transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:30] I love it.

Speaker 2:
[00:30] We're gonna talk about that, folks. We're gonna talk about global economy and the markets today. We have an expert in the house, David Rosenberg, who has an article he writes every morning, Breakfast With Dave. We got a lot of things to talk about, many things going on. I mean, I got these 11 stories I'm going through. It's like sometimes you want Mondays to be stacked with a lot of stories, but today's a Wednesday. What a lot of stories that broke last time. Let me go through a couple of them for you. Number one, just at 4.25 this morning, less than five hours ago, three ships were hit. Two of them were seized by Iran. One of them is Panamanian ship. The other one is a Greek ship. And they've been seized by Iran. And apparently the third one, they're trying to figure out where it's from. They don't know yet. Maybe we'll break it when the story breaks and we'll share it with you as well. We got to talk about that. Tariffs, the president said a few things about tariffs saying he will remember the companies that don't seek tariff refunds. And a lot of people are saying, wait a minute, what does that mean? People have some questions. We'll talk about it. Trump encourages companies not to seek tariff refunds. UPS and FedEx have began filing for tariffs refunds. A lot to talk about there. Tim Cook moving on. And you know, I want to say Steve Jobs passed away in 06. Can you verify? No. Was it 011? 11, yeah. And so he's been on there. And when he passed away, Apple was worth 100 billion. Now it's worth a few trillion. And now they have a new CEO. So there's a lot of ruckus. Some people are excited. Some people are not. Personally, I like Tim Cook. I know a lot of people have some criticism of him, but we'll talk about Tim Cook as the new CEO, Tim Cook leaving and the new CEO coming in. And the new CEO, you can't find a lot on him. You know, he sounds like a pretty solid guy, but we'll see. Well, we'll talk about him as well. Virginia, lots going on with Virginia. It's a story that broke. Virginia voters approved Democrats redistricting plan, giving the party a midterm election boost. So we'll see what happens there. Next story is Trump confronts Xi. Apparently, there's a mysterious gift that was sent to Iran in a cargo ships. And markets trying to find out what's in that gift. Was it a hundred dollar gift card to Amazon? You know, was it like maybe, you know, some Chinese? I don't know what it is. Everybody's trying to find out. They're speculating. We won't speculate. We will talk about it. Maybe we'll do a little bit of speculating. Kevin Warsh was out there at his, what do you call it? When he was at the confirming hearing, right? Am I saying it correctly? And there was some couple fiery moments and he said something where, you know, he said, look, I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do. I'm not taking his job because of, I think Elizabeth Warren was pushing him, if I'm not mistaken. And an anthropic CEO went to the White House. Why did he go to the White House? He could have gone to Toronto, he could have gone to different places, chose to go to the White House. What's the outcome? What's the conversation about? Cash Patel yesterday, and what's his name? Todd Blanch were talking about this thing called SPLC, Southern Poverty Law Center, and what the FBI found out. And then, you know, Cash was pushed on a couple of things, having to do with the story that came out, drinking and all this stuff, and Cash pushed back. It was pretty intense. Newsworthy, it's good for TV, and so we'll talk about that jet fuel. Few stories about the jet fuel that's actually a real thing that's going on. Lufthansa, which I used to fly on a lot when I lived in Germany, Lufthansa planning to cancel 20,000 short haul flights to save jet fuel. 20,000 short haul flights to save on jet fuel, and that's not just the only story. United Airlines slash in 2026 forecast as fuel cost surge, and that story leads to the next one. What a looming jet fuel shortage could mean for summer travel. Will people travel less? Will they travel more? Who knows? Andy Jassy, there's a clip that came out telling Gen Z that if you want to be successful, you have to pay your dues first. How dare he say something like that? Isn't that offensive? Don't you find that a little bit offensive, David? Shouldn't they get it? Shouldn't they be entitled to just a $200,000 salary day one when they graduate? How dare a CEO of a multi-trillion dollar company who is super wealthy telling others you have to pay your dues first? Give me a flip and break. That's disrespectful. And then at the same time, story comes out saying that Gen Z would prefer GLP-1 as benefits instead of PTO. If you offer GLP-1 as benefits instead of PTO, we would like that. That would make us more attractive if we want to work for a company. And so, what does Amazon announce on the same exact day? That they officially are selling GLP-1 weight loss programs. Promising fast, convenient access. This is a CNBC story. We'll get into that as well. And then I got one other one if we get to it. Who knows if we got the time at the end. At this point, if we have to cover all these stories, we're going to be here for about six hours. So brace for impact. You know, so having said that, before we get into the podcast, I want to share something with you guys because a lot of people started asking about it and it's becoming more and more a topic that's coming up. We don't do any major sponsorships on the podcast. You won't see us doing a podcast and announcing seven sponsors. We haven't done that yet. We're talking to some big companies. We'll entertain and have that. We have some things that we'll invest in. And if we do, we'll talk about it. There's certain companies I invest in. I'll gladly talk about it. But when it comes to the Vault Conference, if there's one thing that I can tell you, it's 12,000 people in one room this year in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand Arena. And a lot of business owners want to get in front of these qualified customers. So Rob, I don't know if you have a pitch deck for it. Go on that real quick if you could. Go on that if you could. And go to the sponsorship all the way at the top. Yeah, if you can click on that. It explains, go a little bit lower. I don't know if the slides are there or not. Go a little bit lower, lower, lower, lower, lower. Keep going lower. Keep going lower. That one right there if you could. So if somebody on the title sponsor side, your logo would be on the MGM. Go to the next slide if you could. So you can find out which of these you can have your small business in front of while the customers are coming through and taking a look at the event. Keep going, Rob. You could be on stage. There could be videos. Keep going, Rob. Just keep going every second. You could be on the app while people are going on there. Manual, that's gonna go to 12,000 folks. And then if you wanna play the clip, and then we'll start the podcast. Go for it, Rob. Here's what it looks like for sponsors at the Vault Conference. Go ahead.

Speaker 3:
[07:01] In 2019, the Vault Conference started with just 420 visionaries, 1,500 in 2022, 3,000 in 2023, 6,000 in 2024, nearly 8,000 in 2025. And in 2026, we're expecting over 12,000 entrepreneurs, CEOs and business leaders. For the first time ever, we're heading west to the iconic MGM Grand in Las Vegas, our biggest stage yet. Over 6,000 attendees are decision makers, running companies from 25 million to over 500 million dollars. More than 2,000 CEOs lead teams of 75 plus employees. They come from around the world to grow, scale and do business. And they don't just attend, they engage. Last year, 85% interacted with sponsors on-site. The response from attendees was overwhelmingly positive, generating qualified leads and long-term relationships. And even more powerful, over 71% went further, actively opting in to connect directly with sponsors through their dedicated Manect Circle, our official event app that enables real one-on-one conversations, qualified introductions, and relationships that extend well beyond the conference floor. We make sure your brand is impossible to miss, from a premium custom booth to brand visibility on the Las Vegas Strip. With a reach of 38 million-plus weekly impressions and approximately 419,000 pedestrians per day, your logo on every attendee's badge, moments on stage with Patrick himself, or your ads played on our screens. Our sponsorship packages are built to put your brand at the center of it all. Our sponsors have included industry leaders like PayPal, Stefano Ricci, Tony Robbins, Project Rock, finally, Closers IO, and Zoa Energy. Your brand could be next. Sponsoring the Vault Conference isn't just an investment in a conference. You are one handshake away from scaling your business. Opportunities are limited. Secure your spot today before the Vault closes.

Speaker 2:
[09:20] There you go. So if you want to learn more about sponsoring there, we're going to put the link below, Rob, for people to be able to learn more about it. Submit your application. If you work for a company saying, I'd like you to be there, go to your CEO, go to your executive team, go to your CMO, share with them. The pitch deck is there. They can learn more about it. And hopefully, we'll see you at the Vault Conference. Having said that, let's get right into it. I don't see a story about Iran this morning because it just broke. So if you want to pick one of them, this morning at 425, Iran's attack at around the Strait of Hormuz, three ships, two of them they seized, one is a Panamanian ship, one is a ship from Greece, that we have different names for them as well, Rob. You can pull it up. Yeah, those are the ships. So while this happened, you know, this morning if you look at the market oil prices, if you want to go to it, it's up a little bit, it's 91.37. There's not been a negative reaction to this yet. The president came out yesterday and I believe he said that indefinitely the seize, what do you call it, the ceasefire continues indefinitely but not a date. And so we don't know when it's going to stop. We don't know when it is. Is this it, Rob? Yes, sir. Okay, go for it. Play this clip and we'll get right into it.

Speaker 4:
[10:31] To be clear, you're saying that you need at least the prospects for a signed deal today and tomorrow or else you would resume bombing Iran.

Speaker 5:
[10:45] Well, I expect to be bombing because I think that's a better attitude to go in with. But we're ready to go. I mean, the military is raring to go. They are absolutely incredible. I built the military in my first term. I'm using it now. The military, when I took it over from Barack Hussein Obama, I had just, it was so depleted, so sad. And I built it in my first term. You remember those big numbers. You talked to me about it once. That's a lot of money for the military. I built it. We did a great job with our military. We're using it now. And rebuilding it too.

Speaker 2:
[11:17] So we know it's indefinitely. Sean Hannity said, based on some intel, I think Rob, if you got that clip, that at any point, you know, attack could happen. Go for it, Rob.

Speaker 6:
[11:31] And welcome to Hannity. Tonight, we start with this Fox News alert. Now, new reporting tonight. Sources telling me that the ceasefire extension in Iran announced by the president, that will be short-lived unless a deal is reached quickly. Now, earlier today, the president announced that American strikes will not yet resume, and he will allow peace negotiations to continue. According to my sources, mostly this was out of respect for the Pakistani mediators, and as a final push for peace for the war-torn Iranian people. The president is also giving more time to Iran's regime to attempt to coordinate and actually communicate with each other.

Speaker 2:
[12:09] Tom, what do you think is going on here?

Speaker 7:
[12:11] So what I think is going on is the president is doing what he always does. Well, maybe I will, maybe I won't. This is what I think, maybe I won't. I think this is literally a day-by-day ceasefire. He's trying to keep them unbalanced. And unfortunately, they said that Vance was pulled back. I guess he's not going to the next, the previous public, what did they say? Previously, they had made a public statement about what the next negotiation would be. So that's the one where we can see them all at the table and we see the media talking about it. But there's things going on behind closed doors. I think Trump's trying to keep them off balance. I think he's trying to get a deal done. I think Wittkopf is working in the background. But the public, you know, everybody sits at the big beautiful table and everything. That's not happening tomorrow, Thursday, and Vance was pulled back.

Speaker 2:
[13:07] There you go. David, your thoughts?

Speaker 8:
[13:09] Well, the question is, who are the Americans talking to? Look, who's the Iranian delegation and who's in charge in Iran right now? Because my sense is that it's not the clerics, it's the IRGC. And they are definitely hardened. So, you know, my thoughts for this, I think the bombing campaign is over. The... I think that Trump pays attention to the stock market and I think he's paying attention to the public opinion polls. And I think he has to take note of the fact that his MAGA base is starting to deteriorate in terms of the support for the war. So I think he's looking for an off-ramp. And I think that we're just further in this age of disinformation. It's not just the Iranians, but it's also, you know, what we're hearing out of Truth Social. I mean, we were bombarded with no fewer than seven messages from his social media account last Friday. And next thing you know, the Dow is up a thousand points. It's hard to know where this leads. I think that I agree that I think Trump is looking for an off-ramp. We don't know what sort of deal. What sort of deal are we really expecting? Because the Iranian list of demands and the US list of demands, there's no overlap. And you know, as I go through this in my head, I'm there thinking that Trump, I don't think he can bomb anymore. And I think it's a classic case of Einstein's definition of insanity. Like, where's the bombing? What's it going to accomplish that it hasn't accomplished? Right now, what Iran has found out is that it has an economic engine that it can stranglehold the world through the strait. I think a lot of us already knew that because it's not the first time this has happened, but on this scale. So, you have a situation where, as you mentioned about the strikes by Iran on those ships and the strait, they're demonstrating that they're still in control. And the US still has this blockade.

Speaker 2:
[15:30] Does this break the ceasefire by them attacking those three ships? I mean, if you're talking ceasefire...

Speaker 8:
[15:35] Well, that's really up to Trump, right? You would think that it would break the ceasefire. You would think that Hezbollah, which wasn't mentioned, I think, just sent a few rockets into Northern Israel. Did that break the ceasefire? So this is almost very loose definitions. It's clear to me, firstly, that Trump wants an off-ramp. We just don't know who he's talking to, who's in charge in Iran, and what any deal is going to look like. Because how can we walk away from this war with the Iranians still having those thousand pounds of enriched uranium? And how do we walk away with Iran not abandoning its nuclear ambitions? I don't really know how Donald Trump is going to wiggle his way out of this. I think in the end, what he wants to do is walk away and declare victory on his terms. And then the Iranians are going to declare victory on their terms. And my biggest concern is, do we just end up back where we were with Barack Hussein, Obama and the deal that he struck in 2015? Do we just end up right back there? And that's all this damage.

Speaker 2:
[16:55] Are you speculating or are you thinking we're going to end up there? Or will we get to 20 billion?

