9/4/25: Epstein Victims Threaten List Release, Xi Military Parade, McDonald's CEO Dire Warning

20:50They're not releasing what the survivors are telling us should be released. And people often say, well, how do we know that they're going to release something accurately? Well, the survivors' lawyers have seen these files. They know that there's explosive information in these files. So they will be able to corroborate when there is a release that the information has been released. And this is what the survivors want for closure and for justice. I think that's a really important point. What did you make the other thing they did as they released the audio and the transcript of that Todd Blanche interview with Ghislaine Maxwell?

21:23What did you make of that? Well, it was embarrassing that Maxwell is lavishing praise on Donald Trump to try to get a pardon. And it actually really upset and angered some of the survivors. In fact, the purpose of the press conference for many of the survivors was to get talk about the Epstein files and the release of that. But some of them were so outraged by Maxwell's abuse and how Maxwell is being treated that they wanted to speak about that and did speak about that. I mean, they were raped because of Maxwell as girls. And now they're hearing Maxwell be treated as some kind of victim or trying to get some kind of pardon.

22:08You know, I don't think we fully understand when we call when the president calls this a hoax when they're talking about pardoning Maxwell, the impact that has on hundreds of survivors across the country. Congressman, another thing I wanted to make sure that I specified with you is I saw that there was potential for the CIA and others to actually redact or not include, even with your legislation, some of the potential ties and or scrutiny on intelligence. So what safeguards have you built in and pressure can you ensure that even if such a release does happen, that it is not covered up, let's say, for 60 years, a la what's happening with the JFK files?

22:51Well, it's going to be a fight for disclosure. And I'm not saying that our bill is a panacea and it's going to solve everything, but it's going to get us a lot of the information, particularly where the financial support for Epstein was coming from, who the other powerful, rich men were who were engaged in the cover-up or engaged in the sex trafficking. Are we going to be able to fully understand if there were foreign ties and who they were? That's going to be a fight. I mean, obviously, there's always they will claim national security privilege. We will push for as much as can be released. But the first step is to get the law passed to call for the release of the file.

23:30Congressman, I've heard a lot of Democrats, That's, you know, they're signing on to the discharge petition. So we want to give them credit for that. But I've heard them describe this issue as a, quote, unquote, distraction. How do you see it? No one is saying that after yesterday. I mean, you can't say that it's a distraction. I mean, there are human beings who were raped as girls. And if a nation is going to allow rich and powerful men to assault and traffic young girls without any consequence, then it's a nation that has lost its moral bearings. I mean, I think this is the most fundamental issue.

24:04And you know what? It's an issue that possibly could bring us together. Are we still capable of coming together as a country on anything? Like, can't we come together as a nation and say underage girls should be protected? Our kids should be protected. We should stand with survivors who are crying in front of the country telling us that they were raped as girls. You know, Marjorie Taylor Greene was so emotional afterwards. She gave me a hug. I mean, this was not politics. It really was not. It was anyone who was there would realize that this was the most basic human issue. And I really think that's how people should look at it.

24:39We've gotten too inured being in Congress thinking, oh, what's going to have a polling advantage or a political advantage? This is something just basic justice. Yeah. Congressman, we really appreciate the work that you are doing. And please keep us updated on this petition. And we're really hoping that it can go through. Thank you for taking time out of your day to join us. Thank you. Thank you for covering it. My name is Arnold Bogarty, and prior to me enrolling in Rasmussen to become a nurse, I spent 16 years in the military, 12 in Special Forces, as an Army Green Beret, and I was recommended to Rasmussen by a former student.

25:13She said she loved the culture. It was a family atmosphere. I went to visit the campus. The facilities were amazing. I knew before I left that that was the school that I was going to attend. Rasmussen University. Are you ready to be your own hero online and on campus? Learn more at rasmussen.edu. They're back live across North America.

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26:56and millions of Chinese soldiers, service members, all gathered in immaculate uniforms of production for the ages, which a single message to Washington, do not mess with us. We are one of you now. You have to deal with it. So we have some video that we can show all of you. I mean, one of the most stunning things actually was Kim Jong-un. I believe this is one of the first ever international meetings ever even taken part of. Vladimir Putin was right there next to him. Basically, as I talked about, the rejoining of those two countries in the post-Ukraine environment. But you can just see the pomp, the circumstance, the pageantry, the actually being able to march in formation, all of their uniforms that were put together.

27:41I mean, there's only one audience in the world for all of us. It's Washington. And they're actually—this is the scary part because what do we see here? We have ICBMs and other missiles capable of hitting anywhere on the globe 30 to 60 minutes. They had a stunning display, really, of a lot of their new military technology. By the way, they don't have supply chain problems. They don't have Lockheed Martin stocks and other things that they have to deal with. They have got one singular goal, which is, America, you will not mess with us. If we want to take over Taiwan, we'll damn well do it. If we want to continue to fund Russia, we will.

