Fed Hikes Rates, Oil Affordability Crisis & Paramount Threatens California Exit

Okay, just so you guys know, I got some bad news. I don't know if you guys heard this or not. This just happened. A lot of people are not happy about this. Forbes 400 list billionaires. Do you know 590 billionaires were not rich enough to make it on the Forbes 400 list? Catastrophic. Times are hard. You know, and a number came out saying Americans' income hits record high. Then people are like, wait a minute. Whose income is hitting record high? Top is hitting record high, but at the same time, lower earners lose ground. So the whole concept of rich getting richer, poor getting poorer, affordability, we got some of that that we'll be talking about today. Humberto came in today pissed off. He parked his car 500 yards away, and he walked here because he's trying to save money on gas. So he parked. He no longer – he walks. He was sweating. He was wet. You know, he knows what I'm talking about. He had his mustache all ungroomed. He had his mustache. Look, as much as we're laughing, having fun with this, people are having a challenging time with gas prices. We're seeing it with diesel, and I'm sure you saw the story on JPMorgan Chase. They're asking the JPMorgan Chase. They're asking the JPMorgan Chase analysts, and they said, can you model what's going to happen with oil prices? I don't have a clue what the hell is going on. When have you heard an analyst saying, I can't predict what's going to be happening with the marketplace? And because of that, we decided to bring two guys in, Snyder, Jeff, a very smart guy. He comes here. He gives us a workout here. Him and Tom fight it out on who's more smart. It gets both of them going a little bit, which is good competition. We like that. I don't think we fight. No, you fight a lot. You guys fight hardcore. That's all fair, though. That's all fair. And then we also have the good looking, handsome. Could have gone a different direction in his life. Could have gone on Hollywood, maybe done Top Gun 3. I don't know. He could have done a complete different direction, but we've got the great Will Witt here with us as well. So with that being said, let's get right into it. I'm glad we put him in the middle of these two so they're not fighting over brains. You don't need the brains. Let the good looking guys. Well, look, when we need sports commentary, we're going to go to Will. We have to end up with him. Will knows a lot about sports. He just made it very clear on how much sports he watched growing up, and maybe he'll share that story. Yeah, exactly. So, okay, Paramount leaving California. Where are they going? Nobody knows. There's some speculation. But what everybody knows is they're leaving California. Now, why would a company leave California? It's not like they're doing anything bad. Alicia, you can bring it, no problem. But they're leaving California. Number two, Massey wants to impeach Hexet. Johnson wants to shut down the government. Massey's saying, why are we doing this if we're about to lose? Midterms, we've got only a few months left to fix this. Others are saying, why are you going after Hexet? This is not the way of doing it. Maybe we'll have that conversation here together. Then you have the Fed rate increase that happened. Kevin Warsh, Tom was panicking for a few weeks, worried about if that was going to happen or not. It did. Rates went up a quarter of a basis point. He came out, and some say he's trying to be his own man. Some say he made the right decision. Some are upset at it. The Bonds folks, like, what's his name, Jeffrey Gunlach, he thinks it needs to go up even another point. Trump thinks it needs to go up. If it doesn't go down to 1%, we'll have that conversation, how it impacts you as the individual that's going through this. And then we talked about that in a minute. Houthi's drone strike over Mecca, and Saudi's like, wait, what are you doing? That wasn't us. We would never do such a thing. It was you. No, we would never do such a thing like that. So now Saudi's coming up to ask Trump for help. Trump is saying, we're not going to be involved. We'll get into that story as well. Rogan says, if AI was running the world, there would be no wars. He says he thinks AI running the government would stop all wars on the planet. You guys don't even know that's one of the stories. I kind of want to know what you think about it. Would it? Would it be better? Would we have more wars, less wars? Would there even be mankind for there to be no wars? Who knows? Maybe it sparks a good conversation. And then we got Vivek Ramaswamy, once a superstar on the Republican side, now going against Amy in Ohio. The CalSheet numbers came up. And the CalSheet numbers are not looking favorable for Vivek. And maybe we can talk about why that happened, why that's happening. And then Kash Patel. You know, I'm watching Kennedy. What's his name? What's the gentleman's name? John Kennedy. He's phenomenal. He's asking Kash. I heard you changed the requirements to be an FBI agent. We did. Now, why would you change the requirements for bestiality? He says, we have to do it because of if people were tied to, what does he say? If people were tied to, what do you call it, human trafficking and you were forced to. He says, so we want to protect them on both sides. He says, oh, so you're going to protect animals from bestiality? He says, no. He starts laughing. So people are wondering, why would you allow people who have experienced bestiality to become FBI agents? It's a valid question to bring up. It's actually a very weird thing to even do. His answer was worse than the question. His answer? It was far worse than the question. Whose answer? Kennedy's or Kash's? No, Kash's. Yeah, it was a very weird question. It was a weird answer. The implications of his answer were far worse than the question. So, you know, I think I have an idea of what I think they're doing with that. And maybe we'll get into that. Lindsey Clancy's holdout juror, a man who interviewed him. His name is now out there. His brother's coming out talking about why he made the decision. And one African-American man who interviewed him is saying why he chose the position from day one and never changed. And if farmers who voted for the president are not happy right now, they're having a hard time financially. And we'll definitely talk about some. Gas prices. And there was a college girl, I believe, at your college, Pennsylvania, was attacked. This video went viral. Nobody on mainstream media talked about it at all whatsoever. I'll go to Will on this. And then last but not least, for some of you guys that are watching football, for those of you guys that watch football, I'm going to give you a statistic, which is very crazy. There's this quarterback named Josh Allen, which is kind of a big deal. Did you know, Adam and Tom, that Josh, and by the way, Will, I know you follow this stuff closely. Did you know Josh Allen has more Russian? Touchdowns, 83. Then Frank Gore, all-time. Then Edgrin James, all-time. Then Tony Dorsett, all-time. Then Harold Campbell, all-time. Then Ezeal Elliott, all-time. Then LaShawn McCoy, all-time. Then Eddie George, all-time. Then Ricky Williams, all-time. Then Tiki Barber, Josh Allen. And Josh Allen is not even a flippin' running back. All these guys were great running backs. He's a great running back. He's a quarterback with 83 rushing touchdowns. Holy moly. And I bring this up because this man's a diehard Bills fan. Oh, Bills. And I used to be a Bills fan when I first came to this. It's very common for Iranians that they come to America, they become Bills fans. But they're known for it. It's very natural. Yeah, Thurman Thomas, Beebe, all those old guys. But anyways, with that being said, before we get started, we just recently came up. 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Go to FLB.com. Place your order. Get all the colors for yourself, your son, your husband, your brother. Super, super comfortable shirts that we have here. But go to FLB.com. Get the latest Pima cotton shirts. And start sporting the FLB gear. Again, FLB.com. With that being said, let's get right into it. First topic I want to start off with is interest rates. The Federal Reserve raises the rates. Everybody said Kevin Warsh goes up on the stage. He took maybe five seconds. He says, The Federal Reserve has decided to raise the rates a quarter of a basis point. The market within minutes loses a half a trillion dollars of valuation at the time. It's recovered ever since. Lots of topics. Lots of people started talking. What's going to happen next? Jeff, when you first saw this, were you surprised? And was this the right move? No and no. You're not surprised? No, no. But you don't think this is the right move? No, it wasn't the right move. Okay, tell me why. There's a couple reasons. First of all, the reason the Fed actually did raise rates is simply because the Fed raised rates. They don't know. They're basically saying, we think what's going to happen in the short run is that consumer prices are going to go up, which they already have due to energy prices. We're worried that they could spill over into other prices and become broader inflation. Inflation went up to what? 5.3, whatever the number was. Four, four and a half, depending on which measure you're talking about. Right. The CPI versus the PC. Right. They look at the PC deflator, which has been a little bit higher than the CPI. But they realize that an energy shock doesn't necessarily become inflationary. In fact, historically, it doesn't. So when you look at their summary of economic progress, projections, which is the material that comes out with press conference what they actually model and what they're actually expecting is that consumer prices will go up in 2026 and then decelerate in 2027 okay so if that's the case you ask why the hell would you raise rates if you actually think that there is no inflation problem next year other than energy prices why would you raise rates and the answer is they're not actually confident in their projection they think that this is going to happen because this is what normally happens however they also remember what they said in 2022 so basically kevin warsh is taking out a somewhat of an insurance policy it's more of a symbolic symbolic insurance policy than not we're going to raise rates because we think this is a one-time increase in energy prices and once the oil prices go back down lower we won't have an inflation problem we don't know for sure because i don't want to be jay powell and be criticized heavily by basically everybody for not doing something we're going to proactively raise rates to make it look like we're we're on the ball here about an inflation problem but we don't think we have but we might actually have so it's it's um it's a combination of so is it the right idea is it the right is it the right tactic no of course not they're just basically saying we're not really confident that what we think is going to happen is going to happen well what are you at with that it's pretty laughable that they're thinking you know we might not have an inflation problem later on and thinking that oh it's going to get better and everything's going to slow down i mean you're talking about five percent inflation but when you look at the numbers on just basic consumer goods i mean there's inflation on things with beef and coffee and you know normal things that people are using that is much higher than just a five percent increase so i see this getting a lot worse before it gets better but to me the real question is you know i i'm an anti-fed guy i think the federal reserve has been bad for america since its inception um you had the second central bank of the united states which was shut down then they made the federal reserve and for me i just don't understand why we have 12 people who are deciding essentially the economic future economic reality of a 30 trillion dollar economy it makes no sense and it's the same thing because you know trump is talking about interest rates i would not want trump to be in charge of this either lowering it to one percent yeah you don't want that no lower interest rates are bad okay i mean you heard japan also raised the rates uh to uh highest in 31 years well that raises another question okay if this is not just a u.s problem right if we're having this energy shock and the effect on consumer prices in europe in japan in asia not china china is a different story entirely but most of the rest of the world so most of the rest of the world is having a consumer price problem what the hell is the u.s going to do if it's a global factor it's a set of global factors why is the fed responding to global factors that are beyond its capabilities to begin with and i agree with you will the fed is it's not what everybody thinks it is it doesn't actually control the economy in fact the real purpose of the fed is for periods like this so if you're a politician like trump you can say this is a mess you guys screwed it up uh this is i didn't do this it's not my fault it's your it's your fault the fed is basically a lightning rod that's what it exists for yeah it's easy to blame people or it's easy to blame the fed as a politician for all the problems that are going right anything you know the market can blame the fed for raise oh stocks went down damn fed like why did they raise rates i mean it's it's the illusion of control so tom let me ask you this so if japan raises the rates and typically when you're looking at japan uh raising the rates and us we're not on the same page 75 to 80 percent of the time not moving together okay we're not 20 percent of the time to 25 percent of the time we move together what we do they do the other 75 we raise the rates they raise the race to the highest and we know at one point these guys had negative point uh one percent was their rates for about an eight-year period from 2016 to 2024 which that's the extreme complete opposite by the way when we're talking about them raising their rates you know what the japan's federal rate is right now what's what do you think their rate is right now one and a quarter one percent oh wow they're exactly at one percent right now it's not like it's a astronomical number that they have they're at one percent they stayed negative for eight years why do you think both parties japan and japan are raising their rates japan and us are on the same page with this i think they're on the same page for different reasons and i and i think you don't think there's like a correlation between the two i think they watch each other but i don't think there's as much correlation when you take a look at what what our fed did or what our fed did is is something that's non-correlated they said we're raising rates and by the way you guys are teasing me about fighting with jeff i'm gonna fight with you but i agree with i agree with i agree with jeff on this and i'll go into the specifics and it is a supply shock to be exact that is 65 percent the barrel of oil which has moved since february 28th when the fund started and it is 35 percent the 321 crack spread which has been driven by refinery closures in the united states and we have a shortage of refinery capability which also has raised the price of a gallon of gas and worse a gallon of diesel because the economy runs on diesel and that's my point the economy runs on diesel and you can take a look at the inflation you're seeing everywhere from a strawberry to the gallon of gas and you find it's in the supply shock that is related to energy and so they are taking a pay if they if they here's the what the fed did i'm going to prove my independence from the president i'm going to raise rates a quarter point not a half not a whole point so not like a not like a i'm just going to raise by a quarter point and i'm giving lip service to inflation because i don't want to be wrong i agree with jeff on that point they basically did this to give them a get out of jail free card if inflation keeps going up well i i tried i raised a little bit that's the textbook thing to do except the inflation is not related to that and when they're talking about next year go down basically what you need is you're only going to get part of it back you stop the war and you get oil running and you get the venezuelan stuff the heavy crude coming across the gulf of america coming to houston okay you're going to get some relief but you're not going to get relief on on refining costs in the u.s you're only going to get some of it back and so just and raising rates by a quarter point doesn't build another refinery raising rates on a quarter point doesn't open the street of hormuz and raising rates by a quarter point so why do it why do it because they wanted to get out of he wanted to prove his independence from the president wanted to say it's inflation because everybody's saying inflation inflation inflation and he's getting beat pretty hard let me ask you a question does does this right now make acid look good because he was another one that they were looking at so yeah so you are would you think he would have done anything different no there's there's technical reasons for this too i mean you don't want to get into the econometrics here they have something called r star which is how they evaluate where interest rates should be and there's a whole big argument there what i'm asking you is the following could the president have chosen somebody else that would have not been the president not raised rates and would have lowered it no in this situation this is very important by the way if you if you can isolate this issue go for it because a lot of people are saying maybe he could have chosen somebody else you're saying made a difference so anybody the president would have chosen you're saying it would have been the same result it would have been the same because the pressure they get from who the pressure they get from first of all the staff the look the federal reserve does take a look at the economy they have all these sophisticated econometric models that tell them they should do this if this set of circumstances arises and that set of circumstances a bunch of these boxes checked so whoever was going to be fed to the federal reserve chairman was going to say i have to raise rates because the staff is telling me i have to raise and by the way the issue is the misunderstanding of inflation they're saying it's inflation it's inflation well wait a minute it's like having it's like having the flu what flu do you have do you common seasonal flu do you have covid they're saying there is inflation pat and everybody around him is saying inflation so guess what you reach into batman's utility belt and you pull out a quarter point increase but they're failing to look at what's