12/8/25: Boat Strike Coverup, Tim Dillon Roasts Trump, Layoffs Surge, Somalis Wage Meme War

25:46The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should. and it will blow your mind. Listen to The A Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused.

26:27Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP, its crazy cast of disciples, and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

27:11Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. On a recent episode, I sat down with Nick Jonas, singer, songwriter, actor, and global superstar. The thing I would say to my younger self is congratulations. you get to marry Priyanka Chopra Jonas. And also, you know, your daughter's incredible. That's beautiful, man. Yeah, thank you. That's so beautiful. I can see that got you a little... Yeah, for sure. Our daughter, she came to the world under sort of very intense circumstances, which I've not really talked about ever. Growing up on Disney in front of a million, how did that shape your sense of self?

27:51I went blank. I hit a bad note, and then I couldn't kind of recover. And I built up this idea that music and being a musician was my whole identity. I had to sort of relearn who I was if you took this thing away. Who am I? Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Tim Dillon had an interesting show recently. I just listened to the whole thing yesterday. I recommend you guys listen to it too. It is both entertaining and also insightful, as he often is. and he has his own theories about why we are bombing these boats. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that.

28:27And they're not talking about Epstein and they're not talking about whatever the hell else is in these documents that may or may not come out, redacted or unredacted. And they're not talking as much about the economy and they're not asking to have health care and they're not asking what Palantir is doing And they're not asking why five tech guys in AI control half the American economy in San Francisco. They're not asking any of that. They're just watching a boat blow up in the middle of the ocean. When you have this clumsy, you know, kind of somewhat insane over the top deportations. People are looking at this and going, it's unserious.

29:13It's childish. It's cruel. I think one of the problems with whatever the MAGA movement has evolved into is it's duped their hardcore followers so much that the only thing left now is performative cruelty. Performative cruelty. That's his take both on the deportations, also on the drug boats. And I don't know if you watch the whole thing, but basically the the bit is like they're not releasing the Epstein files. The economy sucks. Like all these things are going sideways. They're not making good on any of these other promises or aspirations people had for the administration. So what does the U.S.

29:46do when the going gets tough? They have to show that they can murder some people. They can bomb some boats. The boomers will put it up on Fox News. The boomers will love it. People like us will talk about it. We'll debate it. We'll get the focus off these other things. And so when things started going sideways, they were like, we must bomb some boats. We must kill some people just to show that the government even still exists and is capable of projecting power. That's basically his bit. It's I mean, the theory I just don't think is accurate because just from the not that I think it's a crazy, a crazy belief, but just this is this stuff has been percolating as what people have wanted to do with the second Trump administration since before the second Trump administration happened.

30:32And to agree with Tim, I mean, I've been criticized by some people for on our show talking about how so much of this like what did you call them, Crystal? Meal Team Six? Yeah. Is that a Kyle? Someone? No, that's an internet. It came from Twitter. Yeah. Some of it like I call these guys LARPers and people are like, no, no, it's not. That just minimizes what they're actually doing. It's like, no, I think it makes it 10 times worse that there's something performative. There's anything. that feels attractive in performing the like, quote, cruelty. Yeah. Which I don't necessarily... It doesn't make the cruelty less cruel, but the purpose of it is a performance.

31:14And I think that just makes it so pathetic. And so that's where the theater of it, because so much of it is theater. If you talk to like hardcore immigration hawks, actually a lot of them are pissed because they don't think deportations are happening at a fast enough rate. And they're like, it's all putting on the show. It's a lot of theater. And so, again, I'm not I don't think I'm in that camp. I don't know what they could possibly do to like increase deportations other than hiring more asylum judges at this point. But there's nothing sexy about hiring more asylum judges like you can't you can't strap on like all of your Kevlar and bring influencers along to hire asylum judges.

31:56Right. Instead, they're actually firing a lot of immigration judges who they don't think are going to be sufficiently sort of like toe the, you know, anti-immigrant line. But yeah, I mean, that would lead to an actually more functional system. Yeah. Because a big part of the problem with all of this is that you do have such a massive backlog in the asylum system that de facto people end up here for years while those claims are being adjudicated. and so you know that is you know one of the the big major and everybody knows this yeah this is not a secret left right center everybody knows this but that would actually like deal with the problem make the system more functional and it would not create a you know titillating display of sadism that they are substituting in for actually delivering on any of people's material concerns and needs well christy noem herself i think is a good example of that or like a good embodiment of it.

32:51But like, because like Trump, we remember back in 2016, he picks Mike Pence because the reports say Pence had a, like the movie star cinematic look of a vice president. That part of the reason that Trump said he thought he was like out of central casting. I think that's the quote that some reports indicated was part of his thinking. And Kristi Noem, of course, is somebody who Trump wanted to put this like tough, badass female, she wasn't chosen because of her substantive homeland security expertise. Yeah. That's not why Christie, that's not been Christie Noem's career. It's not why she was chosen.