Speaker 8:
[16:59] Well, I'm always scenario-building. You know, there's a wide range of outcomes, but you have to have a base-case scenario. You know, the thing is that Trump is under a lot of domestic political pressure. I think he's coming under some pressure in his own party. We have the midterm elections, all these things that Iran doesn't have to worry about. And then we have to consider all along, you know, how we've come to this place. And this isn't like a war over land. This is a war over radical ideology and fanaticism. This is a different sort of war. You know, when we had the Cold War with Russia, it wasn't really dealing with anybody who was irrational. Khrushchev was not irrational. Now, that wasn't religious ideology that you could argue. That was more economic ideology. But you were dealing at least with rational actors. And this time around, you're dealing with irrational actors, and you're dealing with a regime that has no value on human life, even the human life of their own population, as we've seen. So I think the template you want to look back to, and this is what I would advise the president if I was there, is just, you know, know what you're getting into here. Because from 1980 to 1988, Iran and Iraq fought an eight-year war. Now Saddam Hussein wanted to create a buffer. You could argue that was partly about land, but it was also about ideology, because it was right after the revolution. And Hussein was very concerned that this radical ideology was going to spread into Iraq. So after year two of that war, Saddam Hussein actually offered an olive branch to the Ayatollah to end the war, to call for a permanent truce. Iran walked away, and the war lasted another six years, over 500,000 deaths. So that's what we're dealing with right now. So there's a wide range of outcomes. I think that what's obvious to me, what's obvious to me, I mean, this is now, you know, what is the deadline right now? What's the deadline? Now the deadline is over, and now it's basically, you know, there's no timeline attached. What does that tell us?

Speaker 2:
[19:31] What's ideal for you? In your opinion, what should you do?

Speaker 8:
[19:33] Well, I'm, you know what, I'm pretty hardcore. You know, I'm in the John Bolton camp, okay? Really? Absolutely. Because I think that, you know, you've got to finish what you started. What was the goal? You know, the problem I have is that President Trump says, well, we did achieve regime change. Well, that's a lot of information right there. We tell you, you know, he's going to say, we actually got one of the things that we wanted, which was regime change, but we got a worse regime. And then he says, well, these are more reasonable people than we had before. Well, you know, I don't really think so. And then it's a matter of what people have to know is that it's the Revolution Guard are the ones really in control and they're hardened. I think that you got to finish what you start. And I think that the ultimate goal was really to get that 60% enriched uranium out of Iranian hands and to permanently end their nuclear ambitions. Now, the reality is that you actually would need to have a new and more peaceful regime to do that. I think that's next to impossible. The question is, because when you think about what the spark was, the spark was the uprisings that we saw, the popular uprisings back in January. And how do you incentivize? I mean, now, you could actually argue that the Iranians were prepared because they killed, let's say, the numbers 30,000. Now, the Iranian population is scared to go out and do it again. And that to me is really, when you're talking about regime change, I think that that always should have been the goal. Because when you think about how do we end this nuclear ambition, I think that nuclear bomb in Iranian hands is a danger for the entire world. How do you accomplish that? And then you look at history. How do you change regimes? And you don't do it from the outside. You do it from the inside. And what you need to do is you need to get to a place where the army, the regular army, I'm not even talking about the IRGC. I'm talking about the regular army. There's a million of them. Now I don't know. I'd like to hear, what I'd like to hear is that that's who Wyckoff and Jared Kushner and Vance are talking to. What are their back channels into the actual regular Iranian army? Because when you look at previous revolutions, King Louis XVI, the revolution was successful only when the army turned their back on the king.

Speaker 2:
[22:14] That hasn't happened yet.

Speaker 8:
[22:15] No. When you look at Nicholas II, okay, it's only when the army realized that their survival was at stake, that they abandoned the Tsar.

Speaker 2:
[22:24] How do you get there?

Speaker 8:
[22:25] Well, I sort of...

Speaker 2:
[22:28] Because you gave the weapons to Kurds, they kept it, so it's not like they're passing it to the people.

Speaker 8:
[22:32] I like that. I like that idea, but Turkey shot it down. And, you know, I mean, there's always risks about having a revolution, like, and you'll create this political vacuum. And let's face it, Iran is not a homogeneous society. But the thing is that how do you incentivize the people and the army to turn against the clerics? And to me, you know, that's why, look, the whole notion of bombing power plants and bridges, or even, you know, using the strait, the blockade to block food imports and medical supplies. And then, there's all sorts of commotion and noise around, well, the US be breaking international law. Well, never mind about all the international laws that the Iranians have broken. But you see, there's just more political pressure on Trump. But, you know, the thing is that, and this is going to sound pretty radical, and I don't want to sound mean, I'm not a mean person, but the question is, how do you incentivize the Iranian people into another uprising, which they did in January, but now they have fear because they know that the guard is going to kill them. I always thought the Kurds were at least a good start. It would be actually a very good distraction to the Revolutionary Guard. You know, can Mossad or the IDF get involved? I don't know, they're under a short leash themselves. But they're also under Trump's control as well. To me, that would be the most effective end game. How it's accomplished, look, I don't claim to be a military expert. I'm an interested observer. But I would say that without regime change, nothing's going to change. And then it's a matter of how you accomplish it. Would you accomplish it through, say, real boots on the ground? Like, you'd probably need like a million troops.

Speaker 2:
[24:39] Brandon, what do you think? It would be interesting. What do you think yourself?

Speaker 9:
[24:42] I mean, I agree. And that's why I said a week or two ago, I said that I think they should use an Iran-Contra model. I mean, any revolution that's ever happened, it's been through rebel groups, through militia groups, that the CIA or the Mossad type of group helps organize, helps them get together and helps smuggle weapons to them. But that doesn't exist in Iran. There's no organized militia or rebel group. And that's really how an uprising could actually happen. Right now, it's just a bunch of people without weapons that get slaughtered by the government when they organize in public. So I agree, there really is no off-ramp with this in terms of changing leadership in an effective way. No matter what, even if you take out the guy who's in charge right now, somebody just like him from the IRGC is going to be put in his place. And until that whole mindset or that whole IRGC regime is gone, then it's the same situation, probably even worse. So even if we do agree to a deal, there's not an off-ramp that exists with the same group. And I just looked it up actually, 31% of the military is part of the IRGC, but the IRGC does control all the military weapons. So that's what that looks like in that regard. But yeah, it's a bad situation because I don't see what that option is to like totally eliminate it because it's not like they're in one place. It's not like it's one group of people, like small group of people.

Speaker 2:
[25:51] But saying you're extending the ceasefire indefinitely and then these guys break the ceasefire. And they're saying we did not. They're saying we're enforcing the law because they're acting as if they created new laws. So because of that, they're enforcing new laws. So we didn't do anything wrong. We're just kind of doing our part. This is not breaking the ceasefire. But in a way, Iran is trying to say is, look, they're not showing their real players. Not real players. They're not showing their ethical players here. So if that's the case, what do you do? So if his position is, well, Trump wants to get out of this because he's paying attention to the market, market's doing better, everything is up, earnings are coming through really good, numbers are coming through really good, people are pretty optimistic. The market, I don't know where SMP is today, was at 7,000 and hey. But that's a different story between Main Street and Wall Street. SMP's at 7149 right now. Up almost three quarters of a point. So, but if he goes back in attacks, if he goes back, let's just say we hear the news, boom, we're bombing again. What happens to the market? Two to three percent adjustment?

Speaker 10:
[26:59] Yeah, it goes back the other way.

Speaker 7:
[27:00] SMP goes back down to 69. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[27:02] So, but if he's gonna do it, Iran's telling you we're not ethical negotiators, right? This guy who was Obama's or I don't know, was Obama's or Clinton's. Clinton's guy in 1996, he says Iran's never been an honest negotiator. They always lie. So, what are you gonna do now? You're dealing with somebody that's ethical now? Who knows? But this leads me to the next story while we're talking about this. Trump confronts Xi, okay, the surprise gift. Is this on the addendum, Rob, or is this on the main story? Main story. Trump confronts Xi as US forces seize Chinese ship carrying mysterious gift to Iran. What do you mean a mysterious gift to Iran? Here's a question when the president is being asked about it. Go forward.

Speaker 5:
[27:44] I heard that militarily, they use the bridges for their weapons, for their missile movements. You know, they're trying to move the missiles because we've obliterated most of their missiles and they're trying to move their missiles around even during the ceasefire, which I think was a good thing because we're totally loaded up. We have so much ammo. We have so much of everything that we've like a much much more powerful than it was four or five weeks ago. So we've used this to restock and they probably have done a little bit of restocking and we caught a ship yesterday that had some things on it which wasn't very nice, a gift from China perhaps. I don't know. But I was a little surprised because I have a very good relationship and I thought I had an understanding with President Xi, but that's all right. That's the way war goes, right? But I will tell you that we have our military is incredible, what we've done. I mean, think of it. In the first three days, we took out their entire Navy, 100...

Speaker 2:
[28:37] Tom, what do you think is going on here?

Speaker 7:
[28:39] Well, he just said we took out their entire Navy. I'd like to know who's shooting at the ships, because supposedly those were those fast boats, or is this a Navy boat? Because supposedly it was ship to ship firing that was happening first thing this morning. Number one. Number two is we've known China has been trying to help. China got busted in the last week, sending in, and I gave you the chemical name that we found on that ship, which is basically the raw powder needed to make rocket fuel, to make high-volatility explosive that goes off in a constrained manner, is a rocket engine. That's what it is. So they were helping them with that. So the gift from China, they've been trying to enable them. They're not going to put the satellite imagery and sharing satellite coordinates that they shared of the US bases that were located around the Middle East in UAE, telling you, hey, here's the aircraft on the ground in UAE, right here, right here, right here. China shared that stuff going back four weeks ago. So if something's on a ship, it's either a weapon, and China's been very reluctant to openly share arms transport. But what were they sending? Rocket fuel. So I think that that is still going on. And I think what this is also Trump saying, I think he's talking to Xi. And rather than say to Xi, hey, I know what you're doing, he just casually mentions to the media, yeah, China had a gift over there going for him. And I think he's letting people know how much we know about China's assistant. I think that's, you know how when you want to talk to somebody, Pat, but you don't pick up the phone and call them, you can talk in other ways. And I think he's talking to Xi. We know what you just did. We know what you sent and we caught it.

Speaker 2:
[30:32] What do you think it was?

Speaker 8:
[30:36] I don't know. Can you fit one drone into a box and gift wrap it with a ribbon?

Speaker 2:
[30:43] You need more than one drone, though.

Speaker 8:
[30:45] I'm just, well, I'm being a little facetious. But I mean, to be honest, I don't really care what it was. The reality is this. Again, we are in an age of misinformation. And the markets, as you're saying, this is a headline-driven stock market. But we know that there are two countries that are very powerful, that have a vested interest in this war lasting longer and costing America that much more. And one is Russia, one is China. And remember that why it was so important to remove Maduro was because Venezuela at that point was selling sanctioned oil at a discount to China. That's what it was all about. It all comes back down really to China. And China has been supplying these armaments to Iran for a long time and even during this war. Again, when I talk about misinformation, no, I'm sorry. Iran's military capacity has not been obliterated. It's been seriously impaired. But from what I've been hearing from my sources, we've only destroyed 50% of their drone capacity and 50% of their bombing capacity. So they've been impaired. I'll tell you what the Iranians are probably thinking is that they can outlast Trump. They can outlast Trump. And especially if those reports are true, that they've been impaired but not disabled, they believe and that's what their actions are telling you. And that's what we have to, what is the interpretation of what Iran is doing right now? They think they can outlast Trump. And I didn't just say that it's all about the markets. It's also about the public opinion polls. It's also about the polls now showing, we already knew that the House was probably going Democrat, but now the Senate's in play. So you have a Democratic sweep in November. And there's fissures already within the Republican Party. So we have to pay attention to the internal politics, which the regime and Iran doesn't have to worry about. So I believe that they believe that they can outlast Trump. And so, and the reality is that, does anybody surprise that China is helping Iran in this cause? Or Russia for that matter. Who's surprised about that?

Speaker 2:
[33:20] Yeah, apparently what it is, is it's missile-related chemicals, is what their speculating was in there. Missile-related chemicals, according to Washington Times, is what was in the gift. Brandon?

Speaker 9:
[33:32] Yeah, and this is why it's such a shame that the Supreme Court did what they did with terrorists, because I don't think it's a coincidence that China's feeling a little bit old like this, where they could do something that they know Trump would be upset about, that they know would be considered possibly a hostile action, when Trump's biggest lever, biggest tool against them was taken away. This is an unsettling thing. There's a time for the last 30 years where countries wouldn't dare to do something like this, but now China's feeling our weakness, it looks like. I mean, the Center for Strategic International Studies did a report showing that it would be two weeks that we would run out of weapons if we were to have a conflict in the South China Sea right now. We used 40% of our THAAD missiles in the first 16 days of the Iran conflict, and it's going to take until end of 2027 for us to restock that. So we have the technology, we have money, we have, but not the supplies for something like this. So I think China's kind of poking us, testing us with this, this is like, that's a bold thing for them to do. I know they've been sent, going back and forth on basic things, but to send long-range missile stuff to Iran, that's a...

Speaker 2:
[34:43] Who is this from? It says, Liveman, US found Chinese gift for Iran. Trump, after ship carrying missile chemical seized in Hormuz, Beijing, rejects claim. Trump said that China is possibly providing Iran with lethal aid or weapons or move that would test a US red line. The development comes days after US military seized an Iranian vessel with Chinese chemical missile shipments.

