Chinese Billionaire Birth Tourism Surges As U.S. Faces Security Threats | PBD #732

Patrick Bet-David, Tom Ellsworth, Brandon Aceto and Jeff Snider break down the surge in Chinese billionaire birth tourism amid U. S. national security concerns, Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz grilling Netflix over content and censorship, Disney’s new CEO transition, Palantir’s expanding ICE contracts and border enforcement role, and selloff pressure hitting gold, silver, and Bitcoin markets. ------ ♟️ SALES LEADERSHIP SUMMIT 2026: https://bit.ly/45Evtj4 🏢 VT CAREER OPENINGS: https://bit.ly/49ZjZcx 📺 JEFF SNIDER'S EURODOLLAR UNIVERSITY: https://bit.ly/4i5uz3W Ⓜ️ MINNECT RUDOLPHO VARGAS: https://bit.ly/4bwAE8r 🎙️ FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON SPOTIFY: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4g57zR2⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://bit.ly/4g57zR2 Ⓜ️ CONNECT ON MINNECT: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4kSVkso ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://bit.ly/4kSVkso Ⓜ️ PBD PODCAST CIRCLES: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4mAWQAP⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://bit.ly/4mAWQAP 👔 BET-DAVID CONSULTING: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4lzQph2 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://bit.ly/4lzQph2 🥃 BOARDROOM CIGAR LOUNGE: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4pzLEXj⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://bit.ly/4pzLEXj 💬 TEXT US: Text “PODCAST” to 310-340-1132 to get the latest updates in real-time! ABOUT US: Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller “Your Next Five Moves” (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:14Speaker 00

  My handshake is better than anything I ever signs, right here.

• 0:18Speaker 00

  You are a one of one? My sun's right there. I don't think I've ever said this before.

• 0:27Speaker 01

  Gang, we got business Wednesday today, back with the same three brilliant minds that we have with us. Snyder, Aceto, and Ellsworth here with us. But in the interim, this, this set here is getting a little bit warmer. It was freezing on Monday. I still need the scarf. Don't have the gloves with me. This is a temporary podcast set we're using. Our other set that we're building, the new one, is coming along good. We're about to finalize it. I think we'll be ready within two to four weeks to get it going in that new set. Uh, we can't wait to go back to the new set. Uh, because the old one we used for five years, it was great, four years. Well, we're excited about this new set. Anyways, lots of stories to get into.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  One of the things I do want to get into, which is kind of interesting, is this concept of, uh, birth tourism, which, you know, I was asking you about. I'm sure, you know, Jeff, you probably know about birth tourism. You've heard about it before. It's a story that's coming out a lot recently. Peter Schweizer, I've had him on the podcast before. He wrote a book that he talks about what Chinese billionaires are doing to leverage having future leaders that... Anyways, we'll get into it. It's a massive, massive thing that both New York Post and Wall Street Journal wrote about. I want to talk about it today. It is interesting, something we should be paying attention to on how to protect it long-term. Couple other things as we're going through this. Trump said something that really upset Brandon.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  Brandon is not happy with this answer. Trump gets out there and says his goal is to drive housing prices up, not down. Brandon said, no, bring it down so I can afford to buy a house. So Brandon is saying, he's unhappy about it. He's unhappy about it. But some homeowners are like, look, I kind of don't mind it if he wants to take the prices of my house and I got more equity. Tom is saying there are people right now that are refinancing and letting go of their three and a half percent rate.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  That they had and picking up a six and a half percent for a reason that is scary. And we'll probably talk about Tommy, it's none of our stories, but I want you to cover that when you were talking about in the back. When we get to it, US manufacturing is in retreat and Trump's tariffs aren't helping. This is a Wall Street Journal story. Trump says he wants Harvard to pay a billion dollars for being strongly anti Semitic. That's what he wants. He sues the IRS for $10 billion over leaked tax returns. He refuses to be outdone by Europe signing his own US India trade deal. And then the administration to create $12 billion rare earth stockpile to counter China. US plans to issue license for firms to pump Venezuelan oil.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  Let me read that to you one more time. US plans to issue license for firms to pump Venezuelan oil. It's happening. So Bloomberg story. Clintons finally agree to testify in House Epstein investigation ahead of contempt vote. And this Epstein stuff, a lot of new stuff came out. Every time you think you're done reading the stories, more stuff is coming out on Epstein. Ken Griffin, Steven Ross bankrolled $10 million campaign to attract other CEOs to South Florida. Only place a founder can scale. That's what Ken Griffin said. Only place a founder can scale. Bob Iger finally is stepping aside. The question is, is it the board's decision or his?

• 3:48Speaker 01

  Some are saying the board decided to step him, push him aside to bring a new CEO. But Bob is saying, no, it's me. It's really, it's time for me to move on and have somebody else take over my job. Tom was giving me this assessment when we were talking about it. And, you know, for whatever reason, when we're together, the four of us, we talk about Disney. I don't know why this happens every single time. Maybe Jeff is a diehard Disney guy that it brings the Disney energy in here, but we'll talk about it.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  And then yesterday, there was a couple of clips where the CEO of Netflix and Time Warner are being grilled by Holly and Ted Cruz on this transaction that could possibly take in place. Holly asked a question from the Time Warner guy on, you know, hey, we know you're leaning left and transgender content, all this stuff. No, that's not how we choose our content. It's actually, we should play one of those two clips, Rob. I'm probably gonna play the Holly clip, not the Ted Cruz, even though it's three or four minutes, I think it's good for the audience to see. Disney names the new CEO, uh, theme park boss, Josh DiAmaro, as its new CEO, and Josh comes out and says, "I'm a risk taker. I like to take risks." Who knows what the hell that means when you say, "I'm a risk taker." Does that mean he's gonna go even further than it was? Nobody knows, but we'll see. Loosen the bolts on Space Mountain.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Disney warns of, of hit to US theme parks as foreign tourist numbers fall. Uh, this is the number one thing Americans worry about, being able to afford in retirement, and it's not food or housing. It's important. If you got aging parents, they're thinking about this, and we'll talk about that as well. Gold and silver, one minute, boom, skyrocketing up, next minute, boom, gold drops to, I think, 4,500, next minute, boom, back up to 4,900. It is extremely volatile right now. You know, we'll talk about why some of the opinions are white. That's taking place, even though JP Morgan Chase forecast that gold could hit, uh, 6,300

• 5:40Speaker 01

  by, uh, the end of, in 2026, despite the sharp fall since the eighties. The crypto holding strategies unraveling, SpaceX buys, uh, XAI in a 1.25 trillion dollar deal to unite crucial parts of Elon Musk empire, causing Elon Musk net worth to go above 800 billion dollars, first guy ever to be worth over 800 billion dollars. You know what I found out yesterday? You know the total net worth of Sudan is 200 billion dollars? The whole, the total net worth of Sudan is 600 billion dollars, and the total net worth of Afghanistan is 200 billion dollars. Elon Musk could literally buy Sudan and Afghanistan if he wanted to. Can he make, he makes an offer. I'm officially buying Sudan and Afghanistan.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  He can name it to whatever you want. Elonville, he can call it whatever you want to call it. But he's got that kind of money right now. Anti ICE protests should want more Palantir in their government. CEO Karp says, I don't know if the panel agrees. California tech company moving headquarters to Florida. And another devastating blow to this guy that really wants to be a president. You guys may know his name. His name is Gavin Newsom. And then we got a couple of other stories here. Why PayPal stock crashed? And I want to get into the Netflix stuff. Having said that, before we get into it. Gang, once a year, we host an event called the Sales Leadership Summit. If you're a sales leader running a business and you want to find out how is the most effective way to move your revenue?

• 7:09Speaker 01

  Watch this clip about the event that's coming up with Sales Leadership Summit. Go ahead, Rob. Say you're a CEO, you're a boss, you're an executive, you're a leader. Which of these four feelings do you want your employees or your sales team to feel the most? Do you want them to like you? Do you want them to trust you? Do you want them to respect you? Or do you want them to fear you? And if I was to ask you to order them and say, ah, I think I want them to like me first. Then I want them to trust me. Then I want them to respect me. I don't want them to fear me, right? This whole thing that we're talking about. Developing salespeople in a big sales team, which can exponentially increase the valuation of your company, your income, your lifestyle. This is a big problem to solve. You have to get these four things in order while you're developing people.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  Once a year, I host a conference called the Sales Leadership Summit, which is purely about developing salespeople. And we go through this 200-page manual together. This year, we're doing it at the Trump Doral from March 25th to the 27th. And that dynamic of like, trust, respect, and fear is one of the ones that creates a lot of debate. If you want to find out how you can attend this event, click on the link below. Get registered. One of our consultants will get ahold of you. Alright, having said that, click on the link below. This is, you have to qualify to attend. You need to do a minimum of a million dollars and have five people on your sales team to attend this conference. But the link is below. Click on it, talk to our consultants. They will tell you all about it. Cannot wait to see many of you there this year at Trump Doral.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  Having said that, let's get right into the story. Rob, the first story I want to get into, uh, we have so many of them. The first story I want to get into, let's get into this Netflix story, okay? Netflix, Warner story. So Netflix Warner defend proposed deal in senate hearing. This is a Wall Street Journal story. It got nasty very quick, Rob. If you want to go to the Josh Hawley clip before we go to the Ted Cruz one. Co-CEO Ted Sarandos defended the streaming company's planned $72 billion acquisition of Warner Brothers and HBO Max at a senate hearing Tuesday that occasionally grew contentious.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  The best part of this that I want you to watch is here with Josh Hawley. Josh Hawley pushes both of these guys and they couldn't answer a couple of the questions he asked. Go ahead, Rob.

• 9:31Tom Ellsworth?

  That so much of Netflix content for children promotes a transgender ideology. Almost half of your content for children, I'm talking about minor children now, I'm not talking about teenagers. Minor children promotes a transgender ideology agenda. I was just looking at the data here from your various series. And what concerns me is just two days ago, a jury in New York awarded a former transition or $2 million because she said that her psychologists and others pressured her into, they pushed on her an ideology that proved to be extremely detrimental. I'm sure you know that in the UK, the National Health Service in the UK has said that they're

• 10:16Tom Ellsworth?

  not going to perform transgender surgeries or any longer so-called gender-affirming care for minors, including in counseling because it is so incredibly detrimental. Our own HHS has come forward with similar findings this past year, yet if you turn on Netflix, you'll find that an enormous amount, and I say this as a parent with three young children, an enormous amount of your children's programming has this ideology and agenda in it. Is this an advocacy position for Netflix? Are you, is this, is this an ideological commitment you have? And why is this?

• 10:49Speaker 00

  Senator Halli, Netflix has no political agenda of any kind. I would tell you that we have millions-

• 10:53Tom Ellsworth?

  Well then, why is your children's program so full of this highly sexualized, highly controversial, highly controversial agenda? I don't, I don't, I don't understand it. It seems strange to me.

• 11:05Speaker 00

  Um, respectfully, sir, it's because it's inaccurate. We have millions of hours of children's programming.

• 11:10Tom Ellsworth?

  You're saying it's not there? You, you don't, you don't have, uh, trans, you don't feature trans characters, trans storylines, trans themes?

• 11:17Speaker 00

  I'm saying we-

• 11:17Tom Ellsworth?

  It's not in your programming?

• 11:18Speaker 00

  I'm saying we feature a wide variety of stories and programs to meet a wide variety of people's tastes.

• 11:23Tom Ellsworth?

  Why is almost half of it, why does almost half of your children's program feature this highly controversial, highly sexualized material? What, that, that just seems strange to me. Is, it can't possibly be a reflection of the population.

• 11:37Speaker 00

  Senator Hall, I don't have any idea where that number would come from or what that would be. I don't believe that's been your personal experience, but I, I don't, I can't speak to that.

• 11:44Tom Ellsworth?

  Well, what do you mean? You don't think it's been my personal experience? You don't think that I monitor what my children watch on your, I, here's what I'll tell you what my personal experience is, since you bring it up.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Rob, can you pause it real quick? Pause it right there? Can you go a little bit to the end where the HBO Max guy responds?

• 11:57Speaker 03

  Look at his blink rate.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  Keep going, keep going, keep going.

• 11:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, he does not look comfortable.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  No, he doesn't look comfortable. Do me a favor, go back to the Ted Cruz one if you could. Cause he experienced, experienced, what, what Josh Halli continues to say is, "We're watching movies, we're watching all this stuff, our, we don't let our kids watch movies before we watch them ourselves." Uh, this part, he talks about, uh, uh, what Billy Idol said, "We live on stolen land." I want you to go on the second half of this interview. If you go right around there, uh, go back a little bit, like 30 seconds before he starts talking. Right, go, go right there. That's good, from right there.

• 12:31Speaker 04

  Are people at home, just, how should they feel even remotely confident that if this merger happens, the combined entity would not simply be a propaganda outlet pushing one particular political view with much greater market power than you have now?

• 12:48Speaker 00

  Well, sir, we would fail. We would fail pushing a political view or propaganda. We, we deliver entertainment to consumers. Our consumers see our business pretty much the way they see the America. About 40% conservative, about 40% liberal, about 20% don't know. And they, what do we, but when we turn on, when they turn on TV, they're tuned in to be entertained. And if we fail to entertain them by trying to promote propaganda or something, or something, anything other than entertainment, we fail.

• 13:16Speaker 04

  Mr. Campbell, same question to you.

• 13:21Speaker 05

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• 13:46Tom Ellsworth?

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• 14:19Speaker 01

  Did we lose it, or did he lose it?

• 14:23Speaker 03

  We have a very broad range of content across not only HBO Max, but all of our platforms that we need to appeal to all audiences. Our content ranges from Hard Knocks from the NFL to shows like Deadliest Catch and Gold Rush. It's a very broad collection of programming that represents broad interests across America.

• 14:44Speaker 04

  You have a wide range of programming on HBO. Name one program that is designed to appeal to conservatives.

• 14:50Speaker 03

  We don't design our programming to appeal to any...

• 14:52Speaker 04

  I can think of a lot that are designed to go to liberals. Name one.

• 14:56Speaker 03

  None of our shows are designed to go to any political group. They're designed to appeal to...

• 15:01Speaker 04

  Really? John Oliver's not designed to appeal to a certain group?

• 15:05Speaker 03

  It's a program that for which there's...

• 15:08Speaker 04

  You just said none of your program is. Look, let me ask you, do you think CNN is fair and balanced?

• 15:14Speaker 03

  I do believe CNN is a fair

• 15:16Speaker 04

  So when CNN showed riots and fires behind them and you put a Chyron mostly peaceful but fiery protest, was that journalism?