33:30He chose her for public relations. He likes the costume changes and the, you know, play acting. Right. And presumably the hundreds of millions of dollars that were spent in ads basically to bolster her and show her like riding around on a horse or whatever. A hundred percent, yes. And, you know, obviously some of that stuff, like public relations is not unimportant, but it's just another good example of whether you agree with the substance or you disagree with the substance, the administration spends a lot more time away from the substance. And I think that's extra, I think that really does irritate people, Tim Dillon or otherwise, when they start disagreeing with the substance and the politics of that become very, very dangerous when it looks like you're pouring all of your resources into theater instead of substance.

34:15Did you see the reports that Kristi Noem might be on the rocks in the administration? Do you think that that is accurate? I don't think so. It wouldn't surprise me if it happened, but I haven't heard anything myself like that. It wouldn't surprise me, though, because there are people that are really dissatisfied with the way things are, like on the right, who are dissatisfied with the way things are being run. Not necessarily just because they think more people should be deported, but just because I think they see everything as really chaotic, unnecessarily chaotic and messy. And she's graded on people.

34:49Yeah, she's graded on people. I think Corey Lewandowski is graded on people. So it wouldn't shock me. Gotcha. Yeah. The central casting thing is why I took some. I thought that the reports that Cash Patel might be on his way out, why I took those seriously, because he is not out of central casting. He is out of central casting for the like bumbling idiot bureaucrat FBI director. He is out of central casting for that, but not for the like, you know, whatever projection of strength that Trump would want in that role, I guess. Maybe we should do a poll for a pool for premium subscribers of who's the first to go because Hegsa, Noam, Cash Patel, Dan Bongino.

35:28If I had to guess from the cabinet, if I had to, I would say Cash. Really? I would say he'll be the first, but I don't know. He's obviously we're gonna talk about this later in the show, but he's obviously trying to endear himself to the president pretty hard right now. I feel like the more liberal media outlets report on cash being on the outs. Exactly. The safer he is. The more time he gets. That's totally true. I think it's totally true of Kristi Noem as well. Really? Yeah. Who had the report on? Was that another NBC report? I thought that was NBC. I'm looking it up right now. The cash report was actually MS Now, which are now two distinct things.

36:04They actually did pull some real reporters. It was the Bulwark, actually. Oh, the Bulwark. The Bulwark, even more lib than NBC. Yeah. So, OK, well, we will see. But I mean, the other thing that's interesting to note of Tim Dillon is obviously like he was a, you know, supportive of Trump and now he is definitely not. So that's another interesting thing to note. And I think we'll tie into the Sidney Sweeney block as well. I know that's a unique comparison to make, perhaps. But I mean, I think emblematic of a vibe shift and just a general recognition that like, whatever hopeful thing you thought this administration was going to be, there's almost no one who is like, yes, this is completely going the way that I wanted it to go.

36:42Even if you are, you know, a hard right, like immigration hawk, and you actually wanted to see millions of immigrants deported or whatever. Like when I listened to Nick Fuentes talk about how he's disappointed that there aren't millions of people being mass deported right now. So even from that perspective, I guess it's a disappointment. It's, it's such a, it's all such a mess. The, Yeah, it's been there's been a lot of like testing of policy, legal grounds, but there's also been a lot of testing of what kind of policy constitutes a conservative immigration policy and not a lot of consensus, but also not a lot of backlash from the right so far.

37:22yeah that could change well and i think uh tim dylan the saga has been making this point i think you've been making this point too from the like i guess right-wing immigration restrictionist perspective not that tim dylan is in the same place as like where saga is right but he's like if people have the choice between between this like performative cruelty and all right we're just gonna like not do this they're gonna be like yeah we're we're not going in that direction this is horrible so like seeing these like kids pepper sprayed ripped apart from their parents and the mass thugs in the street just like randomly assaulting people or even shooting them.

37:58It really is very strongly discrediting the whole anti-immigrant project. And especially when that is being substituted in place of actually addressing people's genuine concerns. And with the president out there building his ballroom and calling affordability a quote unquote con job. Yeah. Yep. And like bringing helicopters to Chicago. I mean, it's all just again, I think the danger that they run into is, of course, some people disagree with their immigration policy. Some people are going to want it to go even further. But a lot of people are also going to look at it and say, what are you actually doing?

38:34Like, what are you just wasting everyone's money and making people mad and like causing all of these legal problems for yourself, for the country? Like, are you poor? Are you making the situation worse? And I think those three buckets, that one is the one where you could see independent swing types be. When you lose that, you're going to make it hard for Republicans campaigning in the midterms to defend a helicopter in Chicago or whatever it is. So that's where I think it gets difficult for them. Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

39:11have both been assassinated. And Black America was at a breaking point. Writing and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution, I mean, people were dying. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should.

39:54And it will blow your mind. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology.

40:36Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. On a recent episode, I sat down with Nick Jonas, singer, songwriter, actor, and global superstar.

41:17The thing I would say to my younger self is congratulations, you get to marry Priyanka Chopra Jonas. And also, you know, your daughter's incredible. That's beautiful, man. Yeah. Thank you. That's so beautiful. I can see that got you a little... Yeah, for sure. Our daughter, she came to the world under sort of very intense circumstances, which I had not really talked about ever. Growing up on Disney in front of a million, how did that shape your sense of self? I went blank. I hit a bad note, then I couldn't kind of recover. And I built up this idea that music and being a musician was my whole identity.