Speaker 9:
[35:02] So it's like they're seeing what they can get away with, you know.

Speaker 2:
[35:04] Are you surprised though with China? I don't know if I'm surprised. I don't know if I'm sitting there saying, I'm surprised with them doing this because...

Speaker 9:
[35:13] But they do 20 years ago though?

Speaker 2:
[35:14] No, but think about what they're stronger as well. But the reality of it is, look what we've done to China. Just think what America's done to China the last 12 months. So you were getting your stuff from Venezuela, that's gone. That discount is gone. You were getting what percentage of your oil out of Iran? I don't know what the number is. It's a massive number they're getting from Iran. And so now that's been locked up. You're not happy about that. And they were giving it to you as a discount.

Speaker 7:
[35:44] And the Panama Canal is part of Venezuela.

Speaker 2:
[35:47] CK. Hutchinson is... Who owns Panama Canal, the 43 ports, whatever it is, two or three of them that are the main ones in Panama on both sides. Now you mean to tell me you lost that? Because the Panama government said you don't have any jurisdiction here, and then now they're suing them to say, now you lose that chokehold for America if you wanted to really piss off America and say, don't F with us, because I'm going to destroy your Panama Canal and I'm going to mess with... That's now gone. So one by one... So you know what? What would you do if you were Chinese?

Speaker 9:
[36:17] Anything you can to...

Speaker 2:
[36:18] That's what I'm saying. So if you're cornering me and I'm China, I'm sitting there saying, oh, you want to do this? I have to make sure Iran makes it. I have to make sure I'm on Iran's side. So then what other leverage are you going to have? Because China is going to say, you need my minerals. You still don't have Greenland.

Speaker 9:
[36:33] Or refineries in the US, which that would give us the ability to have those too.

Speaker 2:
[36:37] Yeah. So this is a very interesting, but I'm not surprised that China says, no, that wasn't us. And two, they're testing their limits to see what they can get in there. Because guess what happens? What's the worst case scenario with the Strait of Hormuz that happens to China? What is the worst thing that can happen to China in regard to Strait of Hormuz?

Speaker 9:
[36:59] That just never happens.

Speaker 7:
[37:00] We control it, and we control Carg Island.

Speaker 2:
[37:02] Bingo. If the US controls Carg Island, and we control Strait of Hormuz, what the hell are you talking about? Now that's not the Western Hemisphere. That's what?

Speaker 9:
[37:13] Yeah, Eastern Hemisphere.

Speaker 2:
[37:15] That's the part where China, there's no way in the world, China can control Iran, China can control America if we take control.

Speaker 9:
[37:22] Right.

Speaker 2:
[37:23] So this is a very rough place for China. Your thoughts?

Speaker 8:
[37:28] Well, firstly, I'll come back to what I said before. Who has the staying power? What we know is that China stockpiled a hell of a lot of oil ahead of this. I don't know how China even had an inkling. Xi Jinping was well prepared for the Tariff War. And it looks though he was even prepared for this Iranian war. And you know, when they say that Xi Jinping is playing chess while the other leaders of the world are playing checkers, I actually think that they're right. The staying power, they stockpiled many months' worth of oil. So I'm not worried about a chokehold on China unless the administration is thinking that we're going to actually keep it closed for three or six months, okay? The other part of it is that, as the United States was turning its back on the clean energy file, the one country in the world that was pursuing it aggressively was China, where basically, so we could talk about all the oil that China needs and needs from Iran, but half their energy comes from clean energy, and they stockpiled a lot of oil. Now, there's a time when there's going to be a real choke point on the Chinese economy if this continues, but I think that it would take at least three months, if you're talking about trying to bring China to its knees. The question is, does Donald Trump have three months more? You want to talk about taking over Karg Island? Look, you're talking about a situation where the whole world will face massive constraints. You talked about jet fuel before. We're just in the early stages of the airlines, either canceling flights or actually just not flying as much. That's a huge impact on domestic travel and tourism and internationally. Isn't the United States, they're hosting that soccer championship, right? Olympics. Yeah, the World Cup. Yeah, the World Cup. Well, do you hear what the hotel companies are saying that they're slashing their rates by 50 percent? So, my point is that the United States has a much higher threshold for pain. What I mean is that in an election year and a lot at stake, how much pain are Americans going to suffer? And I'm not talking about the markets, okay? The S&P is not GDP. And you could say that things are looking okay right now. We've got the retail sales number. Well, guess what? Right in the middle of a $30 billion incremental increase in tax refunds, and all that money got spent last month. But that's going to wear out in the next couple of months. We'll see the emperor disrobed. The question comes down to who's got the staying power. And that's, I guess, you know, we can either agree or disagree. I think that China, I think probably even Iran, has longer staying power than the Americans do. I don't know about that.

Speaker 2:
[40:33] I don't know about that. And I'll tell you why. I'll agree in one area, and I'll push back. And I want you to push back on me, on what I'm going to say. I want to hear your... So what do you think about the fact that Iran is using $400-500 million every day in oil? That's $12-13 billion a month. And they, you know, some reports are coming and saying they can go two more weeks. Some are saying, Max, six more weeks with that income coming in. And the country is in shambles, so the people are starting to get frustrated and the people are getting tired of it. The opposing argument to that is World Cup starts when? Rob, when does the World Cup start? What's the first date? And by the way, the FIFA president came out and said, I don't know if you saw this or not, that Iran will definitely be in the World Cup. Okay, so Iran will be competing. You know that whole story was like, they're not, they're going to, they are? So they are, okay? World Cup starts June 11th. Today is what, April 23rd, 22nd? What is today?

Speaker 7:
[41:27] 22nd. 22nd.

Speaker 2:
[41:28] Six weeks. My timeline is he's got six weeks. So my timeline, you either have to fix it in six weeks, or you have to put a ceasefire for how long? From June 11th to July 19th. Why July 19th? July 19th is the championship match. So then you got to go back at it. And then do you really want to go into the midterms? So there's two ways. For us, you're right, World Cup and midterms is there. On the other side, for Iran, what are you going to do when all of a sudden, if the tipping point from my end is if the Iranians go in the streets again and families are struggling financially, payment, all of that stuff, that is chaotic. What we did learn, and again, you know, Reza Pahlavi, who was the fellow that's going around and we've had him on a few times and we're probably not on the best terms today because you know, I called him on a few different things, here's what we did learn. How much influence, when he said he has, with the military turning against IRGC, how much of that have we seen?

Speaker 8:
[42:30] We haven't seen any of it.

Speaker 2:
[42:31] That's a problem.

Speaker 8:
[42:32] Well, that's what I was saying. I mean, that was my, you know, initial soliloquy. That's me when you're asking me before about, you know, what would be something really good? That would be really good because I think ultimately it will take the Army. So far the Army hasn't turned against the regime and maybe that will change. It will change, you know, it's like I talked about the history. When does the Army turn? The Army turns when it sees its own survival at stake and that comes from the uprising of the general population, which we saw in January. I imagine that perhaps Donald Trump thought that maybe we're going to see this again, but they're scared and they're not armed. And then it will come down, I think, to what the Army does. I fully agree. The point I'm making before is this. I think that Iran has more staying power. And we have to acknowledge that it does, because this was supposed to be a four or five week war. It started in late February.

Speaker 2:
[43:29] Standalone or would help?

Speaker 8:
[43:31] What?

Speaker 2:
[43:31] Standalone to have staying power or would help?

Speaker 8:
[43:35] No, when I say that staying power, it's a matter of that, what I said before is that Donald Trump has to pay attention to the political calendar. And I think he's starting to. And he's, you know, I don't know, is he going to buckle to domestic political pressure and now within his own party? I mean, these are the things that Iran doesn't have to worry about. And what I'm saying is that from what I'm hearing, is that Iran, despite what we hear from the White House, their munitions have not been totally destroyed, not been obliterated, and that they have probably still 50% capacity, which is a lot. We were told at the beginning, there was going to be a four or five week war. That was back at the end of February. So we have to acknowledge that, although there's no bombing right now, the war is ongoing. And what I'm saying is this, a little bit of history yet again. 1930s. When you look at the Gallup polls in the 1930s, 90% of the American public was against the US joining the allies in the fight against the Nazis. When did that flip? When did it flip? 1941, with Pearl Harbor. So I don't even want to go there. What will be the event that would flip public opinion? Right? And public opinion matters in a democracy. Well, we're talking about Iran. And we're talking about China. We even talked about Russia, which comes at a winner from all this as well. These are not exactly democracies. My sense and my concern is that Iran has more staying power in terms of time than a lot of people recognize. And that's a problem. Because Donald Trump doesn't have a lot of time. Because we're going to shift our focus the next few months towards the midterms. So he's under tremendous political pressure. Well, all of a sudden, out of the blue, I mean, just a few weeks ago, we're talking about, we're going to bomb the power plants and we're going to bomb the bridges. And of course, to a lot of internal political pressure, not just global pressure, because people are going to die, right? Civilians are going to die. And that's the one thing that Americans today, they can't stomach that. But that would be, when you think about it, how else do we incentivize the Iranian population to rise up?

Speaker 2:
[46:01] There's one way to do it. Are you familiar with the Rewards for Justice program?

Speaker 8:
[46:05] No.

Speaker 2:
[46:06] Okay, so if you want to pull up the Rewards for Justice program, go to a place that explains what it is. Maybe go to, yeah, so the Rewards for Justice program, you ever hear when they're like, we'll give you $25 million for somebody that finds Maduro and tells us where it's at, we'll give you that whole Rewards for Justice program, right? Guess what? How much have we spent so far? $51 billion, give or take, so far, alright? If I break a billion into $10 million, how many $10 million payments can I make? How many? A hundred, right? $10 million, billion is what? A hundred. If I break it into $5 million, how many can I make? If I break it into $2.5 million, how many can I make? So, instead of spending $50 billion, why don't you increase your rewards for justice to a billion dollars? It's gonna save us a shit ton of money instead of you going to $200 billion. Let's find the top 200 military leaders that are two IRGC and tell them, hey man, here's what's gonna happen. Leak the info, get it in front of them. You guys are each gonna get $5 million in a box, rewards for justice based on these three criteria. One, you flip now, two, you do that next, and three. It's not hard to come up with the next three requests. And each one prompts a payment or each one does something. It's not like we don't have this program right now, and this is kind of a quiet, low key, underground CI type of a thing. Some of these guys are gonna sit there and say, okay, I got seven kids, I got two wives, I'm a military this, the top 50 leaders were killed, they killed Khomeini, they're about to kill a son, they killed all these other guys, who the hell am I? They're gonna kill me next. You'll be able to flip 200 military leaders for five million a pop. Now what are they gonna do? So go, you know how we have the general of the army, we have Sergeant Major of the army, we have Marines, we have Air Force, we have Navy, one by one, and find a way to get that messaging to them. Remember back in the days, the way the CIA would recruit people, did you see that commercial on CIA on how to leak into, was it a commercial that we did to Russia or vice versa? Did you see that one commercial?

Speaker 11:
[48:32] I think it was China.

Speaker 2:
[48:33] Yeah, do you have, that's right, it was China. Do you know which one I'm talking about? Have you seen this one? So China did a commercial, CIA launches Mandarin videos to recruit Chinese spies. That's the one. So go ahead and play that clip. By the way, can you do me a favor, Rob? Go back if you could, go back if you could, because I want to know one of them, what YouTube channel it's from. CIA has a YouTube channel. Just so everybody knows it, it's not even hidden anymore. So CIA launched a commercial to try to get spies from China. Please go on and play this clip, Rob, if you could.

Speaker 12:
[49:09] From the CIA, the language Mandarin. The goal, recruit Chinese spies.

Speaker 13:
[49:16] One of the primary roles of the CIA is to collect intelligence from the president and for our policy makers.

Speaker 2:
[49:23] Guess what? CIA, make a video and say, if you're a colonel or above in the Iranian military, and you want to flip $5 million reward for you to get a hold of us. And guess what? We'll protect your kids, we'll protect your this, we'll protect your that. Make that commercial, spend a billion dollars. Spend a billion dollars. And guess what? Tax pay, and I've watched some of the, so fight back, argue that, argue the point. Would you be for spending a billion dollars, rewards for justice, flipping a couple hundred of these guys, they're not wanting to fight, they stand down, they sell intel, and the war is over with, would you be okay to spending a billion dollars for that? Would you be okay with that idea? To even entertain the top?

Speaker 9:
[50:09] Much better.

Speaker 2:
[50:10] Tear the argument apart, say I like this idea.

Speaker 8:
[50:12] I can tear the argument apart.

Speaker 2:
[50:14] Go for it, I want to hear it.

Speaker 8:
[50:14] Well, I said before, you're fighting a radical Islam ideology. A lot of people at or near the top in Iran, the money doesn't matter. This is about fanaticism, a fanatical theocracy. So I mean, I love the idea, I love utopia. The question is that, forget the IRGC, they are in control. Now, you're talking about going after the military. You're gonna need more than just a few dozen or a few hundred. There's over 200,000 IRGC and they're in control. You would need, if you could do this and you start with 10 or 20 or 30, I mean, there's a million just in the regular army, it would have to spread. It's just the law of large numbers. The IRGC is not a small army, there's over 200,000. But I love the idea. I love the idea of somehow, we talked about the Mossad earlier and the Kurds, how do we develop internal insurrection against the regime and have it grow? And then you reach a point right where the general population has the confidence to come back out and do what they did in January.