• 15:26Speaker 03

  Sir, I'm not involved with CNN and in fact, they're not part of this transaction, but they have an independent editorial board, they have independent news gathering, we don't

• 15:36Speaker 04

  They have no independence other than hating Donald Trump, which is why their viewership numbers have plummeted because they don't actually report news. They instead engage in very biased propaganda and I will say, the truest words you said a minute ago is when you said with respect to Mr. Sarandos, "Well, he and I see the world in very much the same way." That is exactly the problem, that in the world of journalism, it should not be propaganda. In the world of entertainment, there is a reason why entertainers who are even slightly right of center get blackballed in Hollywood, writers get blackballed in Hollywood, actors get blackballed in Hollywood.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  You can pause it right there. Okay, so Tom, concerned with this, because it's getting to the point where, you know, the deal's about to get wrapped up, they're gonna get destroyed the next couple of weeks with a bunch of these hearings, and then eventually, is anything gonna be able to stop this deal from happening? Well, the Federal Trade, yes, the Federal Trade Commission can stop the deal. What they are going to do is they're gonna spin out all the cable nets into an independent company, that's CNN and all those things, and they're gonna throw that on the stock market. Then they're gonna merge the two libraries, that is the plan here. Now, 60% chance of being successful is what people see here, but these numbers can jump around. This is Kalshi, and I don't think the Federal Trade Commission has spoken.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  These are congressional hearings that are bringing things forward, and the Federal Trade Commission is gonna be the one that has the final say. And we saw how the movement was so radical when WASH was dropping, and then suddenly one comment from the White House, boom, WASH was the guy. And so, right here, what you see, they are trying to convince Congress that, number one, this will not create too much market power when in fact it'll create a streaming giant with over 30% market share of total streaming. Number one. Number two, you have now price power over the consumers and Netflix has been incrementally

• 17:41Speaker 01

  raising price and the Federal Trade Commission's job is to ensure that there's competition in market so prices can be moderated through competitive offers. So these guys are here to say we're not a monopoly, it's not going to be there, and they just got pulled into the vortex of reality by saying, hey, we don't have advocacy. That's a clever word that they're using. We don't have advocacy. Means we don't have an advocate group that specifically says this, but they have advocacy by default because they know the opinions of the showrunners and the producers that they're funding. And they're simply not funding showrunners and producers that run with core conservative or core family program.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  And by the way, while you're talking here, Rob, can you pull up the stats when he was saying half of it is LGBTQ? Is this the article? Is this from Washington Times? Yes, sir. Okay, perfect. If you go a little bit lower to the stats, right there. The organization's report, LGBTQ messaging pervasive in Netflix children programming showed that both 41% of G-rated programs and 41% of TV Y7 shows include LGBTQ elements, a result that CWA president and CEO Penny Nance called shocking. 41%. That's absolutely insane to be thinking about that, especially following a $2 million lawsuit

• 19:04Speaker 01

  that just came out with a young girl who transitioned and now she got 1.6 million, I think, and another 400,000 for a total of $2 million. The one plane would fire. Two, parents are not supporting. Ted Sarandis did say, look, Josh, you have the ability to control what your kids get to watch. You get to say, you don't get to watch this. It doesn't show up in the search. And then Josh is like, I don't even want to do that. Right? I don't even want to go through it. Jeff, what do you stand with this? Well, I think one of the things that he said was that if we do this, we fail. In many ways, his merger is a failure because if they were succeeding, they would stand alone, they wouldn't need to do the merger. The reason why they're merging in the first place is because they need to create a larger

• 19:46Speaker 01

  content library that appeals to more people because their individual content library, let's face it, is just garbage. Netflix should be able, Netflix should be Completely. The fact that they're not and they're actually trying to buy Warner's library. It is an acknowledgement that they have failed. That their agenda has failed and they're trying to keep it going for as long as they possibly can. I think what it is, this is one of those situations where they've created a monster they can no longer control. Uh, when, you know, everybody started to shift to streaming. Companies just threw money at Hollywood. So just give me content. I don't care what it is. I need content. I need content, content, content to get subscribers. And Hollywood is notoriously left leaning. Let's be honest here. It's incredibly left leaning.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  So they enabled all of these left leaning producers, like you said, showrunners, talent and everybody. And just gave them gobs of money, created tons of content and now they're stuck. Because these are their one source of content creation. And they can't really do, they can't really do much about it. They can't go back in the other direction because the people that they've enabled would absolutely revolt. If they even thought about doing something differently. So. To me, in many ways, this, this merger is an acknowledgement that we failed in that model. We have been doing advocacy. Do you think they'll succeed? Do you think it'll get done? I think the merger is gonna happen. Do you think the merger is gonna happen? I think it'll, I think it will happen. Okay, even, even if the involvement of, whose approval do they need? Federal Trade Commission. Yeah.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  They need, and Federal Trade Commission, the guy that runs it, what do we know about? CAR? No, it's not CAR. That's FCC. FCC is Brian Carr. FCC is CAR, but FTC is Andrew N. Ferguson. What do we know about him? He got appointed in January of last year, I believe. Zoom in a little bit. And look at who he replaced. Remember who he replaced was the anti-businesswoman? Solicitor of Virginia. Yeah. Because Ferguson was born, background is graduating from Eastern Minnesota, go a little bit lower, legal career. What did he do? The law school? Lena Khan. Remember her? I do remember Lena Khan. Communist. She was there, a freaking communist. From 2016 to 2017, he clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court. Okay, so go to Lena Thomas.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  Lena Khan, go to Lena Khan to the right preceded by Lena Khan. I call her communist in my own opinion, obviously. We definitely remember her. She was all over the place and we were talking about her as well. On the podcast. So. How much authority does he have to prevent this from happening? Can he prevent this deal from happening? I think what they really have, sorry, Tom.

• 22:11Tom Ellsworth?

  Don't they have a board of five?

• 22:12Speaker 01

  They have, they have to find.

• 22:13Tom Ellsworth?

  Some kind of legal basis. They can't just willy nilly say we're gonna.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  And there's not a monopoly law doesn't exist here because it's not like it's about 50%.

• 22:20Tom Ellsworth?

  Yeah, so it's it's I think unless they have some kind of legal basis that's already been spun up that we haven't heard about, which is possible. I just don't think it's likely.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  Brandon, where are you at with this? Yeah, I I don't think that um it's as certain that Netflix goes out with this because it doesn't feel like Trump wants that to be the case. It doesn't feel like the conservatives want that to be the case. I think they'd rather have Oracle um Paramount slash Oracle like in my view. Um but I think both scenarios are bad for different reasons. I think Netflix, you know, because of the propaganda side. Uh Paramount because of the control side because of some of the things that they're aligned with. But uh what Holly said there's um totally true or what um the um Serrano said to Holly is true. As far as how are you how are you controlling what your kids watch? You know, maybe he's able to, but a lot of parents aren't able to control what their kids watch. And Netflix got to that position where since they were first, I think they were able to be comfortable in.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  You know, putting out propaganda, putting out their messaging they're aligned with because they were comfortable in that number one position because I mean their stock's still doing really well. They're still. You know, have a ton of market share for kind of abusing their product for a long time. So um yeah, I I think that uh you know, it's it's unfortunate that a lot of. Parents probably don't even have the ability to make sure their kids aren't watching that stuff and it does a lot of damage to society. Like we've seen those charts that show.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Like was it 20% of Gen Z identifies as part of LGBT? You know, like where's that coming from? It's coming from entertainment and education. So uh yeah, I mean, I think it's a threat to society to let them just get with it. Yeah, Rob's got it right there. So like, you know, I think this is a direct result of stuff like this. So we're talking about like that doesn't just come out of nowhere. It's from school and from entertainment. Yeah, it's true. And Rob, can you do me a favor? Pull up Netflix's market cap. If you can type in Netflix market cap last 12 months. Uh I'm curious to know how how the the go to year. Split recently. Yeah, and then zoom in a little bit so we can see it closer, Rob. So when what was it in six months ago? What number was it? 120, 130?

• 24:16Speaker 01

  133.91. It's 79. Can you go based on the market cap instead of what the stock price is? So it's down. If we look at market cap. The market thinks you're gonna get less valuable by doing this. Yes, so market cap 337. Or do they think it's not gonna happen? Market, is there a market cap high? Oh, cuz I think they hit a half a trillion, if I'm not mistaken. Yes. They were close to a half a trillion.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  At one point, so they've lost 150, okay, yeah, so 407. Uh, no, that's just the market cap, it's not the peak. I think they hit a half a trillion, or if not, 470, 480. Well, what's the price right now? 79, 130, so 79, 130, 50 up, so 50 up on 70, it's 80%. There you go. 80% higher, yeah, they hit. They hit a half a trillion market cap. So, Tom, did you have any final thoughts on? Yeah, there's a, there is a, I have a dark thought. Ellison's want to buy the whole thing, and they want the cable nets, Pat. They want CNN and the cable channels. So the Ellison's Paramount wanna buy the whole thing. If they do, you saw what they did to CBS, right?

• 25:27Speaker 01

  What do you think they're gonna do to CNN? They're gonna neutralize it, bring it back to the center. This is what the rest of the industry doesn't want. They don't want another news channel to come back to neutral, or Lord God, one-click conservative. By the way, so, so Brennan, why do you say neither is a case you want? Neither Paramount, uh, and neither this? So you would rather have Netflix control, you have to choose between the two? Yeah, I mean, for the immediate future, probably Paramount's better, but, um, you know, long-term, I don't like some of the things that, um, Ellison's stand for, you know, based on what they say in the past, you know, we've seen the videos of Larry Ellison saying how he, um, monitors his people at work, you get a little break from the body camera when you go to the bathroom, or when you go hang out with your friends,

• 26:12Speaker 01

  but it's still recording and it could be retrieved of the corridor, so some of those sensibilities make me a little bit uncomfortable, but I, I get what you're saying, that short-term, yes, they're conservative, they're more reasonable, so it's better than Netflix and their propaganda. I think long-term, Netflix is gonna be worse. Oh yeah, for sure, that's what I'm saying. I think short-term, mid-term, long-term, Netflix is worse than Paramount. Where are you at with this? Oh, I mean, look at, what do people watch on Netflix? They watch old reruns of The Office and Friends, right? They don't watch the new content. Again, I go back to this, this is the industry kind of trying to, trying to stay in the same mode, realizing they're failing. Um, what would really work is somebody coming along and saying, "Look, we need to make..." We need to actually do what the guy said. We need to make content that appeals to actually the entire, uh, entire country and the entire

• 26:56Speaker 01

  audience instead of a narrow focus. And so in many ways, the merger is the, the industry trying to resist that. So I think it's positive in the, in this respect that it's being forced to do something. And eventually that might actually correct with market forces, but it's going to take a while to get there. Yeah, I, I don't know. I mean, when, when you look at that, you've got the two behemoths, right? You've got Netflix is dealing with a problem trying to buy Time Warner and Paramount, you know, the Ellison's are trying to pick up Time Warner. We'll see what happens. By the way, if, if this, there's a strange turn of events and all of a sudden, boom, they're out, FTC's not allowing this to happen and then they're looking at Paramount as a possible buyer. What a curve ball. Imagine you're looking at this in six months and David Ellison is sitting next to Ted,

• 27:40Speaker 01

  uh, next to the CEO of Time Warner and they're having this type of conversation simultaneously. Here's what Disney is going through. Okay. Here's what Disney's going through. Both behemoths, different challenges. Disney, Bob Iger plans to step down before contract expires at the end of the year. Now this is what the, the story is being told from Bob Iger's angle is Bob Iger has reportedly told allies that he plans to step down before his contract ends. The Mouse Heads, um, Board of Directors chaired, uh, chaired by ex-Morgan Stanleys, Jamie Gorman is planning to meet next week and vote on who will replace Iger.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Wall Street Journal reported citing people familiar to the matter. Iger 74 has told, uh, told close associates in recent months that his decision was motivated in part of frustration about feuds that arose at Disney owned ABC over his decision to suspend late night Jimmy Kimmel last year, according to the outlets. Disney boss also reportedly has said he wanted to move on from the grind of being a CEO and focus on things, including spending more time with wife and managing his women's pro soccer team, et cetera, et cetera. Now, while this story's being told, story comes out, uh, three days later, Disney names theme parks boss Josh DiAmaro as its new CEO. Rob, is this the clip from it? This is actually the new CEO.

• 29:05Tom Ellsworth?

  CEO with Bob Iger sitting down with ABC News.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  Go for it. Play the clip. Go for it. Bob's a big risk taker. I'm a big risk taker and that's been true my whole life with how I've approached growing as an individual to how I've approached the business world. And I think you see that on full display today. I mean, just several months ago, we announced a massive expansion in a new part of the world in Abu Dhabi. We did that quickly. We did it ambitiously and we knew there was a new part of the world to serve. Tom, your thoughts with this new assignment, new appointment?

• 29:40Tom Ellsworth?

  Okay, here they go again. So when Iger retired the first time, after he wrote the book Send Me A Lifeline, I mean, The Rite of a Lifetime, The Rite of a Lifetime, that was the book. I got them out of order. It's a sequel will be Send Me A Lifeline. Iger member steps down and who did they put in there, Pat? Chapek. And where did Chapek come from? Theme parks. And they said that he messed things up on the content side. He ended up in some sort of a dispute with Kathleen Kennedy on the, right, on the content. And then Chapek, they're like, okay, okay, okay, this theme park guy has been unable

• 30:19Tom Ellsworth?

  to bring things together in terms of streaming and all the stuff we put together. So Chapek out, Iger comes back. Now Iger's leaving and we're gonna go get a content guy to, oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, I'm sorry, Josh DiAmaro is from theme parks. So here we go again. At a time when streaming is up there and we've got the merger of Netflix or Paramount or Warner and we have the wars going on and we have Hulu and Netflix raising prices and trying to find the equilibrium and we've got, you know, people competing with the news division like your podcast here, sir. All of that

• 31:00Tom Ellsworth?

  going on, don't you think you would want a forward strategist in a content area?

• 31:06Speaker 01

  be there instead you go back to the theme park guy that had recent successes like building the theme park in Abu Dhabi by the way it's a unanimous pick by the board it's not like they had a so they had a second pick I mean everything I'm looking at it's unanimous Diamaro and it's March 18th which means Bob Iger after apparently the January board meeting and by the way he didn't make announcement he leaked it through friends you notice that friends of Iger leaked it to someone at the post this is called getting ahead of the narrative and protecting your own reputation it appears that Iger leaked it after January they said Bob you know we've unanimously decided Amaro needs to take over

• 31:50Speaker 01

  he's had a bunch of success this year with the theme parks he's gonna be our guy and by the way no you're not serving out the end of the year you're not even serving out first quarter March 18th Amaro's getting in the chair I've been at the company for now for 27 years Diamaro says I've had the great benefit of a great honor of working with Bob all of those years so for 27 years he's worked with Iger first from a distance and now much uh uh much more uh uh close up close and personal and I've watched probably the best of the best balance between these two things as Bob talks about being close to the fans and guests this is something that's important you know I spent a lot of time in our beloved parks that hundreds of millions of people enjoy every year and I see firsthand the importance of the brand what Disney meant

• 32:32Speaker 01

  to them etc etc by the way his pay package is thirty eight million dollars thirty eight million dollars two and a half million dollar salary with a one-time bonus of 9.75 million with 26.2 million dollars of stock incentives and his bonus on his two and a half million is 250% quite honestly this is a cheap contract for Disney like a what a what a cheap company to pay so little for a guy that they want to turn things around you're gonna give him this much like this is a half of by the way was 466 the company was worth 466 at its peak in 2025 it is now whatever 350 360 I think this is a trillion dollar company but bringing a guy like this I don't know what's gonna end up happening well he lives in California

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Starbucks a much smaller company you know what the contract was for Brian Nichol you know what Starbucks gave Brian Nichol I what was this uh uh contract Starbucks gave to Brian Nichol by the way I thought it was a hundred and ninety-nine million dollar contract. That could be off. But I I thought it was a hundred million plus. Was it pay pay deals? Yeah. Okay, hundred and thirteen million dollars for a company that was worth, you know, uh, I don't know what it was worth at the time. Definitely wasn't the size of a Disney, but they paid him a hundred and thirteen million dollars. Guess what he's done? He's done a pretty good job. So we're gonna see what's gonna happen with this guy. Jeff, where are you at with this? Well, I think they they got the guy in the cheap because they're looking to do, um, you know, can you be the- Damage control? Yeah, sort of. But they, these are the moves of of an industry that's in the death throes.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  The entertainment industry as we knew it is dead. And some people realize that some people don't. And the reason that the entertainment industry is going through radical transformations is because of you. People like you. Um, social media, um, the ability to create content freed from all of those, you know, legacy baggage and everything else has has led to a brave new world where the old way of doing things no longer fits. And so trying to push everybody into appointment television, which, I mean, does anybody actually watch appointment television anymore? I mean, I suppose boomers actually do, but uh, most young people have never even turned on a cable box or even know what it actually is. Most people have never, they don't even know who, um, the, you know, nightly news reports, what are those?