41:56I had to sort of relearn who I was if you took this thing away. Who am I? Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The place that Democrats have picked up ground in these past elections versus like, and in polling, versus how they won and did well in the 2018 midterms. In the 2018 midterms, it was like winning more white college-educated voters. Now, this time, it's actually all of the gains have been made with non-white, non-college voters, which I think is about two things. I think it is a rejection of the hardline immigration policy and the performative cruelty.

42:38And I think it's about the economy. We have some new numbers with regard to layoffs that are looking really grim. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was sent out onto the Sunday shows and was once again touting his bona fides as a soybean farmer. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that. I'm involved in the agriculture industry. I run a soybean farm. And I can tell you. You own one. You invest in it. Sorry? You own or invest a soybean farm. And people in my family go out and work on it. If everything's fine, then why do farmers need a bridge payment from the agricultural department? Sorry? Why would farmers need a bridge payment from the agriculture department then?

43:12Because these prices haven't come in because the Chinese actually used our soybean farmers as pawns in the trade negotiations. And we are going to create this bridge because, again, agriculture is all about the future. You've got to start financing for planning next year when things will be very good. So he's getting pressed there on the soybean aspect. You know, this is a major issue in a lot of farm states. I don't know if you guys have seen some of the polling out of Iowa, but the governor's race there is competitive. There's some hopefulness around the Senate race there as well. And a large part of that is dissatisfaction with the trade policy and the way that it has hurt soybean farmers in particular.

43:56And I mean, I don't know why he does this bit, Emily, of insisting that he's like super in touch with the average soybean farmer out there. But apparently he's committed to it. Well, he was committed to it, except actually later in the thing with Margaret Brennan, he said, I actually just divested it this week, referring to this, quote, soybean farm, which is a$25 million operation. It's hilarious to refer to that as a farm, which is so funny. Yeah. But he said, I actually just divested it this week as part of my ethics agreement. So I'm, quote, out of that business, which is right after he said, I run a soybean farm.

44:33Well, actually, I mean, I did divest that, which is I'm sure how soybean farmers describe selling their farms is divesting from their farm. No, just announced literally as we were like, this is as of 10 minutes ago, we have a report from the Wall Street Journal that Trump is unveiling a$12 billion bailout for farmers. So that echoes what happened in the first Trump administration. But obviously, another suggestion. Yeah, this is a$12 million aid package to, as the journal puts it, help the agriculture sector, quote, grapple with the fallout from President Trump's far reaching tariffs. So a sign, obviously, I mean, that is not surprising.

45:09We saw it earlier. But a sign that the squeeze is really starting to sink in. That was different, you know, the couple weeks after Liberation Day, quote, Liberation Day. Everyone was like, whoa, you know, what's going to happen? Well, now it's almost the end of the year. And they're unveiling their aid package. So tells you what the arc of the, I guess, last, well, how many months has that been? the last eight months. Yeah. Already eight months. Yeah. Yeah. Well, in China, you know, once we struck this trade deal with China, the idea was China was going to start buying the soybeans again. And that hasn't come through.

45:48Not even close. Yeah, not even close. And, you know, for the farmers that I've heard interviewed, you know, I'm sure the bailout will help, but they don't want a bailout. They want to have a sustainable market that they can sell into, which, you know, a whole other conversation about why we are so dependent on China for sales of soybeans from, you know, from our farmers. But we'll put that aside for now. Scott Bessent was also asked about President Trump saying that affordability is a quote unquote con job. Let's go ahead and take a listen to how he defended that. We hear from, for example, the president when he says that affordability is a con job by Democrats.

46:26That seems to just not be resonating with consumers that have been pulled by CBS. 60 percent of Americans polled by this network told us President Trump makes prices and inflation sound better than they really are. And his approval rating on the economy is now down to 36 percent in our latest poll. On inflation, approval is even lower, 32 percent. Don't you need to show that you feel the pain? Well, Margaret, I think the president's frustrated by the media coverage of what's going on. This is the polling of average Americans. Yeah, but I think the average Americans are hearing a lot of it from media coverage.

47:04What we're not going to do is say that Americans don't know what they're feeling. We've been working on it every day. The American people don't know how good they have it. You think there is an affordability problem? Sorry? You do believe there's an affordability problem? Oh, I think the Biden administration created a terror. No, but now we're nearly 12 months in. You said the president would own the economy at this point. So two things there. First of all, he's saying, oh, the media coverage is driving people to feel like the economy's not great. He has that line in there. Americans don't know how good they have it.

47:30Good luck selling that one, buddy. And then the other piece that people just aren't buying at this point is that this is all still Biden's fault. You know, even Republicans, when you ask them, like, whose fault it is, they will put more blame at Biden's feet. But come on, you all have been in office almost a year now. You made all these grand promises. And I think critically, you know, Trump has had his hands all over this economy. A lot of promises were made about how glorious the tariffs would be and what it would mean for the economy, et cetera. And so here as we're heading into the holiday season and you have this, you know, sense of betrayal, distrust, malaise at best with this administration, still trying to point the finger at the other guy is just not going to cut it.