28:17And by the way, that's why we're starting a new pipeline. It's not an accident that Russia and North Korea were standing there side by side. And if anything, I think that that picture with Modi, with Putin at the SCO and now with North Korea and Kim Jong-un standing by that side is a perfect symbol of the failure of U.S. diplomacy because at every single instance, this was avoidable. We had the Putin summit. We could end the war in Ukraine if you really wanted to. You could. Absolutely. We could restore decent relations with Russia and find some sort of agreement rapprochement or whatever with Ukraine.

28:54With North Korea, Trump met with North Korea. He met with Kim Jong-un. He shook his hand. All sort of this devil. But the one thing is, in both times, he refused to drop the neocon line. With North Korea, he's like, but you got to give up your nukes. And they're like, no, it will never happen. It will quite literally never happen. So drop it. Nor should they. By the way, they would be idiots to do so. So they're like, no, it's not happening. With Putin, they're like, oh, you have to, I don't even know what the demand here is of Putin, right? It's like, oh, we're gonna meet with you, but we're still gonna fund Ukraine.

29:23He's like, okay, well, I've got millions of troops and China's got here, they have my back. India's gonna keep buying my oil, so I'm just gonna keep rolling, all right? And in the meantime, you guys can figure out whatever it is that you want and I'm just gonna continue inch by inch. I don't care how many soldiers of mine die in Ukraine. In the end, I'm probably going to win. And so that's their strategy. And then same with China. Like, it's not just tariffs. I support tariffs on China. Again, though, the level of capriciousness has made it so that Xi has, in the last decade, been able to fully go in on the Made in China 2025 plan.

29:56I mean, by the way, you know, a lot of that weaponry was distinctively part of it. If you went and read all of the primary source documents that they released 10 years ago, you see there the ability to compel Modi, Putin, North Korea. You can make fun of these states if you want to. A lot of them are not like economic powerhouses. But what we have learned in the post-Ukraine environment is that production, the native capacity to produce, is the single most important thing for a nation in a time of crisis. China has been able to marry economic production, economic growth. They have state-managed capitalism at the highest, most efficient order.

30:31And they have now the ability to bring all of these former U.S. allies and or U.S. like states which were able to engage with the United States go in with China and say, hey, they're going to be a better partner to me. So combined with their deterrence, their weaponry, their economic, I mean, just the sheer might of their economy, of their defense sector, anybody in Washington who's dealing with the bullshit that we are today should be deeply afraid. And this is scary because as someone who's been covering this for literally a decade, I remember reading those 2025 plans. I was like, ah, it's never going to happen.

31:07Or, you know, Washington's going to wake up. The pivot to Asia is finally happening. We're here now. We are here now. And we lost. We have to admit it. Can we even catch up? Maybe. That's a big question mark. So it's stunning. It really is. That parade. I think that military parade is an intentional global wake-up call, or wake-up call at least here at home, that we already live in a different world than most Americans imagine that we live in. That's right. And I was taking a look at this Foreign Policy magazine article. The headline is, China's military is now leading. Wednesday's parade proved the regional military balance has irrevocably changed.

31:44I just want to read you a little bit of this just to underscore what I'm saying here. It's now widely accepted that the story Western countries once told themselves about China's technological development, it's a mere imitator of Western tech, it steals IP, its successes result from wasteful public subsidies, is inadequate. I would say that's putting it kindly. This story still has some elements of truth, but is much less true than it used to be. China is today an innovator and a technological leader in robotics, electric vehicles, nuclear reactors, solar energy, drones, where they make 70 to 90 percent of drones made in China.

32:17By the way, guys, high-speed rail and AI. If confirmation were needed, the September 3rd military parade through Beijing confirms that we must add military tech to this list. It's no longer enough to say that China's military is catching up or that it's copying foreign military equipment designs. China is now innovating and it is leading. In the process, the regional military balance that has for decades favored the U.S. and its partners is being irrevocably changed. Now, one thing that they, of course, don't have, that we do, is we have these military bases spread all over the world. They do not have that.

32:52So that is a very different kind of an orientation towards the globe. But in terms of military tech, you know, I've been listening to Seth Harpur, we had on this show to talk about the Fort Bragg cartel, the book that he just wrote. He, you know, studies and follows and researches and does, you know, all kinds of incredible journalism around the state of the U.S. military. And he says we're fooling ourselves if we think that we just reign supreme and it's unquestioned. You know, when's the last time we won a war? Like, look at how we did with it. How did it go with us in the Houthis? Yes. Right.

33:22How did it go with us in Afghanistan? hand? How is it going with all of our weapons and know-how and, yes, special operations, special operators on the ground in Ukraine? How is that going, right? Even in Gaza, where it's our tax dollars funding this horrific genocide, it's our weaponry. How is that? Hamas is still able to operate and able to take out IDF soldiers at times. So we're sort of living in a delusion about our unquestioned military superiority. And I think, for anyone who's paying attention, this parade is one symbol that should help to pop that bubble. Absolutely. I think I said this last time.