Speaker 2:
[51:31] I was hoping you would come out and you would say you would finance it. You know, you being a financial, I was hoping you would come out and say you would finance it and we would figure out a way to do this.

Speaker 8:
[51:41] In Canadian dollars, that's not going to fly.

Speaker 2:
[51:45] Okay, let's go to the next one because you kind of brought it up. So Tom, I'm going to go to this and I'm coming to you first. You mentioned jet fuel, right? And there's three stories I'm going to read at the same time and in time I'm going to come to you. Number one, Deutsche Lufthansa canceled 20,000 short haul flights to save on jet fuel. Rob, go ahead and play the clip.

Speaker 14:
[52:03] Hansa has canceled 20,000 flights between May and October to save on fuel in one of the largest cuts by a global airline. The cuts will save around 40,000 tons of jet fuel and will amount to 1% of available seat kilometers. The carrier is trying to boost profitability with a plan to cut 4,000 administrative jobs by 2030.

Speaker 2:
[52:27] Can you imagine what's going on there? Now let me get to the US one. So you may say, well, Pat, that's Germany. Why do I care about Germany? Do you care about United Airlines? Here's United Airlines for you. United Airlines slashes 2026 forecasts as fuel cost surge. So here's a story for them. Forecast to just $7 to $11 a share. Let me read this story to you with them. Here we go. So United said it could earn between $7 and $11 a share on an adjusted basis this year, down from its previous forecast, $12 to $14 a share. Released in January, more than a month ago, the carrier, like others, is trimming down of its plan flying this year to reduce costs. Wall Street had already been adjusting its expectation for the year. As a result, analysts like Polled by LSEG had forecast that United adjusts full year earnings could be $9.58 a share for the second quarter. United forecast adjusted earnings between $1 to $2 a share. Analyst had expected $2.08 a share for the quarter. The carrier has said it's expected its revenue to cover between 40 to 50% of the fuel price. Increase in the second quarter as much as 80% in the third and between 85 to 100% by the end of the year. Revenue overall rose more than 10% from 14.61 to 14.61 from $13.21 billion from last year. Tom, what's going on over here with travel and jet fuel?

Speaker 7:
[53:57] Well, it's a little bit of a complex situation. All of the airlines out there, I should say almost all, I believe 90% of the airlines out there have, one of the most important persons in the executive suite is the economist that's responsible for their fuel hedging strategies. They hedge fuel and they try to plan for things. And what's happening right now, the cost of fuel unexpectedly popping up, they're looking for cost reduction. And the way they're looking for cost reduction, in the case, every airline, the sum of the shorter flights are not profitable, believe it or not. But they get people, like think of Delta. Delta's got a giant hub in Atlanta. And it operates small flights to get to Atlanta. And some of those are marginally like break even pad, or maybe they lose a little bit. Now, why would you do that? Because they make a lot of profit once you get to Atlanta, and then you fly to New York, or you fly to LA, or you fly to South America on the long flights with the large wide body aircraft, and they make a lot of money on those. And so, what Lufthansa said is they have a small regional division called City Line. And so, City Line, they say, hey, we can't afford to run City Line. Which means that some of those people will drive two hours to get to a more major airport rather than having the convenience of a small airport where they can get to the major airport to fly. And this is all around fuel. And I can give you some perspectives on it as well. Now, you're going to have people that say, well, maybe I just won't fly this year. Kim had to go rather urgently to see her dad in Idaho. And so the coach ticket was 750 bucks just to go from Fort Lauderdale to Idaho. And that's on Delta. Go to Atlanta, switch planes, go to Salt Lake. And then they're crazy, right? Well, she already has to go back there again because he has another appointment. She has to go to six weeks from now in June. Do you know what the price of that one is? $1,600. The same coach ticket.

Speaker 2:
[56:05] Tom, a coach ticket? $1,600?

Speaker 7:
[56:07] Yeah, because it's also because it's three flights and Twin Falls is a very small airport. But you take a look at what's happening. This is crazy. This is really crazy. And so you're seeing prices go up. Now, that's one example from Delta to a micro. By the way, in the question she's asking, what if Delta decides they're not going to operate by West later this summer, or they're not going to have that? She's going to have to go to Salt Lake City and then drive three and a half hours to get to her dad's place in Southern Utah. And so what's happening now is the airlines were carrying the initial cost. And now the airlines are saying, look, I wanted to keep my market share. I wanted to keep my customers. I wanted to do a little bit. So they kept a little bit of it. Now they're saying, I can't do that. So I got to get rid of my short haul flights that are just marginally profitable or not profitable. And I got to raise fares. And that's what's happening.

Speaker 2:
[57:03] While you're saying that, there's five other airlines that are going through this as well. Cathay Pacific Airways, a Hong Kong based airline, said it will cancel about 2% of its scheduled passenger flights from May 16th to June 30th. HK Express, a budget carrier, said it would cut about 6% starting May 11th. And then we already talked about Lufthansa, what they're gonna be cutting. And then Dutchess Airline KLM said it would cut 160 flights in Europe next month, amounting to less than 1% of its flight schedule. And some companies have already signaled larger reductions. Vietnam Airlines in March said that it may cut up to 18% of its international flights and 26% of its domestic flights. So that's big. We're seeing the stories. It's not yet fully scaled to everybody, but you're feeling the impacts so far right now, Brandon.

Speaker 9:
[57:51] Yeah, and I think this is just kind of the beginning of this, if it keeps going in that direction, because we just got to the point where the last fueled shipments from before the war started were arriving. So I mean, that lag effect is finally starting to hit. But that's why I think that oil's actually got a lot like interest rates going up, and counterintuitively, it could kind of knock the price down of a lot of things. Like people are saying this is going to cause inflation, but I think it's just going to devour disposable income because of what people have to spend on energy, what people have to spend on travel. And yeah, I mean, airlines, it's not surprising, one of the first ones to go, they've always had like razor thin margins. I think it's like, well, like 2% to 5%, and that's why they always have to get government subsidies. But yeah, one bright spot out of this, I think it could bring down inflation in a lot of other areas, because of how much more people are spending on energy.

Speaker 2:
[58:38] Yeah, you know, there's a great article by CNBC. It says, travels need to know a few things. Number one, know your rights. Every airline has its own policies about what it owes to passengers who face delays and cancellations. Federal rules require airlines to pay a prompt refund to a ticketed passenger, even those with non-refunded tickets if they cancel a flight or make a significant change to the itinerary. Number two, check your contact info. Make sure the airline has your contact information on the file in case it needs to get in touch with you. Number three, act fast. If an airline contacts you about a canceled flight or change to your itinerary, send nerd wallets. The sooner you act in contact in the airline, the more options you're gonna have. Fly nonstop. Flying nonstop to a destination is generally more expensive than booking a flight with a layover. However, it's good strategy for travelers who can afford it and want to minimize disruptions and consider travel insurance while you're going through it. So it's an interesting time where you're traveling right now. So it is something that's becoming real. Of course, we'll follow the story closer to see how much bigger this gets, but that's that part. Let me get to the next one. Tariffs. The president makes a comment about tariffs. He encourages companies not to seek tariff refunds. That's a Bloomberg story. And he says, I'll remember companies that don't seek tariff refunds even though UPS and FedEx have already began filing for some of the refunds. Here's what the president had to say about it. Go for it.

Speaker 15:
[59:54] On that topic, there's a whole number of very large companies, including Apple and Amazon and others, that have not sought reimbursements yet for the tariffs. Meaning they haven't tried to collect refunds. And from what I understand, part of the reason that they have waited is because there is a worry about, frankly, offending you. Would you find it offensive for them to try to collect a refund?

Speaker 5:
[60:20] It's brilliant if they don't do that. I actually think if they don't do that, they got to know me very well. I'm very honored by what you just said. If they don't do that, I'll remember them. I will tell you that. Because I'm looking to make this country strong. Supreme Court could have helped us. Now they have birthright citizenship. They'll probably rule against this. No country in the world has it. It's horrible for our country. And I just see it, you know? I see some of these Republicans that are nominated by me, asking those real bad questions. And looks like maybe we're going to lose that one too.

Speaker 2:
[60:54] Which one is he talking about? Looks like we're going to lose that one too?

Speaker 9:
[60:57] One of the races for the Senate.

Speaker 2:
[61:00] Yeah.

Speaker 7:
[61:00] I think he's talking about the Supreme Court reviewing birthright, I think.

Speaker 2:
[61:04] That could be it. Tom, what do you think about that whole exchange with tariffs and how I'll remember you if you don't do it?

Speaker 7:
[61:10] Well, I mean, let's face it. Most presidents are quietly the head of the Federal Trade Commission and they're head of the FCC because they appoint people and then they pick up the phone. And what we're seeing here is he's just playing the cards very, very openly. He says, I will remember you. I said, what does that mean? I'll remember you. And so people don't want to run a foul of a US president that will say your name and headlines potentially affect your stock price and also take steps. Yet FedEx and UPS both have had, they've got earnings issues. And I think some of these may not feel like, you know what? It may offend them. It may not offend them. Maybe the midterms will go to a more neutral direction. But you know what? We got to go get some of this money back. And I think it's that simple.

Speaker 2:
[62:09] David, where are you at?

Speaker 8:
[62:11] I find it absolutely incredible that the Supreme Court ruled against his broad-based tariffs. And now you have companies that, deservedly so, want to get their refunds. And then you have the president in a veil threat. It's a veil threat that he'll somehow come after them. I don't like it. I don't like a one bit.

Speaker 9:
[62:38] Anti-tariffs? You are?

Speaker 8:
[62:39] Well, yes. I am a free enterprise capitalist. I felt at home in the Reagan Republican Party in the 1980s. I believe in free trade because I think it unleashes productivity, it reduces protectionism, it forces companies to become more productive internally. I don't like tariffs one bit. Now, Donald Trump has been in favor of tariffs publicly all the way back to 1987. This is like religion for him. So, no, I don't like tariffs. I can understand what his objective is. I don't buy into, and I've looked at the data, that the United States has not been ripped off by the rest of the world. The United States runs large trade deficits because it's a consumption-oriented economy. It's geared towards consumer spending, and a lot of those consumer spending comes out of imports. Besides the fact that the flip side of the trade deficit is the capital account surplus, so that money comes back into the US markets. That's why the rate of return on capital has always been superior in the United States than it is in the rest of the world. That's why the cost of capital has been lower than it's been in the rest of the world. That's the flip side. It's called the balance of payments for a reason. It's because they balance. The trade deficit is the mirror image of the capital account surplus which every American has benefited from. So, yes, I don't agree with tariffs one bit. I don't even like the way that he carried it out because if you want to identify countries that maybe you're cheating and maybe they are, you do it on a one-to-one basis, okay? Liberation Day was something to slap on indiscriminately, tariffs on everybody and that's basically what he did. But I think that a lot of it was part of his agenda to bring in manufacturing, build a protectionist wall, attract manufacturing investment back into the country. I think it's a very- Well, it is a problem. Well, it's a very- look, when you think about tariffs, tariffs are a dirty three-letter word called a tax. It is a tax. It's a tax on goods. And it hits disproportionately the most vulnerable parts of society, which is the low-end consumer. And that's what- this does not do anything to resolve the case shape as to what's happening in the US personal sector. It exacerbates it. Of course, the Supreme Court, I'm just going to say, the Supreme Court already ruled against him. And then he's- the thing is that he's got these other avenues that he's pursuing. So just pursue those other avenues until they either expire or they get ruled against. But to then go and surreptitiously start to invoke threats, veiled threats to companies, private companies? No, not a big fan of that strategy.

Speaker 9:
[65:36] Well, do you think it's more national security or economic, though? Because, you know, what's, like, how do we fix the problem of other countries underselling companies in terms of what they could pay for labor, for manufacturing? How are we supposed to compete with that?

Speaker 8:
[65:50] Well, there might be reasons why these other countries in the world, you say, are underpaying their labor. It could well be that these other countries in the world have surplus labor. And if they have surplus labor, well, then it would stand to reason that their wage rates would be lower. Like in the United States, you know, right now, because of the out-migration file, we don't have… we have an unemployment rate really more than 4%. Are you going to come after Canada because the Canadian unemployment rate is 7%? Would you think that Canada should not have reduced wage rates or pressures because there's more of a surplus of labor in Canada or anywhere else in the world relative to the United States? You can't have it both ways. You can't sit there and brag about, well, we have a very healthy, vibrant labor market and we have tight unemployment rates, in which case, if that's true, you're going to have wage pressure in your economy. You can't have it both ways. You can't say we have the best labor market in the world and therefore our wage rates are going to be below our competitors. That makes no economic sense whatsoever.

Speaker 2:
[67:01] Well, let me ask you this. As a Canadian yourself, what do you think about Carney's relationship with China right now?

Speaker 8:
[67:09] Well, I think that his relationship with China is intertwined with his relationship now with really with the rest of the world. So I think that I think Carney has almost given up on the United States as a viable partner. So he's partnering with whoever is going to want to do business with Canada.

Speaker 2:
[67:33] As a Canadian, do you see yourself as China as the number one enemy of Canada or no?