48:08No, I saw a really interesting proposal from Chris Jacobs writing in The Federalist, so obviously from the right, which was to help actually ease some of the backlash to tariffs and the general economy. Could the Trump administration ease tariffs? Actually, this is pretty smart on things like coffee, bananas, foodstuffs that like literally cannot be grown at scale in the United States going into 2026. That I could see happening. I thought they were doing that. They might. I mean, I haven't seen anything that is like a concerted effort, but because still what they're doing and what could be very difficult about that is they're still doing these carve out deals where it's based on their conversations and meetings, the push and pull, not necessarily.

48:54We brought a gold bar this week. Yeah, right. There's that too. But not necessarily like some grand strategy about what's being grown here, food-wise, what's being grown here, what's being sold elsewhere and that sort of thing. So we could see something like that happen. And the reason would be that politically, it's obviously a disaster. And they know, I mean, when people see high prices at the grocery store, they don't see things coming down. Whether or not it's the president's fault, they're going to blame the party in power. And Republicans right now have the House, the Senate and the presidency.

49:26So there sure is hell going to blame Republicans this time around. I think, though, the bigger problem for the administration is housing and health care, because those are like the two biggest parts of people's budgets. There's also child care, which is insane in certain states. Oh, absolutely. And if you yeah, like they have not really done much on any of that, let alone messaging on any of that. Trump obviously knows that housing is a problem for him because he was saying that Jay Powell was essentially creating an emergency for American families with the interest rate. So I don't know. Like, those are the big ones.

50:00And there's nothing that you can really tariff with your if his tariff power even continues to exist as he's used it. You can't just wave a magic wand on those. Yeah. There's also reporting from The Wall Street Journal about the fact that Trump just doesn't really like he actually thinks that affordability is a quote unquote con job. He thinks that the economy is doing great. You know, the metrics he's looking at the stock market, he thinks that people should be satisfied with this. And there is a sort of like whole of administration effort to get him to care about affordability and take it seriously and refocus some of his dwindling brain share, mind share from the ballroom expansion to affordability and actually like get in the game with that, that there's like a concerted effort being made.

50:47and they're struggling to get him to really sort of focus in on what Americans routinely say is their biggest concern. You mentioned health care. I think you're absolutely right. I mean, this is one thing you can say about the Democrats' shutdown fight is it really did put the spotlight on health care. It really did help to educate people about, OK, these premiums are going up and who is to blame for that. I mean, there are a lot of people to blame. But one of the immediate factors is the imminent expiration of these ACA subsidies that had helped keep things more reasonable, especially for middle class families.

51:21One Republican who's sort of like considered a moderate in the swing district, Representative Fitzpatrick, was speaking out against Republicans in general and their lack of any sort of a health care plan. This is B6. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that. Well, I say that if you don't have a better plan, then get on board with ours. But Doing nothing is not an option, right? I mean, I've heard so many people in the Republican Conference rail on the Affordable Care Act, rail on Obamacare, rail on the premium tax credits. And if you want to criticize something, that's okay as long as you have a better alternative.

51:51They have never offered a better alternative. We went down this health care path my freshman term. I voted against the repeal of the ACA. I thought the replacement was insufficient. It was hastily put together, not well thought out. And here we are, you know, what, eight years later? and they still have not been able to put together an articulable plan. So it's sounding a little like Marjorie Taylor Greene there. Congressman Alan Cumming. Yeah, well, that's actually been the, because Marjorie Taylor Greene was seen as obviously hardcore MAGA. I think that's a fair characterization of her. Brian Fitzpatrick is not hardcore MAGA.

52:26And so that's where, you know, basically you still have the kind of Chamber of Commerce style Republicans who are all about just what's the best way to put it? I mean, I don't even know, like all about trickle down economics is probably the best way to put it, who still aren't really paying attention to this, don't really see it as the five alarm fire that it is unless they can talk about repealing Obamacare. when it comes to replacing Obamacare, there's literally no consensus point on that. And that's where I think because you have the Fitzpatricks and the MTGs, MTG is not out of Congress until the new year.

53:04So keep that in mind for when it comes down to voting, these tax, not these tax credit, these health care credits expire at the end of the year. So they're going to need a vote on that before the end of the year if they don't want them to expire heading into the midterm cycle with huge premium spikes that are about to come everyone's way. So they need to fast. I mean, it is December 8th. They need to come up with something on this like yesterday. And remember when a few weeks ago, Trump was like, oh, we've got a health care plan. We're going to announce it. And then it was leaked what the details were and they hadn't run it by anyone in Congress, apparently.

53:39And then there was a big backlash to what the proposal was, which basically involved extending the Obamacare subsidies for two years and then some other little tweaks. And there were a bunch of Republicans who were like, we don't like this. What are you doing? And then that got scrapped. And we haven't heard anything else about a health care plan moving forward. And, you know, I mean, for Fitzpatrick and also for Marjorie Taylor Greene, they complain about like the GOP doesn't have a health care plan. That's not like you are a member of Congress, but you could have an idea of your own. You could offer something.