33:59It's the analogy. I was having dinner with somebody who's very knowledgeable about U.S. defense. And the analogy was is that the United States, in the lead up to World War II, our technological advantage was simple. Production, more than anything. So the B-17, the B-29, they were not the world's greatest aircraft, but we could just make a shitload of them. You know, the Nazis invented the V2 rocket. They invented the first jet engine, the first jet or not jet, the first jet aircraft that the United States actually had to engage with above the skies of Germany. Guess what? We still won, even with a technically less superior aircraft.

34:35Why? Because you could produce a ton. There's great stories. You know, the Japanese Zero was one of the most sophisticated airplanes of its time. But, you know, the production after it was eventually bombed away, the Japanese would have to use a horse-drawn cart to bring a newly finished piece of material to another. Now, we are the Japanese and the Germans. We have this stunning B2. It costs$2 billion, but we don't have the oil to put in it. We don't have the production facility or others to create the ammunition that goes into the basic gun. Now, what China has been able to do is not only match U.S.

35:12stunning technology, they have the entire their supply chain to deal with it if they need to. They have the economic might and all the ability to sustain all of that. Meanwhile, we're living in a service-based, financialized, ridiculous system where I was just telling you today, FanDuel is now going to fund public transportation so that fans can get to an Eagles game in Philadelphia. The government can't fund it because FanDuel is stepping in. That's the reality. Our military parade was funded by what? But Palantir and Coinbase, I mean, it's sick. It's actually sick. Let's put that B2, please, up on the screen.

35:46This is a symbol of, you know, we can't mark. Compare and contrast. It's all, yeah, look at this. Just compare and contrast. Look, I do not want to be in a position where I'm putting down our service members, you know, and they probably didn't have a lot of time to prepare for this because it was shoddily and hastily put together. The individual people in there, I have nothing but deep love and respect for. What I have concern about is what? is the system that places them in potentially harm's way and has failed them and at the same time is raping the American taxpayer who has to spend a trillion dollars a year for this nonsense.

36:21Take a look at their GDP spending per capita on military and then compare it to ours. That's the most important thing. The other thing that we all need to grapple with is that Xi and Putin, they are megalomaniac crazy but smart and that we have megalomaniac crazy but not smart uh and just to show you all this particular clip is she and putin chatting about how everyone anyone could live to 150 with organ i mean these guys are obsessed with transhumanism with living forever uh in the exact same way but they may actually be able to do it let's take a listen in the past People rarely lived longer than 70 years.

37:04But today, they say that at 70, you are still a child. Human organs can be continuously transplanted. The longer you live, the younger you become and can even achieve immortality. So, yeah, you can even achieve immortality. The longer you live, the younger you become. I mean, you know, and I've talked about this with Putin. He's a czar. She, I mean, he's the new Song Emperor. Like these guys are not communist or they're like, oh, he's the new Soviet Union. Guys, read a book. Like you have to go way, way deeper. And if you look at the way that they talk about the Chinese elites in particular, they look at themselves as the inheritors of a 2 ,500-year-old culture.

37:46They're not looking at themselves as history began with Mao Zedong. That's part of it. But it is part of a much, much broader picture. And so in a way, it's like the old world is punching back. and here in the U.S., like we're just... This is what Yegor says to me. He's like, you know, maybe the aberration was like, you know, U.S. Western dominance in the world, that the historical tradition is actually China being the leader of the world. Yeah, Lex Freeman asked me that. We did a podcast. He's like, will the American empire fall? And I was like, well, statistically, yeah. It's like asking, are we going to one day die?

38:21Yeah, I said, there's a Fight Club quote. You know, on a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everything drops to zero. So yeah, if you look at the – yeah, exactly. The aberration in China was that during the 1900s it was weak and it was divided. A lot of – it kind of was – it depends. It's complicated. But the point just broadly is that where they see their historical – where they see themselves today is on a long timeline that we cannot – we can barely conceive of in their culture and in their history. And so this will be the single most important battle for the 21st century. It might be a hot battle.

38:58It might be economic. Who knows? But it is the story of our time. It really – you cannot – you really cannot grapple with it unless you are – actually, yeah, all the people alive who really had to deal with psychologically the rise of either Nazi Germany or the Kaiser Imperial Germany. That's what it was like to live through. When you were the British Empire and the sun never set upon you, and all of a sudden you have this state, Germany, this new state, and they're ramping up industrial production and science, and it caused all kinds of destabilization, and nobody really knew what to deal with.