Speaker 8:
[67:40] I would rather that Carney does more to foster a positive relationship with the United States than going and cozying up to China. Because I think China is not a military enemy. China is not a military enemy of the United States either, but it's a massive economic adversary. And if it's an economic adversary to your biggest trading partner, which is the United States, which is really the bread and butter for Canada's economy, it's a bit of a risk to go cozy up to China. But you see, this is the byproduct. See, this is basically what I would have done going into this war with Iran. I wanted to cobble together. You see, what you want to do is get a global coalition, just like George HW. Bush did. That was a global coalition against Saddam Hussein, you know, back in Gulf War I in 1990 and 1991. I would have put an immediate moratorium on the tariffs, okay, because to just give a kiss on the cheek to your partners. Well, he didn't do that because tariffs are so important to him. But yes, I find a lot of Mark Carney's policies problematic. I think that's one of them right there. I would rather that he worked harder. I'll tell you the truth. I know the Europeans loved his speech in Davos. I sort of like was thinking, because again, you read between the lines. You really want to poke Donald Trump in the eyes like this. And of course, he reacted. Now, I'm not saying that we have to go cap in hand and on our knees to the United States. But you know, I just wish there was more effort. You have to, it's like in our business, the financial industry, the know your client rule. You know, the people that have most successfully dealt with Donald Trump, whether it's Sheinbaum in Mexico or it's Melania in Italy, although he's a little upset with her right now. But there's leaders out there that have treated, know how to treat Donald Trump, okay? And so-

Speaker 2:
[69:50] Tom, what are your thoughts on this?

Speaker 8:
[69:52] I just wish Canada would have done more in that direction.

Speaker 2:
[69:54] Well, let me do this while you're saying that. And then, Tom, I'm going to come to you. Here's what Howard Lund think. He had some choice words for Canada. Go ahead, Rob.

Speaker 16:
[70:00] Time is on our side because the pressures on the US are only going to increase over time. Basically, you guys are in political trouble. The longer they wait, the better a deal you're going to have to do.

Speaker 17:
[70:10] Good for them. That is like the worst strategy I've ever heard. They suck. Look, we are a $30 trillion economy, right? We are the consumer of the world, okay? Carney has a problem with us. He gets on a plane and he goes to China. Does he think the Chinese economy is going to buy his stuff? China is entirely an export-driven economy, right? So what did he do? He came back and said, oh, we'll take their electric cars. I mean, is this nuts?

Speaker 2:
[70:41] Okay. What do you think about what he's saying here, Tom?

Speaker 7:
[70:43] So I think there's a lot of perceptions that go out there back and forth. And David, I'm going to present some numbers here. And I think some of the things you said there, I kind of disagree with a little bit. There's a little perception going. I think, just look at January. We have all the numbers for January. Canada exported to the United States $38 billion with the stuff and only imported $25 billion. So it was a net positive export for Canada making stuff and sending them to us of $13 billion. And because the US auto, with the interest rates, it gently went down toward the end of last year. The US auto sales perked up a little bit. And GM makes a ton of pickup trucks just right over the border from Detroit and Windsor. And so the auto exports to the US were like up 24%. But watch this, Pat. What percent of Canadian exports to the USA today, under Trump, Q1, arrive here duty free? What percent? Probably 95%. That's right! Which means that this whole war that Carney is starting with Trump, 95% of what Canada exported here is duty free. Trump tried to make a point. He actually moderated a little bit. And Carney's running around like Trump is this great boogie man stepping on everybody's feet when he's got a good deal going. And I think he just sold out his old economy, going to get BYD to bring electric vehicles to Canada. And BYD was known to be putting predatory pricing all across the EU and to undermine Mercedes and Volkswagen, which makes a ton of things, and the Nissan conglomerate and BMW. They undermined everybody. They sat there, what was it, Bulgaria? Check me on this. I think they have a BYD had an import place or a assembly, final assembly in Bulgaria. And they were sending all of this EVs into Europe and just undercutting everybody's price. Does Carney think he's not gonna get the same deal out of China, that they're not gonna do that? My goodness. So I'm kind of shocked. I feel like he's bowing to political pressure. Oh, it's fashionable to be anti-Trump. But he's got to look at the facts. It's a great trading partner. And he's sitting here with very, very few tariffs on things right now.

Speaker 8:
[73:04] Well, what do you disagree with? I think we're in total agreement, unless you said you agree with me.

Speaker 2:
[73:09] No, you said you were not supportive of the tariffs, of the way he was doing it. And something you said is that he said since 1987, he's been for tariffs. The surplus is where other countries win more from doing business with us than we do. And so a lot of presidents have negotiated favorably on behalf of China, which by the way, starting with Nixon. Nixon is who built China because at that time, everybody was worried about the power USSR was going to have and Soviet Union and all this other stuff. And then we said, hey, let's help these guys out. They were number 10 in GDP. I don't know what year they were. Pull up China GDP ranking in the world in 1970. Okay, 1970, how they were doing. And today we know they're number two. But what was China in 1970? Can you go to the ranking so we can see them ranked against others? Go to images. Rob, if you just go to images, there should be a ranking in 1970. Does it show it? What year is that? Yeah, so anyways, China was top 10, now they're number two. We've helped China become who they are. And now you want me to accept the fact that each president comes in automatically always favorable towards China? No, I kind of like the fact that finally somebody stood up to them. And I remember this was going to pass when I had a conversation with Rand Paul. And Rand Paul says, the Supreme Court is going to rule against the president. The Supreme Court is going to rule against the president. And the president started kind of saying, hey, I hope they don't. I hope they don't. I hope they don't. And we know what ended up happening, you know. So to me, a part of, I think, maybe what Tom is saying is the fact that all these other countries are winning from having the best customers in the world, which is America, and we need to make sure they're happy. You said something which was interesting, that it's a good debate to have. Should he have done it where he went after every country around the world instead of doing it as one liberation day? Maybe that's a good strategy to debate. I can see that being a good debate. Because the reality of it is, who was really wanting to have trade war with? Who was it with? It wasn't with everybody, it was one company, one country. He didn't want to have issues with Mexico. He doesn't want to have issues with Canada. His main thing was China. My opinion, your thoughts.

Speaker 8:
[75:17] Well, that's not what he said. He said that the rest of the world was ripping them off. Canada was ripping them off. Mexico is ripping them off. Europeans are ripping them off.

Speaker 2:
[75:27] You know what Canada is ripping them off? The part of Canada is ripping them off. You guys don't put any money into military. What percentage of GDP do you put into military? We make you safe.

Speaker 8:
[75:37] I'm not going to debate that one bit. You can say the same thing for the Europeans, although that is starting to change. I think that Trump was right all along. That's different. Living up to your commitments in NATO is different than talking about balance of payments, to which I will say that the president and his economics team do not understand what the balance of payments really are. Once you want to eliminate the trade deficit, you will eliminate the capital account surplus. You will have less investment coming in to US bonds, US credit, US equities. That's just how the balance of payments operates. The capital account and the current account have to balance. And you can't go on the podium and say we are the best economy in the world and then on the other side say but the rest of the world is ripping us off. How does that compute?

Speaker 9:
[76:36] They were tariffing us and we weren't tariffing them and they dumped cheap goods into our market without any consequences. I don't think they were worried about the trade deficit. I think they were worried about that. How are our companies supposed to compete with the Chinese company who could dump cheap goods into our market?

Speaker 8:
[76:49] I'm not talking about China because his tariff policy was multilateral. It was every country. Now, it's quite true that Canada was relatively unscathed and it didn't mean that he didn't raise tariffs on steel and tariffs on aluminum and tariffs on lumber.

Speaker 9:
[77:02] Because our steel companies were going out of business because they couldn't compete. We need steel companies in America.

Speaker 2:
[77:06] Didn't manufacturing numbers just come up? What manufacturing numbers just came up, Rob? Can you find that real quick? Please continue.

Speaker 8:
[77:14] Yeah, the point I'm making is that if you can actually identify, and I think this will, if you want to go through like we did with Japan in the 1980s with the 301, go do it. He didn't embark on that. This was a broadly based tariff increase. And if you go back to Liberation Day, which really told me that they'd have no understanding of the balance of payments, the tariff rates they were applying was based on the ratio of exports to imports. It's just a transaction, okay? You get the construction worker to come in and remodel your house. You remodel your house, and then you pay him a check. The United States runs a trade deficit with the rest of the world, and then they cut a check, and that check comes into US capital markets. It's a symbiotic relationship. If you want to go back into a world where the trade balance will be zero for every country in the world, which is what I think President Trump would like, we're going to end up with much weaker global economic growth. And because the US has a large closed economy, it will be relatively better off. But it will be like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Growth generally will be weaker, okay? You don't have to do much more than just go take an economics course in balance of payments economics, international trade economics, to know that free trade, if conducted properly, benefits everybody.

Speaker 2:
[78:43] I don't know about, I think...

Speaker 8:
[78:44] Well, that is true in theory. It's true in theory. It's true in practicality. Now, it doesn't mean that the principal cheater here has been and always been China, and not just in goods, but also in services. Well then, well, that's what we've done all along for... And the big problem was not the get round of negotiations that started in the 1970s, which was multilateral. It was when we allowed China in a WTO, unshackled, back in 2001. That was the problem, OK? Then to globalize it, then to globalize it. And it just showed me, I'll just tell you right now, everything I've seen out of the administration in the past year, since April last year, tells me there's a fundamental lack of understanding on how the balance of payments works. And I know that people, for some reason, they think tariffs are a great thing. I think that, once again, I'm a Reaganite, okay? We knew back then that the cheater was really Japan, it was really in the good sector, they primarily steal and autos, and we went after them with Section 301. We went after them, and then it got resolved. That's what you do. You can't treat everybody unilaterally. You know, the one thing I'll say about Carney, and I told, and this is where we're in agreement, okay, by the way, because most of your commentaries are on Carney.

Speaker 7:
[80:09] By the way, you said Carney gave up on the US and went elsewhere, and I'm like, how can he possibly give up on it?

Speaker 8:
[80:14] But hold on, I didn't defend that. I criticized it. I didn't defend it. One iota. And I think that it's going to cost us, because I think come July, we're going to have to start renegotiating the USMCA. And I don't know what's going to happen on that score, but the Free Trade Agreement is, you know, if you talk about, for example, all these, that 95% is still been protected under the the tariff and trade actions, that might come to an end in July. I would say, look, the reality is this, and this is where we're in agreement, okay? Canada, United States is not an equal relationship. It's never been an equal relationship. It's not an equal relationship. It will never be an equal relationship, because we depend. Like, we ship out, like, 80% of our GDP is shipped out south of the border. So the United States has always had economic leverage. And when you go back to when the Free Trade Agreement was signed before Mexico, back in the late 1980s with Brian Mulroney and Reagan and George HW. Bush, we just had to show in Canada that although we're going to be the immense beneficiary, you're going to benefit as well. But the United States is a large closed economy.

Speaker 2:
[81:32] Canada's a small open economy. For me, this is what I think, and I got it. So a couple of things I want to share with you. One, I think sometimes, finance guys like you, and I'm in the market as well. I want to see the market blow up. I know what happens if we continue with tariffs. Temporarily, I'm going to take a hit. And the more they print money, the more money I make. The more, so there's many ways, look at financially, where the right thing to do impacts the market. But I'm not interested in what's the right thing to do for 6, 12, 24 months. I'm interested in what's the right thing to do for America long term. Not short term, long term. So for me, when I sit there and I ask, who is the enemy to you? And you're like, well, you know, we kind of don't see China as the enemy and all this other stuff. Rob, this is 1970. Can you play, I want to show three things. This is where China ranked in GDP in 1970. What is that? 2, 4, 6, 8. They're number 8. Okay, they had an 84 billion dollar GDP, right? And so who was ahead of them? Italy was ahead of them. Canada and China were the same. Look at that, at the screen. It's the same exact size in 1970. China and Canada. And what ends up happening, Rob, if you play it, it continues and maybe put it on 4.0 speed. Canada passes China a little bit in 73. You know, go as fast as you can. Yeah, even faster. Look at that. And then slowly, China drops to 10th place behind Mexico and it comes up and then go all the way fast forward to today, pretty much where they are, press play. Yeah, that's fine from right there. They're number two. So they went from 80 billion in 1970 to 18 trillion. Who helped them become 18 trillion? Who got them there? US. And so now that we helped them become so powerful, Canada dropped, by the way, you guys went from 7th place to 10th place. They came to 2nd place. And America is sitting around saying, we helped so many of these other economies grow and now China's caught up to us. Look at the distance. Go to the score before 1970, what it was at. When they were 83 billion, where were we at? When they were at 83 billion, okay, look at this. 83 billion, a little bit more, Rob, if you can go to, right there, okay. They're at 83 billion and we're at what? 1 trillion. That's how many times? 12 times? Let's say 12X, 125X. And they went from 125X to what? Go to now, Rob. So you guys were 1 to 1, and then now it's what?

Speaker 9:
[84:09] 0.5.