causing the inflation it is not overheated driving economy with a case-shaped economy by definition the middle class isn't getting jobs and raises and and and wage inflation which drives broad inflation because you have to pay your people more than you have to raise price on your products that's not what we're seeing it's a supply shock inflation but they're sticking with the it's inflation and they made the move look i'm gonna default to you guys when it comes to these macroeconomic things i'll just get my two cents if you told us six months ago a year ago that the new chairman of the fed would basically go against trump and raise interest rates i'd say you got to be kidding me because the the sort of the illusion was that trump was handpicking exactly who we want in the fed he's basically condemning jerome powell and he's going to handpick his guy what we've just realized is trump is not a king the guy he picked to be chairman of the fed and his first major move was like yeah sorry trump inflation's up i'm going against you and by the way it says it was unanimous by the committee 12 completely unanimous so when trump says this was only for political reasons i don't think so i think they're actually that's what that's trying to fight inflation but i think that's what jeff is saying and to me uh uh i would rather know that and by the way what do you think is a likelihood that kevin talked to the president telling him that i'm going to be raising the rates before actually doing it do you think that conversation happened what do you think he was asked about and he evaded the question but what do you think is likelihood that they spoke of course he did okay so to me what yeah but but i will tell you i don't think trump is as pissed off as uh you would have expected him to be i i don't think trump is pissed at kevin i i think trump is sitting there saying here's the conversation could have gone something like this hey mr president i have to raise the rates and they're voting unanimously and i'm telling you the news first yeah great then trump may say i'm gonna trash it as well and i'm gonna disagree with it publicly no i know mr president what you're gonna do i'm just letting you know as respect that you're gonna know a call could go The people I see that are surprised are maybe the guys like Tom, maybe the guys that are into business, maybe the guys that are saying, maybe not even you, that it's people that are like, why would they? raised the rates. Why would they do this? This is not the right thing to do. Even Trump doesn't seem surprised that they raised the rates. Were we about to have the clip there where Trump talks about it? And by the way, correction, the rates in Japan is one and a quarter. You were right. So it's not one, it's one and a quarter. This is the clip with. The comparison is in Japan. It's how it's the U.S., the Federal Reserve usually acts in concert with every central bank around the world. Japan is the outlier. Political and hostile. Yeah, so again, these things are global. You're saying the EU. Play this clip. Go for it. Watch this clip. This is Trump. Go ahead. Yeah, I do. I mean, I'm relying on Kevin, but he's got, you know, a very tough board. He's got a board that was put there by a lot of other people, and the interest rates are too high. They're not appropriate, and I talked to Kevin and I said, you might as well vote with the board because it's not going to matter. The board is very hostile. They're very political. They're doing the wrong thing. They're a bunch of politicians or people put on by politicians. This is my point. That's a shame because. You can pause it right there. My point is, he is not pissed off at Kevin the way he was pissed off at Powell. It's a very different relationship because I think even he knew. So let me get to the next story here, which kind of goes together. Do you know what is special about today? Do you know the record numbers on the highest diesel price ever per gallon is today. Ever. In the history of America, today's the record. Ever. 645 is today. The previous highs that we hit, numbers-wise, was, June of 2022, was the previous AAA high that we hit. This is right around when the war got started with Russia and Ukraine. And if you want to go even previous to that, when we hit a record high, was I think 2008 when diesel hit. Is it 8? I think it is 2008. Yes. Peak of July of 2008. So, 476, that was the peak. We had never experienced that before. June 22, 581, we had never experienced that before. And then today, 645 diesel, we've never experienced. This before. So, you'll hear a lot of people say this directly impacts. So, some people may say, well, but I don't drive diesel. It's not about you driving diesel. It's about all the trucking companies, transportation, moving. They're paying more. Cost is going to go up. They have to pass it down to somebody else. You saw burger prices being higher and you're seeing a reflection in different places. I'm going to go to one story, then, Jeff, I'm going to come to you first. So, JPMorgan Chase and Tom brought it up this morning. JPMorgan Chase is being asked about what they think is going to happen with oil. Give us an opinion, Will. You're an analyst at JPMorgan Chase. What do you think is going to happen? Here's what the analyst said. This is a Bloomberg article. More than six months after the start of the Iran war, JPMorgan Chase, oil analysts, are stating what many traders have been saying privately, the path to the end of the war is increasingly impossible to predict. So, if you can't predict how it's going to end, I cannot tell you what's going to happen to oil prices. Several economic red lines, the bank assumed the administration would be unwilling to cross, including oil above $100 a barrel, gasoline near $5 a gallon, surging treasury yields have already happened, making the exit strategy less clear. Analysts, including Natasha Knieva, said in a note, the market is on edge, in our view. The analyst wrote, oil fair value in September is estimated around $90 a barrel, prices through close to $106, and implying the market is pricing at a risk of additional 4 million barrels a day of supply losses, on top of the 10 million barrels a day already disrupted. So, it seems like the market can't say what's going to happen to oil prices. What do you say, Jeff? It's not really about oil. Like you said, it's about diesel and gasoline, and that's where the problem is. The bottleneck in energy has moved from oil to the distillates. There's a lack of refinery capacity, as Tom pointed out, in the United States, which is coming back to haunt us at the worst possible time. You've got disruptions with Russian diesel exports, which have been banned, because they have their own problems over there. You've got issues with the Middle East, and then all sorts of shortages that are going to start appearing in Asia and other places, which is going to bid up the price of diesel as well as gasoline. With crack spreads, and the crack spread is simply a market price that gives you an estimate of how the physical reality of the energy market, and the diesel crack spread right now is a ridiculously high $112 per barrel, which is insane. But that goes to show you the level of desperation and urgency in the energy market, because there's that level of potential shortfall in diesel, and we're rapidly running through all the inventories and supplies as it is. So the market is basically saying, once that physical shortfall really starts to manifest itself, we don't know where prices are going to end up. The $6, $6.50, $7 range that we're getting now in diesel is probably just the beginning. So diesel prices. How high do you think it's going to hit? We could see $10. $10 a diesel. By when? I have no idea. That's the thing. Give me the timeline. Shortest, latest. Shortest will be the end of the year. Of course, we're eventually going to hit $10, but I'm saying like. End of the year. It's that soon. It's that close. In December, diesel could hit $10 a gallon. $10 a gallon. And then the consequence. Why do you say that? Based on what? Again, the crack spread. The crack spread is an estimate of how much of. There's a price dislocation in the market. Is this it right here that you're talking about, the crack spread? No, that's World Inventories. Can you pull up the crack spread real quick? So the crack spread shows what? The crack spread shows you how profitable it is to refine a barrel of oil. That's 3-2-1 crack spread, which is oil, which is gasoline plus a distillate fuel. Explain it to the average person out there so they can understand. Yeah, I've never heard of the crack spread. No, we're sure today. I thought we were going to go to a porno or something. We'll have a lot more fun. We've done that before, but go ahead. When we're talking about crack spread, you know things are not good. Yeah. So the crack spread basically tells you the price of oil. Depends on who it is, but yeah. How profitable is it to convert. Sorry. I'm just saying. It's true. You guys got dirty minds here. Focus. Go ahead. How profitable is it to refine a barrel of oil into. In a 3-2-1 crack spread, it's three barrels of oil into two barrels of gasoline and one barrel of distillate stuff. Diesel, it's a little bit different, but it's a similar idea. And so when the crack spread is high, what that basically tells you is that it's very profitable to take a barrel of oil and turn it into something useful. And the reason it's profitable to do so is because the marketplace says, "I want that something useful, and I'm so desperate for it, I will pay a premium to do so." So the crack spread is basically a premium on supply. Jeff, who else agrees with you that diesel could hit $10? If the JPMorgan Chase analyst is not making any predictions, who else agrees with you that could hit $10? I think the marketplace does. The marketplace does. The marketplace. That's why the crack spread is that high. But also, I mean, the reason they said we can't model this is because they don't want to say it'll be $10 a gallon. So do me a favor. Do you think the President knows this? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so if the President knows this, and you're in his ear, and let's just say that conversation is taking place, "Mr. President, diesel could hit $10 by December. Midterms are when? November." What does he keep saying? Gas prices are going to drop right after the election midterms. Why is he saying that? Because he needs to win midterms. You think the average person's buying that? No. Okay. So let's say it does go to $10. What happens to America? What happens to the market? What does the average person do if it hits $10? If it hits $10, what will happen is you'll see layoffs. You'll see jobs disappear. You'll see companies that are struggling. You'll see a lot of weak companies that have been kept alive through refinancing debt start to go under. It will be economically -- it will be like every other energy shock that we've gone through in history. It leads into a recession. And I think Trump knows -- I've said this from the very beginning. Trump said, "Iran is worth the cost." If we have to go into a global recession, if I lose the midterms really badly, it's worth the cost. And so everybody expected these -- you know, the idea that there's these red lines in the energy market? That was never the case. Do you agree with him that Iran's worth the cost? If he gets it -- if he executes it correctly, yes, it will be worth it. Long run. So you're part of a minority group that believes that. I understand, yeah. But you're saying if he gets it done, it's worth it? Why? Because the short run -- the pain in the economy will be in the short run. If Iran actually turns into a -- you know, what we all hope it could be, that's a long-run future that's hugely positive. So it would be worth the short-run economic pain and political pain, because it's going to be political pain. I think Republicans need to steel themselves for how this election is going to go. Well, where are you at with this? Well, I just want to say this. When the Iran war started, I was one of the few voices who was saying, "I don't think this is a good idea." Everything like that. And I got called a liberal. I got called a traitor. I'm now a horrible person and all this and no longer a conservative. You're a Russian shill. A Russian shill. And everyone was telling me at the time, "Go back and read the comments on my videos about the Iran war." They said, "Two weeks, this is going to be done. It's all going to be taken care of. Oil prices are going to go way down. Everything's going to be great. We're going to figure it out. And now look at where we are." And I hate to be the guy -- But what was your reasoning for not being forward at that time? Well, I think we've seen this song and dance before with the endless wars. And for me, I just -- I don't see it working out any other way. Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan. I mean, it all seems to me the same to me. And I didn't want America dragged in. And that's not just from Americans going overseas and being separated from their families, potentially dying, but also from this economic standpoint that we're looking at. It seems to me like you're making companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing incredibly rich with these defense contracts. And I know, again, people will be like, "You sound like a liberal right now. Anti-war liberal." But to be honest, this is what it really goes down to. I think a lot of conservatives would agree with that whole -- we all know what -- who was it, Eisenhower, before he stepped down, where he says, "Be careful with the military industrial complex, how much money they can make and keep the wars going." I get that part. Tom, where are you at with this? I'll tell you where I'm at with this right now is that if you take a look at where that crack spread was before it started, and I think we were at $24, $26. So it was $24 to $26 to take a barrel of oil and to turn three barrels of oil into two barrels of gasoline and one barrel of diesel. That is up now 3.5x And so I think right now, right now, I think we are literally a couple weeks from seeing $8 a gallon in some of the high-tax states on diesel, like California, and it's devastating. That, soon as you touch that, you are playing with fire right now. And as soon as you touch $8 diesel, you're going to see layoffs in hospitality. The hospitality industry, which is discretionary consumer spending, is going to do a face plant. It is absolutely going to stop. It's going to be like COVID. What I'm saying is, similar to COVID, that the revenue stop will stop so quickly. You have restaurants and independent restaurants that are not supported by national franchise fees and things like that. Already, they're under deep stress or laying people off right now in hospitality. You're seeing it. And you see the jobs report, which included seasonal things that happened, specifically in education, as everybody went back to school. And the jobs report was misread. And so what I see right now, I see misreadings. And to answer your question directly, I'm worried about $8 diesel, because I think that's where the tree starts. The tree right now is leaning. I think the tree falls at $8 diesel. And I think we have a very tough winter, and we have a recession. Like you said with COVID. Oh, sorry, I didn't. Go for it. No, no, go ahead. I mean, the most important thing with that, it was like, what, 60% of all small businesses in America shut down? And that's what it seems like it's going to be again. Do you think this is going to be a big deal? Do you think this is going to be a debt level type crisis? Well, it's funny. I was just on the phone. I always talk to my family. And my sister is married and looking to maybe buy a house. I'm like, I'm not buying a house right now. Everything's going to crash soon enough. How old are you? I'm 20, or just turned 30, actually, last week. So 30. Happy birthday. Congratulations. I know, I know. I decided to just say 29 forever. Just like I'm 40 still, Pat. Yeah, exactly. But it seems like the small businesses are all going to get shut down. The big businesses are going to take another huge win off of this. I mean, it seems to me like it's going the exact same way. I think these are all worthy discussions and discussions that need to be having gas prices, oil prices. I keep going back to the same thing. This is where I respectfully disagree with my super liberal friend, Will, right now. If we didn't deal with Iran now, when would we have dealt with them? Because if not Trump, then who? President AOC? I will tell you this, though. You better finish the deal. You better finish. And this is a guy that you know where I stand. I fully agree. But if we didn't do it now, what would happen in 5, 10, 20 years when they actually have a nuclear weapon, when they actually have more capabilities, and it's not even a nuclear, they were building up their missile shield, that if you even try to attack them, they would have unleashed hell and fire and fury around any of their neighbors. So yes, it sucks. Yes, gas prices are high. Yes, inflation is higher. Yes, core inflation and CPI is higher. But I will ask you this, if we didn't do it now, how much worse would have been 5, 10, 20 years from now? That's what I keep going back to. Yes, we need to finish the job. Yes, we need to clean this up. But I'm coming back to how this all started. We're figuring how this is ending. Jeff said the best thing. Jeff said, he said, if I lose the midterms, if I lose this, if I lose that, if I lose that, guess what? It's all worth it. Guess what, folks? You didn't become the president. President Trump did. And by the way, guess what? President Trump can't say, why is the media talking smack about me and the podcasters? That's what happens when you're the president. Everybody gets to talk trash. And you get to say, agree, disagree, fake news, whatever. But if you're making this massive type of a bold position that you're going to put the Iranian regime out, guess what this works like? If you do it, your face is up there with Mount Rushmore type of conversations, and you did something that all these other politicians talked about, you close the deal. If you don't do it, AOC is the president in 2028. It's that simple for me. And let me simplify it for you. I'm going to say this to you one more time. If he pulls it off, J.D. or Rubio are president in 2028. If he pulls it off, one of those two guys will be president, and probably more Rubio if he pulls it off. You understand why it's going to be probably more Rubio if he pulls it off. If he doesn't pull it off, here you go. Socialism's here in America. And you know why socialism's going to be here in America? Because