54:08But the problem has always been that because Obamacare was basically the Republican proposal, they have never figured out, you know, that was borrowed from Romney Care in Massachusetts, which came from like Heritage Foundation ideas. And so they've never really figured out what their proposal would be. And so they've just tried to either they would run on like repeal and replace being very vague about what the replace would entail, or just railed against Obamacare in terms of coming up with an affirmative solution that has always been a real weak point for them. And it is interesting on the Democratic side, too, because Kamala Harris and Joe Biden also weren't that interested in talking about health care.

54:52That was really a gift to Republicans in a lot of ways because it is a very weak issue for them. Joe Biden originally ran on a public option. Then, of course, that got scrapped. They didn't even try to do anything with that during the campaign. Kamala Harris nominally in favor of a public option, again, wasn't a major debate point during the campaign. Trump famously said he had concepts of a plan. The health care debate is also becoming much hotter and more central in Democratic Party primaries. And you have a lot more Democrats who are now getting on board with Medicare for all because they see the reality of the system as it is.

55:28You just had Chris Van Hollen come out and do a video saying, listen, this is where we're at. We've got to support Medicare for all. But they see where the base of the party is, you know, is headed right now as well. And what a pain point this is. So I do think that this is going to become a more central issue, take more of a central role in our politics the way that it was in 2016 and the way that it did in the 2020 primaries as well. There's a very obvious solution on the table for them. But the problem is, to your point again, there is no consensus policy. The obvious solution here is that you easily pass an extension of the credits.

56:01Like just do it, extend the credits. You can do it a year. You can do it two years. and then say, we're going to do this, but we will have a health care bill on the floor of the House for a vote by March. Right. But they don't want to do that, of course, because they don't actually have anything. Now, morally and politically, it is foolish not to spend while you have the House and the Senate, your political and the presidency, your political capital over the next year, coming up with a Republican health care plan over the next couple of months. I mean, it's so urgent. But if you're a member of Congress or if you're somebody lobbying members of Congress, on behalf of these insurance companies, you don't feel this in your, even though, I mean, it hits people across every income spectrum really hard, but you just don't feel like the average American family feels it.

56:49So you're disconnected from the degree to which it's an emergency. Yeah. Yeah. At the same time, let's put B3 up on the screen. We're getting more and more numbers about accelerating layoffs and just what the picture looks like. So this is Frank Luntz here says this year has had the highest layoff since 2020, of course, which was COVID. It's an extraordinary situation. If you take away 2020, it's the highest number of job cuts since 2009. So, you know, really a lot of layoffs. And you could put before up on the screen, this is a partial list of some of the large companies that have announced layoffs.

57:23The U.S. government, 307 ,000 employees. Sometimes that gets left off, but that is a very significant part of our economy and what's going on. UPS, 48 ,000 employees. And right now, as we go into the holiday season, that is crazy. Amazon, up to 30 ,000 employees, also crazy. Intel, 24K, Nestle, 16. Verizon, 15. Accenture, 11. Ford, 11. Nova Nordisk, 9 ,000. Microsoft, 7. PwC, 5 ,600. Salesforce, 4 ,000. IBM, 2 ,700. American Airlines, 2 ,700. Paramount, 2 ,000. Target, 1 ,800, GM 1 ,500, applied materials 1 ,400, Kroger 1 ,000, Meta 600. And then this is the Kobe C letter says, where will all these people go?

58:06Which is a very good question. Then put B5 up on the screen as well. We also have an accelerating number of bankruptcies. 717 U.S. large companies, this is from that same account, by the way, have gone bankrupt year to date. That's the most in 15 years. This is now higher than every full year total since 2010. And again, that's not even through the end of the year. This also marks the third consecutive annual increase, a 93 % jump since 2022. In November alone, 62 large firms filed for bankruptcy after 68 and 66 in October and September. U.S. bankruptcies this year are now running plus 30 % above the annual average for 2011 to 2024, corporate bankruptcies are surging outside of the AI trade.

58:53And we covered last week the ADP payroll numbers that showed job loss. And there, so this is focused on large firms filing for bankruptcy. The job loss was coming overwhelmingly from small businesses who have really struggled to be able to navigate the political landscape and the tariff landscape, I think in particular, because if you're a large firm, OK, Trump's, you know, the tariffs are on, they're off, et cetera. We've got our stockpiles. We're able to plan in advance. We have the cash to be able to ride this out. It's going to be OK. If you're a small business, you're kind of doing the equivalent of living paycheck to paycheck.

59:30Like you don't have this massive cash reserve where you can just ride things out. You also don't have, you know, like a million dollars to throw around to go to a Mar-a-Lago dinner and ask the president for whatever favor you need for your business to be able to make it. So I think that's a big part of the reason why so many small businesses are shuttering right now. And it's also a continuation of a trend of, you know, massive corporate consolidation in America that's been ongoing for decades at this point. Yeah. And I mean, I'm a tariff person. I'm looking at this White House rundown right now of new investments in the U.S.