Speaker 2:
[84:10] 0.5% a high, and we used to be 12X, and they are now 9X you. You used to be the same. So, and we don't mind doing this. I mean, that's how capitalism work. Everybody wins, good things that's happening. But now you want to come control, and we saw what they did during COVID and we just kind of went by it. Yeah, they could have controlled it much faster, but they didn't. They released it and they're like, yeah, let it stay open. You could have closed the airports. You could have told the world about it. No, $8 trillion of world economy loss, and we're supposed to think these guys are honest players. I like the fact that he's playing aggressive, to be honest with you. And then we spend what percentage of our income GDP on military, and I think Canada's, I don't know, it's 3%, 7%. One of you, either Mexico's 7%, Canada's 3%, or vice versa, it's a small number. We're the reason why you're safe. America's the reason why you're safe. And so if we finally have a leader that's pushing around his weight, I don't mind it. I like it. I don't mind it. And so that's the part, because if he's a competitive guy, from 1987 when he set it to now, he's seen us strengthen everybody else, and we're just sitting around clipping coupons and allowing them to get stronger. I don't mind a little bit of the audacity that he has. Let me go to the Commissioner, the new Fed Chair that's going through his confirmation hearing. I want to get your thoughts on this as well. Well, so he's being pushed a lot, and he's going back and forth, and Elizabeth Warren is accusing him of doing what Trump's going to want him to do, and it was actually good exchange. Rob, I think you have to couple those clips. Is this one of them?

Speaker 11:
[85:40] This is where she asked him to verify the 2020 election results.

Speaker 2:
[85:44] Right, so this is one of them. Go for it.

Speaker 7:
[85:46] That's a, gotcha.

Speaker 18:
[85:47] We'll start easy. Mr. Warsh, did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?

Speaker 1:
[85:54] We try to keep politics, if I'm confirmed, out of the Federal Reserve.

Speaker 18:
[85:57] I'm just asking a factual question. I need to know, I need to measure your independence and your courage.

Speaker 1:
[86:03] Senator, I believe that this body certified that election many years ago.

Speaker 18:
[86:07] That's not the question I'm asking. I'm asking, did Donald Trump lose in 2020?

Speaker 1:
[86:12] I'm suggesting you in 2020, the Fed made a huge inflation problem and you certified the election.

Speaker 18:
[86:19] So let me ask you another question.

Speaker 1:
[86:20] Out of monetary policy.

Speaker 18:
[86:21] In our meeting, you said you would be independent.

Speaker 2:
[86:25] Okay, by the way, go back. Was that Larry Fitzgerald sitting behind? I'm like, why is Larry Fitzgerald, is that him?

Speaker 9:
[86:30] Oh, wow.

Speaker 2:
[86:31] Is that Larry Fitzgerald from the Cardinals, the wide receiver or am I gonna get wrong?

Speaker 9:
[86:34] It looks a lot like him.

Speaker 2:
[86:35] Can you verify that? I may be wrong, but that looks like his twin. So there you go. That's the exchange that they're having. And then there's another one, Rob. Do you have the other one as well, where it's more from the sock puppet? Is this the one? Because this is the main one.

Speaker 11:
[86:50] Yes, I have, this is Elizabeth Warren asking if he'll end up being Trump's sock puppet.

Speaker 2:
[86:55] Okay, go for it. That's the one.

Speaker 18:
[86:56] Mr. Chairman, last week, every single Democratic member of this committee asked that you postpone this hearing and instead conduct oversight on the president's role in directing bogus criminal probes into Chair Powell and Governor Cook. The Senate should not be aiding and abetting Donald Trump's illegal takeover of the Fed by installing his chosen sock puppet as chair. It's an invitation for corruption and for economic catastrophe. We have the power to stop it and we should be using that power. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Speaker 2:
[87:35] That was Larry Fitzgerald.

Speaker 9:
[87:37] That's crazy.

Speaker 2:
[87:38] Why was he there? Which led to a lot of questions. Sadly, we don't have an answer yet, but we'll update you as soon as we do. Football and politics today on Capitol, pro-Hall of Famer, Larry Fitzgerald sitting behind Kevin Warsh at his federal reserve. Okay, listen, this is not about Larry Fitzgerald. This is about Kevin Warsh. So Tom, I'll come to you first and then David, I'm coming to you next. Go ahead, Tom. Thoughts on this?

Speaker 7:
[87:56] Well, first of all, Jesus Christ could have been coming up for confirmation and Elizabeth Warren would have found some angle to go after him and to say, do you think your relationship with your father in terms of a religious policy is nepotistic? I mean, it wouldn't have mattered who was there. Elizabeth Warren is going to go after it. Anybody, because she's part of the no Trump at any time, and here you have a guy that everybody believes is very intelligent and has a very moderated view of Fed reactionary tools. And what I mean by that is you never want somebody to turn the ship radically. Ships don't turn like that. They have to be gentle. And you also need a Fed that is less rearward looking and will accept certain forward looking. And the Fed typically reacts late. You look back at Powell. If anything can be said for Powell, and I kind of watch this, I feel like he's been late, that there were shifts that he could have been ahead of, not 350 basis point moves in a row, no, but a quarter point of moderation here and then be ahead of it. And this guy, he is seen as being, I was a fan of his and we were tracking him on Cal Street. Remember this, Pat? Who's going to come up here? And they thought it would be Hassett. Hassett was another candidate, correct? Kevin Hassett, I believe. And then this guy showed up and everybody was like, wow, you know, people were happy that it was Warsh. And I think that what you just saw from him is a feisty, measured response in the face of democratic pressure. And I like what I see in him and I like how he responded. And I'm not surprised even a little bit with Elizabeth Warren.

Speaker 2:
[89:56] David.

Speaker 8:
[89:57] I just have to go back one thing. Maybe I'm speaking Quebecois French. But we are in agreement, because I said that China is an economic adversary and made that point rather emphatically.

Speaker 2:
[90:09] You did.

Speaker 8:
[90:10] So on this particular thing with Warsh, it's just a really great political theater. And the reality is that the choice of the Fed chairperson is always political. Like Janet Yellen was appointed by Obama, and she worked in the White House, right? And Alan Greenspan, the maestro, was writing speeches for President Ford. So, it's always political. And we have to realize at the same time that the Fed chairperson is just a figurehead. It's a committee. He can't do anything on interest rates or anything on policy, without cobbling together a majority or consensus on the FOMC. It's the FOMC, and actually the FOMC voters, the governors, the president of the New York Fed, and the rotating banks. So, we tend to overplay this. He is the leader. He has one vote. It's the most powerful vote, but it's one vote.

Speaker 2:
[91:28] What is the process? If he wants to increase rates, what is the process?

Speaker 8:
[91:32] Well, if he wants to increase rates or decrease rates. Well, they have a two-day meeting, and they discuss it. I mean, he'll always throw what his particular view is. And then they discuss. You can actually, I mean, they produce the FOMC minutes a few weeks after. You have to wait five years to see the actual transcripts. And you could see it's a very fulsome discussion. And you could see there are descents. There's been times in the past where actually the descents were so large. It's happened with Volcker near the end of his tenure, where they get outvoted. So he's got one vote. It's the most powerful vote. But it's a committee. It's called Federal Open Market Committee. It is a committee. That's the one thing that doesn't come out. Most people think, because the way he's portrayed, that one person controls interest rates. It's very interesting that Donald Trump even pressures and pressures the one person. He's only got one vote. Like, why doesn't Donald Trump just come after the whole FOMC? Well, because we know Donald Trump, that when it becomes personal, he's going to come after you personally. And so we came after Powell personally. Did anybody really on the FOMC outside of Steve Myron vote against whatever it was that Powell wanted to do or not do? Donald Trump just should have come after the whole committee and maybe called each one of them out on the fact that they didn't pursue his more aggressive interest rate cuts. But he went after Powell. Powell is just the leader. It's like you're coming after the quarterback. Bring up the football analogy. You're coming after the quarterback. It's a whole team, right? So we tend to overplay the power of the chairman.

Speaker 2:
[93:23] So it's interesting. So it's seven members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, one permanent seat, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, four rotating seats from the other 11 regional Federal Reserve Bank president, seven governors, only 12 votes, and this group sets interest rates, monetary policies, decisions, move markets, inflation, jobs. So he's got one vote and his one vote is not above everybody else. Brandon, your thoughts?

Speaker 9:
[93:49] Yeah, that's super interesting. And I do wish that Trump would have come out after the whole concept of the Fed, the way he's coming after the head of it. And yeah, I mean, the thing with a lot of these people, I don't think there's like a lot of diversity and opinion. It's a lot like politics where you're either kind of a dove or a hawk. And, you know, they tend to, I think, over-correct a lot of the time. But this guy, for example, I was laughing, it says in the past that he was calling to raise interest rates. And in 2009, when we were at the bottom of a recession, he was suddenly dovish when Trump was trying to be dovish in 2018. So it kind of goes in whatever direction the wind is blowing. And not super excited, but, you know, he's probably a slight increase, a slight better than Powell. Because I think Powell has been consistently wrong every time, loosened too much in 2020 and tightened too quickly, too late. But yeah, no, I wish Trump would attack the concept more than just the person of it, because I think that we don't have a serious economy until the concept of the Federal Reserve controlling the price of money goes away or changes.

Speaker 2:
[94:50] You know what's the one thing people forget, Tom, is Elizabeth Warren makes it seem like him and Jerome Powell are best friends. And here's what they forget. Who appointed Jerome Powell?

Speaker 9:
[95:01] Trump.

Speaker 2:
[95:01] Trump did. So if there's one thing you got to give credit to Powell, is he did his job as much as he could, no matter how much hate he was, he got in trouble a little bit with this building stuff that was not pretty, was nasty. Hey, you spent this much money, you were supposed to spend this much money, and it was problematic. But at least Powell did his job. He is not the most liked guy in economy today, but he held it together. Okay, so good for him. So Kevin, he comes and she's asking questions like that. Oh, because he's appointing you, you're going to do this. This guy, Tom said it yesterday. He's probably going to be a, potentially could be a, definitely going to be for two, but he potentially could be a chair for three different presidents on the six years. So Trump, whoever gets elected 28, if they're one term, it could be another person next term, or it could be a two term, same president. So it'll be interesting while we're going through it.

Speaker 7:
[95:52] And by the way, what's interesting to look at, one simple chart, if we could look at one and move on.

Speaker 2:
[95:55] Go for it.

Speaker 7:
[95:56] I know we've been on this for a minute. You got, Robbie, you have the dot plot I just sent you to Wednesday. And that list of people there, you usually, you'll see 18, 19 dots on this, but you've got the 12 votes. And you can see where it's going. Scroll down, right there, click on that. See there, Pat? There it is. So there's the dot plot. Those are represented by the Fed voters, but they all get influenced. And the chairman of the Fed talks to these people, and he does lobby his group. And part of the job of the chairman of the Fed is to make the piece or keep the piece. And you can see right here, the majority of the dots are only down a quarter point for year-end 26. You can get rid of that. And then next year, they're only aiming to another quarter point. So unless we have economic stats that go crazy, this is where it is. But somebody, the summary of economic projections is also what you look at, and they publish that every third meeting or something like that. It's not every meeting. Summary of economic projections is like every...

Speaker 8:
[97:07] I think it's like twice a year.

Speaker 7:
[97:09] Yeah. So you can see which way it's going. But to say that he's one guy and only one vote, I think kind of understates the influence he has on these dots and these folks.

Speaker 2:
[97:23] Let's keep going. Let's keep going to the next story. Very interesting. Next story I want to get to is we covered jet fuel. Let's talk about Andy Jassy, the whole Amazon. Actually, you know what? Let's do Cash Patel. And what happened there with specifically the story of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Did you follow the story with the Southern Poverty Law Center? Peripherally. Yeah. Very, very interesting. So yesterday, everybody is doing their own thing. And then all of a sudden, it's dropped that this organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which by the way, originally, they got started for, with noble reasons, right, Tom? You were talking about Martin Luther King and...

Speaker 7:
[97:59] Yeah, 1971, right after 68 in civil rights.

Speaker 2:
[98:02] Yeah. So the intentions were good. And then all of a sudden, reports came out yesterday. Elon retweeted this. Mark Andresen retweeted this. There's a bunch of people on X. I'll get a bunch of those tweets. We'll get to a wrap. Is this the clip about Cash talking about that? Yes. Go for it.

Speaker 19:
[98:17] We're here today is to announce what the general just told you. The Southern Poverty Law Center in a massive sweeping indictment has been charged with allegations of fraud and using the banking system to perpetrate that fraud. I just want to talk about a couple of brief things here. The Southern Poverty Law Center themselves advertise to raise money to dismantle violent extremist groups for a period of at least a decade. They use their donor network to raise money to purportedly dismantle violent extremist groups. However, the SPLC, the Southern Poverty Law Center, used the money they raised from their donor network to actually pay the leadership of these very groups. I just want to say that again. They used the fraudulently raised money by lying to their donor network, thousands of Americans to go ahead and actually pay the leadership of these supposed violent extremist groups. The groups, as the general laid out, include the Ku Klux Klan, the United Clans of America, Unite to Right, National Alliance, the National Socialist Movement, the Aryan Nation Motorcycle Club, and the National Socialist Party of America, and also the American Front. In at least one of these matters, our investigation revealed that funds were used to facilitate commission of further state and federal offenses, totaling over $3 million. Furthermore, our investigation revealed that the Southern Poverty Law Center, on top of perpetuating this widespread, decade-long, multimillion-dollar fraud, conducted more criminal activity. They attempted to hide their criminal activity from our financial banking network. They set up shell companies and entities around America so that the financial institutions that we rely on as everyday Americans were deceived in believing that money was not coming from the Southern Poverty Law Center in the perpetration of this scheme and fraud, but rather fictitious entities they stood up to perpetuate this ongoing fraud. This is a serious and egregious violation of a group that purported to dismantle violent extremist groups, but in turn actually only fueled the hatred. This is an important case brought by President Trump's administration. We're thankful for the president for his leadership and funding of not just the FBI and DOJ, but his commitment to go out there and wipe out fraud, and conspiracy, and waste, and abuse wherever it occurs, including the Southern Poverty Law Center. Even though this money was made to appear to be coming from legitimate people and legitimate entities, we at the FBI, with our great partners at the Department of Justice, and in the state of Alabama, were able to comb through a decade worth of material, a scheme that took a decade to build.