• 34:42Speaker 01

  So the media is, the the entire industry is going through some ma- massive changes and not everybody realizes that, um, they're they're they're not going to win this. So I think Disney is trying to resist in the same way that Netflix and Warner are trying to resist the radical transformation that's undergoing on the industry, but- Why give the job to a theme park? Rob, can you pull up- It's a safe, it's the safe bet. Do you think that's what they're doing?

• 35:04Speaker 01

  It's continuity. Okay, so Rob, can you, I think we've looked at this before. Can you pull up the percentage of revenue Disney brings in from movies, from theme parks? I do think theme parks is a big part of it, but if you- It's like thirty percent. Say that again?

• 35:17Speaker 01

  I think theme parks is like thirty percent. Thirty percent. What's what's next? I want to know what's next. Do you know the numbers or no? I don't know the numbers offhand. May I ask you a question? Please. So how many big companies have you consulted with where they talk about a gap and you say, well, who's the number two in that division? And they're like, we don't really have one. You have it all the time.

• 35:38Speaker 00

  You say, well, then you need to do the following five moves to get your company ready. You have these things all the time. What if they didn't have anybody on the content and streaming? And they had just got Kathleen Kennedy to leave.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, so if you look at this, Tom, theme parks is forty six, movies is forty two, then a movie studio streaming is forty two. And then movie studio content is eleven. Used to be a very different thing thirty years ago, forty years ago. But that's like Amazon giving the CEO job to Andy Jassy because Andy was the one that was running Amazon Web Services.

• 36:10Speaker 00

  What had AWS happened?

• 36:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, you're right. And it's got massive profit margins that they put it there. Uh, but we'll see. Look, respectfully. The fact that Di Amaro said nothing, I mean, he didn't come out and say, I'm gonna do things very differently. He said, I'm a risk taker like Bob Iger. Buzzwords, I mean, he said nothing. There's nothing of substance in any of his comments. What did you want to hear from him? I wanted him to say. What did you want to hear? I wanted him to say that, look, we've done things wrong here at Disney. We screwed up Marvel big time. He can't say that next to Bob, though. I.

• 36:41Tom Ellsworth?

  What about an innovative campaign?

• 36:42Speaker 01

  If he, if he was a risk taker, he would have said it right there and said, look, you're wrong, Bob. Everything you did was wrong. We need to change course. Brandon, where are you at?

• 36:51Tom Ellsworth?

  Yeah, no, I mean, like, when was the last time Disney did something exciting? They have all the resources and history in the world to reinvent themselves, but they haven't reinvented themselves. This is like a NFL team firing a coach in the middle of the season and playing their offensive coordinator as the new guy. And when everybody, like, he has no track record or nothing exciting about him. So I, I think they could radically reinvent themselves. They could launch an innovative campaign and, you know, like you said, they could be a trillion dollar company with the resources they have. Like, people want to love Disney, you know, it's like, it's like fun and exciting to love Disney. But it's like California where they've literally done everything possible to make people hate them and make themselves a bad brand over the last five or 10 years. So, I mean, I think it's like super doable if they brought somebody like with good ideas in there, but they shouldn't bring.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  Guy has been there for 27 years absorbing the bad habits of the prior CEOs. So, so remember, remember when Disney specifically with Bob Iger, when he was celebrating, I won, the board sided with me to not allow Nelson Peltz. Remember that guy that, you know, Nelson Peltz was the billionaire that wanted to be on the board and they rejected him, right? And Bob Iger successfully defended its slate and the two billionaire backed nominees were not seated despite several months of campaigning. It was Nelson Peltz and this other guy named Jay Rasulo. Although not a billionaire, he was the allied board nominee backed by Peltz's campaign. The fact that the entire board agreed on this hire is part of the problem.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  That's, that's part of the problem. I, I would have liked to have heard 60, 40. I, I want to hear a board member disagree with the stuff that they're doing. And, and at the end of the day, you got a brand, how many brands are as well known as Disney? Worldwide, how many, honestly, like Coca-Cola's one. And the brands underneath. McDonald's is one. What else would you say is a big, Rob, can you type in most recognizable brands around the world? I thought Coca-Cola was number one, that every 300 feet was a Coca-Cola logo in populated areas. I think that's the stat. In populated areas. Apple is one, Nike, McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Google.

• 38:56Speaker 01

  So, ah, it's going by, it's going by, uh, uh, industries. Okay, Gucci, Chanel, Louis go a little bit lower. Let's see what media says. Microsoft, Amazon, Samsung, Meta, doesn't even have Disney there anymore. That is pretty wild. Starbucks, Pepsi, KFC. But is there, is there a ranking, ranking? Because when you think about Disney, to me, ran by the right person. If your board had a few conservatives or even pro-family type of guys that there is the proper debate. You'd, there's such a massive, if I'm running Disney right now, I'm looking at Netflix getting destroyed on TV. I'm like, dude, guys, we have a massive opportunity right now. Vice versa.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  Each of them, we have a massive opportunity right now to win people over. What would that be? And. That was what Paramount did with CBS, right? It was the, the, the. market opportunity to to bring a news organization back to the middle. And look what they did. Look what they did. I mean, they, you know, they did have a little bit of a hiccup with that one guy they had to distance themselves themselves from who was tied to the Epstein files. Who is that guy, Rob, that was on the island that was part of CBS? The health guy.

• 40:06Speaker 00

  Peter Attia. I don't know if he was on the island, but he was in the emails with Jeffrey.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  Not on the island. You're right. There's an exchange, a lot of friendly exchange. He talked about what a low carb diet is. Embarrassingly included in the Epstein. Wasn't it something like 1700 times he was in the Epstein emails, which is, you know, not casual? No, it's not casual. And he was, yeah.

• 40:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  You think the large shareholders could do anything about this? Because I know really past the board, it's just the shareholders that have the most influence. And, you know, if they got. Take a look at the board. Disney's board has long been down.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  Well, look at who their largest shareholders are. Say that again? Go look at the Disney board. Rob, can you put up the list of Disney board members? I mean, that's part of the problem.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  And tell me who you think on there is a forward thinking. Exactly. I mean. Maybe rebel. You have institutional shareholder ownership, which means companies like BlackRock are effectively controlling these businesses. And BlackRock is, I mean, we all know what BlackRock is. So that's one reason why some of these businesses are so heavily resistant to change is because it's not really owned by shareholders. The shareholders own the stock, but the proxies are voted by BlackRock and BlackRock doesn't care. Right, exactly. ISS tells BlackRock how to vote. Yep. Yeah, I'm on here trying to find that. No, I'd love to know how they donate their money. So one of them is James Gorman, chairman of the board,

• 41:22Speaker 01

  former Morgan Stanley executive. Then it's Mark Mary Barra, CEO of GM, Amy Chang, technology executive with leadership experience AI, Jeremy Darick is experienced global media and communications executive, Caroline Everson, senior executive with experience in digital global marketing, Michael Froman, strategic growth and international trade expert, Robert Iger, Maria Elena Logomassino, investment executive, Calvin McDonald, CEO of Lululemon, DeRica Rice, senior leader with experience in finance. And then you got Safra Cat, CEO of Oracle and longtime Disney director.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  And then you have Mark Parker, director nominated, elected as part of 2026 slate. And by the way, if I'm not mistaken, if you look at Netflix's board, you know who's on Netflix's board? If you look at Netflix's board, I think Ted Cruz or Holly mentioned one of the names that works closely with them. Netflix's board is similar situation. Which board?

• 42:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, Mar- Mary Barra.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  Who's that?

• 42:37Speaker 00

  She runs General Motors, you know?

• 42:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, but look at the name right there, Board of Directors, Susan Rice. Who's Susan Rice? Former USC, US National Security Advisor, sitting on the board of Netflix.

• 42:50Speaker 00

  See, this is the whole point that I was about to make. These boards all recommend each other to boards. And you don't have people on there that are going to challenge the CEO. The CEO does it by design to not be challenged. He, he, do you think any techno, what technology company in their right, let me, let me ask you this way. Microsoft does not have a social media platform per se. Would Microsoft put Elon Musk on the board? No way! They would not put somebody on there that would challenge their thinking. That's not the way these boards work.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, look, again, both have a big, same problem. They can really capitalize. There is tens of millions of people that want to support Disney or Netflix. If you get your act right. If you get your act right, so we'll see what this new CEO is going to be doing. They got him at a discount. I don't know how good he is, but apparently he doesn't have good negotiation skills because I want to be able to have him negotiate better with a half a trillion dollar company than the numbers he negotiated with. Anyways, next story I want to get into. Birth tourism. Have you heard about this concept? Birth tourism. So, Wall Street Journal comes out with a story talking about, uh, the Chinese billionaires having dozens of US-born babies via surrogate.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  Okay, video game executive Zhu Bo said to have more than a hundred children and other elites build mega families testing citizenship laws and drawing on nannies IVF and legal firms set up to help them. The the concept of birth tourism is not a new thing, but it's being done a ton by the wealthy in China. So they'll get a woman pregnant, $60,000, they'll send her to the States, the baby's born here, the baby becomes a US nationalized, they get their American citizenship, then they take the baby after they get the paperwork to be a US citizen, back to China, to raise him in China with the systems that they have with long-term

• 44:56Speaker 01

  desires of possibly bringing him back here. Some of the numbers are saying between 750,000 to one and a half million of kids that this has happened to, according to Peter Schweitzer's latest book that just came out. And as you look into this, there's a lady in California that was just sentenced for three years for helping with birth tourism. Yeah, right there, 750,000 to one and a half million in the last 15 years or so. Chinese elites have weaponized the practice, say, other author Peter Schweitzer, raising a generation of legal citizens who have no loyalty to the US. In this excerpt from the book, "The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon",

• 45:36Speaker 01

  and it goes down to talk about different stories. In 2012, one nonprofit calculated that about 36,000 foreign-born women gave births in the US and then left the country. Chinese officials said the number's 50,000. And another person here, Salvador Babonas, put the figure even higher, saying with 100,000 Chinese babies being born in US, every year, birth tourism may result in millions of new elite Chinese-Americans. So this is what they're describing as a potential Manchurian candidate, long-term. What an interesting way of doing this, and the fact, the fact that this is legal to do. What do you think about when you think about this birth tourism, Tom? Uh, it's another example of the Chinese think long. They think long game.

• 46:22Tom Ellsworth?

  So let's translate this for you. They see the opportunity to put senators, congressmen, and maybe even a president someday in the United States that does not have natural allegiances to the United States and has radical other views. "Oh, that would never happen," you say. "The people in Minnesota have put Elon Omar in place." And let's name the rest of the members of the Squad. So if you don't think that could happen, now go take a look at China saying, "Now, wait a minute. We're going to do this more sophisticated, and we're going to take the long view of it." I think it's that simple. They are, global dominance is what they want, and this is a way to create a conveyor system

• 47:05Tom Ellsworth?

  to put their people in power because they've seen what Elon Omar has been able to do. Just one person in one generation creating madness and havoc in the Minnesota House and in the US Congress.

• 47:20Speaker 05

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• 48:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's the same thing that we've seen a lot of different places, too, is the, you know, the Chinese are using a multi-layered, multifaceted strategy. And again, I think this is why, I think we talked about this last time I was here. The US under the Trump administration has shifted to a Cold War posture because they have finally woken up to all of these various schemes that have been, I mean, what's the latest thing that came out, the guy with the bio lab in Las Vegas that was running the same thing? And there's some scary stuff here and when you put all these things together and see the whole big picture, the Chinese have, you know, they bought up farmland near US bases, they've got bio labs in the US, now they've got Manchurian candidates lined up, it's a huge enormous threat. How do you prevent this Jeff? How do you stop this?

• 48:59Speaker 01

  First of all, you gotta have some kind of intelligence. I mean, we would hope that, you know, our intelligence services have been actually aware of this kind of behavior and we're just hearing about it now because it's leaking out into the press and hopefully they've been on it, but I don't think any of us have a whole lot of confidence that's the case because the US intelligence apparatus has been distracted by other political things. Specifically, how do you fight against the birth tourism from China? You have to, you have to at least look at changing laws so that you don't have birthright citizenship. How do you change that? It's gonna be an uphill battle, but you gotta, you gotta get Congress on board, you gotta get, you gotta essentially change everybody's minds about what citizenship actually

• 49:39Speaker 01

  means in a situation like this because the long-term threat is these people, along with all the other stuff that's going on, but these people specifically are gonna have, who's gonna be backing them? It's not just, you know, China is some kind of vague thing, it's the Chinese government, you've got billionaires, you've got tons of assets that are backing these people, they're gonna have all the right education, they're gonna have all the right background, they're gonna have pedigree, but let's face it, in our society pedigree is a form of currency and it's a huge form of currency. So they have an upper hand on everything that would allow them to infiltrate all these different layers and they have already done so and it's not just one thing or another, there's so many different angles that the Chinese have been doing and I fear that the US has been asleep for so long that just catching up to all of this stuff will take

• 50:24Speaker 01

  an enormous effort to begin with. Legally, but legally, if you wanna spitball and talk about legally, how do you change that? What are they doing that's illegal? I came, according to your laws, I came on vacation. It's the same thing with all that stuff, the farmland, they did that legally, they bought farmland. near US bases and they can say, well, it's just commerce. How do you change the law to prevent this from happening versus the players that are ethical players? You have various states who have said like North, I think it was North Dakota. North Dakota said, if you're a Chinese company, we find some kind of, you know, some arrangement with a Chinese firm. We're not going to allow you to buy farmland. It's, you know, local laws that were changed in order to deal with the specific threat that was taking place.

• 51:06Speaker 01

  That's not going to work in this case, but it needs to be a top to bottom comprehensive strategy led by the Trump administration. Because nobody else seems to want to do it. That says, this is the threat. This is another threat. This is another threat. We need to have a comprehensive strategy that deals with all these various facets. And it has some way to deal with these individual threats in ways that actually take account of the fact that it's legal to do this. But it's not, it may be legal, but that's not something that we really want to encourage. Yeah. So what can the US do about it? What does it say explicitly deny visas if primary purposes? Given birth to US require visa applicants to prove medical insurance, ability to pay hospital costs.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  That childbirth is not the purpose of travel, permanently bar visa applicants caught lying about pregnancy or intent. There has to be some kind of consequences though. You can't just say, we're going to deny people entry and then they. I know. That's what I'm saying. So the State Department updated rules allowing consular officers to deny tourist visas specifically for birth tourism. This approach avoids constitutional issues and is the fastest lever, stronger border and border of entry. Ask about pregnancy stage, hospital arrangements, length of stay, financial ability. And then this already happens, but inconsistently target birth tourism agencies. Many birth tourism cases are organized, especially in California, Florida, New York prosecute agencies for visa fraud, tax evasion, money laundering, conspiracy.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  Shut down maternity hotels, seize assets type. Okay, good. What's the next one? End automatic citizenship by statute.

• 52:37Speaker 05

  It's gonna be the hard one.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  Some lawmakers argue Congress could interpret the 14th amendment through legislation saying, "Subject to the jurisdiction thereof, including children." Reality check, almost all constitutional scholars say this would fail in court. Supreme Press, and, okay, so skip to the next one. Constitutional amendment, only true ban, also the hardest, truly outlawed, uh, Burt tourism. Uh, requirement, okay, so that's gonna be complicated as well. Go back to the, uh, go back to the farmland that you had with China and the fact that they're all close to military bases, look at the way they're doing it. Fort Lenowood, Missouri. Okay, you got Fort Moore, Fort Cavazos, you know, uh, MacDill Air Force Base. Look at the way Fort Liberty, you know.