1:00:02since Liberation Day. And there's a lot of really good stuff, but that's not what these ADP numbers. Obviously, the ADP numbers are net. So job losses. Because when the economy is losing X jobs a month and you have right now tariffs, so basically the big picture is you have the tariffs and the AI revolution happening at the same time. And we will look back on this period in 10 years as, I think, similar to what we will end up or what we already end up looking back with, like, the Clinton and Bush administration trade opening up, NAFTA, WTO. I think we're actually going to start looking back at this within 10 years as a really similar time period.

1:00:49And David Obie, a Democrat who represented this district in northern Wisconsin, very rural district for a long time, he looked back after NAFTA and said he regretted voting for it because he was promised all of this job training and all of these efforts to augment the job losses. And it never happened. And it just never materialized. And it never worked. And there's a clear lesson from that, which is when you have a revolution happening like artificial intelligence, that's already, I mean, we're projected going into next year to have the highest level of college graduate unemployment. It is going to be a bloodbath, especially in entry-level jobs.

1:01:26What are all of those people going to do? Yeah. Truly. I mean, fentanyl deaths, I was just looking at this last night, are still way higher than they were a long time ago. I mean, it's fentanyl, so it's relatively like new phenomenon, but they're still way higher than they were in the early days of the opioid epidemic. So you have all of these things happening at the same time. And the Trump administration was supposed to is what Donald Trump promised, of course, was people were, I think, correctly skeptical of it. But what he promised was something that appealed to the hopes of folks who are looking at this and saying this is a generational scrambling of the world around me.

1:02:00After the generational scrambling that, you know, my parents went through and that my town went through. so it's way bigger than I think people realize. Yeah, no, I absolutely think that's correct, and I think people were willing to trade, like, it was not a secret to anyone that he has these, like, authoritarian instincts, but they were sort of willing to, okay, well, we'll take some of that because it's an extraordinary time, and, you know, we trust that you're going to be able to kind of strongman get things in order, and the trains will run on time, and instead you've just gotten the, like, performative cruelty and then mass layoffs And then, you know, to me, the central theme, like the central thrust of this administration is just giving everything over to the tech oligarchs and saying, OK, off to the races with AI.

1:02:45We're going to grease the skids for you, deregulate as much as possible so you can win this AI race and hope and like we're going to hope and pray that that just like magically fixes everything. And in the process, they're promising to lay off literally everyone and completely disrupt the entire, I mean, completely destroy the existing social contract with little to no thought about what may come after that. Yeah, I mean, we were talking before we went to air this morning. I always check the morning newsletters to see who sponsors them because I find it very amusing and depressing. And this morning, the Free Press and Politico's Playbook were both sponsored by Meta.

1:03:24And I went and clicked through the Meta ad to see what Meta was bragging about because in both ads, it was, quote, Meta is investing$600 billion in American infrastructure and jobs. So I went and clicked through. They had a list of all the places around the country where they're doing this. Every single thing I clicked on said data center, data center, data center, data center. And that is so harrowing because a lot of these places, I mean, we have hollowed out factory towns all over the country and places that are still struggling from NAFTA and China and all of that. And you're just going to put up data centers that employ way fewer people and convince these communities to give you big tax breaks.

1:04:05And then if the bubble bursts, holy shit. I mean, think about that. If an AI bubble bursts and all of these communities have given tax breaks to these big companies around to Meta, to OpenAI all around the country, and they're already not employing all of the people taking up all of this land with data centers. Think about that. It's horrifying. Yeah. And the bubble bursting might be the best possible end of the horrible ends. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Then it may be even worse in terms of the impact on society. It's going to be UBI. And those layoffs. Yeah. I mean, honestly, 20 years UBI. If we're lucky, if they don't just decide we're all disposable and good luck.

1:04:47And I was going to say, not even a humane effort at UBI. It's just going to be shut up and let us bulldoze culture, tech, everything. Yeah, what's the smallest amount we can get away with giving you so that you don't like literally murder us in our beds? That's what they're, that's the point they're going to be aiming for there. They've seen the purge. Yes. Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. have both been assassinated. And Black America is at a breaking point. Rioting and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale.

1:05:24In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution. I mean, people were dying. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should. And it will blow your mind. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:06:09What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain.

1:06:45It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP, its crazy cast of disciples, and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. On a recent episode, I sat down with Nick Jonas, singer, songwriter, actor, and global superstar. The thing I would say to my younger self is congratulations.

1:07:25You get to marry Priyanka Chopra Jonas. And also, you know, your daughter's incredible. That's beautiful, man. Yeah. Thank you. That's so beautiful. I can see that got you a little... Yeah, for sure. Our daughter, she came to the world under sort of very intense circumstances, which I had not really talked about ever. Growing up on Disney in front of a million, how did that shape your sense of self? I went blank. I hit a bad note, then I couldn't kind of recover. And I built up this idea that music and being a musician was my whole identity. I had to sort of relearn who I was if you took this thing away.

