10/30/25: AI Mass Layoffs, Nvidia Bubble, Healthcare Costs Spike, Kash Patel Freaks Over Kirk Assassin Probe

23:32Shares have been boosted by the AI boom. You can see there the market cap, now$5 trillion. Just 273 days ago, it was$4 trillion. Just 66 days. It took 66 days to go from$2 trillion to$3 trillion. And then it took some 180 days to go from$1 trillion to$2 trillion. it. But you can see the absolute gigantic increase in the overall stock price and the market cap. Shares have been boosted, they say, by AI's potential and recent flurry of deals. Remember that these deals are not actually cash deals. A lot of them are circular round-trip finances, the way that they call it. Vendor finance is another term that goes back several decades.

24:05You can go watch our segment with David Dain if you're interested for the exact mechanics. NVIDIA is now larger than AMD, ARM, ASML, Broadcom, Intel, LAM Research, Micron, Qualcomm, TSMC combined, combined, all of those juggernaut semiconductors manufacturers. Remember, also, TSMC actually makes the NVIDIA chip, not that a lot of people even know that. Now, according to the Dow Jones market, its value also exceeds entire sectors of the S &P 500, including utilities, industrials, and consumer staples. Santa Clara Company designs chips, as they say about GPUs. has shipped some$6 million of the Blackwell chip it released just last year, has orders for$14 million more.

24:47That's part of the reason why. And this is why saying it's a bubble implies that they don't sell anything. They actually do sell a lot of stuff. They have a lot of orders on the books. That's part of the reason why the stock is so high. The question is, are those orders going to continue in the medium to long run to sustain this level of growth and to finance all of the deals that are propped up by these insane valuations. Just again, to stick with this, the market value of NVIDIA now exceeds the entire S &P 500 industrials. It exceeds consumer staples. It exceeds Broadcom. It exceeds the S &P 500 utilities, AMD, ASML, Micron.

25:29I mean, just consider what percent that that makes up of the entire S &P 500. Ironically, I use ChatGPT to calculate this, it's some 8 % alone just of the entire S &P 500. So just the whole, so if you're a normal investor, you have your 401k, your Roth IRA, whatever, and you're just on auto buy for a Vanguard S &P 500 fund, which is what most people responsibly should do, you're betting on NVIDIA a lot more than you think. Now you're not totally exposed to the risk, but yeah, let's say it goes down, then that will drag the entire index down. It literally has that power. Like, I mean, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the retirement portfolio of the entire country is banking on this stock.

26:12Well, and I've got some more for you. So Jacob King crunched the numbers. He says NVIDIA is now worth more than two Canadas, 166 Iselands, a Germany and a half, every U.S. regional bank combined, the world's billionaires three times over, the entire NFL 35 times, every pizza sold in history, every item on Amazon, Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal, NASA, SpaceX, and Boeing, Toyota, Sony, and Nintendo, Europe's four biggest banks, every oil company on earth, all of global gold reserves combined, all of LA real estate, Manhattan real estate, the whole crypto market, and all 54 African countries combined.

26:52Okay, let's think about this whole quote-unquote vendor financing thing again. So basically the idea is that NVIDIA loans money to a company. And or stock. Or stock. And then they buy the NVIDIA chips. So they give the money to the company and the company sends the money back to them and gets their chips in exchange. And everybody's stock price goes up, right? Even though you're just round tripping this money effectively. Okay. So not only do they have to maintain their order flow in order for this stock price to continue going up or even maintain its current valuation, they also have to maintain their price.

27:31So let's say that there's some sort of market hit where the price of these chips goes down, or there's some sort of a hit in the AI market where all of these companies go down. Well, not only is NVIDIA taking the direct hit, because now their chips are worth less and they're able to sell them for less, but now all of these investments, all of this vendor financing that is going out to these companies, they're being hit there too, because the value of those companies is going down as well. So you're getting hit twice just from one market movement. So that's when you look at the precarity of this.

28:08I mean, it's some of the same like domino type effects that we all experience firsthand, or those of us are old enough to experience firsthand during the Great Recession. So you're set up for something very troubling here. And it also begs the question, like, OK, if these chips are so amazing, there's so much demand for them. And oh, my God, the price just keeps going up and up and up. Why do you need to do these deals if there is so much organic demand for this thing? So a lot of big questions. And like I said, I don't even think there are many people that deny that it's a bubble. There's just all sorts of cope around it of like, okay, yeah, it's a bubble, but you know what?

28:47Even though it's a bubble, when it crashes, there's still going to be a lot of good that comes out of it or, you know, it's not going to pop for a long time. So don't worry about it. I mean, there are very few people who are actually like, this is fine in this market actually makes sense. Yeah. Did you put A6B up on the screen? No. Yeah, please. This is the infamous now vendor financing chart. Look how beautiful this is, right? It's like a gorgeous graphic where it shows NVIDIA. It shows companies investing in NVIDIA and NVIDIA investing him back. And then various different open AI is kind of the nexus of a lot of these deals.

29:18But each arrow shows either investment services, capital, hardware, or software and how interrelated the entire thing is. This is like our whole economy right here, guys. This is it right here. It's entire GDP spending. It's everything. And all of it is being powered by data centers. By the way, there is a huge China angle already. Let's go ahead and put that one, please, up on the screen A7, just to show you all. So Bloomberg is now reporting, and remember I mentioned the Blackwell chip, which is one of the more advanced chips here, the AI chip, will be on the negotiating table now in the US-China trade talks.

29:51Any substantial deal here would balance the AI compute balance of power. Trump has suggested he is open to providing NVIDIA with the Chinese access as part of a larger trade deal, which would represent a major concession, and it would, to quote, rile up national security hawks in Washington. AI Blackwell is basically like the last element of our economy where we have some strategic advantage over the Chinese. And Trump is basically worried about the soybean farmers in the Midwest. And so he's decided, I'm happy to give them access to the best technology in the world in our last moat, as long as they can bail out my trade war on soybeans.