• 53:19Speaker 05

  It was also the bio, the, the thing about the bio lab, it was found in California, then apparently they moved to Las Vegas, and it's within a couple miles of a US military facility in Las Vegas. I think it was Nellis Air Force Base or something like that. I mean, this is not a random coincidence.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, Fort Irwin, uh, the one Fort Irwin right there, uh, is, they do a training there called NTC. NTC is where they would send a lot of the US Army folks to be ready for Desert Storm, on how to go war in the Middle East. So it's interesting they have it in Fort Irwin. And then Louis, Brandon, where are you at with this?

• 53:55Speaker 05

  I mean, I think it's pretty straightforward. It's, it's kinda like what we were talking about with Fishback the other day, where, um, I, like, we don't wanna go to a place where people who immigrate here, um, and have kids, where those kids aren't citizens, obviously, but why not make something where, you know, if you're here for a certain amount of years, if you have employment for a certain amount of years, if you, you know, own property, then, you know, it's a automatic citizenship for kids who are born here. But, like, the fact that we have a situation where you could just be visiting on vacation for a weekend, if the kid happens to be born here, it's a citizen. Where the hell else is that the case in the rest of the world? Like, that's just a logical, plain and simple law that could be changed. But, I mean, the problem is that half of our government and intelligence agencies seem to act like they want the downfall of our society, so that's the tough part, is getting over that hurdle.

• 54:36Tom Ellsworth?

  You know, half of Congress wants things that are bad and destructive for the country. So, you know, it's a pretty straightforward law that has to be changed and pretty straightforward parameters for when, when two and when not to allow people who are born here to be citizens. But, um, yeah, the, the will is the thing that's lacking. Um, and yeah, I mean, for the intelligence agencies, it's, it's like, it better not be the first time they're hearing about this for all the resources that get thrown into that.

• 55:00Speaker 00

  Would we be surprised if it was?

• 55:01Tom Ellsworth?

  Yeah, I mean, my God, you know, we got Palantir, we have the ability to like use satellites to spy anybody in the world anytime. We have them listening to all of our devices with Google and you're telling me that they don't know that these, these things are happening?

• 55:11Speaker 01

  Well, let me ask you this, let me ask you this. So Palantir CEO Alex Karp says anti ICE protesters should want more Palantir in the government. Let me read this to you and this kind of goes to, um, to what we're talking about here with the Burt tourism. So if we go to, uh, Palantir CEO Alex Karp said protesters demonstrating against the US immigration customs enforcement should support the use of his company's tools in the government. If you are critical of ICE, you should be out there protesting for more Palantir. He told CNBC, "Our product actually in its core requires people to confirm with fourth amendment data protections." Karp comments came, uh, come as an anti protest, uh, continue in Minneapolis following the

• 55:56Speaker 01

  fatal shooting of two demonstrators. Uh, documents reveal, released by the Department of Homeland Security last week also showed that the Palantir showed that the company is providing AI tools to the agency to help it sift through tips. Palantir previously bring criticized for its work with ICE and role in President Trump's track down on immigration federal documents from April revealed that the company had $30 million contract with the agency to provide real time visibility on people self deporting. So what do you think about the idea of, of, uh, Palantir being used for immigration as well as using a company like Palantir against China when they're trying to take advantage of Burt tourism?

• 56:39Tom Ellsworth?

  Uh, I don't think it's going to be used for those things explicitly at all because I think we have the means to track a lot of these things right now with the.

• 56:46Speaker 04

  Things that are tracked like what like you know we found out the other day that Google just listens to everything that we say like at

• 56:52Speaker 01

  Sixty million dollar lawsuit.

• 56:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, so you're telling me you can't filter that in a way where it's tracking these type of things? No, like I I think that's a great marketing pitch and something that Alex Karp would say, of course, you know, you could make anything about Palantir sound good. If there's a problem, yeah, Palantir could fix it because it could it could do anything. It could track any data that you have and it could be used to alleviate this. But no, it's

• 57:11Speaker 01

  Would there be a day where you would say, you know what? If I have to choose between Palantir, you know, getting deeper or preventing what China's doing long term with this million and a half? You know, Burt tourists that they come here, they take them out to China, indoctrinate them, and then later on, send them over here to go to school with the idea one day becoming a US president forty, fifty, sixty years from now. And now we have somebody that likes what China does, but they're now the president of US. Would that be worth the risk for you to use Palantir to filter some of these people out?

• 57:42Speaker 04

  No, because I think we have the means to filter a lot of these people out right now. I think, you know, the the struggle is that half the government doesn't want to, half the government does. You know, so I completely reject the notion that we don't have the technology to get rid of these people right now. I think this is just a Trojan horse saying like, oh, now we finally have this technology where we could use it to get them out.

• 57:59Speaker 01

  You're saying you don't trust Alex Karp?

• 58:01Speaker 04

  I don't trust Alex Karp. I don't trust half the CIA. I don't trust half of Congress. And I think that half of the government and the half of the Congress is the problem, not the technology that we have. I think we have more than enough technology and we've given up more than enough rights and freedom with the NSA to for them to track all this stuff. So, no, I don't think the Palantir is doing it.

• 58:18Speaker 01

  Congratulations. You're about to get audited by IRS.

• 58:20Speaker 04

  I know.

• 58:21Speaker 05

  I was gonna say, it's the same argument with the border, right? For the four years of the Biden administration, it said, we can't close the border, we can't do that. And then Trump comes in and

• 58:28Speaker 01

  Boom, overnight.

• 58:30Speaker 05

  It's it's not less, as you're saying, it's not they're not lacking the the way. They have the ways to do things, they're lacking the will.

• 58:36Speaker 01

  So you you think Trump's administration is okay with that one and a half million coming through?

• 58:40Speaker 05

  No, I don't. What I said was, I hope, I hope. I don't have a whole lot of faith. I hope the intelligence communities

• 58:46Speaker 01

  Figures it out.

• 58:46Speaker 05

  Have already, not that figures it out, that they figured this out before they even arrived in the in twenty twenty, in twenty, early last

• 58:53Speaker 01

  I hope that they had been aware of this over the long term and had been doing something about it. And we're just hearing about it now. You remember the debate with Hillary Clinton and President Trump were debating and he says, yeah, you know, here's a man who does everything he can to pay no taxes. And he only paid this much in taxes. And then the guy asked him, the moderator asked him, yeah.

• 59:18Speaker 01

  I do my best to pay as little taxes as possible. I use the same code that her, she wrote the last 30 something is you have the chance to change it. This is where I'm going with it. If a good accountant can help a billionaire like that, you know, minimize the amount of tax exposure that the person has. These Chinese billionaires are like, we're not doing anything illegal. I'm having a hundred kids and they're doing it in US and by your law, I'm legally here. You know what I'm saying, Tom? And so for me, I don't know how you prevent that, but Tom, go for it. Your thoughts on this?

• 59:50Tom Ellsworth?

  Two things going on here. Number one, Alex Karp is being a defense contractor. And he's telling people, oh my goodness, this issue, this thing over here. This is just like Boeing and General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman saying, have you seen the new planes that the Chinese are flying and maneuvers over Taiwan? We need the F-88. This is, it'll only be a billion dollars per airplane, but that's what we need if you want to compete with the Chinese. Pat, defense contractors do that every day. It's called defense contractor marketing. And they market based on application, fear, response, buy my product to do it. The second part that makes me very nervous is Alex Karp is playing the familiar card

• 1:00:33Tom Ellsworth?

  that got played on Americans for the Patriot Act. Throw enough fear on the table to get people to give up privacy in the name of safety. It is a playbook that the government's been running for a long time. You know, long ago, I worked for a telecommunications company, a big one. And we kind of changed the world with some stuff, right? Remember?

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:00:57Tom Ellsworth?

  There was a room there that they, they would bring subpoenas so that they could go in and look at phone records. And while they were in there. Sometimes they were unattended and I remember I asked, I said, Matt, can I ask you a question? You just said sometimes during their unattended. How do you know they're only looking at stuff that they have the subpoena for? And they're like, well, we, we don't really. And this was long before, this is when they would actually go and check records, actually go in. Now they don't have to do that. It's all in the cloud and they can do it with backdoor access from Langley. So this is classic also Alex saying, well, the Fourth Amendment says that, you know, you know, data use and privacy, right there, Fourth Amendment.

• 1:01:41Tom Ellsworth?

  Our government and our CIA break the Fourth Amendment before lunch every day. Right? Then they, they track us and the things they've got. So this is Alex Karp on both sides of it. One, he sounds just like the Patriot Act. But on the other hand, he's a defense contractor telling you he's invented the magic thing that's going to solve this.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  Are you glad he's on your side?

• 1:02:02Tom Ellsworth?

  I'm glad he's on our side, but the longer term ramifications, I, it makes me kind of squirrely.

• 1:02:08Speaker 01

  Do you think he's on your side?

• 1:02:10Tom Ellsworth?

  I think he's on Alex, he's on the side of Palantir's profitability. But I do think that he and Peter Thiel are on the side of the US. However, there are dark forces in government that want to do things that even they don't want, but once they sell their toy to the government, the government's going to do it anyway.

• 1:02:30Speaker 01

  Rob, can you pull up, how many contracts does Palantir have with foreign governments? How many contracts does it have with other countries? With foreign?

• 1:02:41Tom Ellsworth?

  It's not a lot.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  But listen, one to me is one too many.

• 1:02:45Tom Ellsworth?

  There's one big round one in the east.

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  Public numbers, some of them, Palantir doesn't publish and itemize number of contracts. Many contracts are classified or confidential, especially military and intelligence work. Some foreign deals are announced at high level. So known foreign government clients, UK is one, Palantir has multiple contracts with UK government, including a large ongoing defense analytics contract with the Ministry of Defense and work with public services, France. They have a contract of renewal for France's domestic. Intelligence Service DGSI extending a multi-year partnership. Then it's Netherlands Police Department and several Dutch states have reportedly used Palantir software, Canada, Palantir has at least one historic government contract through its subsidiary.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  Then it's Israel, they deal with the IDF, provided tools and support for the IDF. Ukraine, NATO allied program, so.

• 1:03:40Speaker 05

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• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. Look at France, domestic intelligence. I know, I know. So that's the citizens of France. That's right. That's would would if you were a French citizen, would you want your country to have a relationship? Because do you think deep down inside Alex is still going to be a little bit pro US? Or he's going to be pro profit? What do you put it? Profit. He lives here. You think he would still be pro profit over pro country and where he lives? Um, I think maybe power number one over profit and country. Power? Number one over profit and country. Country. But you can also justify it either way, though. I mean, you could say I'm pro US, but I'm doing all these other things that are kind

• 1:05:19Speaker 01

  of shady because I'm pro US and I can control it and. Well, it sounds good to say pro US.

• 1:05:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, what does pro-US actually mean?

• 1:05:28Speaker 00

  You could be pro-US, I agree with you 100%. You could be pro-US, but also be in favor of centralized databases that keep us safe. When, in reality, as soon as you set that up, you've got three-letter agencies that are out there that want to use it in the backdoor for other things.

• 1:05:48Speaker 05

  You hit the nail on the head with the Patriot Act. That was, it was supposed to be a tool to help the Bush administration with the war on terror, and in many ways, this may have started out that way.

• 1:05:58Speaker 00

  Sold with fear in the name of safety.

• 1:06:00Speaker 05

  Exactly, you gotta do this, or they're gonna blow up airplanes and buildings all over the country, right?

• 1:06:03Speaker 00

  We have to know.

• 1:06:04Speaker 05

  We have to do it. And, but what happened to it? It became bastardized by subsequent administrations. The, you know, bureaucracies get bigger, their mission creeps, always creeps forward. It gets used for, it starts out pro-US, and next thing you know, it's being used against US citizens.

• 1:06:17Speaker 00

  It was renewed, but three times as many pages.

• 1:06:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  By the way, this was, it's ridiculous. Palantir was created by the Patriot Act, because they tried to do the Total Information Awareness Act, and then Congress said, "No, we're not doing that." So, the CIA, or Incutel, started Palantir and funded that. So, you know, Palantir is a director's old. That's a true story, by the way. Yeah, that makes it even worse. I wish I didn't know that.

• 1:06:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  Director's old. You know, for what it's worth, to me, a part of this, you know, how this transitions into next story, did you guys see the poll yesterday of what percentage of Americans are okay with people having IDs? Valid IDs? Did you see this? From CNN? I'm so glad you guys haven't seen, because I want to see a raw reaction from you.

• 1:06:55Speaker 05

  I'm not gonna say anything, I saw it.

• 1:06:57Speaker 01

  Can you please play this clip? Right there, watch this, folks, go ahead.

• 1:07:01Speaker 00

  Favorite photo ID to vote? 85% of white people favorite, 82% of Latino, 76% of black Americans favorite. So, the bottom line is this, voter ID is not controversial in this country.

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  Bingo.

• 1:07:14Speaker 00

  A photo ID to vote is not controversial in this country. It is not controversial by party, and it is not controversial by race. The vast majority of Americans are

• 1:07:22Speaker 01

  agree with Nicki Minaj that in fact you should have a photo ID to be able to vote. So something of a not. I love Harry Enton. Did you so so are you surprised that majority of Americans are OK with you having a photo ID? Actually, no, because I mean, it's it's such a reasonable position. You know, like, what's the argument against having it? Oh, are you kidding me? You don't remember the debates we've had on photo ID over the last few years? I know, but those are like, public people, like, people on TV and people in Congress who have a vested interest in illegal immigrants. So, but I think if you talk to somebody in the street, whether they're black, white, Hispanic, I don't think any reasonable, average person would make a strong argument saying that you shouldn't have photo ID. By the way, you know who is not happy about this poll being ran by CNN? DNC. So many people in the DNC. Are you kidding me? Are you crazy?

• 1:08:07Speaker 01

  We're about to lose seven elections. If we pass this law, do you realize how many states don't have IDs and we keep winning those states? You guys are dumb for even showing something like this. Why would you ever do something like this? I can only imagine what the newsroom, the types of calls the CEO and the people are getting right now, saying, what the hell are you guys doing over there? Now, what happens if Ellison owns CNN because he wins? Say that again? What happens if Ellison owns CNN because he wins? What happens if Larry Ellison? Owns CNN because he wins. Harry Enton, it would just be the beginning. You'll have more stories and more neutrality. Saying is Harry Enton is applying for a new job in a race. He's saying, look, Mr. Ellison, I'm a logical player. Just look at me, I'm a reasonable player. Jeff, where are you at with this?

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  Are you surprised by these numbers? Not by the numbers, but I'm surprised that it came out of CNN. I mean, let's face it, that's they've been on the other side of that for as long as we've been talking about it. You guys are, I mean, nobody, nobody would actually object to voter ID. We all have IDs, it's not really hard to get. And it's really obvious why anybody would be against the idea of voter ID. So this is not really, this is one of those 80 20 issues. It's probably closer to 90 10, if not 95 5. What what happens if it passes? What happens if it passes? That's the interesting question. Does it actually make a difference? And will we see the differences in the areas that we think that there'll that there'll be a difference? What do you think?

• 1:09:32Speaker 01

  What we think is because the Democratic Party in particular has been against this, and the only reason they have to be against it is because it must affect law, it must affect voting counts at the margins. We're not talking about, you know, millions of fraudulent votes, but at in these races that end up being within with.