1:08:04Who am I? Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's go ahead and get to what is going on with the Somalis in Minnesota. And I guess globally, I don't know, I feel like this is a global effort. So Trump, after calling Somalis garbage, his administration has surged ICE agents into Minnesota, Minneapolis, list. Specifically, Tom Homan was questioned on this new operation. Let's take a listen to that. That Somali community in Minnesota is about 80 ,000 people. The vast majority are U.S. citizens or legal residents. So what is the reason for sending ICE there?

1:08:48Well, look, we also know there's a large illegal Somali community there. There's illegal alien community, large illegal alien community there. If you're a U.S. citizen, you have nothing to fear. The president said very clearly this week that he doesn't want Somali immigrants in America. He called them garbage. Is that the real reason this operation is happening in the Somali community? No, I think President Trump's referring to public safety threats as national security threats from Somalia and every other country. Well, he didn't say that. He's been clear from day one. He talked about the whole community.

1:09:29Well, look, I'm not aware what the President Trump was thinking when he said that, but I agree with President Trump. So, Emily, I think it's worth people thinking for a moment, too, about why we do have such a significant Somali community. And, you know, they ended up in Minnesota in particular, but why we had these successive waves of Somalis who were brought in, the vast majority of whom, by the way, are U.S. citizens. And so they shouldn't be subject to these deportation efforts, even though we know that ICE is, you know, discriminated by color and by their ethnic background in the past. Some numbers on that quickly.

1:10:01So not a citizen as of 2023, 9.5 percent. Yeah. U.S. born, 38.8 percent. Naturalized citizen, 45.4 percent. So it's about one in every 10 is not a citizen. Yeah. Yeah. So the biggest reason why we have a significant Somali population here is you had a civil war in Somalia. It was brutal. And you may ask yourself, did the U.S. play any role in that civil war? And the answer, of course, would be yes. And the question is, of course, rhetorical. I mean, we you know, we use Somalia basically as a pawn in a plaything during the Cold War, flooded the zone with all kinds of U.S. weapons, also forced this like IMF World Bank adjustment, like austerity onto them, which stripped their own domestic capacity to feed themselves and cause these austerity conditions.

1:10:47We were very important in terms of creating the conditions for the civil war and the fallout and the chaos that made it necessary for people to flee Somalia for other places. So that is, I think, always important, especially as we're contemplating this regime change effort in Venezuela. Like for the vast majority, you and Sagar are pretty much on an island, correct me if I'm wrong, Emily, in opposing the regime change effort in Venezuela. A lot of the America firsters, even people who had a problem with war with Iran, are like, yeah, yeah, sure, Venezuela, Medora's a bad guy, let's go for it. Why the hell not?

1:11:24And I don't want to hear a fucking word from these people when there is a failed state and another refugee crisis. Like, we are causing those problems. And so, you know, if you want to have fewer migrants, and I think we all should actually want people to have a place where they can live and not have to flee war and famine and devastation, then maybe we should stop destroying and using these countries as pawns and playthings and destroying so many other places around the world. Just a thought. In any case, the Somali community has responded in, I think, the most glorious way possible. Like the most glorious way possible.

1:11:58Mac was saying we need to make all of them citizens just as a reward for their their memeing efforts. So in response to these brazen attacks from Trump calling them garbage and now the ice incursion into Minneapolis and all of this, they have been, I guess, playing with memes that take the language that Israelis use to justify their claim of of the land of Israel and also claim of Palestine. taking that language and appropriate it, appropriating it themselves and saying like many Minnesota was promised to us 3000 years ago and we're the real founding farmers and all of this. It's incredible. Um, you know, sort of like, you just said founding farmers.

1:12:43Did I really? Amazing. Great restaurant. We love it. Founding fathers. They would probably claim that as well. These memers are so good. They were probably like, we created founding farmers. They also were involved in that creation. I think it's from the North Dakota Farmers Union, and there are Somalis in North Dakota. There you go. I'm pretty sure Ilhan Omar went to college in North Dakota. So in any case, founding fathers, founding farmers, they're claiming it all. Let's go ahead and take a look at one of these memes. This is C3, the way that they are using this lexicon. Brothers, behold it, the white land of the North.

1:13:21Snow everywhere. But look, The skyline, just like on the old drawings. Three centuries our elders thought. Behold, this is Minnesota. Three centuries past, it was promised to us. On these horses through the snow, we have found our land at Laf. And Emily, I think honestly, if you oppose this, I think you are anti-Somalitic. Anti-Somalitic. And you need to be called out for that. Oh no. You might be anti-Somalite of the week. Oh no. You should start that account. Oh no. Let's put up some more of these. C4, we've got a whole bunch of these. I love them. OK, so this one says this is our proposal. And it's got a map.

1:13:56It says the West Bank and it's like California, Oregon and Washington and then the New Jersey Strip. We've got let's let's see the next one. This is then they zoom in on the quote unquote West Bank. And it has just like in the West Bank in in Palestine, all these different areas that are like Bandustans and then under control of they say under Somali control, under Somali and A &A control occupied by Somali Defense Force. So we've got that one going on. Let's see the next one. Some food appropriation here. They say Somali food and it's tacos, egg fried rice, sushi and pizza invented by the Somali 3 ,000 years ago.