30:29Even though, by the way, we could have also forced Argentina, who we were bailing out to buy said soybeans if we wanted to. We didn't even have to do any of this. Let's put the next one up on the screen too because here's the thing, guys. NVIDIA Jensen, he is one of the, Jensen is one of the most sophisticated political actors I've seen in quite a long time. He understands this place exactly. He's here in town actually right now for the NVIDIA conference, laying the groundwork for trying to sell as many chips into China. He's a business. That's what he wants to do, right? So what do you do? He is now joining everyone.

31:02in donating to the Trump ballroom. I will also remind you that one way he was able to get access to Trump is he donated a significant amount to some super PAC, which held a dinner at Mar-a-Lago. And immediately after that dinner at Mar-a-Lago, it's not confirmed exactly he spoke to Trump. It's almost certain he must have, right? Because immediately afterwards, there was an announcement of a concession. He has been meeting with every AI figure in Washington over the last several months because he is desperate to preserve the Chinese bottom line for his business. He even traveled recently to Beijing and said that he would be working as hard as he could to sell the Blackwell chip.

31:40Now, what's crazy about this entire thing is that the Chinese now openly say, they go, yes, we want access to the Blackwell chip for now. At the very same time, they're like, this is a strategic problem for us. So we are going to massively surge development to make sure that we're not reliant on the Blackwell chip. He doesn't care. Neither does America. Trump needs his soybean bailout, literally, so we could buy more soybeans. We're going to give away part of our economic – the last thing that we really have on top of them. And then at the same time, it's all just to juice the NVIDIA stock price in the short term because the Chinese, who are smart, as I always say here, are like, yeah, in the long run, this is a problem for us.

32:22They're like, we can't be having this. And they have open orders in their entire economy, which are being massively state funded, to find an alternative in the immediate. So this is it. And we had Ben Smith on our show, and it bears a longer discussion. The era of trying to beat China or any of that on trying to beat China in terms of full-on decoupling from the U.S. side is over. My current theory is that if China and the U.S. decouple, it will be because the Chinese want to. And they're like, you guys are a problem. You have a degenerate market volatile economy. They're like, we can't deal with this.

32:57You're too unreliable of a supplier. And by the way, they're not entirely wrong. In a lot of ways, they have been taking the steps to do that. Yes, they are. Both in terms of their financial system. They're looking at our sanctions regimes. Their banking system. Going like, okay, this is not, we don't want you to have this leverage over us. Arnaud Bertrand had written up that whole thing about helium. They realized they've had this vulnerability and relied on us for helium, which is apparently really important. And they were all right. Well, we got to figure that out. You know, they they have been thinking about how actually to become less dependent on us and decouple from us for years now.

33:32And, you know, this is the the chips piece is a really critical piece. You know, I'm not even sure I disagree with the decision from the Trump administration at this point. Like the corrupt part of it is obviously disgusting. And I actually think what it really comes down to as well is that Trump also realizes that the stock market is wholly and completely dependent on NVIDIA. So he's like he wants that arrow line to keep going up. So he's going to do whatever NVIDIA wants him to do to continue increasing their orders, et cetera. But, you know, when we had these sorts of export controls on, what that did is it did force China into, OK, well, we got to be creative.

34:08We got to do our own innovation. We got to do our own development. You know, that's actually what helped to some of the backstory for development of DeepSeek. They realized how to be more innovative with the chips that they did have access to, etc. So, you know, I'm not even sure. Like, I don't know that the export controls were really working at this point. What NVIDIA's argument is, and of course this is a self-interested argument, but their argument is effectively like, no, you don't want to keep the American tech stack out of China. You want them to be dependent on our tech. And so that's the argument that they've been making.

34:41Basically, if you don't allow them to purchase these chips, they're just going to go and develop their own and it'll be a direct competitor. And then that's more of an issue for you at this point. Now, like you said, I'm sure what China is going to do is both to purchase these chips in the short term and also continue their development and race to develop at this level of advanced technology. Right. But, I mean, I think they're racing towards that whether we provide them with – allow them to buy these chips or not at this point. Don't sell somebody the rope to hang you, okay? At least make it a little bit more difficult.

35:11And this, look, I mean, the problem is talking about this in a vacuum. It's not supposed to be in a vacuum. The point is, this is what's so frustrating and honestly deeply sad. Eight years of talk about industrial policy, about competition, about decoupling, about reforming American manufacturing. And it's basically over, guys. Like, it's over. This trade deal put the nail in the coffin. And ironically, it's Trump himself who 10 years ago was the person who ushered in a new consensus on China where a lot of people agreed. But the point of our discussion with Ben Smith yesterday is he's also the person who, because of political convenience, corrupt, whatever you want to call it, has decided actually it's not going to happen.

35:50It's not entirely his fault. The Biden administration tried. But the truth was, as we always said at the time, it's just not enough. Like the piecemeal approach, it was never going to work. It would have literally had to take in what the Chinese did. They made a commitment, made in China in 2025. Like I said, I went through their plan. You would be amazed how their 10-year plan actually came to fruition on a number of counts. They have still a few strategic areas, which they're very open about, and they're moving towards it. And their system is not only not collapsing as people predicted and said, oh, they'll never be able to do it.

36:25Instead, it's going the opposite. It's consolidating. It looks even more legitimate for the eyes of the people. Of course, they have a lot of problems. No one's saying that they don't. It's a gigantic country with over a billion people in it. But their trajectory is on the right track. You can't say that about our current economy. And so AI is the last thing that we have. And yeah, if they succeed, I guess it'll destroy us. If it doesn't succeed, it'll also destroy us. I mean, if we're going in the strict, can we at least get to buy the BYD cars? Yeah. At this point, give us something. You can in Mexico.