39:31And it ended in the First World War. It was a catastrophe, an absolute catastrophe. And I don't have any faith that our statesmen today are smarter and able to deal with this crisis. And the people back then were a hell of a lot. I've read a lot of their primary documents, correspondence. They were a hell of a lot smarter and thinking deeply. And they still weren't able to avoid, you know, some sort of horrific. I mean, Trump is just in it for himself. Like he only cares about what he can squeeze out of the state. Because this is it's not Trump. It's Biden. It's the system. Sure. But also in this moment, like Trump has accelerated.

40:05Yeah, I agree. This is the Trump effect. Like he has accelerated the coming together of these world leaders. And you even had some, you know, attempted rapprochement between South Korea and North Korea in the context of this. And I think it's also important to remind, because we talked about this earlier in the week, you know, the purpose of this parade in part is to recast the narrative of World War II and the post-World War II order and to put China at the center of that and China as a leader and the true sort of heir to the post-World War II order. So it's, you know, narratively and propaganda, from a propaganda perspective, it's interesting as well.

40:42Oh, absolutely. It is fascinating to see them try to reclaim the World War II. I mean, look, I mean, I do get it in a certain way. I think, what, 20 million Chinese died in the Second World War fighting the Japanese. It wasn't all the Chinese communists. You know, a lot of the Chinese nationalists are the ones who died in that as well. So, you know, it was a little complicated. Sometimes they were pretty happy to let the nationalists get killed by the Japanese if it meant it was good for them. It's an interesting story. A lot of people should actually spend more time thinking and reading about it.

41:10But the point more broadly is that they love to flip the terms on the United States and be like, oh, a U.S.-led war order? What has that led to? Chaos, Iraq, you know. And they love to talk about zero-sum competition or mutual respect. Mutual respect in their minds means Taiwan is ours and you can fuck off. Or, you know, how Russia decides to elect its country is its own business. If Kim Jong-un has to create a famine to create ICBMs, so be it. And, you know, in the 90s, it would be very easy to say, well, that's not who we are. Well, you can't say that in the year 2025, not in the midst of Gaza, Ukraine, Libya, Syria, Iraq.

41:47How are we going to stand on some, like, territorial integrity principles when we're funding a genocide in Gaza? It would be insane to go to war with China over Taiwan at this point. Our secretary of state is on his way over to Israel, apparently, or I guess I should say whatever, what they claim to be Israel. Apparently, he's going to participate in a settler event. Oh, great. Yeah, exactly. The secretary of state of the United States of America. So really, we're going to fund Ukraine to protect their territorial integrity? OK. I mean, you know, it's like, oh, and we have a problem with monarch.

42:17We have a problem with dictators. Really? That's not who we buy our oil from, is it? Oh, wait. So it all falls apart on a very basic scrutiny. Let's go ahead and get then to Trump, which we've been building up here, who is, you know, he kind of admitted the quiet part out loud. He was like, they were doing it because they wanted me to watch. And I was watching. Let's take a listen. I put out a truth last night. You saw that. And I was the one that brought it up. I said, they're only doing this. They're really there looking to when they when they did what they did. I thought it was a beautiful ceremony.

42:50I thought it was very, very impressive. but I understood the reason they were doing it, and they were hoping I was watching, and I was watching. My relationship with all of them is very good. We're going to find out how good it is over the next week or two. They were hoping I was watching, and I was watching. He told them in a truth that he was like, they all conspire against the United States. Well, what are you going to do about it? And not just wave around until Putin big things are coming. like what? Like what exactly? What do you have left? What cards do you have left to play? You want to know China's cards?

43:25Let's go and show everybody. Let's put this up there on the screen. All the military parade, all the military equipment that they were debuted, you know, it's stunning. Hypersonic missiles, combat vehicles, unmanned aircraft, undersea drones, nuclear missiles capable of hitting anywhere on the globe. I mean, this was a massive shot at the Pentagon. This is all has production lines, capacity that does not rely on us. Does anyone want to know who we rely on for some of our military equipment? Right. It's called China. Seems smart. Really works out. And the more that you look into all of their capacity and their show, it's like you said, they not only have the ability to spend less because they don't have some great geopolitical projection.

44:07By the way, Trump yesterday was like, yeah, we'll send more troops to Poland. I was like, oh, really? Why? You know, for what reason? Why? Why do we need troops in Poland and all over the Baltics and Germany and Korea and Japan? And I mean, I could go on forever. Some of those make sense. Japan, Korea, et cetera. Germany? Why? I mean, again, it's one of those where nobody asks basic questions, keep cutting these checks to the Pentagon. And that's what it looks like when you're actually intelligent and you think deeply about what this is all going to look like and potentially should look like in the future should anything happen.

44:41The last thing we wanted to mention was about Korea because this was actually very interesting. I'm just going to put this last part up on the screen. Obviously, Korea, one of the top 10 trading partners of the United States, one of the most important US allies in all of Southeast Asia, actually sent their speaker in parliament to shake hands with Kim Jong-un at the Beijing military parade. Now, why is that important? Well, it used to be in the first Trump administration that the United States was the one who was trying to broker some sort of peace and or rapprochement between the South and the North.

