Republican, Democrat, independent would ever get away with.  and so how does he, but you know, how does he take it? How does he take advantage of that? you know, in this first hundred days in office, we, you know, we shall see.

But anyway, the bottom line is this, if you are a Republican today, congratulations. You're guy one, you get a second chance at this, make the most of it. I think you should, you have every right to be celebrated. It was a hard fought campaign. If you're a Democrat, don't be too despondent. I feel like it's not going to be as bad as maybe you've been led to believe.

And if you're an independent, well, no, grab a martini.  Well, Arick, thank you. And thank you so much for your time. And I want to thank our listeners for listening in. If you have any comments, please make sure you reach out to us on therobinreport.com. Just click on the contact us and send us any feedback.

Thanks so much.  Thank you for listening to Retail Unwrapped. We'll be back in one week with another podcast. Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast service. If you have questions, ideas for a podcast, or anything else, please contact us vi