if this goes to eight, if this goes to 10, if even conservatives and farmers, here's a story from farmers, and I'm going to come to you with this, Jeff. Farmers who voted for Trump talk about impact of high costs for Iran war tariffs. We're all just in survival mode, is what farmers are saying. Okay. So, you know, we need these guys. These are people that are not wanting a lot of recognition. They just do it because they love their jobs. Matt Bell, 52 years old, North Carolina farmer who grows soybeans, corn, and wheat, and raises cattle on more than 1,000 acres. He's voted for Trump and now says soaring fuel, fertilizer, and equipment prices are crushing him. I've done this for 34 years. I've never worried and stressed like this. I have in the last year. We've cut everything we can cut. There's nothing left to cut. The war with Iran and the Houthi Saudi fighting the squeezed global fuel supplies, diesel average about 640 a gallon nationwide, nearly double a year ago. Bell's combined burns roughly $600 a diesel a day. He blew through $35,000 of annual fuel budget in August. Tariffs attitude, everything that we touch has gone up. He said, noting that China's $10, 10% retaliatory tariff on soybeans has left the market in limbo. Bell now says the administration miscalculated the war. I think we've been misled and agriculture was going to be in the forefront. Right now, that has not happened. A Republican, he plans to split his ticket in November. We're fighting for survival and we're running out of options. So your thoughts when you hear farmers going through this because the economy. Yeah, I mean, that's, I agree with you. I think the way you approach this, the macroeconomic end of it is we can sit here and argue about why, whether it was a good idea, whether it wasn't, it happened. You're exactly right. You get to do what you want when you become president. And the idea, the taco stuff, that was all garbage. I mean, Trump has said from the very beginning, I'm going to do this. And I don't think he's going to back down. I think he sees a pathway forward. And there is, there is enough indication out there that to get off topic a little bit here, there's enough indication out there that he could actually pull this off, that the Iranian regime isn't as strong as it appears to be. And that maybe the Iranians, but that's, it doesn't matter. Trump says, I'm going to do this. There are no red lines here. Diesel hits 10, cost of doing business as far as Trump is concerned. So what we have to do is analysts and say, okay, this is the reality we're working with. What happens from there? And so farmers are saying, we've cut back to bare bones. We can't handle $10 diesel without raising prices. So prices are going to go up from, from, for food. That's going to happen. What happens then? Well, most Americans aren't going to see an increase in their incomes, which means they're going to have to cut back. As Tom was saying, where are they going to cut back? We've already seen numbers come out of places like Mexico. Tourism in Mexico has absolutely crashed in some places by 20%. And a lot of that, that, that crash and that decline in Mexican tourism, Americans, Americans are not flying to Mexico. Why? Because they, first of all, realize that gas prices are high today, but food prices are going to be high tomorrow. And then food prices and some other things are going to be higher tomorrow. That's how you get to the recession. So the, the argument here isn't whether or not this, this farmer's right, or, you know, whether Trump was right in doing what he did, he did what he did and he's going to keep doing it. So we now, we're going to have to do what he did and he's going to keep doing it. So we now, have to figure out what the macroeconomic consequences are. And this farmer is telling us what the macroeconomic consequences will be. I guess I'm just curious what you're saying, you know, pull it off. Trump would pull it off. What does that even mean? Like, what does pull it off mean? What is the benchmark that people could look at and say, okay, now we've finished it and it's done. Because looking myself, looking at it, I mean, I have no idea. I have no idea what that would even be. There are three things that I think have become crystal clear that the administration defines as success. One is the nuclear program, which is less, less uncertain. I think the nuclear program is going to be a done deal easy. The second thing is control the Strait of Hormuz. They're never going to go back. They're never going to let Iran have the Strait of, control the Strait of Hormuz. This is a, we need to decide this issue for now and forever. You know, when they were talking earlier about the memorandum of understanding and Iran, that was, that was all just, you know, political. So Hormuz has to be wrestled. It has to turn into some kind of international control. And the third thing is the more contentious one is a regime collapse. So what they're, what they're betting on is that by squeezing Iran economically, which by the way, is not a fun thing. You know, there's a lot of people in Iran who are suffering. But that's the, you know, the, the tactic here is to squeeze the Iranian system economically so that Iranians rise up, the moderate factions in Iran rise up. They throw off the IRGC, which the IRGC is in a war of survival, which makes it even more difficult. But that's the three things that need to happen for Trump to say, we've got this done. I think that he is shown. Yeah. I guess it really comes down to the three things that you're talking about. They sound great, but all of those things sound like they need to be monitored by America to continue afterwards. Because what's the point of doing this? I mean, again, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan. I agree. No, I'm not arguing for, I'm saying this is what Trump, I think this is absolutely clear. Maybe it is, you know, really, I mean, unless you're keeping American interests, Americans over there to monitor all these things, how do you stop them? Let me ask you this. Let me ask you a question because I think a lot, millions of people side with you and they have the same concern that you have. And, and, and they have your base that voted for you, supported for you that are now concerned about this war that's starting. We don't want another endless war. What could happen with this now that would make you happy? What would, what would happen for you to say, you know what, respect, cannot believe the press. I never thought he would be able to pull this off. Give me two or three things that could happen specifically with Iran that will make a 30 year old like you happy. Getting out. So that's one. I think that's the biggest thing. Is that the only one? Really? Yeah. I would say. So let me ask you another question. So let's just say in the next six to 12 months, I are Reagan tried this in the past in 1988, the whole operating prey and mantis, George Bush tried to do this with the IRGC. Quds Force when he did that in 2007 against Soleimani. Obama put sanctions on Soleimani. We know Trump killed Soleimani, the number two guy. So a lot of people have tried to do this with that. What happens if in the next 6, 12, 18 months, Iran, the IRGC, toppled? They're gone, regime change. That entire force is out, okay? Pre-2028 election, going into it, that's been done. What does that do to a guy like you? Does it change your position at all? This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. 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Fanduel is now available everywhere in the U.S. So you can get in on the sports action no matter where you are. Including these places. Make this your most rewarding season ever with Fanduel. Age and location restrictions apply. Product availability varies by market. See Fanduel.com for eligibility. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. We'll see you next time on Fanduel. Potentially, it just, it really looks forward to the future. Like when Saddam Hussein was killed, you know, you had people in Iraq, in Baghdad, celebrating. You know, at first they were celebrating everything that was going on. They were very happy about it. But, you know, then a few weeks later, a few months afterwards, you look at Iraq and the people were not happy anymore. And they're not happy now with everything that has happened. I think the issue here isn't that. Everybody would agree with you. If Trump pulls it off, everybody would celebrate. The issue is, again, the pull it off. That's it. The issue here is. I think there's two things. I think even if he pulls it off, there's going to be people that are going to say, yeah, but, you know, what's the big deal? He didn't do anything. So when you're a leader, you have to understand, as a leader, I am never going to win will over. The only thing Will wants for me to finish the war and move on. And guess what? And Trump wins me over in other things. No, I get that. But what I'm saying is, in this topic, I'm not going to win will over in these millions of people, whether I pull it off or not. No, I think what a lot of people. I'm going to go do it anyway. I think what a lot of people have, and I'm going to speak for you, Will, if you don't mind. I think the issue here. More eloquently than me. No. The issue here is, can he? Because we've heard this before. We heard it. I mean, the 1990s, the no-fly zones in Iraq, that was supposed to put pressure on Saddam Hussein. He was going to. We've heard this before. You know, Iraq, Iraq itself. We took over Iraq. Like you said, they were celebrating. The Iraqis were happy. And what happened? Two decades of just chaos, hardship, and heartache, right? So the problem here is, it's very difficult for the average person to see this as a likely probability. I don't blame him. I don't blame him. Nobody does. Nobody should. I still don't think it's a high problem. It's a high probability. But at least I think there's a plausible enough pathway that Trump says, we can potentially do it. To pull off regime change. Incredibly difficult. To pull off regime change, you know, there were moments where, you know, my confidence was higher because you had guys like Reza Pahlavi that were saying there's going to be defectors in the military. None of that happened. Okay? In the military, leaders are going to be, you know, they're going to come out and they're going to turn against and all this other. That did not happen. When they turned off the internet, you couldn't see what happened to Iran. The amount of people they slaughtered and killed. So that scared the crap out of a lot of parents that said, where are you going? Stay home. No more protesting. Stay home. Where are you going, Will? Stay home. Stay home. You're not going anywhere because they're worried they're going to kill your kids next. So the IRGC suffocated the people that had momentum because it takes the Iranian people to make this happen. It's not going to be anybody else but the Iranian people. I think the Iranian people right now are sitting there saying, look, man, another time we tried to take over the IRGC and we failed again. We just have to suck it up. I need a job to pay my bills. I can't feed my kids. I think that's where they are right now. That's the difference. That's the one difference that they never did in, say, Iraq in the 1990s, the economic blockade. I think the economic blockade is having a much bigger impact than people realize. The Navy sitting out there saying no ships coming in and out of Iran. The economic blockade is really decimating the Iranian economy. So that's the key difference. You saw this article by Breitbart where J.D. Vance talks about the first phase of the war, second phase of the war. First phase is to destroy the nuclear program and to destroy their conventional military. Check. Second phase is to ensure that they're not able to rebuild. They're in that process. And then Scott Besant, we've been calling him Besant, but it's Besant, you know, a little flavor to it. He said the U.S. is waging the greatest economic isolation campaign in the history of the world against Iran through Operation Economic Outcast. Shout out to Andre 3000 right there. But I think there's. They're going to do this. I don't know when. I don't know how long it's going to take. But I'm a believer in our military. It's at least a possibility. That's the thing. What I'm saying to you is there's certain. Okay. So who remembers Friendster? Friendster.com. Yeah, that was before MySpace. Do you know what Friendster was? No. Do you remember MySpace? Yeah, of course. Do you know the first social media site ever was Friendster.com? Oh, yeah. It wasn't MySpace. MySpace, I think, was the second or third. But Friendster.com came up with this concept of, hey, let's create a social media site, okay? 24 years ago, they came out, like, hey, we're going to build this thing, and people are going to be social networking, and everyone's like, I don't know about that. I don't know if we're going to be doing this. 8.2 million users is what they had, right? Then others were like, well, listen, this Friendster idea was pretty good. They got 8.2 million users. Let's do MySpace. And then this guy named. What's his name? Bill or Tom or Tom? Tom. Tom is his name. With the white shirt. With the white shirt, yeah. Tom comes out with MySpace. Ends up selling it for half a billion dollars, right? Yeah. And Tom Anderson was his name. So they get whatever amount of users that they get. Then what follows MySpace? Facebook. Facebook is now what? A trillion dollar, multi-trillion dollar company? The rest is history. No one knows Friendster, okay? Some know MySpace. Everybody knows Zuck. What's the point? The point is, sometimes when you're doing the impossible, if you're, you know, many times people will say, this is the guy that went bankrupt. This is the guy that built a business and went bankrupt. This is the guy that started this and went bankrupt. Look at him. He's poor. He's got nothing going on. He may have worked very hard. He may have had the right idea. He may have had the right, but he may have been a little too early for the times of being ready for it. But what he did is he left the fingerprints of what things to not mess with for the next guy to pull it off. I don't know if this is making sense or not. Yeah, he set the tone. So meaning, what Trump is doing here, you know what he may end up becoming? You know what he may end up becoming? The OG of how to deal with it. He may end up becoming the guy that sets up the ways not to do it on what to face, that the next guy comes and is able to pull it off. I don't know. But if he doesn't pull it off, I'm just telling you this. If he doesn't pull it off, AOC is the president in 2028. You mean a Democrat, not a socialist? A socialist will be a president. Not a Democrat. Hopefully America's not a Democrat. AOC is not a socialist. I'm saying Michelle Obama. Just ask her. Michelle Obama. Yeah, not a socialist. Seriously. Not somebody who is a socialist. Let me say, guys, if you like what we had to say. If you had to say, hey, contact me on Friendster. Yeah, for sure. In my top eight. Go contact them in Friendster. Okay, let's go to the next story. Next story I want to get to while we're going through this is two stories that kind of go together. One, Forbes comes out and announces that 580 billionaires are too poor to be on the Forbes 400 list. Let me say that one more time. There's 580 people in America that are billionaires, but they're not rich enough to be on the Forbes 590, that are not rich enough to be on the Forbes 400 list. Imagine how pissed off you would be if that was you. So some people read that and they're like, wait a minute, who gives a shit if these guys are not? Why should I care for you, poor you, that you're not in the Forbes 400? And in simultaneously, the same story, another story comes out where I'm trying to find a 590 story. I don't know what page that went on. Am I missing this here where it's at? There it is. Record-breaking page 11. Let me read this and then I'll go to what other number came up at the same time, and I'm going to ask you guys what you think about this. So just having 10 figures is not enough. The minimum net worth to make it on the Forbes 400 list is $1,000. list today ready you have to be worth 4.4 billion dollars to be on there 600 million more than a year ago leaving a record 590 billionaires too poor to make the list up from 500 in 2025 so that means that's an increase of 90 every notable name who fell short oprah winfrey media and entertainment 3.4 billion not for 400 roblox founder 3.4 billion not in it sam altman 3.3 billion he's not in it tim cook 3 billion too poor to be in a forbes for 100 tyler and cameron winklevoss 2.9 billion jay-z 2.8 billion taylor swift 2 billion kim kardashian 1.9 lebron james 1.4 sanjay mihorta uh from micron 1.2 arnold schwarzenegger apparently his net worth is 1.2 billion good for him beyonce 1 billion dre 1 billion you got a few other people there now while this story comes out this other story comes out i hope i can find this one if you guys can point me to it you know which one i'm talking about americans income hits record but lower earners lose ground what page is that one on there it is page four let me read this to you and then jeff i'm going to come to you then tom i'll come to you right afterwards u.s household income in 20 uh hit a record in 2025 with real median income rising 2.6 percent to 87 000 highest inflation adjusted level census record began in 1967 while official poverty level to 10.2 percent but the gains were uneven incoming uh income among the wealthiest 10 percent of the american rose 1.7 percent while the bottom 10 saw no significant change and the top five of uh uh the top fifth of households captured 52.4 percent of all income versus three percent so you know jeff the the concept of rich getting richer poor getting poor is that what's happening here is there something deeper we're not looking at no that's it's exactly it the economy doesn't work and uh people realize that i mean the simplest way to think about it is okay if you have a hundred people in 99% of the population is rich you're not going to be rich if you have a hundred people in 99% of the population is rich you're not going to be rich if you have a hundred people in 99% of the population is rich you're not going to be rich if you have a hundred people in 99% of the population is rich you're not going to be rich if you have a hundred If you have 100 people, 99 people, their income is $50,000, and it goes up 1% to $50,500. The 100th person has income of $1 million, and it goes up to $1.1 million. The aggregate statistic looks good because the entire income, average income, goes up. But if you polled those people, what would