45:11But now the Koreans, who, you know, look, not exactly in love with China, are sending delegations to the Beijing military parade. And basically a word to Washington is, you treat us like shit. They don't treat us so bad over here, even though we have all of our differences. And they're willing to shake hands with Kim Jong-un and potentially broker some sort of peace via China without the United States. It would be a disaster. So everybody keep their eye on this. I know it can seem tedious and more, but I mean, it really is like it's like the 1930s or the early 1900s all over again. Like the entire world order is being rewritten before our eyes.

45:47It's not that hard actually to figure out. What's hard to figure out is how to avoid what usually happens when something like this does seem like it's on the horizon. The last thing I wanted to mention was this story, which, again, challenges dollar supremacy. Can we go ahead and put a B7, please, which is developing countries have been swapping out of dollar debt to cut their borrowing costs. They say that sovereign borrowers are now turning to lower interest rate currencies such as the Chinese renby and or the Swiss franc to get around the fluctuations in the interest rates of the dollar set by the Federal Reserve.

46:24So just another little thing that we can look at just broadly about all of the signs of where things are going. I'm not a BRICS person. I'm not saying it's all happening tomorrow and the end of the U.S. empire. That's not how it works. The point is that sometimes it takes decades. And the initial signs, though, if you're smart enough, you can see that they start to rhyme with a lot of problems, which is probably a good segue to our economy block, which is about how we have troubling signs in our economy and a lot is fake. So let's get to it. My name is Tuva Nguyen, and enrolling at Rasmussen University was essentially a handshake to a lifeline, a career, stability, and a future for myself.

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48:28Turning now to the economy, as we said, into where we can actually look to some truth. Unfortunately, it comes from the CEO of McDonald's, who shockingly actually dropped some truth bombs on CNBC about how divided the country is on whether you make over$100 ,000 or not. Let's take a listen. Part of what we also saw was that particularly with middle and lower income consumers, they're feeling under a lot of pressure. I think there's a lot of commentary about what's the state of the economy, how's it doing? And what we see is it's really kind of a two-tier economy. If you're upper income earning over$100 ,000, things are good.

49:06Stock markets are near all-time highs. You're feeling quite confident about things. You're seeing international travel, all those barometers of upper income consumers are doing quite well. What we see with middle and lower income consumers is actually a different story. It's that consumers under a lot of pressure in our industry, traffic for lower income consumers is down double digits. And it's because people are either choosing to skip a meal. So we're seeing breakfast. People are actually skipping breakfast or they're choosing to just eat at home. And so for our business, which has a significant group of consumers which are in that middle and lower income, we needed to step in with something like what we're doing here.

49:49Listen to the CEO of McDonald's. People are skipping breakfast. Now, I will say on McDonald's, it's still outrageously expensive compared to where it used to be. I don't eat McDonald's maybe more than two or three times a year. My wife gets hungry for it. She's nursing. Whatever. She gets what she wants. So I go to McDonald's. The McGriddle, it cost me$9. And I tweeted about that. People made fun of me because apparently I don't use the app. No, I'm not. I'm not degenerate enough to have the McDonald's app or to be knowledgeable enough about set deals. But in my head, as a child of the 90s, you're on a road trip and you roll up to McDonald's.

50:22How much do you think that should cost? A couple bucks? You know,$1.99? And yet it's not just the price. What he really said there, which is important, is if you look, he said below$100 ,000, you're seeing a massive reduction in lower income consumers. being able to go out to eat and people are skipping breakfast. Now, I think that's hopefully they're getting enough to eat elsewhere and are trying to eat at home. But the totality of it is that, yeah, it might be marginally cheaper on a percent basis to eat at home, but it's still really expensive to eat at home. If you're talking about a cup of coffee, we've talked here about coffee futures, Folgers and more has actually exploded in price.

51:00Even if you look at the basic necessities of goods, meat in particular, protein, the price is just astounding. You can still eat cheap if you want to, but it takes a lot more effort than it used to in the past. So if you put that together, I think here is where you should listen to the CEO of McDonald's or the CEO of Walmart or these other people who have to cater to all of these customers. And now McDonald's is scrambling to try and bring back below$5 meals and more because they can see the consumer cannot afford it. That's the real traffic. Yeah, I mean, down double digits, he says, traffic from lower income consumers.

51:34I mean, that is a very significant sign. And it's not just that the prices are high. It's also that the wages are not keeping up. We covered previous, I mean, I think the two-tier economy comment is the perfect way to think about it. You've got the stock market that just keeps going up and up and up, seemingly totally divorced. And we'll talk more about what's going on there from the actual real economy, what people deal with trying to make ends meet on a day-to-day basis. And meanwhile, especially lower quintile wages are not keeping pace with inflation. So people are struggling. They're going into deeper and deeper debt.