36:59I was actually speaking with a friend recently because I was very against allowing these Chinese cars into our market. And he made this point. He said, look, I agree. I understand where you're coming from. But the truth is, is that the American automakers are so, just so bad and that there's not enough competition currently in the U.S. and that the only way that we could potentially spur things is to allow BYD, Xiaomi, and all of these other companies here access, consumers would flock and it would actually put organic market pressure on Ford, GM, and others to actually try and compete in that sector.

37:36And I said, you know what? I'm not there 100%, but it's not a bad argument because they're cheaper. It's better technology. And, I mean, again, if we're going to live in this world where decoupling and all that's not going to happen, then, yeah, we might as well be able to drive a cheap car, right? You know, if the Japanese car is sorry, it's better. It just is. I saw the new version of the Corolla. Oh, my God. I'm like salivated. Well, here's in fairness to the American automakers, especially with the EV development, is like, you know, if you were a Chinese automaker, you knew my government is in for the long term on EVs.

38:09And, you know, and by the way, there were a lot of EV, Chinese EV automakers that failed. You know, it wasn't just this one company. There are many of them. There's hundreds. That's what's very interesting. Some of them have failed. Some of them have succeeded, et cetera. But they all had the confidence of, OK, this is a priority of my government. Not, oh, this is a priority of this four years, but next four years, who the fuck knows? And that's the reality for the automakers here. So, you know, like I said before, you had four years of Biden saying, OK, this is something we want to do. And we're going to try to build out the charging infrastructure and, you know, which is a major pain point as someone who is an EV owner.

38:43And by the way, I love I actually love my Ford Mustang Mach-E. I really like it. I'm not saying it's better than BYD. It's probably not. I know it's not, but - It depends, just roomier. Well, it depends on the BYD. I mean, you know, the BYDs, they have longer, the battery technology alone is better. But in any case, you know, one of the pain points is a not fully built out charging infrastructure. Biden administration was like, all right, we're gonna work on that. We're gonna give some subsidies. We're gonna help people to be able to make the transition. We're gonna support these automakers. And then, you know, four years go by and the Trump administration pulls all of that aggressively as like, nope, we don't wanna do absolutely any of that.

39:18So, you know, in a sense, it's like it really hobbles their ability to have any sort of business certainty and invest for the long term. So I do have some sympathy for them in terms of their trajectory. No, it's not their fault. Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm not saying none of it's their fault. A lot of it is. It's also a very uncertain policy landscape. You're definitely right. But even on the outcome, this is why outcomes are so important. You know, everyone's like, oh, the Biden administration appropriated funds. The actual chargers that were built out, even with the enormous amount of funds, it was scant.

39:45It was like one in 1 ,000 of the amount of infrastructure. Right. And the ones that were built, they had long wait times, many of the times that they were down. We just don't have the requisite ability to just go in, bulldoze, build new stuff, put in some transformers. I will say, credit to Tesla, the new stuff that they're putting in the northeast corridor with their transformers and the supercharging network is actually very cool. But still, that's only for Tesla owners and some of the other companies that have done deals with them. It's not even close to what's the current market penetration of EV.

40:16I don't even think it's 10 % in terms of the number of – Maybe in California. Right. You're right. Maybe in California. But here in the Northeast, I would have to look immediately. But it's still not even close to where it is. And by the way, even the power, if you try to charge at a supercharger in the middle of the day, it can get a little pricey there for a couple hundred miles. I mean, yeah, I'm preaching to the choir for people who have to pay for gas. Like that's – it's obviously a lot more. But in China, they don't have necessarily that issue. By the way, you know, I was in London about a year ago or so.

40:48And you know those pylons that like stick up out of the street? In a lot of places in London, they have charging supports inside the pylons for street parkers. So you can just roll up, you can park right there, and you can actually charge your car directly from one of those street pylons that's just sitting there on the sidewalk. I mean, London's an ancient city. If they can figure it out, why can't we figure it out? I mean, I will tell you guys, it is a superior technology. Like, not only not having a paycheck. Yeah, the acceleration is fantastic. The way it drives is great. No maintenance, right?

41:18You don't have to go get your oil changed because there's no oil circulating through. It's much cleaner. It just requires a lot less upkeep. So it lasts longer. You're going to the dealer or the auto mechanic, much less. You obviously don't have to deal with the ups and downs of how much gas costs and whatever. Like, it is a superior technology, but not if you don't have the infrastructure built out. Then it just becomes impractical for most people. You know, I wouldn't have an electric vehicle if it was my sole vehicle. Yeah, exactly. I'm not going to take it on long trips because it's a freaking pain in the butt, you know, to have to, okay, where's my charging station?

41:51Where am I, you know, let me plan it all out and then I'm going to have to sit there for 20 minutes while the thing gets a charge. Oh, this one's broken. It doesn't work. What am I going to do now? You know, that is the current reality of EV ownership. And since our government can't, you know, build anything and couldn't get its act together to, you know, really invest in this charging infrastructure and is schizophrenic about what they even want to do in this direction, it means that our automakers are falling behind and sort of we're being left in the past. I looked it up. The new EV penetration for new car sales is 7 % to 8%.

42:26So that's just with new car sales even, 7 % to 8%. Which, look, it's not nothing, but it's still. And you get why, because it's inconvenient right now. Yeah, of course. I've driven 12 hours in the electric car. And I mean, I will say, if you have a new baby, it's not the worst thing in the world because you pretty much have to stop every two hours anyway. But yeah, if it was just me, I would definitely have found it a little bit inconvenient. But I mean, the full self-driving can make up for that. It depends on your own preference for the technology and et cetera. But yes, look, the fact of the matter is they have abundant cheap power over there.

43:02They have a huge amount of government infrastructure and investment behind their technology. It just continues to progress. The people there love it. You know, there's no real organic complaint generally. And it would be nice if we could see something like that. And instead, all of us are just praying to the nvidia God that it continues to go up. Because when it goes down, we're all going to suffer the consequences. This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. It was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Trainor, disappeared from a commune.