end up happening? One person would say the economy is great, and 99 people would say the economy sucks. So it's the difference between averages and what people actually experience. And this is a real phenomenon, and it has been happening especially since 2021 and 2022, really the lockdowns. Ever since the lockdowns, it has been, they call it a K-shaped, Chris Martinson called it an I-shaped economy, which is probably a better representation of it. People at the top are doing well. People at the top have no problems. They are able to shelter their wealth because they have access to financial markets and leverage and liquidity that nobody else does. If your only asset is your labor, your labor has been devalued since 2022 in a substantial way. So you've been made poor, and people realize that. And so we have all these statistics that say if you're at the top, you're doing well, and if you're at the bottom, you're not doing well. The problem is there are more people going into the bottom than there is going to the top. So while there may be 590 billionaires who don't make the Forbes list, how many thousands and millions of Americans are falling into the bottom part of the economy? Well, if you ask Americans, they'll tell you. I brought a couple of charts here. I don't know, Connor, if you can bring them up. This is one reason why Republicans really need to be on alert for. Now, the election here, Americans' view of the economy is exactly the opposite of what you hear in the media. So you hear, you know, Kevin Warsh talk about how resilient the economy is. Americans, they want to flip him the finger and say, what the fuck are you talking about? The University of Michigan Consumer Survey. This is a survey that goes back into the 1960s. They've been doing monthly surveys since the late 1970s. Americans' assessment of their own current financial situation today is equal to the worst levels of each past recession that we've had since the 1970s. That's how Americans think about the economy, not just their own financial situation, what they think about the lack of jobs. How do they measure this? How is this measured? It's measured the amount of people who say that their financial situation is better minus the amount of people who say their financial situation is worse. Plus minus. So it's a plus minus chart. So what we're saying is many more, a vast majority more people think that they're worse off than a year ago. And if you look at the other charts, it's unemployment. It's income reasons for what we just saw in the other chart. Every single one of these measures. Coming from America. And this cuts across political divides, demographics. This is widespread change. Americans' assessment of the economy, their place in the economy, is at lows that we associate with the worst parts of the recession. So then I got a question for you. If you go on this here, and if you look at from 2010, 2008-9, which we know what happened, 8-9, market crash right there at the bottom that I'm looking at. Massive drop-off that's post-Bush. Then you have Obama comes in, and it goes up. And if you go to 16, Trump. Trump comes in, spikes all the way up. Then you got 2020-2021, Biden comes in. Massive drop-off. And it goes all the way down. And Trump comes in 2024-2025. So 2025-2026, it drops off. So a part of this, how much of this you put on him, how much of this you put on the other? Oh, zero. This is not Trump. This is not. So who is this on? You can argue about it. The massive drop-off there is actually under the first Trump administration. That's during COVID, the lockdown. So you could make the case that, you know. The lockdowns were the original sin. The CARES Act, the massive explosion in government spending, that's a lot of it, too. But this transcends politics. This is not partisanship. It's not a Biden economy versus a Trump economy, and Trump fixes the Biden economy. It's just the fact that we made a whole bunch of mistakes. So a president cannot do anything to positively impact this is what you're saying? What I'm saying is it was baked in five years ago. And Trump's mistake is the same mistake that politicians made all throughout the world was saying this was Biden's economy. I'm going to fix Biden's economy. Remember? Trump came in office and said, I'm going to build the greatest economy in the world. He never should have said that because it's not in his hands to do that. It wasn't as simple as if we replace Biden with Trump, the economy fixes itself. Whose hand is it in? It's whoever decided we should lock everything down and, you know, spend all that money on CARES Act and then the follow-up bills where the government expanded itself, you know, exponentially. So more House, more the House of Representatives, Congress. I think at that time, you know, the CARES Act was a bipartisan act. I think. Everybody in 2020 has their hands dirty, whether it be the Trump administration. And then Biden just continued it. We had a rapid, massive expansion in the government in 21 and 22 that never returned. The emergency is over, but government spending is as high as it was back when we were doing the pandemic. So can you do me a favor? Go back to the previous chart that he showed the plus minus this one right here. So if you look at it, I wish that thing was out. OK, it's gone. So 2008, 2009, we know where that is today. I mean, to have those two comparisons together. What's the other one? Oh, three or four. And then you got ninety one, ninety two. And then you have 1980. That's Carter, where interest rates were 16 percent, 17 percent, 18 percent. You had the double dip in 80. Is there a correlation you see between all those or no? Each of them is a different reasoning. Well, they're business cycles. So these are recession cycles. The reason why confidence starts to go back up is because the business cycle hits its bottom and starts to go back. Do you think we hit the bottom? No, that's the. That's what we're just talking about. Ten dollar, ten dollar per gallon diesel guarantees we're not at the bottom. Tom, and I'm at eight and the tree falls. What I see here, you're at eight and the tree falls at eight dollar diesel. The tree falls. I think the tree is leaning right now. And so what Americans are saying is the economy is bad today. His stats he brought up. Americans are not taking short term vacations to Mexico. And what we're seeing this summer, they're not taking even shorter term vacations just to drive. To six flags. We're seeing it. So you're saying Catalina is going to get a lot of business. Catalina Island. Right. Well, if you go back to this, here's Catalina wine mixer. Here's what I think people need to pay attention to. But you need to pay attention to is that the prior chart that Jeff showed, that means that right now, two things happen on COVID. We shut down the economy and people were unable to make money and save. Number one. Number two, we printed a bunch of money in the process. And inflated the piss out of everything that was there and then that labor except labor, except their wages. And so when they went back to work, everything was way up, including houses. We started migration in America. What we had with COVID is, I would argue, has been almost as cataclysmic as 2008. We just didn't see it that way in terms of the net economic change that happened to the facility and situation of the average American consumer. That's my headline. They were paying for the mistakes of 2020 and 2026. So it was the big market crash in 08, and I look at print, COVID lockdown, savings. Those three things came together and were as bad as the crash of 08, and then the government kept spending at the same level in terms of the deficit, which was the trailing. I put those four things together. That's why this thing goes from 22 to 26. That's why the consumer's there. Well, the thing is that you don't see this. You look at the economic statistics, and they look relatively decent, which is why Jay Powell and now Kevin Warsh gets on TV and says the economy's resilient, because you look at the aggregate statistics, they look okay. But what Americans are saying is, okay, the numbers might look good, but that's not my experience. I experienced something completely different. And their 401ks or IRAs, if they haven't withdrawn, are okay because of the index-driven market. Okay, fine. But at home, just trying to take care of the increase in price in energy, insurance. I mean, never mind energy, go look at what happened to insurance since 2020, health insurance, home insurance, car insurance, go look around. But this also explains why Trump did the, first of all, the Trump accounts, right? Because most people don't have access to the stock market, and people who do have access is mostly through their retirement assets, which is not spendable income. And it's also why he brought up the $5,000 dividend at the midterm convention. That's ridiculous. Because they know what's coming. They know that Americans' view of the economy is not good. I'm dubious on the second, but I'm with him on the Trump accounts. I think he's saying, okay, guys, let's build savings for everybody born in America starting now. I don't think that's a bad idea. I'm not with the $5,000 will. Thoughts? Well, right now you have millennials my age versus baby boomers. At the age of 35, on average, baby boomers owned about 21% of this nation's wealth. Now you have millennials at about the age of 35, on average, own only 3% of the nation's wealth. Is it that high? It doesn't seem like it. Yeah, it might be even lower now, you know, this stat. But that is absolutely insane to me. The value that people have. The value that people have in this country who are my age, I mean, we own basically nothing. You will own nothing and be happy, as they tell you, you know. But in, what is it, 2005, the median price of a house was $200. You're comparing boomers with millennials? Yeah. What is the average age of a millennial? This is 30. Yeah, this would be about 35. I'm actually not surprised with those numbers. I'm not surprised with those numbers. Compound interest is scary. Yeah, but the problem is. Hang on, let me just finish my thought. I'm going to give you another point. Compound interest for me is scary. What happens? Scary. You know, I would watch a guy that would come to the office at 8 o'clock in sales, leave at 10, and he would make 20 calls more than his peer, and he would send cards to all his clients and the other guy wouldn't. In one year, they made the same money. In the second year, the guy would make 10% more income. Third year, 25%. By the fifth year, he's making 200% more income. And it's not even close. And the other guy would say, I can't believe it. He got lucky. I said, no, man. He just would make 20 more calls than you would. And compound interest is truly a real thing. Now, let me go to the other side. What I believe I'm talking about guys that are under 30 years old is I'd like to see something where we don't tax anybody under the age of 30 for the first $500,000 they make. They keep all of it. No federal income tax. Meaning, you make $300,000, it's your money. You make $200,000, it's your money. You make $100,000, 100% is your money. You make $600,000, you pay taxes on $100,000 of it. Why? Because if in the business, our guys, I was in an insurance company that they changed the comp plan to benefit guys that have been around for 20 years, not benefit the newest guy that was getting recruited. And I would always say, if the opportunity is no longer good for the newest person, you no longer have a good business. The newest person needs to have the same opportunity to make a lot of money as the guy that was there 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago. And we don't have that today. So for me, if we can find a way that somebody's getting into the marketplace, zero taxes, upwards of a half a billion, half a million dollars they make, let them keep that money. We need to increase people getting married, having kids, buying a house, and they simply don't have that today. And that's a scary thought. If the incentive doesn't benefit the youth, you have a very, and if they pay a price for boomers saying, no, no, no, no, no, don't give up my benefits. No, no, no, no, no. Ain't no politician's going to run up there and say, hey, we need to raise the retirement age for boomers five more years. I would get elected with that. No one, not a single soul, even though they may be right, not a single soul would win a campaign if they went there and say, retirement age needs to be increased. Nobody, even right now, if I said this, look how many people are going to get pissed off at me. I'm telling you, look how many people are going to be like, oh, you know, screw you. You don't know. You're talking from a place of, you know, you made the money, you did this. I grew up in a family where my mom and dad were poor. My dad worked at a cashier at a 99 cents store in Englewood, California. You know, yesterday I'm talking to my, my knee, you know, I'm doing physical therapy, because the ACL, my dad is sitting there saying, he reminded of a story about 14 years old, how he's scared he was about me because a guy named Vladimir Al-Hassay, who's a great pastor in Torlock, San Jose area. His father was one of my heroes. And when I was 14 years old, Trevor, teenager, I joined a basketball league called the New Century City Basketball Association in Echo Park. We played with blood, crib, you know, diamond. We played with every bar, TVR, Tunerville. You tell them 18, we played with everybody. All the troubled kids were playing basketball together. And then my dad's telling the story to this guy, Carson. And I'm just listening to him. He says, I remember one day we're at Las Vegas and we took him there and my son didn't come up till two o'clock in the morning. I'm in the street. We got into a fight with five guys from New York, guns out. And I'm hanging out with a couple of these guys in a car Burbank that I say, the guy's driving a car at 14, 15 years old. His dad's Cadillac. My life's going this way. And this guy got ahold of me and changed my life. So I know what it is to be poor and it sucks. I know what it is to go through the price. I went to the military. I was hoping I would do 20 years 'cause they gave me a pension plan. My plan was I was gonna go do 20 years in the military. I understand that pain. Today, we gotta figure out a way to get the youth to have incentives, to have kids, to get married and to buy a house. And we can't just look the other way and say, look how many billionaires we're producing. They gotta feel it. But at the same time, we have to find a way to say, look, everybody's gotta pull their own little red wagon. You know, there's gotta be something that everybody needs. Everybody's gotta give up here as we're going through this next phase. And spending needs to kind of lower a little bit. Spending, the amount of things that we're spending money on right now, it's getting a little bit out of control. I'll come to you, then I'll come to Jeff. - Yeah. - This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Check responses, setup required, compatibility, and availability varies 18 plus. - Boot season's back, which means football season is back, and Tecova's has the denim for game day. Either way, you can buy it at tecovas.com. - Hank joined BJ's Wholesale Club the day he became a father of 30. - I coach football. - Now, Coach Hank saves up to 25% off grocery store prices. 30 pounds of pasta, three cases of protein bars, 75 sports drinks. - And that's just pre-game. - He knows teamwork, and BJ's knows savings. This is your home, coach, home of the save. 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Call 1-800-GAMBLER. - I mean, you can definitely, I mean, before 1912, there was no federal income tax. - Exactly. - I mean, I'm totally for all of that. - But the amount of expenditure we got right now, the amount of how big the government's ballooned into to cut the whole thing. They tried Doge, look what happened. The richest man in the world got fired. - Yeah, exactly. You know, but the compound- - In a blaze of glory, by the way. - The compound interest- - When him and Trump got into it. - Yeah, yeah, the compound interest, I mean, I dropped out of college to move to Los Angeles to go and work for PragerU. This was in 2017. - You crushed it, by the way. - Thank you, thank you. And there weren't conservative influencers or conservative people like that, you know? It was a completely new thing, and I saw what was going on in the world, and I said, "Man, I'm gonna work really hard." I lived in a horrible bachelor apartment in Hollywood, California, where I'd wake up with cockroaches crawling on my face at 4:00 a.m., you know, eating Ritz crackers and turkey with no kitchen, you know? And so I get that, working hard and putting in that, and you can, of course, make something of yourself. This is America. - Oh. - There's no doubt that there aren't more hurdles today for young people than any other time, I think, in American history. I mean, just looking at minimum wage laws. I mean, minimum wage laws are something that keep people out of actually, you know, making money in the future, you know? It's not letting businesses decide how much they're going to actually pay people, making it especially hard for black Americans to get low-entry jobs to then move up in the world. All these different hurdles that are making it very difficult. - Give me more hurdles. What else is it? Hurdles for the youth. - Yeah, well, one thing, you know-- - Yeah, I mean, one thing, we're talking about housing, right, and one of the reasons why housing has gotten so expensive, you know, it's not the only reason, but you have these big hedge funds coming in and buying up single-family homes in this country, right? And if you're doing that, then you're making it so, I mean, how am I, it's obviously going to inflate the price of the house. - You saw the law they changed a few months back that they can't do that anymore, and, you know, to kind of prevent them from pushing the way, 'cause they're raising the price of where everybody's sitting there saying, "I'm just gonna be renting." There's even a story in here about just renting. What else would you say outside of that? - Well, the biggest one has gotta be illegal immigration. If you have two houses that are built and someone cuts in line and comes and gets government benefits and says, well, I need too of course that's going to push the supply up so illegal immigration the the hedge funds the the not really good jobs for young people that are making them passionate and creative people you know they're just replaceable people and in stupid email jobs all day in some big techie city i think the biggest problem is young men especially right