52:05They are very pessimistic about the future. They are holding back on any purchases that they can. They're apparently skipping breakfast so that they can make it all work in their budget. So these are dire indications of where the economy is headed right now. Absolutely. And there is some really troubling stuff behind the scenes. And I've talked about this, in particular with the stocks, is I was like, man, I just don't get how with inflation, with reduction in consumer spending, tariffs, how can the market continue to go up? Well, now, we have a little bit more of the story. Let's put this up here on the screen.

52:40Fantastic piece by the Wall Street Journal. Behind this season's bumper earnings, job cuts, price hikes, glum workers. Quote,

53:18They're raising prices when they can. The processes are, quote, human light now. That is from one chief financial officer last month, telling investors about the initiative that includes automation upgrades, global logistics, higher profit margins, despite a nearly 8 % drop in revenue, even though there is a prolonged freight recession. How do you do that? You raise your prices. And so, yeah, the companies are doing fine. The investors in the stocks are doing great because that's what they demand. The number has to go up. It literally must. It's an American contract. It's like baked into our blood at this point.

53:51But what does it mean for all of you? You're paying more. You are working more hours for less pay. You are potentially not going to get a raise. You may even get a price cut and then you'd be lucky to actually work, you know, and continue in your job. Put that together and it just makes a lot more sense about how exactly the McDonald's CEO with the straight face can talk about, you know, oh, well, we're, you know, we have all of this traffic down, et cetera, and all of that. But then if you look at the way that they continue to juice their profit, it will be, you know, the$5 stuff and maintaining sales there, while also, I guess, taking advantage of idiots like me who apparently roll up to the window and pay$9.

54:30Pay full price. Yeah, pay for McGrindle. Don't download the app. Well, yeah, I mean, there's a lot that's going on in this article. I mean, first of all, AI has got to be a part of this as companies are increasingly trying to, instead of, you know, hiring when we're talking about white-collar workforces hiring those new college grads, who, by the way, unemployment rate has really skyrocketed and is quite high at this point. Rather than hiring those new college grads, they'll use AI and force their existing workforce to work more to avoid building out their workforce and to save costs that way.

55:02You have them what's called taking price, so using the excuse of tariffs and inflation and also genuinely facing higher costs in certain regards. They're using that to hike prices even beyond what is required. And then the other thing they talk about in here is the financial engineering that's going on, too. So share buybacks, they say, have helped put a shine on profits. Reducing the number of shares outstanding increases companies' earnings per share numbers mechanically, regardless of operating results. Overall, LSEG data indicates that repurchases added about 1.3 percentage points to the S &P 500's gains in the second quarter.

55:36So So some of this is just, you know, financial engineering, basically like smoke and mirrors sort of accounting tricks to get things to look better than they actually are. So that's a piece of it as well. But if you look through this article, they have a chart in there that's pretty stunning where they look at consumer spending, consumer purchases, and then they take out inflation. They take out the price increases and the line. If you don't take them out, then the line of consumer spending, oh, it's going up and up and people must be doing OK. If you take that out, it's flat. since 2021. So, I mean, that tells you a lot right there about how fake a lot of the profits that are being generated here by these companies and how little bearing they have on what is actually going on with your average consumer out there.

56:21Yeah. And again, this is why this is the Biden story. Everyone understood that under Biden. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. The S &P was up by like 60 % over the entire course. Were you 60 % better off? If you were invested, yeah. If you were buying stuff, no. If you're buying steak at Costco, yeah, good luck. To go ahead and what a lot of people have done, if you really want to feel truly crazy, go into your Amazon cart and scroll all the way back to 2020 and go look at what you were paying for basics and then compare it to today. You can do that with Walmart. If you use Walmart or any of these other places, you can even look at your credit card bill broadly and look at, I use like tracking.

57:01I know exactly how much I pay for like every, at the grocery store, for example, you can compare based on five years ago to today. And, you know, just general, keep in mind, it is astounding. Sometimes it's like 40 or 50 % higher, depending on the number of goods. You're also showing, you know, stuff is showing up in all kinds of the wrong places. So both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal just wrote stories about how black Americans in particular seem to be struggling right now. Let's put this up here on the screen. Both of them, what they say on the New York Times side is that if you look at this, it's largely a cut to federal agencies.

57:35And that's also an important part of the story because the federal government is the largest employer in the United States. And they said that this is one of the most staggering losses of employment that black women have ever seen in our current economy. On the Wall Street Journal side, they say unemployment may remain historically low, But unemployment from black Americans is some 7.2 percent. Probably, again, attributable, it seems, to like federal agencies. But the point just broadly is for Trump, one of the things that he could hang his hat on when he got elected was what? Was, oh, I got historic margins with black people.