43:40It was hard to wrap your head around. It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. No, I am not your guru. And back then, I lied to my parents. I lied to police. I lied to everybody. There were years right where I could not say your name. I've decided to go back to my hometown in Northern California, interview my friends, family, talk to police, journalists, whomever I can to try to find out what actually happened. Isn't it a little bit weird that they obsess over hippies in the woods and not the obvious boyfriend? They have had this case for 30 years. I'll teach you sons of bitches to come around here and my wife.

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44:54Brought to you by the American Lung Association and the Ad Council. China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the Sixth Bureau podcast. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life. And that's a unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable.

45:39This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Yes. All right, let's get to insurance. So we are now getting more of a preview for just how much healthcare premiums are going up in the Obamacare marketplaces for next year. We can put this tear sheet up on the screen. The news is very grim. Obamacare prices become public, highlighting big increases. So the Trump administration has released a preview of the available plans sold through Obamacare marketplaces in 30 states, giving Americans who buy their own health insurance a first look at just how much prices would go up.

46:25Insurers have increased rates significantly for next year, An average of about 30 % for a typical plan in the 30 states where the federal government manages markets and an average of 17 % in states that run their own markets. That's according to a new analysis from Kaiser Family Foundation. Biggest impact for nearly all Americans covered by Obamacare plans will occur with the expiration of generous subsidies at the end of the year unless Congress extends them. prices on the government website. Healthcare.gov reflect that change using calculations based on a return to the lower subsidy levels offered before 2021.

47:01So you have, you know, across the board hit in terms of prices going up and Sagar part of what they point to. And we can get into because I think it's still very murky why prices are going up so much at this point. Certainly some of it has to do with the Ozempic-style weight loss drugs, which have become incredibly popular and also, by the way, incredibly impactful. The obesity rate is actually going down for the first time in modern history. But you also have with this, they talk about how with the loss of the subsidies and prices going up, healthier people are going to drop out. That makes the cost higher for them.

47:38Sicker people stay in the pool. And so they are pricing in that expectation that healthier, younger people are going to drop out of the pool. And so everybody who remains is going to have to bear more. I mean, it's rational. So ours are not yet public. They will be public, by the way, November 1st. I will personally post for all of you what it will cost for me because I'm very curious actually to see what the actual increase will be. But I mean, this is a rational calculus. Let's say it starts to get to the$30 ,000 a year range and you include a$14 ,000 deductible, which is what I currently have right now for the plan.

48:14That's 44 grand in the event of a bad thing happening to you. Maybe roll the dice. Just pay it in cash. I mean, honestly. And by the way, with cash, can't you negotiate? I've heard that before, that if you have a cash bill at a hospital, you can call them up and be like, hey, listen, I'll pay you 50 cents on the dollar. And they'll be like, oh, okay, we'll take it. Something like that, which shows you how fake the price is the entire time. Yeah, around 40, 50 ,000 of the box. I mean, it seems reasonable to just say, I'm not sure, not so sure that we shouldn't just basically be self-insured. I mean, that's a horrible place to be.

48:47But if you're going to be out the hole anyway for such an insane amount of money, you're basically buying like ultra disaster insurance at that point. And I don't think that the disaster insurance should cost$40 ,000 a year or$45 ,000 potentially in the event of a really bad situation. That is an entirely rational choice. I would not fault really anyone for making. And I think, you know, what we just can't get away from is this just shows you how bad Obamacare is. And it's one of those where with the whole subsidy conversation, it just seems missing for this entire – it just seems missing from this entire discussion.

49:23Like the subsidies only existed because of COVID. I think they're better than nothing. Rationally, people looked at the subsidy and said, oh, that's not affordable, but it's like more affordable. Sounds so – they signed up and they actually had health insurance for the first time. What I do find very objectionable is not the GLP-1, but it does appear that many of the hospitals have been taking advantage of the newly amount of insured to increase their overall price for the services and including for some of the drugs that have been negotiated. Because remember, the PBMs and the interlocutors between all of this are squeezing every dollar that they possibly can.

49:59So the overall price has actually gone up as more people have entered this market-based insurance subsidy system. And so the ultimate reality that you arrive at is healthy people may leave the pool. The remaining number of people in the pool are either going to be sicker or are going to be consuming more health care. That health care price is completely untethered from any market-based demand. And that's how you end up with 20 % of your GDP spent on keeping people sick. It's an insane system. And it makes me so angry when I think about it. From housing and to this, I just don't know. Like if you are, we talked previously$25 ,000 per year, family of four.

50:39What are we doing here? That's usury at a certain point. Where are my AI savings? When's that going to hit? If you're going to deny people care, at least save me a fucking buck. Because I'm like, I can't deal with this anymore. Where are the health insurance layoffs and then the accompanying reduction in premiums from all the money that you're saving? Somehow that's not filtering down to the consumer level. And, you know, they dig into who is going to be most affected. So you have this group that makes, you know, four times the poverty level. They were the ones that were really the subsidies were expanded toward.

51:14So they're making$65 ,000 reward. That's all going to go away. So their premiums are the ones that are really going to skyrocket the most from like a few hundred dollars to multi thousands of dollars. But people who are at the poverty line or near the poverty line, they're also going to see their costs go up significantly. Now, it's still an affordable amount if you make a reasonable income. But if you're at the poverty level, any sort of an increase is potentially dire for you, potentially means the difference between you being able to have health insurance and not being able to have health insurance.

51:46The other thing that they're pointing to here, Sagar, is they're saying that this weekend, November 1st, is a kind of a key deadline because if you don't have some sort of a deal figured out in the shutdown, then you are they're going to price in the expectation that the subsidies are not going to continue, that the healthy people are going to drop out, that these premiums are in fact going to become reality. So, you know, they're looking towards this weekend as really sort of like a key moment in order to determine what's going to happen for the year going forward. Now, I will say the expansion of the subsidies was under during covid was very successful in terms of, you know, the uninsured rate is the lowest that it's ever been.