now don't feel like they have a lot of purpose or meaning in their lives and if you take that away from a civilization the entire thing crashes you know even if you know we have all this kind of like high level economic stuff and things like that but really it's going to come down to the young men finding something of value to do in their lives otherwise what do you do with all of them jeff it's the opportunity you guys don't have the opportunity compound interest you're exactly right and the the issue here is that millennials and gen z two generations now have never had the opportunity to do what you're talking it's not a case of they're not working hard enough that's not it at all and so i brought some more charts because i've got charts for everything there is some of that i will say maybe not working hard like i'll talk to people and they'll be like man this guy came in he thought he could just work from home every day and and not show up and so there is there are people my age who did the same thing yeah the boomers complained about generation x it's it's it's old as human nature right you know the kids are always bad right but this is a macroeconomic thing and it goes back to 2008 if you look at the chart here which shows you income income fell off trend in 2008 it never went back to the point that we're now five trillion behind that trend that's five billion dollars in real uh price adjusted income that never happened that's income you know baby boomers got their got their uh their jobs their incomes their retirement savings their houses they got a they got all that stuff after 2008 things were different people your generation they are in the bottom part of the k because there isn't jobs and income so you don't have the chance you don't have a chance to build your career in the same way you don't have a chance to buy a house at age 28 29 or 30 and build your equity because everything comes with equity um people who have who have entered the economy after 2008 have experienced a very very different life than people from before 2008 and the numbers show this the problem is nobody knows this because all we've heard from ever since 2008 is that everything's just fine we also have to go into the college question because the price of college in this country has gone way past the the point of inflation for how much college and there's that you know and then you can't what do you get out of it you also can't file bankruptcy on a student loan from the government it's time yeah and if you take a careful look right here great chart jeff let's see if we could look at the slope of the line from the spike down in 2020 the covid if you draw a new line on that pat it's even flatter than the 2.9 worse than that it's actually rolling over it's correct it's not 2.2 it is flat it is dead flat so now you go from 3.1 compounded 2.9 but if you look careful after covid and you adjust it it's almost flat so yeah you know this is this is the reality when that's why i call it you know after covid i say it was as bad as 2008 but we didn't see it that way because covid was over we took off the mask we went back outside we were working again and the market was up then which was protecting 401ks and iras it was it is it continues to but it's flat and so that explains why americans think that this is as bad as every recession because the data shows that's actually the case and the stock market has made it worse and that's where a lot of people are going to go and they're going to go and they're going to do a lot of the you know the frenzy over socialism comes from because you the stock market's at all-time highs are very near all-time highs and yet most americans experience this economy so you think okay if this is if this is a booming economy where the stock market's at record highs i'm i'm opting out i need something different i need something that actually works for me look i might be the uh dissenter on this one i i think this is the greatest country in the world i think we have the greatest economy in the world i think when we talk about like what's the famous churchill quote uh uh i think this is the greatest country in the world i think we have the greatest democracy is the worst form of government except for everything else has been tried pick a country in the world you would move to with all your complaints about america go ahead well this is everyone wants to complain well inflation's a little high the cost of housing i get it i'm in the same country as you guys paying the same price guess what but i hear me out but i i think at the end of the day it's like where else you going like you're not going to trade all your issues for america whatever it is for any place in the world so listen i believe in personal finance what i had to do just like pbd i was a south beach nightlife party boy that knew everybody who was having a great time in my life but i was broke as hell so i had to go basically move out of miami move into a house with five of my buddies i paid nothing in rent the cockroach story the ramen noodle story and my first year in business i made five thousand dollars i stuck it out i was making a million cold calls a month next year i made a hundred thousand dollars then the second year in 2008 and you know what i had to figure it out the bottom line for me was was this one major thing you can't save your way to becoming a millionaire you have to own assets so at some point you're going to basically have the tipping point where you're going to say all right what you know what's what did uh you pointed at me tom what's up yeah i was waiting for him to finish okay oh i thought you pointed at me because of a text go ahead no sorry no no no so to me and this is a weird analogy but i i've been watching a lot of thomas soul lately the great thomas soul he said there's no solutions for anything there's only trade-offs so what's the trade-off okay so maybe you're not going to get your own apartment buddy maybe you're not going to buy a house buddy maybe you're going to have to get a roommate cool maybe you're not going to drive a bmw you're going to drive a kia all good maybe you're not going to taco tuesday every tuesday and you're going to eat at home it's all good you're still living in america and and and and i'm so sorry that we're going to have a moment of silence for for jay-z and beyonce and taylor swift and oprah that they're 500 but they still own assets and they're still billionaires and you can be a millionaire too if you just work work hard work earn save and invest adam i see where you're coming from but some of that argument is why people get so pissed off yeah at that the generation above them well i think what pat said what do you mean i agree with you hang on i agree with you i agree with you it's the greatest country i agree that there's a great economy but the reason pat brought up his point about hey under the age of 30 we won't tax you up to 500 i want to help people with a ramp and you know jeff talks about we need wage growth i talk about wage growth as well we agree you know dramatically on that point and one of the ways you can give people wage growth is you can give them spending growth the the ability to spend not on credit not on credit cards which are at 1.4 trillion right now and you've got bnpl that's strangling people because they decided to use that what he's talking about is let's in this economy in this situation what if we're going to have a economy where we're going to have a economy where we're we help these people under 30 to get a ramp up on by the way not to cut you off i think it's a great idea but how soon is that idea going to be implemented a year five years 10 years 20 years let's live in reality today though wait a minute it's like okay edison you're going to invent the light bulb but how long is it going to take you have to start someplace i agree but that's not going to help somebody pay the rent idea that says i've got an idea we've got a problem why don't we get together i i love the idea i'm not i i i fully support the idea even when you brought it up to ben shapiro he loved the idea that's not going to pay your rent today so what can be done today well you're talking about thomas hall and one of the great stats that he had which might not be as relevant before or after covid was that 25 uh or you have like 25 people percent of people in the bottom quarter of economics by the end of their life 75 of those people will have been in the top quarter of the economics in this country at some point in their economic mobility exactly yeah that's why they said the middle class is shrinking it's like if you look deeper it's because a lot of the middle class entered the upper class because of compound interest right but if you don't have the opportunity to get a compound interest you're stuck in the bottom jeff jeff i'm sorry though so go ahead what's your solution you just you just sold massive crisis if i'm a 22 year old watching this i'm depressed right now but no wait a minute no but i shouldn't be you should not be no you would you tell your son that i'm sorry i'm not wired that way i don't speak that language i don't relate to that language so here's my question if you're telling me that it's the shittiest time to be in give me ideas go ahead what can i do this first of all i want to address one thing first is that this no no no no sir you address his question you're not putting me this is not a u.s only problem in fact the same chart can be found everywhere else around the world yeah but we care about the united states i don't know but what i'm saying is that this is not strictly a u.s problem what i want to know from you is yeah how do we fix this yeah give me that because anytime i hear people that are just saying selling crisis crisis it's like when you work in a company and you got employed that's not working this is not working that is okay great give me this i think we should change our benefits and do this okay fantastic let's have the conversation so walk me through your ideas if you had influence what would you do all right go back to that can you pull up the chart again yeah let's go to it which one the 5.9 4.9 go for it it's circled what what what happened in 2008 because that's where you see quantitative easing what happened to cause that the 2008 what was the 2008 crisis heavy borrowing look at what what what this chart is telling you yeah something broke in 2008 okay now the reason the socialists are winning is because they say the same thing they say something broke in 2008 and it was free market capital sure so we're going to replace it with socialism they're correct about the one part obviously way wrong about the other part what broke in 2008 to the point that the entire global economy changed the entire nature of the global economy changed after 2008 this is the problem nobody knows what happened in 2008 what broke in 2008 was that the entire global economy was the entire global monetary system it's the same thing that happened in the 1930s why was the because the monetary system that existed before 1929 broke down permanently. In fact, this is the reason why Ben Bernanke was famous. He said, look, after 1929, 1930, the banking system got broken. It never recovered. We never had a recovery. Same exact thing happened here. In 2008, the monetary system that we had, the euro-dollar system, why I call it Euro-dollar University, broke. And it didn't break on a temporary basis. It broke in a way that was permanent. Quantitative easing didn't fix it. The Federal Reserve's zero-interest rate policy didn't fix it. It was a permanent rupture in the global monetary system, which is why you see this chart everywhere around the world. So the answer is to unbreak what happened in 2008, which argues for rejiggering the monetary system so that it actually functions in the way that we need it to. So that's the solution. The problem is getting people to that solution. I'm so sorry to interrupt. Wait a minute. Okay. So how do you fix it? How do you fix it? There are certain things you can't unfix, right? Exactly. Okay. So now, if that's. But you're not going to like the answer. But I actually want to know what you're going to say because the only thing I care about is. Well, I'll tell you what I care about. I want to know how you fix it. I want to hear what you're going to say. How we fix it is we allow things like cryptocurrencies and digital currencies to develop new systems. The problem is global economic history goes through these periods of cycles. So before the 1930s, we had a 30-year period of tremendous prosperity. People call it the Roaring Twenties, but it's actually. The zeros, the tens, and the 20s. And then what happened is the monetary system, human nature takes over. We get greedy. We do things we shouldn't do. The monetary system breaks down. We've done that for history always. Yep. Human nature is undefeated. Yeah. So the monetary system broke down. And what happened afterward? We went through a two-decade, two-25-year period where things sucked for a very long time. There's nothing you can do about it. You have to sit there and grit your teeth and bear it until bottom-up processes have time to develop. Yep. That fix the problem, and we get out of it. So we go through these long-period cycles. So we're in a long-period cycle where we screwed everything up in the 90s and 2000s. We went way too far. You haven't tried to fix it yet. I have. What do you do? What part of crypto technology? Go ahead. Monetary system needs to be replaced, but it can't be done overnight by flipping a switch. You have to give it time enough to become functional. And to replace the monetary system, how many people need to make a decision for that to happen? Nobody. It's a bottom-up process. It's decentralized. The monetary system. A part of that has happened. And a part of that has happened. It is. Okay. So if you want to put a positive spin on this, Pat, the positive spin is we're almost 20 years into the downside of the cycle, which means we're 20 years closer to the upside. So you know where I'm at with this? And look, the people that will like this and relate to this, awesome. I can't wait to meet you. The people that won't like this, listen, I also respect. You have your own opinion, and I'm not uncomfortable with people agreeing or disagreeing with me. It's very good. It's very comfortable in our environment. Let me go through a couple things I wrote here, okay? Number one, people are driven by incentives on what's going to happen to their lives. I trust people are going to make the right decisions to have their incentives for their lives, whatever that may be, okay? Number two, people that have assets, how hard will they work to protect what they have? We know people will work harder to protect the $20 that they have than to go make another $20. A guy store $20 from them, they'll run 10 miles to get that $20 back from the guy but they won't go put an additional 10 hours in a week to make an additional $400 or $300, but they're going to protect what they have, okay? So people are going to make the decisions to say, "What I currently have right now, I'm going to protect." Number three, dream. Everybody has dreams. Everybody has dreams and they want to pursue. Some are going to give up on the dreams. Some are not going to give up on the dreams. Whoever you listen to will either destroy your dreams or is going to get somebody and say, "I'm going to continue it." I've gone to churches where the main thing the pastor wanted to talk about was, "The end of times is here. The end of times is here. You're going to hell. The end of times is here." I got it. I understand. I've read Revelation, the end of times. Oh, no, but it's right now. It's reminding of what happened in the city of Corinth and watch what happened in Las Vegas and OnlyFans and Sophie Raine and all. I got it. I understand. Tinder, totally get it. All right, so what do I do if it's the end of times is here? Do I just go to that pastor and say, "That's why I don't work that hard. I'm just going to sit around and not do anything because the end of times is here. The end of times is here." That message doesn't create urgency in a way of going out there and fixing things. I'm sorry. I don't relate to that, and I've been in a lot of these meetings. I was in a meeting one time where a man named Monty Holm told me, Mormon man, very successful financially, phenomenal guy, good family guy. He says, "Patrick, don't go into the--" I just got promoted to a position of CEO. He says, "I don't want you to go into this meeting." He said, "Why do you not want me to go into this meeting?" He says, "Pat, I want you to host a meeting." I brought up-- who was the guy? Chris Gardner from-- what was the movie? Pursuit of Happiness. Pursuit of Happiness, yeah. I brought Mary Lou Retton up. She's like right here, and I look like it's my daughter, but it's like it's Mary Lou Retton. And then after hosting this meeting, Cal Ripken Jr. was speaking about consistency and not giving up, and then I'm going into the CEO session. He says, "Patrick, I'm telling you." He writes me a letter, "Don't go into this meeting." So the more he says, "Don't go into this meeting," guess what I want to do? Go to the meeting. There's 56 people, something like that, in the meeting. I said, "Can you just tell me why you don't want me to go into this meeting?" He says, "Pat, you're on fire. Your attitude is so positive. You're going to have big things that's happening to you. These people, 90% of them, all they do is bitch and complain how hard the business is today. Don't go into this meeting." What do I do? I go into this meeting. And guess what I sit there and hear? 