58:07I got historic margins with Hispanic people. And, you know, if you talk to a lot of those guys or gals, guys and in some cases gals, what did they say that they voted for Trump on? The economy. They were fed up with Biden and they didn't feel like Kamala was going to do anything about it. So look, pocketbook and all that, sometimes it's number one, not always. But I do think it can be very disillusioning broadly when you look at all that. And the general experience of being an American consumer today, in my opinion, is hellish. Like it's just deeply expensive. Everything is pay for play no matter what.

58:42Yeah, you feel exploited at every time. You really are. I mean it's like you go out to a restaurant. I don't drink alcohol. You go out to a restaurant and it's not even particularly good and it's like$60,$70. And you're like, what am I paying for? Like, again, in my head, it should be$35. Should have just stayed at home, you know? Same with the drive-thru. Just everything. Apparently, you know, Disney World, I've talked about this. You know, they charge you at every step. All the subscriptions. Like, now, if you're a big NBA fan and you want to watch all the games. Good luck. Yeah, you're going to have to buy like freaking seven different streaming packages in order to pull it off.

59:14So like this deal we thought we were getting with the cord cutting and cable going away, now we're just getting screwed. Now every company out there can nickel and dime you or much more than that, frankly, to death. So, yeah, it just it feels the level of sort of pillaging and exploitation has been through the roof. It's been absolutely insane. And, you know, just to go back to what we're saying about about black workers, black workers are frequently the reason it's important statistic, obviously, is because we want people to have jobs. They also tend to be canary in the coal mine for the economy because historically, you know, unfortunately, you have black people higher represented in low wage, lower scale employment.

59:53And so you have that dynamic. And then you also have the American government. The federal government has been helped to build out the American black middle class. And that is nowhere is more evident than in and around D.C. And so when you have Doge coming in and just wantonly slashing random government positions, not saving any money, by the way, just making everything worse and kicking people out of a job, you can see the effects of that showing up in the black unemployment rate. And I'm sure that is especially pronounced right here in this region. Absolutely. You know, to your point, I don't know.

1:00:26Do you know what NFL red zone is? I know that a lot of my friends are not taking this well. Anyway, I'm sure a lot of our bro audience does. Now, I think you pay for it. It's like to be able to watch all the games or something, whatever. But the point, now they're going to have commercials. So you pay for it and you have to watch commercials. That's how everything works now. Or, you know, it's like Hulu. It's like, oh, you could pay$7.99 to watch with ads. We can pay$14.99 to watch with no ads. Come on,$14.99 for like a show that you might watch once a year? And then, oh, you got to have Netflix too.

1:00:56And then, oh, you have to have Disney Plus. I just had a kid. Apparently you got to have Disney Plus. Well, if you're going to have Disney Plus, you might as well have a Disney Plus version with no ads because then the kids will get. angry it's just it never ends it's everything everything is subscription everything is pay for play and even what you're paying for is not even particularly good video games it's the same thing i know i've heard that it's like yeah like roblox you know you may pay on the front end or you may not pay on the front end you know to download this game but then if you want to do this thing in the game or you want to rise to this level in the game then oh you gotta buy you gotta buy the robux you gotta do this it's like crazy you can play for it or you could pay to like get around i think it's out for again i don't know i mean it varies per game but if you are willing to shell out the dollars then you're going to advance more in the game and participate in the full experience or whatever it's you know i mean it's just at every turn and you know not to be all like back of my day but back of my day you bought the game and that was it that was the end of the story well they could never have envisioned they would have done it if they could have they just didn't have the ability to do so and to milk people for as much money as possible so i i don't know.

1:02:01I really sometimes when I look at the average prices and then I look at the average income, I do not understand how people make it at all. Like period. Just the monthly nut, the absolute basics. I'm like, do you have any money left at all? And then no. You know, you look at the credit card numbers and all that. I'm like, yeah, that's the only way that any of it makes sense. By the way, some breaking news just came across the wire. U.S. companies have announced just 1 ,400 new jobs in August. That's the lowest for the month since 2009. in line, layoff surging to 39 % for 85 ,000. Which jobs report is that?

1:02:35These ADP payroll numbers. Holy shit. This is from the first walk that literally just came out as of this. 1 ,400? That's what they said, yeah. So, I mean, I'm making sure. Holy cow. Yeah, that's the number from ADP. When do we get the government jobs report tomorrow? I think they're separate. I'm not sure. They are separate, but it comes out on Friday, so we'll probably get that one. I think it's the first Friday of the month, so we'll probably get that tomorrow. Wow. ADP numbers. Yeah. While you're looking at that, put the next element up, guys. At least the tariffs are going well or restoring our manufacturing glory here.