• 1:09:47Tom Ellsworth?

  They call the margin of lawyer. Maybe it makes a difference in some of those and it flips some districts and it flips some races and if you if you impose a national voter ID or just any kind of voter ID requirement. Does it take away those marginal votes and those marginal seats? That would be the interesting question. Does it really make a difference? Or are you know, is this is this kind of just being overblown?

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  I don't have you seen these clips of people saying voter ID is racist? Have you not seen all of these voter ID is racist voter ID is racist?

• 1:10:16Tom Ellsworth?

  That's what makes people think there's something there. There has to be something there. If we take it away, will we see results?

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  What is this, Rob?

• 1:10:21Speaker 00

  Definitely.

• 1:10:21Speaker 06

  This is Chuck Schumer saying that passing the SAVE Act is basically Jim Crow 2.0.

• 1:10:26Speaker 01

  Go for it, go ahead.

• 1:10:27Tom Ellsworth?

  Jim Crow 2.0.

• 1:10:37Speaker 01

  We've got to get this done and we've got to get it done very quickly. The SAVE Act is an abomination. It's Jim Crow 2.0 across the country. We are we are going to do everything we can to stop it. So that's what can you play the other clip I just sent you, Rob? Because this this is this is the language when you hear. Just because it's so funny.

• 1:11:00Speaker 06

  Do you think voter ID laws are racist? I think so. Republicans are just trying to make it really fucking hard for minorities to vote. Why do they do that? Because they hate black people. Do you have an ID? Absolutely. What do you have to say to all the people that say that black Americans can't get voter ID? That's a really ignorant and stupid thing to say. You're disproportionately making people who don't have IDs, which are usually people of color, have to go out and pay to vote, which is going to disencourage a lot of those people. In America, the legacy of white supremacy of perpetuating negative stereotypes for black and brown bodies. When you make people pay money to get IDs, a lot of times people won't vote. They won't think it's worth it. They don't have the money to extra money to spend. I think anybody saying that is just dumb.

• 1:11:39Speaker 01

  We're in a country where all of us are majority educated and we have the resources at our hands and are at disposal to easily find these things. Can you imagine they convinced that kid, they convinced that kid that voter ID is racist? Well, let's be, let's be honest, it didn't take much to convince that kid, because I mean. You're, you're right. Yeah, they're just regurgitating stuff that they.

• 1:12:00Speaker 00

  They just clip a dog leash under that nose and just drag him around.

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  How many states don't require ID to vote? You know the number?

• 1:12:07Speaker 00

  We've done this before.

• 1:12:08Speaker 01

  Of course we have.

• 1:12:09Speaker 00

  It's like, it's, it's more than half that either don't require it at all or don't require a photo.

• 1:12:14Speaker 01

  Oh, the, the, the numbers are staggering. We, we talk about this every, uh, few months, we talk about this on the podcast, but. That one, the yellow and blue. The average person, if they knew how scary this was, zoom in a little bit, Rob. Okay. Photo ID required is the blue states, okay? Photo ID, non photo ID required, non photo ID, your photo, like I'm showing a Bali total fitness ID without my picture on it, right? Non photo ID required are the orange ones, but look at gray, no ID required. And what do you notice there? New York, California, Nevada, I think that's Illinois.

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  You got a bunch of these states that know, can you go to the bottom to see what the exact numbers are?

• 1:13:01Speaker 00

  Pat, you could overlay the presidential election except Pennsylvania.

• 1:13:04Speaker 01

  15 states allow some or all voters to sign an affidavit attesting to their identity at the polls instead of presenting identification. Yeah, when you, when you break down the numbers, I think this is massive. I think it's massive if they go out there and saying you need a photo ID to vote. Imagine how much fraud could be eliminated. There is no way in the world the left is gonna let something like this pass. By the way, if this does pass, this could be one of the worst things for the left and one of the best things for logical players. That are saying, yes, people should have an ID to vote. If I'm going through the airport, what do they ask for? ID. So, so, so I can't afford to, I can't afford to show an ID at the airport, but not to vote.

• 1:13:48Speaker 00

  Not just any ID. You have to have the up to date, real ID from your state. The little thing in the corner of your driver's license. Pat, what's interesting about this? Voters are reasonable. This is the DNC doing it. Voters are reasonable. We saw during the election that in Arizona, Republicans and Democrats' feelings about immigration were seven points apart. Now, why would they only be seven points apart in Arizona? You want to know why? Because Democrats and Republicans went to Walmart and found homeless immigrants out in front panhandling. Democrats and Republicans went to the gas station and were approached by illegal immigrants. Democrats and Republicans found people sleeping in alleyways near their homes.

• 1:14:31Speaker 00

  So in Arizona, everybody was seven points apart on immigration. You know what it was in Missouri, Pat? Twenty-one points apart. You want to know why? Because it was a political party ideological difference. And the people in Missouri weren't going out to the end of their driveway and feeling personal safety concerns about the presidents of all these people and homeless people that were illegal immigrants, illegal aliens. But you go to Arizona, and guess what? Suddenly, it doesn't matter what political party. Nobody wanted illegal aliens at Walmart or panhandling at ATMs or at the gas station. The voters are reasonable. This is the DNC.

• 1:15:10Speaker 01

  I think this is. I think this is, but Jeff asked the right question. Will it be a massive impact? You know when you know it will be a massive impact? You know when you know it could be a massive impact? When the opposing side fears it. Let me tell you. Our visit to DC this last Friday or whatever day we were in DC. We went there and we were at the Pentagon, Department of War, and we're talking to all these other people. One of the conversations I had with Rand Paul was about the next story I'm going to get into. I asked Rand Paul, Rand, what are the chances Supreme Court will rule against Trump's terrorists? Because Trump keeps talking about Supreme Court and tariffs. Trump won't talk about Supreme Court and tariffs if he wasn't worried about it. You know what Rand Paul said?

• 1:15:55Speaker 01

  The reason why he's talking about it is because if Supreme Court does the right thing, tariffs do need to go through Congress. They may say it's not constitutional for you to do it yourself. Can you imagine if that were to happen? So, watch this story that we're getting into next. So, uh, uh, uh, which one is it, Rob, with tariffs? Let me tell me what page that's on.

• 1:16:19Speaker 00

  Manufacturer.

• 1:16:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. U.S. manufacturing is in retreat and Trump's tariffs aren't helping. Wall Street Journal story, okay?

• 1:16:27Speaker 01

  Uh, the manufacturing boom President Trump promised would usher in a golden age for America is going to in reverse. After years of economic intervention by the Trump and Biden administration, fewer Americans are working in manufacturing than any point in, uh, uh, since the pandemic ended. Manufacturers shed workers in each of their eight months after Trump unveiled liberation day tariffs. According to federal figures extending a contract contraction that has seen more than 200,000 roles disappear and index factory activity tracked by the Institute for Supply Management shrunk in 26 straight months through December, but showed a January uptick in newer and production that surprised analysts. The Census Bureau estimates that manufacturing construction spending

• 1:17:10Speaker 01

  would surge with Biden era funding for chips and renewable energy fell in each of Trump's first nine months in office. By the way, this is a Wall Street Journal story. Tom, your thoughts?

• 1:17:19Speaker 00

  So, first of all, I think what we need to do, whenever you get a story like this, I like to look at the dates and the numbers and to really look carefully. So, they have pointed out, the Wall Street Journal, that 200,000 roles disappeared since January 1st, 2023.

• 1:17:33Speaker 01

  Can you go a little bit lower, please?

• 1:17:34Speaker 00

  So, these roles disappeared, 200,000 manufacturing jobs disappeared since January of 23. Wait a minute, 23 and 24 belong to Biden. The election was in November of 24, but they've continued to slide during the first eight months of Trump. So, the point is the 200,000 roles did not disappear under Trump. 160,000 of them disappeared under Biden. And they say the job pullback is actually gradual. This is a headline pushing up here. Now, what's the truth? The truth is, we need the manufacturing jobs that Trump wanted to stimulate to get factories built and things done so that we could have that. Construction is moving.

• 1:18:18Speaker 00

  Building data centers. If I'm a concrete guy or I'm a metal worker, there are all kinds of data center projects, Pat, that I can go to a lot of places and get a job. The other part of manufacturing needs to catch up, and the president is trying, but he hasn't got there yet. But for the Journal to put the whole 200,000 on him is really disingenuous because 23 and 24 do belong to Biden. But the president needs to work, I think, harder and get his advisers to push and his cabinet to push faster to get these manufacturing jobs to start in America because it does need to turn back.

• 1:18:52Speaker 01

  Jeff?

• 1:18:53Speaker 00

  I think there's a couple of things here, and Tom, you're right. This is not a story about tariffs or the administration. This is an economic trend that began, like you said, 2023, which we had an economic shift across the world. We came out of the pandemic. A lot of people were home. They bought a lot of stuff on Amazon. There was a, I wouldn't call it a boom, maybe a boomlet in manufacturing, and that quickly faded in 2023, heading into 2024. And so the manufacturing industry, really the whole entire production and goods economy, has been retreating slowly. Like you said, it's not a crash. It's been more of a disequilibrium moving toward a lower equilibrium. So if you want to, I mean, I think the thrust of this article is to say that the Trump administration's tariffs haven't been able to arrest that slide at the very least and create a recovery.

• 1:19:37Speaker 00

  But I think that's an unrealistic expectation. This has nothing to do with tariffs. This has everything to do with the macroeconomic climate, which tariffs really aren't really meant to deal with. So this is more about manufacturing than it is about tariffs.

• 1:19:51Speaker 01

  Brandon?

• 1:19:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, so I mean, first of all, with the Rand Paul thing where he said that if it was to go the right way, it should go through Congress. No, not necessarily. So the the rule is that if it has to do with national security, the president can do it. But if it has to do strictly with economics, then it has to go through Congress. But he can make any situation be both national security and economics. And I mean, the real goal of tariffs-

• 1:20:11Speaker 01

  But that argument needs to be accepted by the Supreme Court. You can make that case, Supreme Court has to buy into that argument. They could say, no, we don't side with you, and it's 5-9, and he loses it.

• 1:20:22Speaker 00

  Right. I'm just saying that Rand Paul is wrong if he believes that it should go through Congress because of it being the economic argument rather than national security, in my opinion.

• 1:20:30Speaker 01

  What's what's crazy is, you know where I land with tariffs. The president needs to have that in his arsenal to use when negotiate on behalf of the American people. But it's irrelevant what you want, I think.

• 1:20:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:41Speaker 01

  If Supreme Court comes out and says, no, go through Congress, do you know what happens?

• 1:20:46Speaker 00

  Right. Obamacare. The Supreme Court said Obamacare was a tax. Remember that?

• 1:20:51Speaker 01

  And then what happened?

• 1:20:52Speaker 00

  That was, I mean, the argument was that Obamacare was illegal, forcing people to buy health insurance for all those various reasons. And the Roberts Court came out, and remember Roberts was the deciding opinion on that, and said, no, we're going to call Obamacare a tax, therefore it's legal. They jumped through a bunch of legal hoops to make sure that Obamacare stayed in place. I'm not sure-

• 1:21:11Speaker 01

  You're saying Trump's team's gonna jump through a bunch of hoops-

• 1:21:14Speaker 00

  No, I think the Supreme Court might do the same thing here with tariffs and say, look, we did it with Obamacare, why don't we do it here? The public policy is, as it's expressed by the Trump administration, makes a good enough argument. There are, there's a legal basis for it, so who are we to to intercede in what should be Congress's job? And and then that, I mean, that's national security to the highest extent. I mean, so the circle is misleading because it's missing the point of tariffs. The point of tariffs is to protect industries in America that are critical to national defense, like steel manufacturers, concrete, you know, pharmaceuticals, defense. And if other countries can jump in and undersell us, undersell those industries, that's why steel companies and manufacturers have evaporated since we let China into the World Trade Organization, since we started doing business with them in the 70s.

• 1:21:58Speaker 00

  So, you know, the point of tariffs isn't to rapidly expand- And the amount of manufacturer workers we have, it's to protect the companies that are building the things that are critical to national defense and they're critical to, you know, when we're in times of war. So, uh, yeah, it's misleading and missing the point with that. And I think it's naturally, there's gonna be some growing pains with it. We haven't even like fully gotten into a tariff situation yet, but, uh, you know, there's gonna be some growing pains with it. It's been like a year and a half. And other countries wouldn't use tariffs if it wasn't, if there wasn't something to it. That's another thing. I mean, the rest of the world is starting to do the same thing. I mean, Mexico is imposing tariffs on mainly Chinese goods and things like, um, the Europeans are talking about doing the same thing. So, yeah, I think that lends, that's more national security issue. I mean, look at what everybody else is doing.

• 1:22:41Speaker 01

  You know, you know what concerns me with this? Let me tell you what it concerns me with this. Okay. So which sports can you guys openly talk about with penalties or fouls?

• 1:22:50Speaker 00

  NFL.

• 1:22:51Speaker 01

  Let's go NFL. So if I'm a cornerback, you're a wide receiver, I'm running, how many yards can I touch you and push you?

• 1:22:58Speaker 00

  Five.

• 1:22:59Speaker 01

  First five yards. Okay, great. After that, if I do, what, what do they call it?

• 1:23:04Speaker 00

  Pass interference. Incidental contact or PI.

• 1:23:06Speaker 01

  If you're running and it's, it's a, it's a hail Mary, you're running, you're throwing with two seconds left, you throw it up and you're going up, I pull your jersey down from the back, what's gonna be called?

• 1:23:16Speaker 00

  Pass interference.

• 1:23:17Speaker 01

  PI. Now imagine the following. Imagine if NFL opens up and goes to Europe and they open up a team out of Nuremberg, Germany, whatever you want to call it, right? And Nuremberg, Germany comes and plays the Chiefs. And in Nuremberg, Germany, their PI laws are different than ours. Okay? So they come in and then KC plays them and the guy pulls his jersey down and US ref throws a yellow flag. That's a penalty. He's like, no, no, no, timeout. In Nuremberg, Germany, this is not a PI. It's legal. Well, wait a minute. So you can do PI to me, but I can't do PI to you? Yes. That's the laws. That's so do you understand what I'm saying? Yeah. Other countries can easily put tariffs on us.

• 1:24:02Speaker 01

  But we have to go through this whole system. They're following two different rules, so it's easier for us to get penalties than other countries to get penalties. That's the part I have a hard time with. There's certain things that if you're gonna have a president to negotiate on our behalf, the laws and the rules have to be on the same side on the other side. If the other guy can do it like this and we have to eat it, but if on this side I have to wait two years and if Congress majority or minority, you're sitting there saying, "I lose my leverage as a president." So to me, I hope this doesn't happen. I do think they keep bringing it up because I think Supreme Court could go against Trump. And if it does, it's another card he loses. Doesn't make me comfortable.

• 1:24:42Speaker 00

  This is not about tariffs. This is about executive power and about the president's pen. And the president's pen has to have power. And it doesn't matter that Scott Besant says that there's three or four other economic things that we could use at our disposal. That doesn't matter. This is about the power of the executive pen and the president's ability to lead. Because the trade deals that he got done, Pat, those don't go away. He has new trade deals with a lot of countries. But then the next morning, he then gets castrated in his ability to use tariffs and have the power of the executive pen, simply because they don't like Trump.

• 1:25:14Speaker 01

  Why did those trade deals get done? Because he threatened him with tariffs?

• 1:25:18Speaker 00

  Because he threatened him.

• 1:25:19Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:25:19Speaker 00

  Because he used the tool at his disposal under the tip of his pen.

• 1:25:22Speaker 01

  Do you know what happens, Tom?