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These are people that have been in the insurance business for 25, 30 years, 20 years. And I've only been in the business for five years. All they're doing is they're not doing anything. All they're doing is bitching and whining because 2008 is the worst time to sell insurance, is the worst time to be in the stock market. Do you know my business, my business, Oblivious PBD, who doesn't have an MBA, and all these other guys that are brilliant guys, from 2002 to the day I sold the business, we never had a down year, ever. Every year we grew. What do you want me to tell you? What do we go through from 2002 to 2000? And when do we sell the business, Tom? 2022, we sold the business. We went through COVID. We went through 08 market crash. We went through bullshit, bullshit. Every freaking, you know our numbers. We grew every year. And I'm not a brain scientist, you know, school. No, we just grew. But Mani had a very good point when he said if you go in a meeting like this and you're around other people who are no longer excited about the future, they're going to rub off on you. And you have to fight it off. Whether you know, and I went in and I came, I said, Mani, I understand your point already, what you were saying. I fully got it. I'm not those guys. I don't relate. I don't relate to those guys. So for me, whether you agree with what I'm saying or not and all this other stuff and you want to be a pastor that says the end of the world is coming, great. Don't go do anything about your life. Just sit home and go collect coupons and what do you call it? Clipping coupons and take your cash that you got from the government and find a way to get a regular job and don't give your best. Don't read any business books. Don't go pick up any new material. But this guy didn't become successful because he sits around and works his ass off. I think one thing we have to do as individuals and leaders in a time like this is we can openly talk about the shit that hitting the fan. We can't criticize the president, and I do. $5,000 to win a vote horrible idea horrible idea to win the vote affordability it's not a real thing it's a hoax it's a real thing they're going through it yo it's not ai oh it's you don't know it's not ai then let's not no we should look into it and see and get these guys to come in and educate us we don't have all the answers you can be a billionaire still know nothing about a different industry i can be a 47 year old successful financial guy and i want to listen to what because i want to know what 30 year olds are thinking about right now i really do i want to know what he's going through i want to learn from the i can learn from a nine-year-old kid that's been playing the piano for five years he can teach me piano i don't know nothing about piano and how to play it i just i like to listen to it so i think that's the mistake in the blind spot that we have in the white house right now where we're kind of like you know when you have success you kind of feel like you are you know everything is going you have to listen to everybody but at the same time if there's one thing i flip and respect about this guy that's working at the white house is the level of optimism he has whether he's right or wrong everybody can learn from that the guy's 80 years old working harder than anybody else answering questions 24 7 to people that are bitching and whining at him and he takes all the calls i'm trying to get a hold of the president to give an idea to him on how to help out with affordability you know how quickly she got back to me she said the president's schedule call with you can you get on the call with us i got a call schedule right after the saying hey we got to do something with affordability i'm trying to impose my ideas whether they do or not i don't know but but i i don't i don't relate to this you know and here's what went wrong and here's one yeah okay then what then what what can i do to fix it give me that if i lose 90 the audience because you don't relate to this message i'll do this show by myself and listen to my own self i'm not changing this message and i don't think americans we need to go subscribe to the fear porn non-stop have the difference i want to know why thomas massey wants to get hexa to resign why give me the motive what's your motive i want to know why speaker johnson wants to shut down let's learn and talk to each other why do you want to do this stuff but if we lose the optimism and we lose that enthusiasm and we lose the fact that we believe this the greatest country in the world holy shit horrible times are around the corner holy shit i'm not i'm not i'm not going to do that i'm not going to do that i'm not going to subscribe to that camp and i think we need to a little bit go back to the here's the five things that is going on that i fully disagree with that's shitty but these are my three solutions here's what's a horrible thing in in our brains collectively you're brilliant you're brilliant you're brilliant we're sitting here with a skip on adam but i'm just saying like you know you say i'm cool baby i think i'm a regular guy that's just curious at one point gpa just so you know i don't even put myself in a brilliant category i put myself in a category i'm curious i want to learn i want to talk to everybody and see what can we do to make this thing the greatest country in the world yeah period i think that's kind of what we need to go to you know you see churches that congregations decline and all they do is bitch and whine and then you see churches that are growing pastors saying hey no matter what happens you're gonna see your father you're gonna see your late mom you're gonna see your family we got a place that's waiting for us i think a little bit we are a little bit subscribing too much to fear porn and listen i'm sorry about the rant i went on right now but i think we need a little bit of that in our house so when we're going to dinner with the kids and the wife and the family i think it's a little too much it's a little too much so this this discussion isn't about giving up this discussion is about being honest thank you i don't mind being honest no the honest discussion is when will says it sucks not to look at it like it sucks it sucks it sucks it sucks it sucks it sucks them and say you're just a lazy piece of shit no one's saying that though they are no yes lots of people but i don't but i don't work hard no but you don't work hard by the way jeff i will tell you part of them are also right sure so he even said it he says there are people that are also right so so this thing to be like we're a hundred percent right on everything we're oblivious if we think that when when my you know when my kids like i have a credit score for people who complain you know what my credit scores with people that complain here's how it works tom has a high credit score if tom complains i'm listening of something that's going on in the company my wife she's not a complainer but if she tells me something's going on in the family guess what i'm listening melba my nanny if she comes and says hey daddy i don't want to say this but this person disrespects me a lot and i don't want to start a fight i just think they look at me as a nanny and i think i'm more than a nanny to you i've been with you for 20 years i said who's talked to you like that this she never i'll go talk to that person and confront and say i said listen if you talk to her again like she works for you you're gonna have a problem with me this is not just a nanny to us this is a blood to me on what she's been with me for 20 years so i watch who's complaining and i watch who's and to be honest with you there are people that are just complainers but then there are people like him he's working he's doing his thing i want to listen i want to know what he has to say but we have to know there is also both sides of the extreme side of the story that we got to give a little bit credibility all i'm saying is this if i got a brain like jeff snyder i want to see the solutions you're suggesting that's what i want to hear i want to use a guy like your brain to come back and say pat last time remember when you said this let me tell you what five solutions i got i'm looking forward to that podcast i want to hear that i think all of us needs to be challenged a little bit to think that way this may not be a popular thing but i think this mindset was popular 2 000 years ago i think this mindset was popular a thousand years ago and i think it's popular today and the only difference is there's more noise today than ever before because we all have podcasts we all have a show and we all are talking and we all are tweeting and we all are saying stuff and oh my god let me see what that person said i'll give you the final thoughts and we'll go to the next i mean you can work hard and make something of yourself of course that's there but there are also more hurdles at the same time so it feels like you know kind of everyone's right when i had my business it was called pure basics collective it was uh kind of like amazon or etsy but for super healthy products you know i became a certified health coach and i was reviewing all this stuff you know think of like raw milk and tallow on the face all that stuff and so we'd bring in these people who are small businesses they would all sell it on the site and like one of the things that we had to do you know the site is we're no longer active unfortunately but like one thing just an example like when you're doing your website you have to make it ada compliant right if you don't have your site ada compliant then you know shark lawyers will come in and check out people's sites and then you know do cases against you and all this stuff and it's like why do i have to do that why do i have to make my site but by the way like but i don't even i want to challenge you on that buddy i mean i went into it started an insurance company right after 2008 and i was like oh my god i'm going to do this and i'm going to do this and where compliance regulation was freaking skyrocketing i'm not saying it's not possible no all i'm trying to say to you if i'm playing a role of a uncle or a father figure an old older brother to you i don't even want my son to talk that way my son he was one week all the kids in the house were sick before the vault he was a starting lineup on the team then the next week he's at the vault for one week so he doesn't go to practice next week at a game he gets a knee injury the coach pulled him he only played two quarters instead of the four they're doing quarters right it used to be two apps but it's he's playing 11 v 11 well you know what it's not fair i'm not playing no what i would take you out if i was your coach this is hard and and but as hard as it is will you think you would have been famous 20 years ago as famous as you are right now you think the world's gonna know who i am 20 years ago who the hell am i 20 years ago i'm just an insurance guy look who we are right now we got right now in a room just so you know 16 000 people are sitting in the bathroom stall or their car or their work acting like they're working and they're listening to us agreeing disagreeing with us 20 years ago nobody has a clue who i am so what would i do 20 years ago i gotta get a wme agent who the hell is getting a wme agent with this guy caa who what am i doing i'm working on fox i'm working on cnn who signs this guy i gotta go to columbia whatever the university is or go to brown or one of these bullshit you know what are the big uh journalist schools out there i gotta go to those schools for me to barely get a job and go kiss everybody's ass to make my way up to getting a job at fox or cnn or cbs you kidding me the world now knows who will wit is we we are living in a ridiculous time and if i have to exchange the regulation go back 100 years ago 100 years ago ac tv radio this is the greatest time ever but we have challenges yeah and we can't that's what i'm agreeing with that's okay but all i'm saying is the regulation stuff every industry's got regulation stuff they're dealing with trust me it's not in every industry right we gotta find a way to rise above it leaders we need to be leaders and we need to rise above it and this message trust me i didn't make any new friends today i'm telling you i didn't make any new friends today people are pissed off at me saying you don't understand what people are going through i feel like we're good friends now oh no i i jeff but but my challenge to jeff is you have a brain that needs to be used to come up with solutions and share that with us every time you come here i look forward to hearing from you because i really respect the brain of yours but i want you to think about bigger solutions i want you to think about if you're in the room and the president's listening to you what would you advise him to do that's the challenge that's all it is it's nothing more nothing less that's why you're here because the world needs people like you yeah and i appreciate that to say hey you know stop being stop being so negative and yeah every once in a while we got to go through okay let's go to the next story let's talk about vivek is going against amy acton in uh in what do you call it ohio can we look at the calcio vivek and amy acton please uh nobody thought and amy acton was going to get ahead of uh uh vivek if you go back to february 2025 go to february 2025 all the way back look at this uh you got 83 and a half to 16 and a half okay then we go to today go to the flip side of today is amy is now 54 9 against 45 1 if you're somebody that's watching the same man i think vivek's got a shot you may want to go on calci and create an account and go that side but the market right now is saying amy acton is going to be beating vivek tom how did this happen vivek was a superstar every How did this happen? Was it just that tweet or is it more than the tweet? It was more than the tweet, but the tweet started a waterfall effect. Ohio is in the middle of America. The middle of America doesn't want to hear that the middle of America has, you know, perceptive problems that he was talking about. And they certainly don't want to hear in the middle of America that a guy that sounds like an elitist engineer who's already sold this company, oh, yeah, nice to be you. They don't want to hear that. And so it was how he responded to it and the little comments that he's been making along the way. And then they're in the middle of America and they're facing this. And they're facing the economy and the affordability crisis, Pat. So those two things came together. Vivek did it to himself a little bit. And God bless you, Vivek. You know, he says, I love you. But after that comment, you didn't kind of rally with it. And then also the wave of affordability crisis came that. And those are the two things that are hitting him hard. And now you've got this woman coming from, you know, the angry white middle-aged crazy town, crazy town Democrat woman. And she is the air has been sucked out of the room and she's coming in with it. Those two things came together. It's not any more complicated than that. And so they don't see Vivek as understanding them. He lost that momentum. The economy moved, affordability moved, and she moved into the into the gap. And that's exactly what we've got going on here. He needs to be out there talking about all the things that we could be doing. He could be doing, hey, let's lower the restrictions on housing so we could build houses. If we have more house, the price of each house will go down a little bit. We'll have supply. We need it. We have it. Let's let's take what Patrick was talking about taxes. Let's do that. Let's drill, baby, drill and have more oil and energy here so that we are not just an exporter. Now. Natural gas to Europe. We could have more here and we could build jobs on this. Those are three so simple things. Taxes, housing and energy. And he could be talking about those in Ohio in the middle of the U.S. But I think he lost the narrative, Pat. And he didn't come back and say, you know what? American exceptionalism is what I believe in. I've taken advantage of it. I've been part of it. Yeah. But we got to go. And I just don't think. And by the way, I like him. You know, we have. Do you think most do? No. They used to. So why? That's the that's the thing. Why? He didn't come back. He seems a little arrogant and aloof. I'm sorry to say that. But the average person looks at him. He seems arrogant and aloof. Do you think that's fixable? It is fixable. Talk about things and have solutions and demonstrate that you've got the ability to do it. OK, where are you at with this? I think he's going to win or lose. No, I think he's fixable in months. No, no. I think, again, this is. So you think he's going to lose the kitchen? I think Republicans are in for a really tough November. As sad as that is and what that actually means, Republicans are in for a tough November. People would have given him a little bit of slack if things were different. Yes, I think Tom, you're right. He's a little bit aloof. He doesn't connect well with the average American. Most of average Americans would say, OK, that's not a big deal. But when kitchen table issues are front and center every single day, you don't want aloof. You want somebody who says, I feel your pain. And aloof said it was aloof. But then he said something. Well, he actually confirmed everybody's worst fears. Look, the greatest states in the country right now are led by Republican governors. Ron DeSantis, shout out to him and Governor Abbott in Texas and the former greatest states in the union, Gavin Newsom and Kathy Hochul, have completely ruined. So I'm not following the Ohio race. I do like Vivek. I understand that a lot of people maybe have been turned off. I'm a fan. And I want to say when's the last? I think. Ohio hasn't had a Democratic governor since pre-John Kasich 15, 20 years ago. So Ohio's doing pretty damn good. Ohio State's doing pretty damn good. Columbus, Cincinnati. You even had LeBron out there in Cleveland. Be careful what you wish for, Ohio. Things are going pretty damn good for you. And if you don't go with Vivek, you're going to go end up potentially what's happened in California and New York. So you're saying for the voters to show up. A lot of people. A lot of people think they're not going to show up. Then if they're not showing up, who is the onus on? If the onus is on Vivek, why are they not showing up? Now, by the way, just so you know, this is just a Cal Sheep poll. And we follow Cal Sheep because nowadays, that's where I go to. I trust these polls more than any other polls I look at. When Cal Sheep puts this up, I want to know why the audience has put $1.7 million on choosing Amy over Vivek. Why are they doing that? Why do you think? Just to be clear, these are odds, right? So it's 50-50 at this point, give or take, right? It's not. It's 55-45, 54-46. So, I mean, it's also. But, Adam, but go back to this is kind of like a Polyvier, Polyev. What was his name? Pierre Polyev. Pierre Polyev. He had a 94% chance, and he lost to Carney. Now, he royally screwed up. He royally screwed up because he did not want to work. Vivek's not a guy that's not a worker. Oh, Vivek is. Pierre was an arrogant, pompous, eating apple, I don't need to sit down with podcast, scared, walking on eggshells, a little bit of a pansy-esque type of a style. And now, after he lost, he's not going to do a podcast, which is good. But I'm trying to find out. This isn't over with right now. Will, what do you think about Vivek's chances of winning against Amy? I think it's tough. And, you know, to kind of say the elephant in the room with this, you know, the fact that his last name is Ramaswamy, and I don't know if people totally look at him as the Republican candidate, you know? Just to be completely honest