1:03:08Oh, wait. Actually, manufacturing contracts dropped for six months in a row. So and that's a big part of the story, too, here is, you know, Trump was talking ironically about how the court decisions with regard to tariffs were creating uncertainty. It's like your whole thing is complete insanity and chaos. What are we talking about here? There's no ability for anyone to plan. No company would want to hire into these circles. No company would want to invest, build out big manufacturing plants in this environment because you don't know if the tariffs are on, if they're off. They obviously used, you know, very likely it's going to be struck down the authority that they used to levy these tariffs.

1:03:49They're very likely to be ultimately struck down, at least some broad swath of them. And so that has also raised prices for consumers, made business owners much more uncertain about what the future holds, and created another massive chill on the economy that is filtering through as we speak. Yeah. By the way, it was a misprint. It's 54 ,000 jobs. Sorry about that. Holy cow. All right. Still not good. 54 ,000 according to ADP. Better than 1 ,400. But below the consensus forecast of 75 ,000. See, this is why not you believe everything you read on the internet. You've got to go and you read itself.

1:04:2154 ,000, though? What's CNBC doing there? 54 ,000 now is still not good. Anyway, so 54 ,000 jobless claims increased to 237 ,000, up from 8 ,000 from the prior week. And previous estimates, job openings said it was one of the worst levels for job openings in July since 2020. So there you go. Well, and let's put this last chart up on the screen because that underscores the point. We're now at a place for the first time in a long time where you have more job seekers than you have job openings. So you can see that red line. Those are the unemployed looking for jobs. And there are now officially too few job openings to go around.

1:05:01And this was, according to BLS data, so government data, and this was compiled by Steve Ratner and posted online. So, you know, that's also a very significant data point in terms of the trajectory of the economy. Yep, absolutely. So you can see all this stuff together. I don't know. It's not good. I always think it's got to end. But it actually doesn't. That's the one thing where these people are somehow smarter than me. They can always figure out how to massage it, buy back stock, whatever. They never, like the bubble, everyone always is like, there's a bubble that's going to happen. And it just never stops.

1:05:34It's like they endlessly are able to figure it out. The really crazy part too is people just take it. They just keep paying and paying and paying. That's what I keep meaning about your monthly bills. I'm like, at what point do you're just like, no, we're not dealing with this anymore. But I don't know. People are conditioned. Again, I really don't know. People are conditioned to think of it as a personal failing if they're not able to make it rather than I really think that that's part of the like sort of perniciousness of the some of the American dream ideologies. Like if you work hard and you play by the rules, you can make it.

1:06:05And there have been studies about that because you have that so deeply culturally enmeshed. People are much more likely to blame themselves if they're struggling versus looking at the system saying, OK, I need to protest against this. I need to vote this person out of office versus other countries. The comparison I saw specifically was the American working class like in Youngstown versus the British working class in like the London suburbs. Interesting. And yeah. And so, I mean, it's a real phenomenon as people turn inward and they blame themselves. They think that it's a moral failing if they're struggling in the economy.

1:06:37It can be both. like some of it can be your fault, but a lot of it can, I mean, you don't. When you look across the country and you see these trends. You don't set housing. I mean, this is why we were talking about the fact. Yeah, the housing thing. You don't create, you know, you don't set interest rates, period. Like you're literally at the mercy of the gods in Washington as to whether your mortgage was at 3 % or at 7%. Like you have no say on that whatsoever. So like, yeah, that's not your fault. You don't set the price of meat. Like you don't set the price of any of this. I guess all you can really control is your job, But, you know, within this and you look at the overall outpacing in terms of inflation for necessities and particularly educate and especially anything that's going to better yourself, like education or any of the other things compared to the amount of wage inflation.

1:07:21It's just it's just devastating. So I don't know. Tucker said people said people should stop paying their credit card bills. Maybe we should. Maybe we should. M &M's popped caramel do sound different. Oh, no. People are going to be obsessed. What do you mean? Hmm, people hate the sound of chewing. Maybe they won't like the crunch. Maybe we're saved. Wait a minute. Yellow. Huh? Have you been eating them this whole time? Mmm, so tasty. Hands off us. M &M's Popped Caramel. It's more fun together. My name is Arnold Bogarty, and prior to me, enrolled in Rasmussen to become a nurse. I spent 16 years in the military, 12 in Special Forces.

1:08:05as an Army Green Beret, and I was recommended to Rasmussen by a former student. She said she loved the culture. It was a family atmosphere. I went to visit the campus. The facilities were amazing. I knew before I left that that was the school that I was going to attend. Rasmussen University. Are you ready to be your own hero? Online and on campus. Learn more at rasmussen.edu. Whether it's help with hormone therapy, weight management, or sexual health, Every woman should have access to affordable prescription medication and personalized care that understands the whole woman. Join me, Dr. Doug Lucas, clinical lead of hormone optimization and longevity at LifeMD, along with other leading experts on the podcast, Here's Something Good on Women's Health and Longevity.

1:08:52To learn more, go to LifeMD.com slash iHeart. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.