• 1:25:23Speaker 00

  "I'm $31 trillion, you're $2.1 trillion, Canada. Let's look at who really gets benefits here."

• 1:25:31Speaker 01

  Let me tell you. You know how you see how they look at him when he comes into the room and everybody's getting in line and listening and everything? They take that away. You know how they look at him?

• 1:25:40Speaker 00

  Here it comes.

• 1:25:40Speaker 01

  They laugh at his face. "You can't do anything to us. They're not gonna let you. Your Supreme Court's your boss. Supreme Court's your boss." Like, you remember when Mayweather would fight with other guys and he would say, "Go talk to your agent. I'm my own guy. You go talk to your agent. Go call Bob Arum. Go call all these guys. I'm not dealing with Doc. I'm dealing with myself." That whole thing, countries are gonna look down at us if we don't have the tariffs. Versus the fear of saying we better be in line with America or else we're not gonna get this. You're seeing what was happening with NATO with a part, part of the funding where he pulled down. Maybe we'll get, I don't know if it's one of the stories here that we have. I'll try to find it to get to, but I'll get to a different story right now. I think it's necessary for him to have this power.

• 1:26:25Speaker 01

  Oh, there it is. Yeah. A UN faces severe cash crisis as Trump admin, uh, admin ramps up pressure on world body. Why is he able to do that? Why is he able to do that? What, what happens if you take this authority away from him? Rob, is this the clip for that conversation? Okay, go for it. Go for it.

• 1:26:44Speaker 06

  Uh, the Secretary General has, as you know, repeatedly made clear the, the problem, uh, both of non-payment of Jews by member states and the, the related problem of the UN being forced to repay member states for budget expenses that it does not, uh, that it, uh, budget, budget money that it does not spend. Uh, and, uh, so those two factors have, have put us on an unsustainable trajectory. Although, uh, one, more than 150 member states paid their Jews last year.

• 1:27:24Speaker 06

  We ended 2025 with a record 1.56 billion dollars in outstanding Jews, which is more than double that of the previous year. So unless either the payments come in or we're not, uh, uh, compelled to spend, uh, to return the mon, the monies that we are not able to spend.

• 1:27:47Speaker 01

  Who is this guy, Rob? Can you say who, folks? Who the hell says 1.56? It's 1.568 billion, 1.5, that's a 400 billion, 500 billion dollar difference. Who is he? Is he a? He is the Deputy UN Spokesperson. And his name is That's a terrible, you know Farhan Haq Farhan Haq is his name? Yes, sir. I'm sure he's a nice guy. I don't know who he is. But I don't know who says 1.56 billion. It's 1.568 billion. At the end of 2025 and that collection covered only 76.7% of the assessed contributions leaving the organization dangerously exposed. So Tom, why is this happening? Why is this important?

• 1:28:29Speaker 01

  Okay, watch this. This is a rule. So the world has been using, and I'm gonna curse here. The world has been using the United States as its budget bitch for the UN. Let me share with you a rule that they have. Okay, let's say that you are the Prime Minister of Durka-Durkistan. And over in Durka-Durkistan, you're supposed to pay $500 million a year to the UN for your general dues. And so here you are at Durka-Durkistan and you don't pay that. But did you know that the rules work like this? Let's say the UN looks at it and said, we were supposed to get 500 from Durka-Durkistan.

• 1:29:10Speaker 01

  Hey, but this year we only spent 300 on behalf of Durka-Durkistan. We owe them 200. They are sending the 200 back to you even though you never paid the 500. There are two rules at the UN that do that. You see that? Mm-hmm. They return unspent funds even though countries, in my fictitious example here, had never paid them. And guess who, guess who foots the bill? The West, primarily the, the US. So Trump has been going around to all these international clubs and associations we're part of and saying, that one's canceled, that one's canceled, don't need that one. Because we've been putting money in a hole and we have been used as the UN's budget bitch for a long time.

• 1:29:53Speaker 01

  But watch this here. What if they come back and the Supreme Court says, you can't do that. You have to be a member of that place. Well, then Durka-Durkistan isn't gonna pay its bill, but it's gonna get It's the point of being a president if you can't make the decisions yourself. No, I don't want to pay it. You're gonna come to us. There's a reason why you're short. Because of the role we're playing. That's right. Jeff, your thoughts on this? Come on, Gary. Durka-Durkistan hasn't paid. A money laundering agency for a lot, like Tom said, it's, it's, you know, it's, it's an accounting shell game. It's basically a money laundering operation in many ways. And I think the Trump administration, before getting to your point, Trump administration has said, we're tired of it. We're done. We're not gonna play these games anymore and By the way, most of the UN exists to advocate for policies that are harmful to the United States to begin with, so why are we sending money to you people to do all these

• 1:30:38Speaker 01

  nefarious things? But to your point, if the Trump administration can't do that, look at what they're saying here. The UN is saying, "We're gonna go bankrupt if we don't have the US money." Good, good. Which is what the Trump administration is saying. That's the pressure they're putting on the UN. Right, right. What he's saying is, "Look, we'll pay you, but you gotta reform. You gotta start doing stuff differently." He's using leverage. So your point is, if he can't use the leverage, we're not gonna get anywhere. What the hell is the point of me being a president if I can't make decisions? By the way, this goes back to this, what happened, Rob? I'm glad you found this clip. If you wanna play this clip. Reminder of how quickly they change their position when they think they can defend themselves without America's help. Go ahead, Rob. The direct answer to the question of this panel, can Europe defend itself?

• 1:31:21Speaker 01

  My answer is unequivocally yes.

• 1:31:24Speaker 04

  Without the Americans.

• 1:31:25Speaker 01

  Without the Americans, I mean...

• 1:31:27Speaker 04

  How?

• 1:31:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, how?

• 1:31:29Speaker 04

  But you're relying on them for these key elements. You've said earlier that Europe can defend itself without the Americans. If it comes down...

• 1:31:38Speaker 01

  Not exactly.

• 1:31:39Speaker 04

  More or less, more or less.

• 1:31:44Speaker 01

  Well, you know, this is permanent.

• 1:31:46Speaker 04

  We'll go back to the...

• 1:31:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, Brandon, your thoughts?

• 1:31:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I have no love for the UN. My favorite thing ever was when Trump in 2017 went to the UN and said, "The future does not belong to globalists, it belongs to patriots." And, you know, stuff like this shows just how much these international bodies are actually the US with a different name on it, rather than this international body that's working against the US. Like, when the WHO, the same thing, Trump pulled funding from them and they fell apart and that the guy Tedros was freaking out about that. It was like the US, I think it was like 70% of the money going to the WHO and then a little bit from Bill Gates Foundation. So, all these international bodies miraculously that are working against us are getting the majority of their money from us, which is amazing. But I'm glad that Trump is, you know, exposing that and taking the money away from them.

• 1:32:33Speaker 00

  I don't think the UN does anything that's good for America. I don't think it does too much that's good for the world. It's mostly just for show and same deal with a lot of these... ...national bodies and yeah, I'm happy about it and I agree with you. It's like the if the board was able to undermine everything that a CEO does, you know, like what's the point of negotiating anything?

• 1:32:50Speaker 01

  I fully agree. I think there needs to be the opportunity for him to impose himself and to walk into a room and command respect. And where does that respect come from? Is it because he's Khabib and he knows how to fight? Is it because he's Mike Tyson? He's got a great uppercut? No, Trump said on Logan Paul, "I've never been in a fight in my life." Or is it because when he walks in, because of the access to decisions that he can make, others have to respect what power we have and he's representing us in these big rooms and we support it. So to me, it's very important what's going on. By the way, next story I want to go to on Ken Griffin. Before I go this and they're talking about a massive campaign to attract other CEOs to South Florida, before I do so, for those of you guys that are extremely talented, capable,

• 1:33:33Speaker 01

  we have 28 job openings right now at ValueTainment. 10 of them are tech roles, software engineers, data engineers, mobile app developers, HubSpot experts. We're also looking for some director roles, director of sponsorship. We're also looking for director of podcast researcher talent booker and 12 roles at our Bedavid Consulting Company. The link will be below. If you or somebody you know, fully qualified, standards are high here, this is not a nine to five type of an environment. If you want to learn more about the job openings that we have, 28 of them right now at ValueTainment, the line holding, click on the link below, share this link with others. We are aggressively hiring right now here in South Florida.

• 1:34:15Speaker 01

  I would say more than 50% of people that work at ValueTainment are not from Fort Lauderdale. They moved here from another state or another part of the state that moved here to be with us at ValueTainment. So go to vt.com/careers and apply now or share it with somebody qualified that you know. All right, Ken Griffin, Steven Ross, bankroll, 10 million dollar campaign to attract other CEOs to South Florida, and they said it's the only place a founder can scale. Now, Ken Griffin is a heavyweight to make a comment like that. Rob, is this the clip? Yes, sir. Go for it, Rob.

• 1:34:51Tom Ellsworth?

  Florida is their future.

• 1:34:54Tom Ellsworth?

  It is unequivocally the next jumping off place for American business. And we're seeing that already taking shape right here on the Florida Gold Coast.

• 1:35:04Speaker 01

  I've lived in a failed city-state, so I'm grateful for the leadership in the state of Florida. This is a great place to call home.

• 1:35:12Speaker 00

  This is a place that welcomes entrepreneurs and innovators.

• 1:35:17Tom Ellsworth?

  Florida has so many resources to deliver that talent.

• 1:35:21Speaker 00

  This really will become the next Silicon Valley of this country. The regulatory environment is great for businesses.

• 1:35:27Tom Ellsworth?

  Florida is probably the best business state in this country. This is the ideal place for growth.

• 1:35:37Speaker 05

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• 1:36:02Speaker 06

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• 1:36:37Speaker 01

  By the way, I've never seen this ad. Me neither. What a great ad after me saying we're hiring in Florida. FYI, let me read this to you. So he says, "The only place a CEO founder can scale from 10 employees to 10,000 employees will be South Florida." By the way, we literally moved down here with eight full-time employees, and we now have 164 full-time employees. We're about to get the plans for the three buildings we're building on our property. To be able to house an additional 1,500 employees. The market here lifestyle is incredible, but let me continue reading this. Ross told me while other cities are still special. They no longer support building business and supporting ambition. Like you find here in Florida, the next generation of transformational leaders. Of business will come from South Florida.

• 1:37:22Speaker 01

  Griffin who found a citadel fund. Is worth approximately $51 billion, according to Forbes. Ross, the founder of real estate juggernaut related companies. Now leads its companies worth $17 billion, the two are backing ambition accelerated and initiative through the Florida council. Of hundred targeting. CEOs and investors with national ads. And direct outreach pitching Florida's gold coast. As the premier place to scale a company, Tom, your thoughts on this?

• 1:37:52Speaker 04

  I think this is fantastic and this kind of reminds me. When a certain governor of Texas was running ads in California.

• 1:37:59Speaker 01

  Yes, Perry.

• 1:38:00Speaker 04

  In different in 2015. Saying come on to Texas, it's good. And and we saw, by the way, we saw U-Haul, this is a true story, Pat and I saw this. Story, we researched it in Texas during spring break. U-Haul would pay college students two or three to drive a truck from Texas back to California. Cause they were coming from California to Texas and then the trucks were stranded, they had too many trucks.

• 1:38:27Speaker 01

  Can you imagine that?

• 1:38:28Speaker 04

  U-Haul was paying college students over spring break. Hey, you want to go to California, want to go to Palm Springs for spring break? It's not glamorous, but we'll pay you to drive the truck. So that just shows you what has been happening. I think this is tremendous. If both of these men are building businesses here, if you know anything about about Steven Ross, he is hiring. If you're a quarterback, there's an opening in Miami, you know, there's a lot of things that are going on, I'm not picking on you, Mr. Ross. We want you to have a winning team and we look forward to finding that guy. There are a lot of things and this is what leadership is when two men are willing to stand up. They have to go.

• 1:39:05Tom Ellsworth?

  Go to Congress and they have to talk about their industry. And do you think they get a good reception on both sides of the aisle when they run an ad like this? No. Do you think that Ken Griffin got a good reception when he left Illinois and came down here and moved not just himself to telecommute? He moved his company. And he's building a large tower in Miami that will house not only his business, but others as well. I think this is tremendous. And South Florida

• 1:39:31Speaker 01

  Jeff, where are you at with this?

• 1:39:32Tom Ellsworth?

  Is growing.

• 1:39:33Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 1:39:33Speaker 00

  There is a huge stark divide.

• 1:39:36Tom Ellsworth?

  Sorry to get revved up.

• 1:39:36Speaker 00

  It should be because, look, let's, when I was younger, which was a long time ago, but when I was younger, there was always a divide. You know, left, yeah, there's always a left, right divide. And it was usually about tax policy, right? You know, Democrats tended to tax more, a little bit more regulation, but there was, there wasn't much of a divide there. These days, um, the left, right divide is absolutely massive. To the point that I think we talked about this before last time I was here, or one of the other times I was here, that, um, they now demonize success. They demonize billionaires. You know, billionaire is a bad word. Success is a bad word. It's gotten to the point where, um, and all of these divisions really became, um, very visible and stark after the pandemic, during the pandemic and afterward, where it has gotten to the point where it's not just an annoyance,

• 1:40:20Speaker 00

  um, to be in some of these blue areas. And again, I come from upstate New York. I've seen the downside to all of this. And the reason I'm in Florida is for this reason, uh, same exact reason. It is a business friendly environment. And that's just where it starts. Uh, but what I'm saying is I think that a lot of the business community and people like Griffin and Ross and others, I have finally realized that this is no longer just some minor issue about tax policy. There is a fundamental difference at play here. Um, and it gets, the downstream consequences, what Tom talked about with people moving. Why are people moving to red states like, uh, Florida, Texas, uh, the Carolinas?

• 1:40:56Speaker 01

  Carolina is to an extent, Carolina is still pretty hot. People are moving because people like Ken Griffin are moving jobs into these areas. It's a, it's a complete top to bottom type of situation. Because like I said, the, the divide is no longer just a small thing. It's a huge thing. No, you're right. It makes it impossible. And by the way, the latest thing is California tech company moving headquarters to Florida. The wealth confiscation. Devastating blow. They're talking about wealth confiscation, which is, I mean, that's, that's going, that's, we're going down just, you know, income taxes or, you know, tax rates. Yeah, I mean, this is D-Wave CEO, Dr. Alan Baraz, claimed Florida's rapidly grown tech ecosystem, expanding talent pool,

• 1:41:37Speaker 01

  and supportive research environment makes the state ideal for quantum innovation. For what? For quantum innovation. They're moving from Palo Alto to Boca Raton, Florida. In January, Boca Raton official approved a resolution where D-Wave would get up to a half a million dollars to relocate there and create 100 new jobs with an average annual salary of at least $125,000. Of what? Of $125,000. So these are high paying jobs? Of course they are. By the way, if this was going to New York, AOC wouldn't have approved it. She would have said, no, go to a different place. We don't want you to pay our people too much money. Why don't you go to a different place? Brandon, where are you at with this?

• 1:42:15Speaker 00

  I mean, you could feel it and see it everywhere. So, I mean, I've been to a lot of different states in the last couple of years and like you could feel the energy of a state, whether its best days were behind it or ahead of it. And, you know, I'm from Connecticut, I go there a couple of times a year and you could feel it's like night and day. You could see things falling apart there. You could see it kind of decrepit, some like a lack of energy in the, in the environments. But here, you know, you see buildings popping up everywhere. You see like a pep in people's step. You see that its best days are ahead of it, you know? So it's, um, it's infectious. You could really feel and see it like, like from that Miami section up to West Palm, that's probably going to be like the financial center and like the, like the real engine of the country for the next decade.