with people. The vice president's wife's name is Usha. Of course, you know. Of course. But we elected, people elected Donald Trump for being Donald Trump, not for. So you think the name is going to hurt him? I do. I do think it hurts him. I think it makes people less excited about him. You know, I think right now in America, you're seeing all sorts of problems that I guess you could say are race-related, but a lot of it comes down to, like, ethnically done. And I think that people, I don't know if people want this. I'm going to be completely honest with you. Just because he's Indian or because of his last name or because of what? Both, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think people. I mean, we just, we voted for Barack Hussein Obama. Yeah. What are we talking about? Yeah. So I. That was Democrats. You know, the Democrats voted for. Well, also, there's a lot of people in the middle that voted for him. You're saying Republicans may not. Yeah, I'm saying Republicans may not. Let me ask you, could, you know, what could. I think it's also. Oh, sorry. What could he do? What could he do, Will, to change it? Like, remember when, the first time Trump was running and, hey, grab him by the, you know what? And so what did he do? He went and got a Mike Pence for hardcore conservative and safe and Christian and no, he's a good man. He's a good man. And I think Pence played a bigger role for Trump winning than J.D. did for Trump. I don't think J.D. played any role for Trump winning. I think Pence did. What could he do here strategically to be able to regain the vote, regain the Republican Party? I think he's got to push hard on the America First agenda. I think if he's not going forward with that on American interests as the first thing, you know, I mean, there's all this talk about these H-1B visas and bringing people in and all this kind of stuff. And if he doesn't really take a stand against that, you know, I think it's going to be losing for him. We'll see. Let's go to the next story. Paramount. Always known for being, you know, for the most part in California, they set California exit plan over antitrust battle with blue states, $111 billion WBD merger, and they're leaving. So now speculation where they're going. Some people know, some people are speculating, but Paramount is deadly serious about relocating its headquarters out of California if the state doesn't drop out its effort to block the company's pending Warner Brothers discovery merger sources toward deadline with executives telling L.A. Mayor Kieran. Bass and Attorney General Rob Bonta that billion dollar merger with Paramount CEO David Ellison has called blackmail in response. California has floated Georgia, Tennessee and Texas as possible new homes. Bonta's office called the relocation talk saber rattling, saying what Paramount decides to do in Paramount's choice alone. Counties Economic Development Corporation report estimated a full relocation could cost California twenty eight thousand to fifty eight thousand jobs and ten point sixty seven billion to twenty one billion dollars annually in economic output. Tom, how big of an impact would this be and how likely is it that they're leaving? It can help you with practically anything on the Web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Check. Responses set up required compatibility and availability. 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New members only. time ever texans have an energy plan that combines free nights all year with daytime summer savings it's called free nights and cool summer you get free nights every night all year long plus a 25 bonus toward your daytime use all summer it's a first of its kind plan created for how texans actually use energy discover how much more you could save with free nights and cool summer txu energy energy for everything visit txu.com for more information rep number one zero zero zero four fan duel is now available everywhere in the u.s so you can get in on the sports action no matter where you are including these places make this your most rewarding season ever with fan duel age and location restrictions apply product availability varies by market see fanduel.com for eligibility gambling problem call 1-800-GAMBLER this would be the impact that they're saying i buy off on the numbers the numbers yep i have no reason to doubt those number one number two um i don't think it's saber rattling i think if you look at it you know back in the old days why did you need to have steel mills where they were in the rust belt why because we're trying because we're moving ore across the great lakes that's where the that's where the ore was the ore gets offloaded goes into smelters we made steel we made iron we did all this it you in a streaming world you do not have to be in california in a world where you need the labor that the studios need you don't have to be in california it used to be convenient the fact is the this icon the paramount arch that everybody drives from takes pictures and everything like that in la you know what they haven't been making movies at the volume that they back there for 25 years they've been in vancouver they've been in georgia they've been in other places they've been doing things on sound stages there but they really haven't been there in terms of the factory of content nor do they need to necessarily be there and they're looking at the cost of real estate and the cost of doing business there i don't think it's saber rattling i think they're saying you know what i can make a lot less money and one third of the music industry moved to brentwood tennessee and there's streamers and there's a lot of things in tennessee and tennessee's favorable for it so they're like you know i'm moving you don't have to be there that you used to be that everybody was there so kind of like the rust belt and the great lakes and the ore coming on ships and barges it used to be that that was it it's not no more you don't have to be there and it's a cost decision i don't think it's saber rattling will they move paramount i give it 60 that they're moving jeff what do you think saber rattling 100 they're moved but i don't think it i think they're using this as an excuse i think they were going to move anyway because what tom says there's it makes no sense great opportunity yeah you don't need you don't need los angeles anymore like i used to so it made more sense to move and they're just saying let's just let's just speed up the timetable they're giving us a reason to do it where you at yeah why would you not leave california yeah i lived there i lived in los angeles you know right over by the warner brothers studios myself over in toluca lake for five years it's a great city by the way toluca lake it's amazing amazing little farmer's market you know who used to have a house in toluca lake maryland monroe really used to have a house and i know that because every single hollywood apartment i would move into they'd always say oh maryland monroe lived right i see the houses they the houses in toluca lake that she had okay in a corner area but uh you know relative of ours bought it many years ago yeah and i loved it there but you know this comes a certain point it's a breaking point you have to leave and it seems very obvious why they okay i think uh whether you're any of the big major studios whether you're sony warner brothers paramount the question is you know whether they're going to leave or not is why would you stay why are you staying in la at this point just because like future generations i'm sorry past generations loved hollywood and what they're going to do is they're going to leave and they're going to do what hollywood did for america yeah that's great we can have sort of like uh that uh wonderful feeling about what happened back in the day but looking at where california is headed why would you stay and sign up for more of this nonsense that's my opinion and by the way paramount the weather in florida is incredible come on here to florida south florida you're not going to do better you know you know glenn beck bought at the blaze i think the old paramount building they had in dallas did you know that yeah he said he has a massive studio it's i don't know if you've ever have you ever been to it i haven't been it's incredible have you been to it's ridiculous it's a museum it's ridiculous how beautiful that place is so spread your wings paramount spread your wings place but time to put the nail in the coffin well you know you know what needs to be happening uh i hope governor desantis's team is calling and selling and making a pitch on why florida sell the dream sell the dream baby to come to florida i think we need to be recruiting these guys to come down here all right i'll sign up for that recruiting all right next one joe rogan thinks ai running the government would stop all wars on the planet okay all wars on the planet i don't know if you have a clip in the back or not but i'll read this if you have it pull it up uh joe rogan said he hopes ai eventually replaces humans in running government and international relations telling physicist carlo ravelli as ai becomes more and more omnipresent one of the things that we're gonna farm off is government imagine a war imagine a war where it stops a world where it stops is this it go for it it sounds like like a very it sounds like a crazy hope but my hope is that as ai becomes more and more omnipresent as we start farming off various tasks to it one of the things that we're going to farm off is government one of the things we're going to farm off is how we interact with other countries i know that's terrifying to people but just think of the how we interact with other countries i know that's terrifying to people but just think of the disastrous effects that we've had so far countries i know that's terrifying to people but just think of the disastrous effects that we've had so far with humans doing it terrifying to people but just think of the disastrous effects that we've had so far with humans doing it if all international military with humans doing it if all international military conflicts ended instantaneously if all international military conflicts ended instantaneously upon ai governing conflicts and military weapons and conflicts and military weapons and imagine that imagine a war where it stops all war stops on the imagine that imagine a war where it stops all war stops on the planet that is stops all war stops on the planet that is one of the things that everybody wants planet that is one of the things that everybody wants but no one thinks one of the things that everybody wants but no one thinks could ever possibly happen if but no one thinks could ever possibly happen if you ask the average person street could ever possibly happen if you ask the average person street what are the odds that in 10 you ask the average person street what are the odds that in 10 years from now there'll be no war what are the odds that in 10 years from now there'll be no war anywhere on earth years from now there'll be no war anywhere on earth everyone's going to say no you're anywhere on earth everyone's going to say no you're never going to have that isn't everyone's going to say no you're never going to have that isn't that insane that the idea of never going to have that isn't that insane that the idea of people that insane that the idea of people for whatever reason wanting to kill people for whatever reason wanting to kill each other is each other is universally accepted as being universally accepted as being something that's always so in other words humans have a something that's always so in other words humans have a terrible historical record of other words humans have a terrible historical record of governing conflict do you agree terrible historical record of governing conflict do you agree with what joe is saying here governing conflict do you agree with what joe is saying here jeff no i think it's incredibly with what joe is saying here jeff no i think it's incredibly naive to begin with uh and it's it's a jeff no i think it's incredibly naive to begin with uh and it's it's a hell of a lot more complex than naive to begin with uh and it's it's a hell of a lot more complex than just saying if we only got hell of a lot more complex than just saying if we only got people to act rationally we wouldn't just saying if we only got people to act rationally we wouldn't have conflicts that's just that's people to act rationally we wouldn't have conflicts that's just that's just nonsense i mean it's have conflicts that's just nonsense i mean it's it's utopian nonsense is what it is why would it's utopian nonsense is what it is why would he say that because i think there's um in the he say that because i think there's um in the context of discussion we had earlier that were context of discussion we had earlier that were people are tired of it people are tired of people are tired of it people are tired of conflict that doesn't mean that we can just conflict that doesn't mean that we can just eliminate it through farming off governmental eliminate it through farming off governmental capabilities to a machine that doesn't capabilities to a machine that doesn't necessarily follow i think it's it's a bad premise it's a bad necessarily follow i think it's it's a bad premise it's a bad argument and it ends up in crazy town i argument and it ends up in crazy town i think it also has to do with the fact on think it also has to do with the fact on that question that trump is not warning that question that trump is not warning about any ai safety trump is basically about any ai safety trump is basically coming out and saying you know we don't coming out and saying you know we don't need to worry about this it's all going need to worry about this it's all going to be fine independently people will do to be fine independently people will do it and i think that's a big misstep tell it and i think that's a big misstep tell me why why do you think so you you me why why do you think so you you you're 30 years old you just turned 30 you're 30 years old you just turned 30 last week why are you are you concerned last week why are you are you concerned are you optimistic what role do you think are you optimistic what role do you think ai is going to play oh i'm incredibly ai is going to play oh i'm incredibly concerned i'm actually writing my third concerned i'm actually writing my third book right now it's called this book is book right now it's called this book is not written by ai and uh yeah it should not written by ai and uh yeah it should come out next fall i am entirely against come out next fall i am entirely against yeah you won't find it on here it's it's yeah you won't find it on here it's it's you know still working on it but um you know still working on it but um incredibly concerned for all a multitude incredibly concerned for all a multitude of reasons you know we can talk about of reasons you know we can talk about human extinction and all that coming and human extinction and all that coming and of course that's scary and and it would of course that's scary and and it would kill us all and all that but the main kill us all and all that but the main point is is that it's taking away people's point is is that it's taking away people's humanity and it takes away people's humanity and it takes away people's ability to think for themselves you know ability to think for themselves you know like i'd be like i'd be i go and do these debates on college i go and do these debates on college campuses right and i'm there i don't campuses right and i'm there i don't have any notes i have to basically read have any notes i have to basically read everything before be like a human everything before be like a human encyclopedia so that anyone who comes up encyclopedia so that anyone who comes up and asks me about a multitude of and asks me about a multitude of millions of different things i have to millions of different things i have to know the answer and i'll be there know the answer and i'll be there talking to people having a conversation talking to people having a conversation and they're on their phone on ai and they're on their phone on ai talking to me while fact-checking it at talking to me while fact-checking it at the same time that's not real knowledge the same time that's not real knowledge that's just me debating an ai why do you that's just me debating an ai why do you even come up to the microphone if you're even come up to the microphone if you're just going to search this and people do just going to search this and people do this for everything and they're not this for everything and they're not actually learning anything and if you go actually learning anything and if you go to any of these big companies right now to any of these big companies right now they're going and writing all their they're going and writing all their press releases with ai they're doing all press releases with ai they're doing all their marketing with ai it's like at their marketing with ai it's like at what certain point it's like why am i what certain point it's like why am i paying you 200 000 to run marketing for paying you 200 000 to run marketing for our company when i could have some our company when i could have some intern that i pay 15 an hour that just intern that i pay 15 an hour that just puts in the exact same prompt as you puts in the exact same prompt as you you're basically useless people have you're basically useless people have amazing minds amazing brains and we're amazing minds amazing brains and we're losing it to social media and ai and losing it to social media and ai and it's only going to get worse as the ai it's only going to get worse as the ai love epidemic comes the transhumanism love epidemic comes the transhumanism comes i mean so many different problems comes i mean so many different problems that are coming what do you think about that are coming what do you think about what rogan is saying here do you agree what rogan is saying here do you agree with them i think rogan was rogan was with them i think rogan was rogan was speculating um and he was saying wow you speculating um and he was saying wow you know all these things that were what do know all these things that were what do you use the word farming we're just you use the word farming we're just farming them out to this and this and farming them out to this and this and this and i think what he was getting at this and i think what he was getting at if we farmed out to ai if we farmed out to ai you know working with other countries if you know working with other countries if as i was reading this one of the things as i was reading this one of the things i think what he's saying is when humans i think what he's saying is when