Speaker 2:
[101:10] Can you pull up the tweet from the Department of Justice, showing what organizations went through it? I tweeted it to you. I'm sorry, I texted it to you. It's one of the things that was in my file right there. Okay, go for it. So watch this. And Tom, I'm going to come to you first. So this is the Department of Justice yesterday. Justice Bond Ransom's indictment against Southern Poverty Law Center, and that's supposed to be more than $3 million. And if you go a little bit closer to it on the right one, click on the right one, there you go. It paid a million to nationalize an affiliate, $300,000 to Aryan Nations affiliate, $270,000 to Unite the Right Member, $142,000 to former National Alliance Chairman, former KKK members got $73,000, and American front president and felon $19,000. Tom, why is it so important?

Speaker 7:
[101:57] Here's what's going on. There is very little difference between what we're seeing here as Southern Poverty Law Center and the fraud that we saw in creating fake hospices or fake daycares. Money was coming that was good money, like good tax dollars that were supposed to be coming to daycare centers in Minneapolis so that lower income people would be able to take their children to a daycare center and have trust that this was checked out by the government and the government's providing a subsidy there too. Okay. These guys were deceiving the donors to give them money and they were using it to pay themselves, but then they were also using it to start trouble by having, by actually funding people that create the problems that they say they're going to be solving. And so what they were trying to do is make these, all these enemies look bad and look like there was more racism and more problems than there actually was, so that they could help, you know, elections and they could help Democrat elections. And because the Southern Poverty Law Center used to pick a candidate, we could find all kinds of Democrat candidates standing up with these guys because it was like the old League of Women Voters, Pat. League of Women Voters was seen as being a premier, you know, fairly impartial group that was trying to help people get registered to vote, it was a good group, they won fair elections, all this. These guys were holding themselves out to be some wonderful supportive cast here, but they were out there trying to create all this discord so that the left could say, look how many problems we have in America, look at all these things are going on, we need Barack Obama to be president and we need this. It's a whole, it was a whole circular scam.

Speaker 2:
[103:46] Yeah, and by the way, Robert, you want to pull up a couple of those tweets on what they call Turning Point USA. This is Mark Enriessen saying, SPLC was one of the most powerful censorship forces in the country for decades, lavishly supported by many big American companies for many years. This is astonishing and deeply concerning. Look at how many views this tweet got alone. Go a little bit lower, 41 million views just on that one. Go to the next one, no, the other one, Rob, the one with Thomas Sowell. I think, yeah, the one I just sent you right there, Rabbit. Racism is not dead, but it's on life support. This is Thomas Sowell. Kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as racist. Look at this meme. Look at this meme. SPLC, racism. Keep it alive. We need it. We can't get rid of it, right? And then Charlie Kirk was on, this is of course a late Charlie Kirk. SPLC put a target on Charlie's back. By naming Kim and TPUSA their manufactured hate map, they used this fiction to monetize the ensuing hysteria and then funneled the proceeds into Charlottesville and other convenient vehicles to force a nationwide dragnet of mainstream. When Charlie said this, people are like, what are you talking about? Play the clip rap. And then we'll go to the Todd Blanche, where the reporter says, allegedly, and he says, no, no, no, there is no allegedly. This is what happened. Go ahead.

Speaker 20:
[105:05] The Southern Poverty Law Center has now labeled, you're in the club with me, by the way, they've labeled Turning Point as a hate group.

Speaker 21:
[105:13] Yes, it's coming from a hateful group. Yeah, it surprised them so long to get us on the list.

Speaker 20:
[105:19] What took you so long?

Speaker 21:
[105:19] I understand that they're literally putting high school chapters of ours on a hate group next to the KKK and next to neo-Nazi groups. And I mean, we can laugh this off. There's an element to this. Remember that there was a shooter that went to the Family Research Council years ago, inspired by the SPLC list. This is them trying to make us basically surrender at Turning Point USA. We're gonna do the opposite, our students are only gonna lean in even more. But they can't debate us on our ideas. They cannot have dialogue, they cannot actually go on to the merits of why they are right or why we might be wrong. Instead, they must smear us with the age-old one-liner that you are a racist or that you are a hater. And they're finally realizing the power of Turning Point USA, which is why they put us on this list.

Speaker 20:
[106:02] Well, when you're effective, you're a threat, right? So they called me the high priestess of hate.

Speaker 2:
[106:07] You can pause it right there.

Speaker 20:
[106:08] Right, Sam is up.

Speaker 2:
[106:08] You can pause it. Mother, what did Todd Blanch say about it? And then David, I'm going to come to you. Here's Todd Blanch. Do you have the question where he's being asked and says, allegedly, and he says, no, no, this is not allegedly. They were involved in Charlottesville. Go play the clip that you have first with. Go ahead.

Speaker 20:
[106:25] What about Charlottesville and the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally? Were they involved in that?

Speaker 22:
[106:30] Yes. So what we allege in the indictment and what the grand jury found is that one of the individuals they paid was one of the folks who helped organize that terrible event. So imagine what we're talking about, Laura. We're talking about an organization that actively came out and just screamed it from the top of their lungs when that happened.

Speaker 20:
[106:50] So just so people understand watching this, did these informants in some cases, given the evidence you've seen, actually initiate what would ultimately be these activities? And obviously Charlottesville ended with a tragedy.

Speaker 22:
[107:05] Well, we know that they were part of those. They were part of it. Whether they were the leaders or the initiators, that'll come out, I think, eventually. But what we do know is that the very entities that this group was raising money to go against are the very entities that they were taking the money in and paying to these entities and these individuals associated with those groups.

Speaker 20:
[107:24] What was the money used for?

Speaker 22:
[107:26] Well, it was, we don't know. Because again, all we know is that they said it.

Speaker 2:
[107:29] We can pause it right there. There was a message going around yesterday of who gave money to SPLC. These are some names. And we verified it today, Rob. One of them, it says George Clooney and Amal gave them a million bucks. Is that true? Confirmed.

Speaker 4:
[107:44] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[107:45] 2017. Unite the right. Rally, Clooney gave them a million dollars. Tim Cook, I didn't know that one, gave a million dollars plus another million dollars to ADL. Tim Cook has a story we're going to get into that because he just stepped down. And JP Morgan Chase, multiple reports saying that they gave $500,000 to SPLC from PJ Media. So more and more names are coming out. David, how are you processing this information yourself?

Speaker 8:
[108:12] Well, look, from where I sit, I always look at stuff from an economic and market perspective. But I would say that more from a humanity perspective, you know, the war that the Trump administration pledged to wage and is waging against, you know, fraud and abuse and waste. And in this case, hate has to be applauded. And then you start wondering how much more of this is there? You know, like when Trump was talking about the deep state and people were rolling their eyes, yeah, no, it actually exists. How many more skeletons are in the closet? That's what I'm thinking about.

Speaker 2:
[108:54] And I'm soaking, by the way, you know, this is like a very big victory for FBI, because the FBI kind of needed something like this. So good for them for having something. Your Brandon, your thoughts?

Speaker 9:
[109:05] Yeah, the stuff that comes to mind with the scope of how big this could be. It's like when you see those reports of we can't account for something like $21 trillion of the federal budget over the last 30 years. So yeah, I mean, it's probably a lot of stuff like this. It's almost as crazy as if the US government was to give money to something that ended up being a terrorist group in order to justify going overseas and fighting a war for it. So I mean, not that we've done that before or anything, but it'd be like that crazy. So it's like a flywheel effect, and it's a very effective model if you're looking to create a problem that you're raising money to solve.

Speaker 2:
[109:38] Yeah, and by the way, this is the clip that I was talking about when the reporter tried to say allegedly. Are you alleging? I'm not alleging. Watch this.

Speaker 12:
[109:45] I just want to make sure I understand that you're alleging that the Southern Poverty Law Center was paying the leaders of KKK and other groups to continue their operations?

Speaker 22:
[109:58] I'm not alleging it. The Grand Jury returned an indictment that says that. And so what the investigation found according to the indictment that was returned today is that they were paying. So Southern Poverty Law Center is raising money, asking folks to give them money to dismantle racism.

Speaker 19:
[110:15] You can pause it right there.

Speaker 2:
[110:16] Can you imagine that? Hey, and I don't know if there's any other reports coming out. Remember when all of a sudden everybody started dropping the N-word and it became a normal thing? You're like, wait a minute, what are you guys doing? I'm talking about specifically on Twitter. It's like you're just dropping, dropping. Is somebody saying, say that? To say how much it exists? And it's like, what are you guys doing here? Who's create? Well, you know, it's a freedom of speech. I can say whatever I want to say. And, you know, I know Elon is all a, what does he call himself? A freedom of speech absolute. What is it?

Speaker 9:
[110:48] Absolutist.

Speaker 2:
[110:49] Absolutist. It's fine, but you makes you think, were some people getting paid behind closed doors to keep this thing going? I don't know. But I do know that this is coming out and we're gonna learn a lot about a lot of different people. Now let's go to Tim Cook. While we're telling this story, you know, with Tim Cook giving a million dollars to SPLC, a report comes out that Tim Cook has stepped down as the CEO. What page is that in, Rob? Oh, there it is, on the bottom of 26. Tim Cook has stepped down as Apple CEO and John Turner's named successor. Tom, is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Speaker 7:
[111:27] I think it's probably a good thing. There's a lot of people, including me, that look at the Tim Cook line and say, okay, Tim, you've been kind of waiting for his next product. He's been cycling out the new releases of the iPhone. Let me ask you, Pat, do you really see a difference between your current iPhone and say two iPhones ago?

Speaker 2:
[111:48] No.

Speaker 7:
[111:49] There hasn't been any big jump. The battery seems to be fixed. They used to allegedly had the auto wear out features, so your battery would have difficulty charging, and all of a sudden you're buying a new iPhone because you thought the old one got tired, and in reality the device allegedly was managing a battery. What product? Remember when Steve Jobs came out with the eye with the... David, you probably remember this. Steve Jobs comes out on stage with an envelope and slides out a MacBook Air, and things like this. I don't remember the last time that Tim Cook had a defining product. The Apple Watch has thrived under him, but what has been the next product? And there's been some criticism about... There it is. Pulls out the envelope. Turns out it's a MacBook Air. I mean, the theater and the innovation and everything that was behind their products. Tim Cook is not known to be the product guy. He's known to be the incredibly efficient driver of the company, and I think it's looking for its next product. And well, you know what's interesting? This guy is a product guy. So that's the criticism has been, what is the next product?

Speaker 2:
[113:03] He's the Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering.

Speaker 7:
[113:06] Yep. What is the next product? And what is our AI play? Have been the big questions that have been asked on Apple. And now, you know, it's, and by the way, but you can't argue with the success of Apple under Tim Cook's leadership. But you know what? No train keeps going forever. There's no perpetual momentum machine. And Apple needs to find its next chapter and its product in an age of AI when things are going to be changing dramatically, especially in the app environment.

Speaker 2:
[113:39] David, your thoughts?

Speaker 8:
[113:40] Look, I don't think it ever comes down to one particular person at the top. It's the whole company. And I think that I look at Apple and it is really a high-end consumer gadget company. That's what it is. That's what it's always been. But it's got the brand name and what continues to ride, no matter who's at the top, is the fact they have a cult.

Speaker 2:
[114:03] Do you use a product? Are you an Apple user?

Speaker 8:
[114:06] Yeah, I am. They have a cult, but I don't chase like...

Speaker 2:
[114:08] You're part of the cult.

Speaker 8:
[114:09] I am part of the cult, but I don't have like iPhone 15, okay? Like it goes back... That's what they specialize in. And it's worked like planned obsolescence. There's not a company on the planet that has perfected planned obsolescence like Apple has. But yeah, I use the product, but whatever it is they produce today, I might buy cheaper like three years from now. You know what I mean? So, but they take advantage of that consumer psyche.

Speaker 2:
[114:44] Yeah, it's interesting because Tim Cook, Tom, came from a position of... You know how you were looking at who they chose to replace Bob Iger? It was the guy that was running the parks, right? And Chay Peck was the same thing as well, running the parks, right? So they didn't learn from their mistake and they're choosing the same type of a person to have a job.

Speaker 7:
[115:05] And they're back to the parks.

Speaker 2:
[115:06] Exactly. But you know what Apple did? Because Tim Cook, before he became the CEO, he used to be the VP of Operations, then he became the COO and then he became CEO, which is the traditional way of Operations guy that becomes, you know, because typically the COO is really the active president. And then so he ends up becoming the CEO. They're taking a complete different route. They're choosing a guy that's a product guy to say, no, we want the product guy to be a CEO. And by the way, do we have any clips of how he speaks? Like, is he a good speaker on stage? Does he have presence on stage? Are we going to get the days of a new product launch and him coming out and showing something and saying this is the chip you will put in your brain to have access to all Wikipedia and 600,000 books ever written. You will have all that knowledge. Is that him?

Speaker 11:
[115:55] Yeah, but this is a report. I don't believe it.