52:29I think, you know, there were huge numbers of people who got into the Obamacare marketplaces because of these subsidies that were offered. So it was very successful in that way. But it means now that if those subsidies go away, you're going to have millions and millions of people who are really impacted, not to mention, like I said, the follow-on effects of premiums going up for everybody. Yeah, let's go to the next one because this highlights something that I'm very passionate about, which we did not even know, Crystal, until we became self-employed. So Marjorie Taylor Greene highlights this.

52:57This is for self-employed married parents in their 30s with four kids. They talk about Obamacare. She says Democrats did this with Obamacare 15 years ago. Johnson says Republicans have a mystery plan that has yet to be revealed to fix it. No one knows what it is we're told to stay home in our district. She highlights this post from a guy, Mark Meredith. He says, these are the nine options for health insurance in my zip code. Here are the three silver plans. The plans that he posts range from$3 ,655 per month to$3 ,810 per month. If you look at the deductible, it's$8 ,600,$12 ,000, and$3 ,000. The out-of-pocket maximum ranges from the low of$17 ,800 to$21 ,200.

53:43This is a Blue Cross Blue Shield plan for a family of six people. Now, notice she mentions they're self-employed. I mean one of the things that you and I discover, right, when you're self-employed is not only that nobody is going to give you health insurance, but you also have to pay like the full freight of Medicare and Social Security tax. So think about what this means for entrepreneurship. Like if you are somebody who wants to be an entrepreneur and to start your own business, which is allegedly the American dream, you actually are a lot worse off statistically in a lot of ways by taking this gamble because$3 ,600 per year.

54:19How much is that annualized? I can't even do the math in my head. That's what, like$40K a year or something like that? Okay, so that's like$40 ,000 a year in after-tax income. Yes, it's tax deductible off of the top that you have to be able to bring home to make this not before you make your mortgage or any of your other bill, not to mention profitability and paying for your employers or employees. So if you're self-employed, what does that – or if you were thinking about being self-employed and you're looking at this, what does that tell you? Health care attached to my job is worth a shitload of money to me.

54:54I may be better off staying at this W-2 that makes me miserable because at least I don't have to carry the burden of the payroll tax and of the overall health care. That's really, I think, so bad because it means it will just incentivize more concentration. concentration of course amazon and those other people they can they have great health care because they can negotiate with the insurance company they can provide preferential rates so can any other large fortune 500 company part of the reason why in american mythology we're always like oh you know go work at a big company is because of the benefits right but the benefits are a chain it's slavery basically saying that you can't leave and that's what i think we really need to highlight because the lack of support at the very least it should be easier to start a new business with the concentration of banks, health insurance, payroll tax, a lot of the other tax problems that exist for people who are small business owners, which we have discovered every single one of those in running this.

55:50It is not simple. It is not easy. And it can very easily drive you to a place of madness. Yeah, it definitely takes out some of the dynamism from the economy, both in terms of people not being able to switch jobs because they're so terrified about their benefits, not wanting to go out on their own because they have to have health insurance. there is absolutely no doubt about it. I appreciate Marjorie Taylor Greene sounding the alarm on these things. I will say the solutions she's offered are the typical price transparency, which is like, sure. That is not going to solve the problem. I think when you price controls.

56:22It has to be a much more radical solution. And listen, the left has been right about Obamacare from day one. Does it have some improvements over the prior system when you could just get kicked off for any old reason and pre-existing conditions and all this nonsense? Yes. But even if it had a public option, that would have at least provided some competition in the marketplace. But what you really need is to go back to square one. And I understand how difficult that would be given how entrenched all of these interests are in our system, how much is built up around it. I've seen people make the point of basically like countries, yes, we're the only developed country that doesn't have universal health care.

57:00But other countries developed this when things were simpler. And so it's going to be more difficult for us to do it. But I'm sure that there is something to that. But how is this simple? Like, this is not sustainable either. So we're going to have to figure something out. And it's going to have to be something a lot more radical than, like, we need price transparency, which is the only thing Republicans can really ever figure out how to say. The United States spends 70 % more of its GDP on health care than any other high-income country in the world without corresponding improvements in life expectancy or outcomes.

57:30Spend more, get less, worse outcomes. That's the American dream. The literal incentive in the system is for you to be chronically ill. Oh, yeah. That's how they make money. That is the incentive because that's how you make money. So if you have a health care system that is driven around making money, you are going to have a lot of sick people. And lo and behold, we have a lot of sick people. I talked about what is dialysis. I mean, I know I may sound like a broken record on dialysis. But does anybody appreciate how crazy it is that 1 % of the entire U.S. federal budget is dialysis? 1%. Hundreds of billions of dollars a year spent on dialysis.

58:03with no, nobody is thinking or doing anything about that. By the way, do you know how fucked up you have to be to be on dialysis in the first place? That means like 50 things have gone wrong from obesity to preventative care. You're an end-stage renal disease at that point. That is how bad things, and that's how much money we have to spend. How much cheaper would it be to make sure, hey, let's just make sure people aren't fat in the first place. Over 40 % of people on dialysis are morbidly obese. the vast majority are extremely unhealthy in many other areas. Many have not had any health care in the previous number of years.

58:40It would be so much cheaper just to make sure, hey, never go on dialysis in the first place. And instead, these dialysis clinics, I forget the name exactly of it, these are multi-billionaires who are running this place. You know how sick that is? Statins, you know, and all the other drugs that people have to take for the rest of their lives after they already have blood pressure or heart problems. Yeah, who's paying for that, right? It's just better not to have that problem in the first place. Diabetes, insulin. We know what's, yes, insulin prices are bad. You know what's better? Not needing insulin in the first place.

59:08How do you do that? Don't get fat. Have some preventative pre-diabetic work. Something like 70 % of the US population is on the road to pre-diabetes. GLP-1 may help with that. Yeah, that's interesting though. But this also highlights the cost issue. Put B5, please, on the screen. So for the first time actually ever, this is about the US obesity rate. It peaked at 40 % in 2022. It's now at 37. Now, how did it get to 37? Well, a number of people are using these GLP-1 drugs is now at some 12 % of the overall US population. I think it's the beef tallow fried. Yeah, yeah, it's steak and shake. Actually, it's steak and shake.