1:14:34Play on how the Israelis like to claim lots of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisine. Here we have a series of politicians kissing the Mall of America wall. Is this supposed to be Alyssa Slotkin next to Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo? I don't know. Or is it Kirsten Nelson? I have no idea. For some reason, Bill Barr is involved here. We've got, yeah, Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo. It might be the Trump-1 cabinet. Yeah, that might be supposed to be Kirsten. We've got some throwbacks here. But, I mean, the legacy of our commitment to the Mall of America goes back. This one, Emily was a little uncomfortable with.

1:15:09But this is a famous picture of a guy who was from Brooklyn, right? It says, if I don't steal, someone else will. And it's a Somali holding up the Somalian flag. So we've got that one as well. Well, you know, some of them are a little problematic. Oh, some of them are very... I saw one AI rendering of a Somali Stonewall Jackson. Oh, my God. It's incredible. And now we have a, you know, this sort of infamous, like, manifest destiny picture that DHS account was tweeting out recently. And instead of, like, a white angel floating over, it's a Somali woman who actually looks a lot like Ilhan Omar who is floating over all of this.

1:15:46So playing with the themes of, you know, the Israeli talking points and colonialism in general. And the thing I've appreciated is they just keep going. Like they keep pushing the lore. More and more layers. Like deeper and deeper. More layers. And really, yeah, there's accounts now that are like, you know, supposed to be like AIPAC but Somalia. And then there's the accounts that are calling out that account. And I'm enjoying the whole thing. I honestly genuinely like to make a serious point about it. I think it is a really brilliant way to respond to these attacks. Because, listen, I mean, I think what Trump said should be called out as racist.

1:16:22It is racist. But also, you know, it's not exactly news that Trump uses racism in effectuating his policy and specifically his immigration policy. So if you're just saying, again, this is racist, it's going to not land as much, I think, as since we are all aware of that at this point, as like the the trolling here, I think, is just another another level and a great response. Well, I mean, yeah, and I'm saying this as somebody who thinks we have wildly underplayed the problems of integration. I mean, Somalia is a completely different culture than the United States and Minneapolis. This is a country that has, according to UNICEF, a 99.9 % rate of female general mutilation.

1:17:06So bringing a culture up into northern Minnesota where you have such vast gulf, I mean, I think it has genuinely been a very tough assimilation progress. I know people in Minnesota have been feels like they've been screaming into the void about this for at least a decade. That said, this trolling shows assimilation to American meme culture in spades because it is. I mean, there's nothing more appealing than self-deprecating humor. First of all, like across the board, anyone who can be like self-deprecating, you realize there's something kind of funny about the idea of Somalis walking across. What did they call it?

1:17:42The Great North. Yeah. Well, and humor is such a potent weapon. And then the other hilarious thing is like the people online who are taking this seriously, like this is outrageous. They think this was promised to them 3000 years ago. And meanwhile, they're posting about like, oh, some all these IQs are low. And it's like, bro. So that's how it started. And yeah, if people weren't following this closely, that's basically how it started to somebody. I don't know who the first person was, but somebody put out a video of somebody like dead serious, deadpan, making this claim to camera, trolling Israel, saying we were promised this land.

1:18:16And a couple of people fell for it and were like, this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Oh, boy, have I got something even dumber for you? It's rough. Look in the mirror, my friend. Yikes. Yeah. No, I mean, it's a great, it's been wonderful. It's been a sight to behold. I mean, humor is a weapon. And this is part of Trump, like, why he gets away with so much is because he's funny. And that is an unfortunate reality of who he is. It breaks people's brains. It does. And so, yeah, if you're trying to otherize a people, which is what they're trying to do, say they don't belong, they don't fit in, they're garbage, they all need to go, blah, blah, blah.

1:18:52And your response is this incredibly relatable, nuanced humor, which is sort of irresistible. Like you're instantly you're instantly humanizing yourself. Number one, instantly demonstrating to your point a high level of cultural competency. And it's disarming. It's just fundamentally disarming. Yeah. And they're playing on what's what's funny is that, like, obviously, these are different cultures with different histories. And that's like it's great self-deprecating humor. And it's like aware of the it's not running from the I don't know the controversy. It's kind of leaning into it to your point about Trumpian tactics.

1:19:31Right. So it's very, very clever and very, very funny. Yeah, absolutely.

1:19:50Black history lives in our stories, our culture, and the conversations we still have in today. This Black History Month, the podcast I Didn't Know, Maybe You Didn't Either, digs into the moments, perspectives, and experiences that don't always make the textbook. Let me tell you about Garrett Morgan. Bruh had to pretend he didn't even exist just to sell his own invention. Listen to I Didn't Know, Maybe You Didn't Either from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or simply wherever you get your podcasts. I didn't know.

1:20:271969. Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. And at Morehouse College, the students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr. It's the true story of protests and rebellion in Black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. On a recent episode, I sat down with Nick Jonas, singer, songwriter, actor, and global superstar.

1:21:06I went blank. I hit a bad note, then I couldn't recover. And I built up this idea that music and being a musician was my whole identity. I had to sort of relearn who I was if you took this thing away. Who am I? Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.