• 1:42:52Speaker 01

  Let me ask a question. This story here, you may, you may take a different position with this. Trump says he wants to drive housing prices up, not down. Rob, if you got the clip on this, President Trump suggests during a cabinet meeting at the White House on Thursday, that he wants to do this. Go ahead, Rob.

• 1:43:10Speaker 00

  Again, existing housing, people that own their homes, we're gonna keep them wealthy. We're gonna keep those prices up. We're not gonna destroy the value of their homes so that somebody that didn't work very hard can buy a home. We're gonna get, we're gonna make it easier to buy, we're gonna get interest rates down. But I wanna protect the people that for the first time in their lives feel good about themselves. They feel like they've, you know, that they're wealthy people. And I want them to understand it, you know. There's so much talk about, oh, we're gonna drive housing prices down. I don't wanna drive housing prices down. I wanna drive housing prices up for people that own their homes. And they can be assured that's what's gonna happen.

• 1:43:50Speaker 01

  Brandon, thoughts?

• 1:43:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, that definitely sounds like something that a real estate developer would say. You know, I have a lot of love and respect for the president, but of course, he doesn't want property prices to go down because that's like the majority of where his wealth is held. And I respect that, you know, that's understandable. And I understand that boomers, the vast majority of their wealth is held in real estate. But that shouldn't be the case. That's a fundamental flaw with society because of artificially low interest rates. That's why people treat their house like their pride, enjoy their biggest asset. But that shouldn't be the case. If we had a free market that allowed interest rates to be where they should be, people would be able to save money in a bank account that compounds over time. And that'd be their biggest source of an asset or in savings. It wouldn't have to be their house, you know. The reason that people have such a low savings account or, you know, rely on their house to be their biggest asset is because of these artificially low interest rates that we've had.

• 1:44:35Speaker 00

  So I don't think the problem is the low interest rates, or excuse me, the high interest rates like he keeps saying. I think interest rates should be up more so that prices could be down more. Cause rates were like 10, 20% in the 80s and 90s. And it still took less of an average salary to buy an average priced house than it does today.

• 1:44:52Speaker 01

  Okay, so, so Jeff, I have a different position here, but I wanna hear your thoughts. Well, that's the issue right there. It's the problem is income's not interest rates. It's, it's, I, first of all, his resp-

• 1:45:03Speaker 00

  was about this idea that he's going to ban Wall Street from buying single-family homes. Which should happen. Yeah, there's but the reason why it happened is what nobody wants to talk about. The reason why Wall Street and BlackRock and all these funds came to buy so many single-family homes, especially in 2021 and 2022, was because BlackRock and Wall Street can get any type of loans and funding that they want. Regular Americans can't. They're being shut out of the mortgage market because they don't have the jobs, they don't have the income, they don't qualify for FICO scores. This is the legacy of the 2008 crisis. And the Trump administration is at least listening to people and saying, how do we make housing more affordable? So the natural response to that from Wall Street was, yeah, if you ban BlackRock from

• 1:45:47Speaker 00

  the housing market, housing prices are going to crash. And so Trump was just saying, look, we're not trying to crash housing prices. We're just trying to solve a problem that was existing, and this is the way we think we can do it. I don't think it can, but that's at least what he was saying. Housing prices were driven artificially high because of all the pandemic excesses and imbalances to begin with. I mean, they were driven higher in the 2010s, but the 2020s really pushed prices way up and out of the reach of everyday Americans who don't have the jobs and incomes to be able to pay for these higher prices. So I'm kind of with Brandon here that I think prices would need to come down to be more affordable, or the better option would be to have a better jobs market where people can get paid more and therefore can be able to pay for higher prices. But the issue here is there's no easy answer.

• 1:46:31Speaker 00

  That would push prices up too, though, if people had more money. Eventually, though.

• 1:46:34Speaker 01

  But I will tell you, for people who can afford, and you can afford to buy, okay? You're not somebody that can't afford to buy. For people that can't afford to buy, these are two separate problems. For the people that can't afford to buy, that are waiting for a massive fall to get a deal, I think that's also a mistake.

• 1:46:53Speaker 00

  Right, yeah.

• 1:46:54Speaker 01

  For the people that can afford to buy, like, I remember, like, you know what? For example, the property we bought, right? We're in the auction and I'm in the final round of the auction with these other people who are all running multi-billion dollar companies. They're not running hundred million dollar companies. They're running multi-billion dollar companies. They can afford to buy the property that they bought, that we bought. That's not a challenge like for them to buy. The moment we bought it, that property we bought cash for 25.2. Every one of those guys could have bought it except for maybe one or two of them. They didn't. What was the opportunity? Probably lost 15 to 25 million bucks. Depending on a location like that, you're not gonna find a location like that.

• 1:47:39Speaker 01

  Two hangars, on the airport, all this stuff. In many cases, I've been on the other side. Where I said like, "Yeah, I don't know about this. I don't know about this. I don't know about this." I missed out and I lost millions of dollars if I would have bought it. So to me, the idea of you can afford and you wanna live in a place long term. Minimum for me is five years. If you're buying something right now for 18 months to 36 months, I'm probably not buying in Florida. 18 months to 36 months. But if I'm gonna be living there for five to 10 years, let's just say I buy something and in three years and four years, I'm gonna buy something else, but I'll rent that out. So I'm gonna keep it for myself for 10 plus years, I would buy. Yeah. That's the challenge.

• 1:48:18Speaker 01

  Cause even though you may be right to say they are overpriced, you don't dictate it. The market does. If the, and you are the market, but you're one individual. If the market sits there and says, "Look, people are coming to Florida from a bunch of places that they're making money." I remember the first time when we moved to Texas and everybody was like, Tom's like, "We're moving to Plano, we're moving to Plano." I'm like, "Tom, what is Plano?" This is, no, this is 12 years ago, we're talking. I said, "What's Plano?" "Oh, you have to look at what Plano is. Plano is this, Plano is that, Plano is this." Never in a million years would I've moved to Plano. And I'm like, "Hey, I think we're gonna move to Texas." I started talking about moving to Texas 15 years ago, but not Plano. I was just saying Texas, could be Houston, could be Austin.

• 1:49:01Speaker 01

  And then he sold me on Plano and then we went and met with Governor Perry, then we moved there. Automatically, people are like, "Wait a minute. I got a bump in my salary, but I got a decrease in my expenses." But to the people who live in Texas and Plano, guess what they said? Dude, cost of living in Plano has increased. Not to us. Yeah. Cause we moved from California. Exactly. So the people that are moving here from DC, from Chicago, from New York, you know what they're saying? Oh my God, this place is so cheap. Yeah. Oh my God, this is so great. That's what they're feeling. So you have a choice. You either have to sit there and say, are people gonna stop coming to Florida? I think the answer is no. If they're gonna con- Did you see what happened to the house that Ken Griffin bought? Rob, can you go back to what happened to Ken Griffin's house in Palm Beach? You just had the story up a minute ago.

• 1:49:46Speaker 01

  You know what Ken Griffin's house in Palm Beach has worth now? Look at this. Click on that. Click on that. Ken Griffin plans to build the most expensive home on earth. A billion dollar mega estate. He's building a billion dollar estate in Palm Beach. A billion dollar home. Did you ever think this quickly, there's gonna be a billion dollar home in Palm Beach? Yup, that's what Ken Griffin is building. So what do you think that's gonna do to his neighbors? You think his neighbors are sitting there saying, oh Ken, don't say a billion. Say thirty-eight million, right? Cause I won't, I don't want the taxes saying- Or are they sitting there saying, babe, you realize this crazy guy's gonna build a billion dollar home? Our sixty million dollar home's about to be a hundred and forty million dollars. Go Ken! Go Ken! Go build this home! We love you! Tom, your thoughts on this?

• 1:50:31Tom Ellsworth?

  Yeah, they're gonna be inviting him for dinner while his house is being built. Your kitchen's not built yet. Drop by. We're so glad to see you. Irving and- Come on down to the kitchen. Ken's here. Um, I think this is great. I, I think what's, um, the discussion is great. Now, the outcome in getting there is difficult. Brandon, I love ya. And I wish I had a DeLorean with a flux capacitor that I can take you back a few years so you could buy the house. But what is going on here, we need three things. Why do these things always come in three? Number one, we need more supply of affordable- Housing, A. B, we need a more relaxed permitting process so that safe compliant

• 1:51:16Tom Ellsworth?

  homes can be made. Two things. So we need people to invest in buying homes, but we also need an easier permitting process. And then the third thing, Jeff's right, we need more companies like D-Wave bringing $125,000 a year jobs down to Florida so that the Brandons and other people who are capable and educated and ready for those jobs can go, hey, I got this great job at D-Wave and look what I found out in, in West Deerfield, great school out there, newer schools are out there, and I found a, you know, home track where some things were built. We need all three things together. So when Jeff says it's not an easy answer, it, it's a complicated execution to get there. It's like the doctor saying,

• 1:52:01Tom Ellsworth?

  you need chemotherapy, then we're going to do a surgery to remove your prostate, unfortunately, and then you need a complete change in diet. That's an easy explanation. The chemotherapy is going to suck. That's like the building of the new houses. The surgery is quick. That's like changing the permit laws. If you could get somebody to just change it, and now we pass new permitting, and then the recovery phase is like building high income. It's difficult, but it's not insurmountable, and it's got to start today, and the permitting process is number one. And when you've got Ken Griffin and other people down here, all we need is civic leadership. All we need is better civic leadership. And I'll tell

• 1:52:43Tom Ellsworth?

  you, we've joked about this for a while. I would love to be mayor of Fort Lauderdale because you have a vision. I would love to just hitch my wagon to that vision, and I have a vision. I went to high school down here in South Florida, as you know, Pat, and we would love to be part of the solution. So we're not just howling at the moon.

• 1:52:59Speaker 01

  Are you really announcing it now, Tom?

• 1:53:03Speaker 01

  We've been talking about this for five years, but the announcement would have been the And by the way, we're actually not joking. I'm not announcing, I'm saying I'd love to do it. No, no, we're not joking. We would, eventually, not right now, but in a minute, you know, we may be getting behind Tom to, to possibly, you know, and by the way, if we get into the race, it's not even a question of what's gonna happen. You know, we, we, we would have a lot of fun with it, but. My point is, is that we want to be part of the solution. If you do support and you want to see maybe Tom and you have some thoughts on him running for mayor in Fort Lauderdale, then maybe Manect him, Rob. Can you pull up his Manect QR code? And maybe send some things down here in Fort Lauderdale which you're not happy about. Send him a Manect right there and tell him what you're thinking about. Anyways, I'm not even

• 1:53:46Speaker 01

  saying send it as a help to run or anything, just if you want to communicate with him and encourage him to do it or not do it. All right. So next story I want to get to, and then we'll wrap up here with a couple of stories left. Crypto hoarding strategy is unraveling, according to Wall Street Journal. So here's the story. Crypto hoarding is unraveling. What is crypto hoarding? I'm buying and I'm not selling, right? The strategy rewarded companies for hoarding cryptocurrencies now punishing them. Bitcoin, Ether and other digital tokens are in a slump and the shares of companies followed. Michael Saylor's company, not now known as Strategy, is stockpiling crypto are sliding too. The sell offs have investors on the edge

• 1:54:30Speaker 01

  and on the lookout for signs, it will force big firms to unload holdings, triggering further declines in digital coin prices. This past weekend Bitcoin fell below $76,000 about the average price. MicroStrategy paid for its tokens, meaning the company formerly known as MicroStrategy was sitting on some paper losses, shares of Strategy, which owns more than, ready for this, 700,000 Bitcoins. Fell 7% on Monday and are down 61% since Bitcoin touched its record high on October 6. Brandon, your thoughts on the story?

• 1:55:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, anytime that Michael Saylor is, or excuse me, anytime Bitcoin's doing well, Michael Saylor looks like a genius. Anytime that it's down, everybody thinks he's crazy. I think it's excessive what he's doing. Like, his answer to anything is buy more. So,

• 1:55:23Speaker 00

  it's interesting that, right now, gold is going crazy and crypto is going down because, you know, it was kind of the opposite in 2021. After, like, everything really got crazy when the Georgia runoff happened, when it was confirmed that Congress was going to be a majority Democrat, which meant more money printing. So, crypto took off at that point, and the metals kind of stayed the same. Right now, the opposite's happening. So, it's interesting, like, whether or not, like, this is a sign of inflation not being the case. Like, because there's the dollar weakening from a financial standpoint and from like a monetary standpoint. So, I think the metals right now, they're moving because of the intentional weakening of the dollar by Trump,

• 1:56:05Speaker 00

  because, you know, he wants rates to go down. We kind of want some currency devaluation so the exports are more attractive. But this is kind of showing and exposing the cryptos as not a hedge against inflation, because that's how people, like, really packaged it and sold it the last couple of years. It's like, oh, owning crypto is the best hedge against inflation. No, it's still gold, it's still probably silver. It's not crypto. Crypto's more like as volatile as the NASDAQ, you know? So, yeah, I think this exposes the narrative as crypto being the best inflation hedge. Still think it's got some good upside, but not directly as a hedge against inflation or any type of stability.

• 1:56:39Speaker 01

  Jeff? Yeah, crypto is not a hedge against anything, really. It's a risk asset. Let's be honest about it. And what happened was, the price soared ahead because it was an asset that was owned by very few people. And then, as soon as it got to be more, more interested in owning an asset, more people poured money into it and the price went up. And everybody searched for a narrative to explain why the price went up. And since crypto people continue to talk

• 1:57:01Speaker 00

  About Bitcoin as a replacement for the dollar, that became the dominant narrative. But that was just the narrative of the story. And it was really nothing more than people wanting to own an asset that was going to appreciate in value alongside some of the other tech stocks like that. Over the last several months, Bitcoin hit its high, really going back to July. Things started to shift in the marketplace where risk-taking has shifted more toward risk aversion. And when risk aversion over AI, over economic concerns, a whole bunch of stuff that's going on, have hit Bitcoin too. So now you have a market that doesn't want to take marginal risk, which has led to some selling because now Bitcoin has become more institutionalized, which means that Wall Street portfolio managers are more susceptible toward short-run fluctuations.

• 1:57:46Speaker 00

  Therefore, they want to own winners, they don't want to own losers. And it leads to a situation where when the price changes and reverses, Wall Street as an institution will pile into something. Some people start selling, then it just becomes more and more selling. And everybody kind of looks for a narrative for why Bitcoin is down, the same way they were looking for a narrative when Bitcoin was up. But there is a real danger here with some of these treasury companies like Strategy. Not necessarily Strategy itself, but some of the other copycats that have come along the way. They own Bitcoin as their main treasury asset. But with it depreciating in price, they no longer have the ability to, first of all, their stock price used to be a leveraged bet on the cryptocurrency. So now their stock price is going the other way.

• 1:58:31Speaker 00

  Now that's, why would you own a more expensive vehicle to get into Bitcoin when you can just own Bitcoin cheaper? But the problem is, these companies have cash flow needs, and which means that eventually they're going to have to sell their cryptocurrency, their treasury assets. In a market that is, right now, not really all that, not a whole lot of buyers in the marketplace, because there's a lot of risk aversion that goes along with it. So if some of these treasury companies are forced to liquidate, that's the fear here, that it could lead to a tidal wave of selling, which we've seen on specific days. And there might be a point where the cryptocurrency can break, and there might be a real gap down in price. So a lot of people are

• 1:59:10Speaker 01

  Selling in anticipation of that problem coming up, which leads to basically a toxic mix. But this is, it's not really about the dollar. It's not really anything more than the overall financial investment climate, which has shifted in the other direction. Tom.