humans and egos get together and egos get together countries fight if ai was doing it then countries fight if ai was doing it then it would be told don't fight just find a it would be told don't fight just find a solution i think that's what rogan was solution i think that's what rogan was saying so he's a little pollyannic saying so he's a little pollyannic because you do get to the part okay well because you do get to the part okay well then what what are humans really doing do we really have? And I don't buy off on that. I think this is a time for humans. This is a time for statesmen. This is a time for connection. This is a time for somebody standing up and leading, not programming AI how to lead. And by the way, whose fingers are on the keyboard? You're going to come back to somebody. Whose fingers are on the keyboard giving it the parameters? Oh, by the way, this is Iran, so be aggressive and be in charge and don't give them an inch. Okay, well, we just eliminated the conflict, but now it's programmed in. So I think Rogan was just speculating. And I discount it because leadership means human interaction representing humans. And I just don't buy off on all the wars would stop if AI was doing it rather than your president, your secretary of state. I've actually been watching the sort of the evolution of Joe Rogan. I've been listening to a lot of his old standup lately. Has anybody listened to Pandora? Everybody still listens to Spotify. Spotify and Apple. I still love Pandora. And you can put together a comedy channel and Joe Rogan's monkeys in space stuff that he used to talk about. And what I've noticed about Joe Rogan is this, is that he's like the original just asking questions guy. Hey, look, I'm just speculating. I'm just asking questions. The things that he said recently about Jesus and religion are actually incredible given like things he said 10, 20 years ago when he was sort of anti-religion. So I've seen his, I've seen him evolve politically. I've seen him evolve on one of the things. So I don't, when I look at Joe Rogan, I don't look to him as a substantial debate. I look at him as saying, Hey, wouldn't this be interesting to talk about? Who I would basically listen to are the basically the AI companies, not the politicians here. So, and regarding AI, you know, again, I'm not the brainiac here, but I do try to research. Are you familiar with something called the Luddites? You familiar with these people? That's what people call me. Oh, you really? Okay. Well, I'm not, but that's what I say. You're a Russian Luddite. So the Luddites were during the industrial revolution. I believe it was going on in, in, in the UK and old British times. They were basically English workers who worked in, in factories who basically rebelled against the revolution, rebelled against the machines. Like there's a famous group, Rage Against the Machine. So the Luddites in the 1810s, 1820s, whatever, they were someone who disliked and basically distrust technology. So the technology that they were using for their, for their, for their, their jobs, they would start smashing and ruining the technology. And, you know, lo and behold, they were wrong. The industrial revolution basically went on. It changed the world and the world's better for it. So I'm just wondering if the, the AI doomers and people, the wits of the world, evidently are basically the Luddites of today, and you can't stop progress. And these things are going to happen to tie this in with Joe Rogan. I think he's just basically posing a question. But for me, I think there's a lot of doomsdayers out there basically saying that AI is going to take over the world. Rogan's saying that it's going to save the world. Yeah. So you, you, to me, the way I think about it is I had, I don't know what, oh, I had a, who was that guy that said his name is Pref Professor and it wasn't a professor, it was a teacher, but he was saying that Trump's going to win. He's going to go to war with Iran. He's going to lose. Jang. Okay. So he said something when I was talking to my, my, the part I really enjoyed about the conversation with him was that he said, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, how much he can criticize China while living in China. And he says, yeah, those are issues we just don't talk about. He lives in China? Yeah. At the time when I talked to him, he was doing the podcast from China. He says, no, we can't criticize you. We just don't talk to, don't talk about those topics because, you know, we just, we, there's a mutual understanding with the people to criticize the China government. Okay. Peace doesn't always mean freedom. So if AI eliminates a hundred percent of war, what does world look like for humans? Let's go there. In brave new world, there was no war. Yeah, exactly. You have this dystopia. Yeah. What, what does that look like? What decisions can we make? How quickly are we getting arrested? So I'm going to the, and then the other part, when Lenin, you know, Stalin, all those guys, they took Karl Marx communist manifesto and they brought it to Russia and USSR. And it was a hundred percent. Nobody makes money, but government's going to take care of you. Everybody drove the same car, same apartment, same underwear, same clothes, same, the same that, and this is how it is. What did, Russians all start doing? They all broke the law. And what did they do on the side? They all had side businesses and they found ways to make money. So that was a hundred percent communism and all. And when they come to you, you ask a lot of time, when you talk to Russians, they'll say, Pat, I don't know how to say this to you, man. My parents, we grew up breaking the law to make additional money. And that was a norm. It's not like you, nobody was seen as a criminal because we all did it. Everybody broke the law in USSR to make money, to take care of their families. So they come to the state. Guess what happens to them? They think that's still the norm. So he was trying to explain to me, this is, we've lived like this for 40 years, 30 years. This is all we know that you have to find a way to break the law, to make money. And then it takes a generation sometime for that to get out of the system and say, not in America, you don't need to do that. Go make as much money as you want. Just do it legally here. Right? So I don't know if world peace is ever going to exist as long as mankind is making the decisions. And I don't even know if I like it. The only way world peace comes through, AI, I think is because people will be so docile and destroyed mentally that they no longer, they just sit in chairs as sacks. What a horrible life. I love the debates. I love them. You know, it's also progress, progress, progress breeds conflict. That's right. We continue to grow. We continue to have new ideas. Obviously there's going to be people who have, you know, you talk about the Luddites. That's a, it's a perfect example. The irony with the Luddites is they were, look at the wise man. I know the smart guy over there. The Luddites were actually correct about one thing. They were, they were, they were afraid that the machines were going to take their jobs. Machines did take their job, but they were wrong about exactly. That's what they were wrong about. So progress comes with conflict to enter, to try to reverse engineer conflict out of the equation means almost necessarily there is no progress. I'll tell you a story. I was at a bar a little while ago in Sarasota and there was this guy there. He's probably 20, 21 years old and I'm not trying to be a snoop, but I'm like looking over at what he's doing and he's Snapchatting, you know, still using Snapchat in 2026. And, uh, he's talking to this girl, send selfies and the girl sends something back to him. He takes her message. He goes to chat GPT, types it in and says, what should I respond to this girl on the thing? How are you supposed to actually talk with a girl in person or whatever you're trying to do? If this is the way you're living? The bigger thing is if he's in a bedroom with her and he's like, what do I do next? That's a bigger problem. That's where we're going. Hopefully he has a bigger problem. But you know, when you're, when you're going through this, obviously, uh, there's going to be a lot of like 10 years ago saying by 2052, the president's going to be a robot and they're going to be campaigning to say, vote for this robot because this robot knows how to make the decisions to minimize war. This video was like 10, 12 years ago. We made it in 2016 when we were in the Providence towers. It's out there public. Somebody could find it, but let me get to the next story. Last story I want to get to before we wrap up is, uh, Saudi accuses who tease of attacking Mecca and who tease like, uh, no, we didn't do that. That's not what we did is no, you did. So Saudi seeks allies, seek allies, help as missile defenses run low in fight with who tease. Do you have the video by the way? Is this the video? Go for it. You think, you know, a browser, but Gemini and Chrome that's new. 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This is your home coach home of the save. Join for just $20 at BJ's.com slash mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for six months. Open soon. Limited time offer new members only BJ's home of the save. This episode is brought to you by TXU energy for the first time ever. Texans have an energy plan that combines free nights all year with daytime summer savings. You get free nights every night all year long. Plus a 25% bonus toward your daytime use all summer. It's a first of its kind plan created for how Texans actually use energy. Rep number 1-0-0-0-4. Agent Location restrictions apply. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. So Saudis seek ally help. Saudi Arabia's running law on missile interceptors has turned to regional and western allies for help. Two regional officials said the Saudis asked France, Britain, Pakistan, Egypt to deploy air defense support against the Houthis' missiles and drones. The outreach came because the United States and the kingdom's main arms supplier has seen its own interceptor stock dwindle over the past six months. War of Iran. Saudi Arabia accused the Houthis of trying to strike Mecca with a drone declaring the city a red line. The Houthis denied it. A crucial Saudi pipeline has been shut for weeks. The Houthis have seized islands in the BAP. El Mendeb Strait, and oil remains above $100 a barrel. One official said the kingdom is in a very difficult position, having to protect bases, government installation, and oil facilities. Adam Barron, a fellow at the Washington think tank New America, said that this is not just a Houthis versus Saudi issue, but a question of guaranteeing international shipping routes. And then U.S. opts out, opts not to back Saudi Arabia and the Yemen meeting Houthis leaders. How do you feel about the story, Jeff? I don't think we have nearly enough information. I mean, who is, what's actually true here? Is this a false flag operation to expand the wider war for Saudi Arabian purposes? Is this a legitimate threat? Obviously, it's a legitimate threat in terms of the theater, but is this Saudi Arabia versus Yemeni rebels conflict, or is this actually part of the wider Iran conflict? I think the U.S., by not backing Saudi Arabia, says, you guys, it kind of says that this was a false flag thing, that Saudi Arabia wanted to expand the wider conflict. And the U.S. does not consider it part of their goals and their conflict with Iran. But not really a whole lot of information here. Tom. Yeah. Number one, there's not a lot of information. But number two, these two guys go way back. In 2022, after about a year of border clashes, very real border clashes, Saudi and Yemen had a truce and concluded the Houthis. 2022, they had a truce. No one knew what was going on. It was out in the back corner. You know, the Western media didn't cover. They covered a whole lot. Some, not, not, not. In the meantime, the Saudis made a defense pact just recently with Turkey and Pakistan. And now they reached out to Turkey and they say, hey, dude, help me with this thing in my backyard here. They're breaking the truths and they're doing things. And, oh, my gosh, they launched something at Mecca. And the Turks said, hang on, man. We really haven't gotten our pact validated by our parliament. And we want to chill. Just for. Just for a second, if that would be all right, can we do that? And he said, well, they're doing this. And so the Turks, which is the largest military in the Middle East, is Turkey, you know, clearly said we don't want to be drawn into this, this clash down there because Saudi wanted other people to clean it up. And then who did Saudi ask? They ask us. And we said, you know, we bombed the Houthis down there. We hit a bunch of their camps and stuff for about eight days, apparently about a year ago. Yeah, we're not into it. We're kind of starting it up down here. So what's interesting to me is that the Saudis are saying, oh, my God, they've thrown something at Mecca. And they have this clash that's been going on, you know, in 2021, 22, Pat. And now even Turkey said, no, I really don't want to get drawn into this down there right at the moment. And then we said we want to get drawn in. So what everybody is saying is like, Saudi, come on, the Houthis are your guys. And they are Syed, Syed Shia, I believe, is their sect of Islam. And that sect happens to revere Mecca as well. So it's like, yeah, I think what everybody's seeing down there with Saudi, for all the reasons articulated, Pat, is I think you've got to work this Yemen thing out. You've got your own treaty down there. And no one is sure of what's going on. So neither the Turks or the U.S. wants to jump in and start start blowing shit up. Adam, man, this Muslim on Muslim crime. Got to stop, guys. You know, the Houthis and the Saudis and the Iranians. And the Qataris. I mean, come on, guys, let's let's figure out who your real enemy is here. Obviously, I'm joking here, but lost in all this. Did you hear about this secret meeting that took place in Germany apparently a week ago between the CENTCOM United States aligned this meeting between Israel, Egypt, Saudi, the Emiratis, Jordanians, I think the Bahrain and one or two other Middle Eastern countries to basically get them in a row. And the fact that you can come in a room and say, guys, what are we doing with Iran at this point? And the fact that Saudi, Egypt, the Qataris, the Emiratis are sitting down with the Americans and the Israelis signifies one major thing. Iran is the bad guy and everybody knows it. At some point, you know, Israel, who's not even being mentioned these days because, you know, no Jews, no news. They're basically saying, hey, Israel, would you mind lending us a hand? Israel, would you mind lending us a hand? And helping us figure out what to do, because, quite frankly, we're incapable of beating a ragtag terrorist group called the Houthis. So and we're also incapable of beating the IRGC. So please help us, would you? Because clearly Saudi and respect to MBS, I think he's doing great things in Saudi. You're using all American weapons. You have all our capabilities. We've given you planes. We've given you bombs. You can't beat the Houthis. What are you guys doing over there? Is that the way it happened that everybody gets together in America says, what do we do about this? I mean, and then the Emiratis in charge of that meeting, the Emiratis say, who is a weak boy? So the what are you saying? Yeah, what do you say? I'm saying you get everybody together and it says, what do we do about this? And it says, who's we? You know, you started this. It's escalated over to us. We've engaged. We agree that Iran is a bad actor. But who's we? What's your point? He's making a very good point. He's saying we didn't start this. You started. No, no, no, no. The Houthi thing, to correct everybody, has been going on for 20 years in Yemen. No, that's not. No, no. But you mixed it. You're talking about the meeting. We're talking two different things. OK, but that's also a part of it. I'm not isolating anything. That whole region is chaos. I said Thomas. No, I know. But you started. That whole region. And I'm reacting to your first point that you correctly made about the secret meeting in Germany getting together to talk about Iran. But it wasn't just about Iran. It was also about the Houthis. It's about a mess with the shipping straits. And what's going on here? It's all interweaved into one thing. It's how do we get out of this mess? I think that's what the meeting said is it's not. The Houthis is a Saudi problem. We don't consider it part of the wider conflict. I think that's the consensus here. Well, Saudi problems. No, the Saudis obviously don't. The Saudis are asking everybody to come to their defense. Right. And nobody wants to. And the Saudis would get their weaponry from America. And the U.S. and the Turks said no. So it's downstream of our problem anyway. That's the thing. Everybody keeps saying no, which should tell you that their view of this conflict is not part of the wider conflict. Well, we'll see what happens there. When the Houthis take over shipping straits in the Red Sea or in this other area, everyone's going to get involved anyway. So I think that was part of the conversation. Yeah, I'm actually on Adam's side for this one. I think you're right on that. I think it will probably escalate into something else. And it seems, yeah, I mean, again, not enough information. And we'll see what happens. But, again, like what happened with Iran, escalating things there. It said it wasn't going to happen. It was going to be over. I could see something like that happening here in the same place. Awesome. You know what today's for me? Today is Friday. And a few months ago. When we pay, when we have our pay cycle that we pay people, I made omelet a few months ago for everybody. You know what I'm doing today? I'm making chicken barbecue. Oh, yeah. I'm coming for lunch today. For my recipe that I've been doing this for the last 26 years, I've got to go cook for everybody. But, Will, thanks for coming out. It was great having you on. Of course. I really enjoyed it. Thank you, guys. And your analysis on NFL season, spot on. Next time we have to talk about, we've got to talk about disc golf. Brown's winning the Super Bowl. Yeah, disc golf. Disc golf. And Jeff, as usual. I can't wait for our next one. Yep. And you know what I want to hear next one? I'm going to have a 20,000 word report. Jeff, do it. You're like an economic rock star. You've got the hair. You've got the glasses. You're doing both things. Everybody else, have a wonderful weekend. God bless. We'll do it again on Monday. 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