59:46However, you can still see it only dropped by 2%. Okay, but we're headed in the right direction. Did you notice how it went from 33 before the pandemic to 39 after the pandemic and now it dropped by two. So what does that mean? It's like, yeah, it's nice. We dropped by two. We're still not even on track to get down to 33. And a lot of these GOP-1 drugs are being paid for out of pocket by people who have obviously a modest amount of income. I mean, from what I've seen from the ads, it's what is it like a couple hundred bucks a month? I mean, it's a lot of money, but it's not going to break the bank.

1:00:22It's not like plastic surgery or something. Not like health insurance premium kind of money. Right, right. Not like health insurance premium. Exactly right. And if anything, it probably could save you for it. So insurance is not covering it. It is covering it in some instances, but they're paying absolutely insane amounts of money for that coverage. And it's still not showing up from where we are. And I think it makes sense because the obesity rate was something like 40%. And now it's only dropped to 37. It used to be at 33, something like six, seven years ago. We can get back to that maybe. You know, I'm not at this.

1:00:50I used to be against GLP one. I still think I am for children for anybody under like 25 years old, just because I think messing with the guts of children and all that is still very scary. And we don't know the long term implications of that. But I do think it is clear, like for obesity, it's just needs to be all hands on deck to make sure that this is crushed as soon as humanly possible, because it will bankrupt us will bankrupt you beyond the money, which, you know, whatever that's replaceable is it will destroy your health. and there's just not, again, you know, for all the talk of Maha and all of that, et cetera, this is the structural stuff that actually keeps people deeply, deeply unhealthy.

1:01:28Yeah. It's really bad. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. A golf YouTuber, actually, a young guy in his 30s, 35, something like that, that Kyle watched. Oh, I know who you're talking about. Yeah. The guy from Barstool, yeah. Big guy and just died. Yeah, I don't know what that was about, but they didn't really cause it. But they did say it was an unexpected medical issue. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, look, the health consequences and the way that being morbidly obese limits what you're able to do in the world. It is absolutely an emergency. So I'm glad to see that at least there's some movement in the right direction because it just felt hopeless for so long.

1:02:07And I was just looking. The cost out of pocket for the generic versions is like a few hundred dollars a month. insurers mostly only cover it when it's like directly linked to diabetes or something like that so if it's like you know a vanity project do you understand how stupid that is it's only once you're diabetic that they'll pay for it wouldn't it be better to not get diabetic yes this is the sickness in the system it's like this for everything uh oh man i i could go on forever but it is something that's just you know from the dialysis from the amount of money that is spent every year. And it's not just, it's not like it's abstract money.

1:02:46It's taxpayer dollars in a lot of ways that funnels this entire system. The billionaires and the multimillionaires that it mints all throughout, you know, all of this for what end? And yeah, I get it. It's trite. We've been talking about it for 20 years, but it's literally an imminent crisis with this healthcare premium expiring. There are going to be vast numbers of people that are just going to be uninsured, period. And like I said, if it comes to the$45 ,000 mark, I'm probably going to roll the dice. I'd probably just go uninsured. I mean, you'd be stupid not to. And life expectancy continues to go down.

1:03:17And this ties into that story as well. Right. This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. It was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Trainor, disappeared from a commune. It was hard to wrap your head around. It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. No, I am not your guru. And back then, I lied to my parents. I lied to police. I lied to everybody. There were years right where I could not say your name. I've decided to go back to my hometown in Northern California, interview my friends, family, talk to police, journalists, whomever I can to try to find out what actually happened.

1:04:00Isn't it a little bit weird that they obsess over hippies in the woods and not the obvious boyfriend? They have had this case for 30 years. I'll teach you sons of bitches to come around here and my wife. Boom, boom. This is The Red Weather. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Talking to your kids about the dangers of vaping can be hard. Getting them to listen to hot gossip is easy. So here's some drama you could share with your kid. Dude, did you hear about Cassie and Jake? No. But did you hear that vaping can cause irreversible lung damage and nicotine affects brain development?

1:04:39Nuh-uh. You don't need to gossip if you want to have an open conversation about vaping. So if you want to get tips on when and how to talk to your kids, visit talkaboutvaping.org. Brought to you by the American Lung Association and the Ad Council. China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal. Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the Sixth Bureau podcast.

1:05:20I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life. And that's a unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Turning now to the Charlie Kirk investigation, some very strange developments happening at the very top of the U.S. intelligence community and the FBI. Let's go and put this up here on the screen. Officials' access to FBI files in Charlie K.

1:06:05case draw a pushback. That's a very New York Times way of putting some of the details here. So let me set the stage. So the person who is in front of you, if you're just watching, is Joe Kent. He is the National Counterterrorism Center director. He is a deputy to Tulsi Gabbard, the ODNI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Now, currently, there is a long-brewing fight, apparently, in the administration over the Charlie Kirk case because Joe Kent examined FBI files in the last several weeks to, quote, investigate whether the man charged with assassinating Charlie Kirk had support from someone else, a foreign power, or another entity.

1:06:44The inquiry by Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, alarmed Kash Patel, the director of the FBI. Mr. Patel and other senior officials believed Mr. Kent was overstepping, treading on FBI responsibilities, and potentially interfering with the investigation and the prosecution of the suspect, Tyler Robinson. But supporters of Mr. Kent say he was just doing his job, running down leads, making sure no foreign or domestic groups were linked to Mr. Kirk's death. Robinson was accused of killing Kirk last month. Mr. Kent is the confirmed Senate director of the Counterterrorism Center.