• 1:59:23Tom Ellsworth?

  Well, Jeff's right, and I'll add something to this, give people perspective. What was the big problem of the housing crash in 2008? It's one word, the debt that had bought the asset in the first place. And some of these treasury companies have leverage of up to 50%, meaning that they have 50% debt was used to buy the Bitcoins. So when things shift, as Jeff was just saying, and if they fall, they have the same problem they had in 2008, that the underlying asset that you had all this debt against goes whack. And if that goes down by 50%, you use 50% to buy it in debt, you're effectively worth zero because you own the debt

• 2:00:06Tom Ellsworth?

  and the thing, and the asset's only worth half of what it was some time ago. And so, you know, I'm not a big fan. I like Michael Saylor, I like, you know, his optimism and, you know, he's a genius. But the treasury companies that were started in his image, many, and we know some of them, that were started with...

• 2:00:27Speaker 01

  750 million, yep.

• 2:00:29Tom Ellsworth?

  Yep, that were just started with money off to the side and stuff like that. And we respect these people, but they were trying to create a treasury company like that. It puts them at risk. So there's three things, treasury companies. I like Michael and strategy. I don't like copycat strategy companies, especially leveraged one. I think it's a highly risky investment as you're seeing here.

• 2:00:49Speaker 01

  But you're saying leveraged ones, right? So here's my question for you, because we got approached with this and saying, why don't you create a fund like this and just match it? And long-term, we'll be able to get you half a billion, three quarters of a billion dollars? You remember this conversation?

• 2:01:00Tom Ellsworth?

  Yep.

• 2:01:01Speaker 01

  So I don't like the leveraged copycats. The question I got is, why are people who are putting the money at risk willing to give billions of dollars to the leveraged copycats?

• 2:01:14Tom Ellsworth?

  Because when the enthusiasm of Bitcoin goes past 100,000, it is...

• 2:01:20Speaker 00

  It is a very fast game. So if the momentum stays, an economic uncertainty and a hedge against inflation, some people disagree. But if those things come true or are true, then the momentum goes fast. And it's like when Bitcoin went from 16,000 all the way up to 60,000. Everybody like, oh my goodness, that was 3X because 3X would have been 48. When those momentum happen, like can you look at Max, Rob? Just click on Max or the graph you got there. And you can see, do you see the momentum? There's one at the bottom, whoosh, at the very bottom, right after 2018. Then it goes down, then it goes up and it kind of plateaus like right there. Then it goes up again.

• 2:02:02Speaker 00

  So those momentum plays, when you have put into it, Pat, you make a lot of money during those momentum plays. But you gotta hang on when, when the dips happen.

• 2:02:12Speaker 01

  Well, it's any type of bubble.

• 2:02:14Speaker 00

  Hang on for dear life?

• 2:02:16Speaker 01

  Bubble behavior, you know, when, you're right, it's all about momentum. When, when the stock price or the crypto price or any, any financial asset price is going up sharply. It makes everything that, every crazy thing that everybody says, it makes it seem like it's real and attainable. So that's why you have all sorts of copycats that come in because they think, look, Michael Saylor is doing something that I can do. All I need is a little bit of financing from a bank and I can convince a bank because look at Bitcoin's prices soaring ahead. I, you know, everybody says Bitcoin's going to go to a million. Why wouldn't we buy now? Why would we leverage up rate at this point if it looks like it's going to go to a million? Do you think it is? Eventually. What's eventually? I know, long run. 20 years? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. But it's not going to be straight up. It's going to be like this. It's going to be all over the place.

• 2:03:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, but, but I mean, listen, to, to me, you know, uh, uh, long, if you're a long-term thinker with certain assets. Like, I love it when my broker calls me when it's a bad day. And the conversation is, well, listen, you know, just got to ride it out and all that. I said, I'm in the business. I didn't buy this because I'm hoping for a 30-day return. I'm, I'm in this long-term. I get it. Listen, the shares we bought the other day of Disney, I'm totally with it. Hey, but Anthropic did this, that's great. Do we want more Anthropic? Yeah. So these are, these are types of conversation, but if you're a long-term player. I learned something a long time ago, okay, in business. I watched a lot of my peers and competitors when I was coming up.

• 2:03:45Speaker 01

  Even when I was making my first year, you know how much money I made my first year selling life insurance? What do you think my first year selling life insurance full time? How much money you think I made my first year?

• 2:03:54Speaker 00

  I think I heard it before.

• 2:03:56Speaker 01

  Seven thousand dollars, five thousand dollars, okay? My second year full time is somewhere between thirteen to twenty thousand dollars is what I made, okay? And then I just knew long term, I'm not good, because I believed in the business. Then it went six figures and I never looked back, right? But I'll never forget a scene. If they ever do a movie on me, this scene has to be in there. I'm at Bank of America. And to my left, two tellers down is a guy that used to be another weekend manager at Bally's. And both of us would always be pinned against each other because they wanted to know which weekend assistant? We were both just weekend, we're not even weekend managers, we weekend assistants. Which weekend assistant manager is gonna do well?

• 2:04:41Speaker 01

  They knew we were both chippy, one of us was gonna go. Well, I'm at the bank, Bank of America. And I'm arguing why I have three over limit fees of twenty nine ninety nine? Because I want to get that twenty nine ninety nine back. And it's a, it's a scene. Ladies like, sir, this is too many of them, you know, you gotta do this, you gotta listen. That's not fair, you gotta do one, why would you do three? And I see him going, hey, Pat, how are you? Good, how you doing? Good. All right, I'd like to make a half a million dollar deposit. And he just looks at me. He left to get into the mortgage business. I left to get into the insurance business. Something about the mortgage business to me was too cyclical. And I knew this was not gonna last all day because they were doing a pickup payment, negam, Nina, no income, no asset. It didn't make sense.

• 2:05:26Speaker 01

  Where my friends would come to me and says, get into the mortgage business. We're just putting income and they don't care about it. Banks are accepting these loans and they're telling us no income, no assets. I got school teachers that I'm putting on their ten oh three that he makes a hundred and eighty a year, even though he's only making fifty. I said, dude, that's not sustainable. You don't need to be an economist right there to have a degree from Stanford to say this is not sustainable. Well, fast forward. That half a million dollar income that he deposited, he was making six million a year, four to six million a year with three to four Rolls Royces parked outside their house, that disappeared. And in long-term insurance, renewal, stable business, block of business, someone's gonna pay a quarter of a billion dollars for it, they did. If you're a long-term thinker

• 2:06:07Speaker 01

  and all this stuff is happening and you fully believe in this product long-term, lock it up. If you're a day trader trying to day trade Bitcoin and crypto and that's not your specialty, do not play with fire. It's not gonna work in your favor. To me, I think long-term thinking

• 2:06:24Speaker 01

  is, is the solution to anything if you're willing to buy and hold something long-term. I bought gold, bunch of it, few years ago. And I said, listen, I'm not gonna just buy an ounce or two, I'm gonna buy kilo. So we bought gold, forty-eight to fifty-two thousand dollars. You remember this? What is the number right now for gold prices for kilo? I think it had a high of a one seventy-four. Right now, it's probably around one fifty, once, okay, one sixty-three. You don't even think about this. And when I bought it, everybody said, you shouldn't buy gold. This is not gonna be this. This is not gonna be that. Long-term thinking is an edge that you have. So let's talk about, uh... Can I add something?

• 2:07:02Speaker 05

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• 2:07:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, please. Okay. For those of you listening, he bought that gold and gave it to a top salesperson. Multiple. Multiple, in a sales contest. It was an ingot and he gave... Same advice, put it in a safe deposit box, put it in the gold storage where you can trust Who sold it, one kept it? It's, yeah, that's right. But the point was, your insurance company had grown to the point that you were able to give ingots of gold as trophy prizes for winners, when the other guy with his Rolls Royces in the mortgage business had cratered. But, but the You built a fundamental, long-term business. Yeah, and, and look, I appreciate that, Tom. And by the way, one of the guys that kept it, he sent me a picture saying I kept it. He says, I kept mine.

• 2:08:41Speaker 01

  The other guys didn't keep it, they got rid of it and took that $50,000 that it gives it to you. But let's go, do we want to do an Epstein story, or do we want to stick to business? What do you guys want to do? You tell me your appetite. Do you have any thoughts on Epstein Snyder? You have any opinions on that?

• 2:08:55Speaker 00

  I have the same thoughts with Epstein as I

• 2:08:57Speaker 01

  So nothing's changed with you there?

• 2:08:59Speaker 00

  It's, there's stuff there.

• 2:09:00Speaker 01

  Do you want me to go through it? Do you have any opinion for you to touch it, or do you want me to move on that?

• 2:09:04Speaker 00

  I think most people, I, we've done it to that.

• 2:09:05Speaker 01

  Okay, so we'll do this on Friday, guys, because there's a guy that's an extremely angry patriot who has faith over fear, who may have some thoughts on it, and the other guy, who, his birthday is today, this guy named Adam Sausting that you guys love, if you love him, it's his birthday today, I think today's exactly his birthday, the 4th, send him a manect right there, surprise him with a happy birthday today, he allegedly today turns 46, something like that, I keep going higher, he keeps going lower, so he's in his 30s, I think he's 46, so happy birthday, Sauce. All right, so then let's go to this story and we'll wrap it up. U.S. plans to issue license for firms pumping Venezuela oil. I want to spend five minutes into this story and we'll move on. Tom, I'll come to you.

• 2:09:50Speaker 01

  U.S. government is preparing to issue a general license allowing companies to pump oil in Venezuela, part of the Trump administration plan to ease sanctions and rebuild the nation's morbund, morbund energy industry. The new license could be issued by the Treasury Department as soon as this week. President and team is working around the clock to ensure oil companies are able to make investments in Venezuela oil infrastructure. Stay tuned. Taylor Rogers said from the White House, the move is A key step to attract companies with US ties to step in and revitalize output in Venezuela, which holds amongst the world's largest reserves following a US military operation in Caracas that took place. Tom, your thoughts?

• 2:10:31Speaker 00

  So, just like there's all different kinds of eggs, you go to the store and there's eggs, there's brown eggs, small eggs, big eggs, duck eggs. You go in the back of Whole Foods or a grocery store, you can get all different eggs. Why am I saying that? It's to kind of, for people who don't know, there are all different kinds of crude oil that comes out of the ground. It's all not the same. Venezuela, a thing called heavy crude comes out of the ground. It's one type of crude. And guess what? In Houston, Texas, there are tremendous number and great facilities and capabilities to refine heavy crude into all the things that comes out of oil. You know, certain plastic products, aviation

• 2:11:11Speaker 00

  fuel, diesel fuel, heating oil, fuel, all those things that come out. And what the president has done is following the extraction of Nicolas Maduro, where he's sitting in New York waiting trial, we are now licensing companies to pull the oil out of Venezuela. So there are oil workers in Venezuela with jobs. Venezuela is now exporting oil. Now, there's part of it that you heard him say, there's a certain 50 million barrels or whatever the number was, that's going to come back to the US because we feel we're owed that. But now, he's literally, this is doing two things. Repaying a debt, restarting an economy in

• 2:11:52Speaker 00

  Venezuela, because Chavez destroyed it, and bringing more oil to the US to be used so that the companies that are, have the license to extract it, now can turn it to other products. And by the way, this is why, this is one of the many reasons why, that all fall under the president's energy policy, including Drill Baby Drill, and you know, shut up those windmills, they're, they're, they're a waste of money and they don't pay off. All of that pat is why gas is so cheap right now in America, and we hope that that trickles down to the price of heating oil in the Northeast. States like California, you got almost $2 a tax from Sacramento on your gas, so can't help that, and you can't blame the president for

• 2:12:34Speaker 00

  that. But this is restarting Venezuela, and the trickle down effects that are happening are good.

• 2:12:40Speaker 01

  Snyder?

• 2:12:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think there's a couple of things here. One, maybe, maybe the The most important thing is this expresses confidence that the, as you called it, the extraction of Maduro was actually successful and that the new regime in Venezuela is playing ball, which means that through a very small action, relatively speaking, they were able to create massive amount of change, which is not just an example for Venezuela, it's an example for a whole bunch of places else around the world. This has always been the thing here. This is a chessboard, this is one chess piece, and what they're showing is that they can execute at a high level and do so successfully, to the point that there is a win-win created, as you're saying, Tom. It's a win, maybe it's a win-win-win-win. A win for US consumers, it's a win for American consumers. It's obviously a win for Venezuela, because Venezuela's been

• 2:13:26Speaker 00

  turned into a crap-hole over the many years. It's a win for US foreign policy, because again, it shows an example of what's been, what's, if you play ball with the US, if you don't play, it's the carrot and the stick, and we've demonstrated both. And then the fourth thing is that it moves on to other, Cuba. Cuba's now suddenly the next target, and I don't think that's an accident. I think this is, again, there's a strategy that's at work there that the Trump administration is carrying out, and they said, "Look, Panama Canal, Venezuela, we knocked those two out, then we get to Cuba, next thing you know, these dominos," it's almost like the reverse domino theory from, you know, the 1950s and 60s with communism. "We keep knocking over these dominos and showing that not only can we do it, we're not like the Bush administration, we're gonna get involved in Iraq for 20 years

• 2:14:11Speaker 00

  and go nowhere. We're gonna, we're gonna take a very light touch, we're gonna do as much as we can, and by the way, along the way, everybody's gonna win for all the process." So this is, this is enormous, and the fact that they're giving out licenses to oil companies to execute suggests that they're very confident that they've achieved some of their short-run goals that allow them to do this.

• 2:14:31Speaker 01

  You know what I wonder? I wonder if Chevron is gonna want to participate in this, because remember when they said, "We don't see an avenue of profitability right now," whatever the line that he used.

• 2:14:42Speaker 00

  Three times we've suffered because the government kind of tricked us and seized us. You know, I don't think this is a good idea, and he's like, "Why are you interrupting my press conference?"

• 2:14:50Speaker 01

  What I wonder is-

• 2:14:51Speaker 00

  I think they messed up with Trump, and Trump is gonna say, "No, you're-"

• 2:14:53Speaker 01

  You said the bad things, you're out of this. Can you imagine if he does that, but I wonder if with that comment, you're still gonna come out. So if we far up, take a look if Chevron does participate, to come back and play that clip. And the fact that Chevron said they're not gonna do anything. Anyways, to wrap up the podcast, guys, I do want to give a shout out to the man that held the gold coin. That is a kilo, right there. Look at the smile. Yeah, look at the smile on his face. Shout out to Rodolfo and Ceci Vargas for not selling the kilo of gold. Smart man, smart man. Rodolfo is a very smart man, very successful. They make a couple million a year, based out of Houston, Texas. If you're somebody in the insurance space or a business person, you want to network with them, you can manect them, uh, uh, uh, Rob, if you can go to the manect handle so they see who it is,

• 2:15:38Speaker 01

  go to Rodolfo Vargas, we'll put the link below as well. That's Rodolfo Vargas, manect with him if you're based out of Houston, Texas. Anyways, this was great, another great podcast, getting smarter, finding out what's gonna happen, and who knows, between now and next Wednesday, maybe Brandon buys a house. We don't know. It's possible. Maybe he's gonna wait till he's, uh, 60 years old, 70 years old to do it, we don't know, but maybe he will. And if you want to learn more with this, this, this man, Jeff Snider, brilliant, Euro Dollar University, we're gonna put the link below as well. Look, this is the best I've seen him today, dressed with the suit and the tie, we complimented him before we got started. But, uh, go visit his information as well, uh, we'll put the link below as well. Having said that, God bless everybody, we'll do it again on Friday. Take care. Bye bye, bye bye.

• 2:17:13Speaker 06

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