Speaker 2:
[115:57] I just want to know how he speaks. That's all I want to know. Like, is this him speaking?

Speaker 9:
[116:01] I don't think that's him.

Speaker 11:
[116:03] Is it?

Speaker 2:
[116:04] Is that it? No, it's okay. Can you do me a favor? Go to YouTube, type up his name and go to search popularity for most video. And let's see what comes up if he has the ability to be a good orator like Steve Jobs was and get the attention of speakers and get the attention of the audience. Okay, so zoom in to most views. Go a little bit lower. What is that? Who is John, CEO? I just want to know how he speaks. That's all I care about. I don't want to do an interview. I just want to know how the guy speaks on stage. Is that him?

Speaker 14:
[116:33] In the- Behind when it comes to AI.

Speaker 2:
[116:36] You have the other one on X speaking as well. Yeah, there you go. Now Rob, you're going to show us a commercial. Stop chasing invoices. Okay, all right.

Speaker 10:
[116:46] That's a long one.

Speaker 2:
[116:47] That's a legit one. It's called, pay your bills on YouTube so you can get free videos. Let's see this, audio.

Speaker 10:
[116:56] I don't believe we are. Not too worried.

Speaker 19:
[116:59] Not too worried.

Speaker 18:
[117:00] That was Johnny Ceruggi agreeing with him.

Speaker 15:
[117:02] Ceruggi has long been at Apple.

Speaker 2:
[117:04] That's a lot of communication, Rob. Phenomenal. I just have a very good flavor of how good of a speaker he is.

Speaker 18:
[117:10] There you go.

Speaker 2:
[117:11] Let's see it.

Speaker 10:
[117:12] Profound change at Apple, certainly in our products over the last 20 years is how we now do so many of those technologies in-house, and top of the list, of course, is our silicon.

Speaker 2:
[117:21] A little bit more charismatic than Tim Cook. Little bit more charismatic, because Tim Cook is very monotone. He's very serious. And by the way, I know a lot of people are, I like a couple positions Tim Cook took in San Bernardino shooting when he said, I'm not giving you the information to Obama. There's certain things he did. Anytime you have a position like that, you're going to get a lot of criticism, people are going to be able to say stuff. Of course, not a lot of good products came out of it. It was more of a business deal that he operated the investment well. Maybe now we're going to get some new products coming out of Apple, and we may be able to get David to spend more money because he's not spending enough money. Go ahead, buy new products. Yeah.

Speaker 9:
[117:59] Question for you. So, I mean, I kind of think and wonder, could a wide variety of people have done exactly what Tim Cook did and just not screwed it up? Because I mean, I think that the leader is really important. I started reading the book, The 21 Undisputable Laws of Leadership, and it's given me a good idea of like how far a vision could take something. I mean, was Steve Jobs' vision so powerful that anybody or not anybody, but like a handful of people could have taken it from 300 billion to four trillion. I mean, Jobs took it from like 14,000 percent increase in its valuation. And then what's the name? Cook took it a thousand percent. So was it so good and so powerful that a lot of people could have done that? Or was there something special about the moat that Tim Cook kept putting up around it?

Speaker 22:
[118:41] No.

Speaker 2:
[118:41] Listen, sometimes the mistake you make is, like you're in a relationship, you date a girl, she's a psycho, but she's a lot of fun. Then what do you date? You're like, I will never date a psycho who's a lot of fun. You go to what?

Speaker 9:
[118:56] Boring.

Speaker 2:
[118:57] Safe and boring. And you try to find a, you know, so did they go from crazy psycho Steve Jobs to, hey, we just need somebody that can talk to the, you know, quarterly calls and he's very conservative and he knows how to handle it well and it won't scare anybody. They went this way. But remember, after Jobs, they also went to who? When Jobs brought the other president from Pepsi, what was his name? Scully or something like that? John Scully. And so we're gonna see, I mean, the verdict's out and he's got a lot of pressure, but guess what? When Tim Cook became an employee, he was worth a few million bucks. Tim Cook is now worth $3 billion. This guy, if he does it right, he's gonna be a billionaire in the next few years. And maybe even he'll be able to afford to buy Apple products one day. Let's go to Andy Jassy. Andy Jassy called out Gen Z. Gen Z, brace for impact. You may be very offended by what Andy had to say. The gall, the audacity, the CEO of Amazon has to say something like this. I think you got a video on this. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy tells Gen Z that if they want to be successful, they have to pay their dues first. Go ahead, Rob.

Speaker 22:
[120:00] The other thing is, I was talking with a young person in college the last week or so, very smart person, asking them about their, what they want to do in the summer, and maybe full time, and we're having this conversation, and they were rejecting certain things under the guise of, well, it's not really my dream job. And I would just say, at 20, you know- It's a bit early for your dream job. You probably, you could get your dream job, but that would be complete luck. Like, you know, I think early on, you really have to be willing to pay your dues. You have to be willing to start at the bottom. You have to do whatever people ask you to do within reason. But you have to get good at the details. You have to learn to deliver. You have to learn to be reliable. You know, and all that learning, apart from being the right way, you know, I think the right approach to have, all those skills are skills that you learn, you know, from having to do all the little hard detailed jobs. And they build a skill set.

Speaker 1:
[121:03] By the way, you can watch a whole video and see what he's going through. It's seven minutes long. We're not going to do it today. Today, he's talking to Gen Z, right? To encourage Gen Z, which is great. But a New York Post story comes out. And you have to understand, this is a different Gen Z today, Kevin, okay? That says the following. You ready for this? Rob, if you want to put it out there so they can see it. Who needs PTO? Gen Z wants Ozempic on the job. And by the way, at first, I thought this was an onion story. Then I said, it's gotta be Babylon B. And I'm like, no, it's New York Post, the oldest paper in America. What the hell are we talking about? Forget free snacks in a break room for Gen Z. Choosing between jobs isn't always about salary, pay time off or cushy perks. It's about who covers their weight loss drugs. A new zip held survey of more than 1000 workers found 47% of Zoomers. The generation ages 14 to 29 said coverage like for drugs like Ozempic or Wegoi, Wegovi, how do you pronounce it? Wegovi? Am I saying it correctly? Wegovi. Wegovi would sway their decision between two job offers. This is a real story, folks. GLP-1 right now costs $1000 to $1200 a month without insurance according to GoodRX. And the funny part of this story that we just had Andy Jassy give an advice, then Gen Z says they want Ozempic on the job. On the same exact day, Amazon launches GLP-1 weight loss program, promising fast, convenient access. So Tom, I'm gonna lump in three stories together and see how you're gonna react to it. Take any angle you wanna take. Go ahead.

Speaker 3:
[122:38] Well, first of all, maybe it was all those free snacks in the break room that led to the problem that now you need GLP-1. Take all these sugar and Snickers and all, you know, granola bars that are nothing but sugar. Sorry.

Speaker 1:
[122:55] You wanna go to David or you?

Speaker 3:
[122:57] I'm okay. So I see two things on this.

Speaker 1:
[123:00] You got us too much vodka.

Speaker 3:
[123:03] I know. It's like, hey, Tito's and cranberry.

Speaker 1:
[123:07] Next time, remember the cranberry? In the morning, 9 a.m.? Okay, David, I'll come to you, Tom. I'll come to you afterwards. You ready?

Speaker 3:
[123:13] Yes, I am. So I think there's two things going on here. First of all, Amazon is doing what Amazon does. They distribute products, they put in programs, and they've got, you know, subscription programs for Audible and things like that. And so to put in a program to help you more economically get access to GLP-1 drugs, not a surprise at all. And then the other side of it is, we're living in, what do they call it, maxing? You know, we're living in the environment where people want to max out appearance and they're willing to do all these things and invest on it. And we're living in the microwave environment. Everybody, nobody wants to work hard. You know what I mean, Pat? They just want to put it in the microwave, beep, beep, beep, and get it. Just like Andy Jassy said, they want their dream job tomorrow morning. Well, guess what? They want weight loss tomorrow morning. Rather than stepping back and looking at things and saying, what are you eating? What are you eating? Do you eat late at night? All these normal things. Do you have apples versus a $7 bag of Doritos? You know, all these things. Oh, well, just give me the GOP so I can, you know, there's my microwave solution to losing weight. And by the way, this is expensive stuff. So if you're willing to give me, you know, a benefit of that, I might be willing to come to work for you. And then Amazon's like, wait a minute, tell what? You'll pay for it, guess what? I'll fulfill it. So to me, it's like the circle, it's a bad circle of life, but it's just an economic circle around weight loss, you know, with the, you know, zoomer in the middle wanting a microwave solution.

Speaker 1:
[124:44] David.

Speaker 2:
[124:45] I think that's a much bigger macro story than that. This is basically about how a large swath of the population is viewing how they're looking towards their career and the job choices that they're going to be making as opposed to, is this the right fit for me and how do I climb the ladder and how do I become more productive? So when you start talking about bells and whistles like this as the incentive for where I'm going to work, it tells me as an economist that this is a dead weight drag on future productivity growth. This is the way the mentality is for people doing a job search.

Speaker 1:
[125:27] Brandon, what are you thinking?

Speaker 2:
[125:28] Yeah, I have a hard time trusting fat people to be honest. And especially when it comes to like job…

Speaker 1:
[125:34] So you have a hard time trusting fat people?

Speaker 2:
[125:36] Yes, because if you can't be trusted to get yourself in shape, how can you be trusted to work hard and be reliable? And even if you try to work hard, you're probably going to not be too durable over the long haul. So I think, not to mention taking the route of taking the GLPs, like 12% of the population is now horrible. If you want to lose weight, you can start fasting. I mean, if you don't have the discipline to get yourself in shape, then how are you going to have the discipline to advance yourself in your career? So one naturally feeds the other. If you do difficult things, you can do difficult things again. So I'm not saying I don't trust fat people's character. I don't trust them to do difficult things if they can't do the difficult thing of losing the fat in the first place.

Speaker 1:
[126:16] You ever heard the song You Look Wonderful Tonight? I didn't think so.

Speaker 2:
[126:21] Maybe but it doesn't ring a bell off the top of my head.

Speaker 1:
[126:23] You know what song that is, right?

Speaker 2:
[126:25] I sure do. It was Eric Clapton. Eric Clapton, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[126:28] So what are you going to do when your wife comes and asks you, honey, how do I look? And maybe she's put on some weight after having a kid. Are you not going to say, babe, you look wonderful tonight? You're going to say, you look fat. You know what you're going to do?

Speaker 2:
[126:41] I have empathy.

Speaker 1:
[126:41] Are you a fat shaming guy?

Speaker 2:
[126:43] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[126:43] I hope you have a comfortable couch, dude.

Speaker 2:
[126:45] I am.

Speaker 1:
[126:47] No, I mean, look, I understand what you're saying. You know, the reality of it is, the challenge is, the not willing to do the exercise, not willing to do the routine of going to the gym. There's nothing healthier for you than actually moving your flipping body. One of the best things you can do is just move your damn body. Go out there, walk, run, exercise, play with your kids, play sports. You know, I tried to play some sports the last two weeks ago, whatever the Saturday is. And I tore my MCL and then my ACL is full. MCL, I've already told this story.

Speaker 3:
[127:20] What's the degree of caution?

Speaker 1:
[127:21] Yeah, it's funny though, when you're talking to doctors and doctors tell you there's four different ways to do the surgery for the ACL. I talked to three doctors, one of them this morning, one of them yesterday. The one I talked to this morning, he did surgery on the greatest of all time in one sport, so I don't want to mention the guy's name because then you'll know who the doctor is. And we're having a call together. And one way is the cadaver, like, you know, they're just gonna put it there and the guy show me the video. The other way is pulling from your hamstrings. And if you're not too, you know, you have hamstring issues, low-brack issues, that's not a good way to do it. Then there is from your quad, slightly a little longer recovery, and your quad gets a little bit weaker, and there's one other way of doing it. Patella. I think that's what it is, yeah. Yeah, from the knee, patella. So one doctor says two-thirds of his surgeries are patella, one-third is from the quad because that's the new way of doing it the last 13, 15 years. But I'm going through this phase right now. So we have to do what we have to do. And yesterday when doctor says, I want you to push, try to hyperextend your leg. Great. Lower your bottom of your knee to the ground. Fantastic. How high is your heel from the ground? I said one inch. He says, you're going to be fine. You're somewhat flexed. I says, can you stand up and touch your toes? I said, easily. He says, then we have to do a different kind of, it's so interesting going through this process, but folks, move, exercise. But if you do want some GLP ones, apparently you can get them at Amazon now. Can we do one last story? Let me see what story. Do we want to do one last story that we have left Rob? Is there anything we have to hit? Are we good? Because we've covered so many stories today. I think we're good with stories on what we got. David, great having you on.

Speaker 2:
[128:55] Thank you.

Speaker 1:
[128:55] Folks, if you're listening, David has a article he writes every year since you said, what year, 1998? Or did you say 1998?

Speaker 2:
[129:04] 1998.

Speaker 1:
[129:04] 1998. It's called Breakfast with Dave. And we'll put the link below for you to go read and study what he has to say. And aside from that, for those of you guys that are watching the podcast, you enjoy conversations like this, smash that subscribe button, helps us with our algorithms. God bless everybody. We'll do it again. Oh, tomorrow, we may have a special CIA-ish type of podcast. I'll just let you know if it goes live. If not, you'll see it anyways. It should be a good one. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.