1:07:18Quote, Mr. Patel was troubled that Kent had gone through FBI material related to the case. Mr. Kent's efforts were a topic then at a White House meeting, a top meeting with Patel, Kent, Gabbard, J.D. Vance, and the White House chief of staff. The people interviewed by the Times were granted anonymity, they say. FBI and the DOJ generally keep tight control over these evidence in criminal cases when they're preparing for trial, where the government documents may have to be turned over the defense and could be used to poke holes in the prosecution's case. So what they say specifically is that while Robinson is currently only facing state charges, they were concerned that his effort could provide fodder to defense lawyers who could use the notion that there more than one person was involved to raise reasonable doubt in the minds of jurors about the case itself.

1:08:03Well, Cash has raised plenty of reasonable doubt in his own operations of this. Look, I mean, I got to tread lightly here. There's so much conspiracy stuff around all of this. I will say it's pretty weird that they're getting – first of all, it's a state case. So this doesn't even have anything to do with the feds. Now, number two, like technically, would they even have subpoena power over what the national counterterrorism director is doing? Like no, right? I mean technically it would be a secret inside this entire time. And two, again, I mean, I can see how if you look at this, you're like, wait, so Kash Patel freaked out at Joe Kent for saying, are there any foreign governments or powers involved in this?

1:08:47That's what he freaked out at him for? That's a legitimate question, right? I mean, look, it could be a turf war and a pissing match over the FBI and the counterterrorism director. But the very fact that this came out is a really bad look, I think, for Kash Patel. It also just, I mean, you know, considering the circumstances of the case, like we have not learned anything new in weeks. And there's still a lot of people, obviously Candace and others, who are like raising questions about the whole thing. I do think a lot of it goes pretty insane and far. You know, I mean like Israel killed Charlie Kirk or any of that.

1:09:18I don't think there's a lot of evidence to back that up. But you and I both know that when something like this is happening and the agencies are acting sketchy, maybe, I'm not saying that happened. I'm saying maybe something sketchy is happening behind the scenes. We have no, genuinely no earthly idea. And I think the fact that it was leaked too, by the way, you can only leak something like this if the people directly involved are the ones who can confirm it, does tell us that people inside the building are trying to sound the alarm. And that also makes me ask a lot of questions about the circumstances here.

1:09:50This is another interesting section. By the way, this is the first mainstream outlet that I've seen publish any new journalism. with regard to Charlie Kirk's assassination, you know, in weeks, if not months. So that to me has been frustrating as well because, you know, you had Ken Klippenstein immediately after able to get in touch with people around Tyler, get some understanding of who was he, how did this happen, like, you know, at least glean some sense of who this person is. And no mainstream outlet has done that kind of legwork. In any case, listen to this section of the New York Times report.

1:10:25They say in the hours after Mr. Kirk's killing, before Mr. Robinson was identified as the suspect, officials across American intelligence agencies were investigating whether any foreign government was involved in a plot to kill Mr. Kirk. Some officials inside the government raised questions about the assassin's abilities and training after security footage was released of him jumping from a high ledge. Early in the investigation, evidence was collected that contained words often associated with anti-fascist writing, namely in the inscriptions on bullets found in the rifle that killed Mr. Kirk.

1:10:57So in any case, that's also a new piece of information that right after this happened, our own government was looking into whether there were any foreign governments that were involved in this. Now, you also have the use of Charlie Kirk's murder as a pretext by this administration. to, you know, you've got NSPM 7 and this creation of a mythology around Antifa being some nationwide terror network, et cetera. You know, it wouldn't surprise me if Joe Kent was also looking into, oh, well, what, you know, left-wing groups might he have been associated with, et cetera. And as Sagar said, it could be just a turf war and it could be that Kash Patel, for whatever reason, really wants to keep his hands wrapped around this and keep other people out.

1:11:41The other thing that really comes out of this is Kent and Tulsi Gabbard are allies apparently in the administration. And just as she was sort of shunted to the side during the buildup to the Iran strikes, it appears that she is still very much on the ounce in terms of her influence and sway within the administration as well and has rubbed a number of people the wrong way and doesn't seem to have a lot of power on the inside. Let's put C4 on the screen. That's what I'm saying. It doesn't necessarily have to be conspiracy. It really could be like a turf war. C4 shows this. The FBI now opposes a push for Gabbard to take the lead on counterintelligence.

1:12:18So the backstory here is that the FBI made this disclosure in a pointed letter over the concern that Tulsi Gabbard, who's the director of national intelligence, would take the lead on all counterintelligence issues. I will say, I mean, here's the thing. If you look at where things are right now in the admin, this is technically not how it's supposed to work. And let me just explain a little bit. For years, the FBI did have the lead in counterintelligence. Now, the reason why after 9-11 we established the office of the director of national intelligence was because the FBI, the CIA, the geospatial intelligence agencies, all these other agencies were not working together under a centralized figure.

1:13:02That's how 9-11 happened because the FBI and the CIA were in a pissing contest, literally like what you're seeing right now. So they said we need to establish this office like the ODNI to oversee all of them that they report up to. This hasn't materialized in practice. The CIA remains vastly powerful. The FBI remains vastly powerful. And the ODNI has been a bit of a joke over the last 20 years. Nonetheless, they have statutory authority technically to be the actual intelligence director for counterintelligence specifically also to make sure, again, that you just have the FBI and the NSA, everyone working under a unified directive, let's say, for a counterintelligence measure.

1:13:37Now, if you're the FBI, you don't want to give that up because spy investigations is like a long history of Hoover and of using his blackmail basically over the last 50, 60 years. I think what this comes back to is some of it is incompetence. A lot of it is turf war. But in that, there's a lot of room for screwery, right, in terms of when you have turf over this investigation, then you can control what's getting leaked and what's not. and you're getting upset about Tulsi getting involved in counterintelligence, like why would you be upset about that? Are you trying to cover something up? Like maybe not.

1:14:11It really may just be turf war. But in the interim, like maybe you are, right? And that's why just watching all of this, I think something weird is happening at the time. I think it's a turf war struggle because look, Tulsi, I've criticized her a lot, obviously over Iran, et cetera. I will say at the very least, her and Joe are much more in an anti-war, anti-neocon stance inside, even inside this administration, that a lot of people may be able to appreciate. And I think that they are being punished for that. Yeah. That's what I think. They've been sidelined. That's right. Very clearly. Yeah. Let's put C2 up on the screen.

1:14:44And yeah, also, that's not to let Tulsi off. Yeah, I'm not letting him off. They can resign if they want to. We're just talking about the internal dynamics here and who does have the ear of the president, who does have the power, which is very clear from the reporting you've done on Venezuela, Sagar. So this is, you know, this is one avenue. Lance, the trans lover, has gone missing. Where is he? You know, like, there's a lot of questions people have. That's weird. It's weird. And again, you know, the New York Post, it actually makes sense that they did this reporting. And they did some of, if memory serves, like in the early days, right, when Charlie Kirk was assassinated, You know, they had some of the initial leaks and were able to be out first with a variety of information.

1:15:31But, you know, the lack of additional information on Lance, I think, is also when Lance's identity the government is asserting as a key part of Tyler Robinson's radicalization to this point. You know, that is noteworthy as well. There's another track of this, too, that I just wanted to update everybody on. I don't know if you guys have been following this case. We could put C3 up on the screen. They actually, in Tennessee, arrested this dude for literally posting a Charlie Kirk meme. Okay? And it was not even a really crazy thing. Like, it was, you know, it was a little edgy. It was like the president, it was a picture of Trump.

1:16:12And then I think it was after a school shooting, he said something like, they're going to have to get over it. And he included that quote. and that's literally just that is what he was arrested for. He was held on$2 million bond. He has been in prison for over 30, so over a month, this man who's former law enforcement, by the way, held in prison for over a month for posting a meme on Facebook, okay? And credit to some, you know, intercepted this report here, but I watched yesterday, there was a local journalist who did an interview with the sheriff and showed him the meme and was like, where's the threat?

1:16:52Because the reason the bond was so high is they claimed that it was a threat against a school. Again, utterly preposterous because the context of Trump's quote was about a school shooting. So they construed this as a threat against a school. Okay, so the journalist is showing the sheriff, like, where's the threat in here? And of course he has really no answer. He's like, oh, well, I think he knew what he was doing, et cetera, et cetera. So after, I think, public pressure and people I know have been calling into the sheriff's office, whatever, they finally, you know, the local prosecutors decide, okay, we're going to drop the charges and the sky has been set free.

1:17:25But crazy situation, held in prison for over 30 days for a Facebook meme. And I hear a lot from the right about whatever's going on in the UK, okay? And that's fine, you know, I think I prefer our speech laws to theirs. But where are you on this one? Because this is complete and total insanity that someone could be denied their liberty for over a month because of a slightly, not even really, like slightly edgy Facebook meme that they posted. Yeah, we do have the report that he is free now, which I guess is good. I think what's actually crazier about this is that this was a local state case, which I still have no idea how you get a 2 million.

1:18:05I mean, I've literally seen reports about murderers and rapists who get less of a bond and who spend less time in prison or in jail awaiting release than this guy. How you even brought the case or the charges against him is literally totally nuts. So apparently Tennessee passed some law about these sorts of quote-unquote threats that at the time people were raising concerns about. Like, what do you mean? What was the justification? What was the justification? I don't know the origin of the law or why they did it. This is something that happened, like, I don't know, maybe last year. And that was the law that they cited.

1:18:39So all of the concerns about the way this could be abused to quash speech basically come to fruition in this case where they're arresting someone over a Facebook meme. This is crazy. So, yeah, I'm looking into the actual law itself. I don't know how the law is. Wild. Yeah. This is actually crazy. Probably unconstitutional. I'm sure, you know, he should sue. Should be challenged. He should sue. Absolutely. You should sue for damages for emotional distress of being held in prison. I agree with you. I think it's totally absurd. And, yes, you're right. I mean, I don't know. At a certain point, too, we've been covering this now for a long time.

1:19:15Like we just yesterday did the Hamdi case where the guy was detained. And, I mean, okay, like he said, some not nice things about October 7th. Whatever. It's about October 7th. That's not about us. It's literally enforcement for a foreign country. And he's still being held. And he's being held in ICE detention. I'm like, okay, I mean, look, I'm not saying it's good. I don't think it's a great thing that he said. I definitely don't think it was artful in the way that he said it. But the equivalence that I come back to is like I literally see posts of Israelis being like, remember that guy in the Israeli podcast who said it makes him feel better to watch babies starving in Gaza?

1:19:57Remember that? Yeah. He's like, it makes this happen. It makes me enjoy my food more. It makes me enjoy my life more when I see them more. And I'm just like, okay, and this guy's speaking like perfect English. Like I'm presumably has come to the U.S. many times. Like, okay, well then deny that guy's visa then, right? If we're going to be the police here, then we got to do that too. But we don't. And so it just falls apart to me. You know, all this like moral outrage about all of this. I don't know. I just find it really sick. Well, we'll get later in the show too as Stephen Miller's wife threatening jink with deportation because she accused him of being anti-Semitic.

1:20:27So a lot going on there. I mean, I'm laughing, but it's not fun. It's actually not fun. It's a genuine threat given who her husband is. Crazy. This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Traynor, disappeared from a commune. It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. No, I am not your guru. Back then, I lied to everybody. They have had this case for 30 years. I'm going back to my hometown to uncover the truth. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Talking to your kids about the dangers of vaping can be hard.

1:21:08Getting them to listen to hot gossip is easy. So here's some drama you could share with your kid. Dude, did you hear about Cassie and Jake? No, but did you hear that vaping can cause irreversible lung damage and nicotine affects brain development? Nuh-uh. You don't need to gossip if you want to have an open conversation about vaping. So if you want to get tips on when and how to talk to your kids, visit TalkAboutVaping.org. Brought to you by the American Lung Association and the Ad Council. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world.

1:21:49The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.