January 2026 Q&A: Who Comes After Trump, My Favorite Books, Life After Death, and More...

0:00Hey everybody and welcome back to open book and happy new year I've been reading all your comments on YouTube x linkedin and of course instagram and i've been loving the feedback the good bad and the ugly so let's jump right into the questions this is from youtube and if you are on youtube do me a favor there's a subscribe button somewhere around here hit the subscribe button make us look good it'll help me with the algorithm this is from joe l rollova what are some 2026 recommended must read books? Well, Joe, it really does depend on your taste for books, if it's fiction or nonfiction. So anything Ken Follett's writing, of course, you should be reading.

0:42I will tell you that my old boss, Lloyd Blankfein, is coming out with a book in March, Getting Through Goldman Sachs. He sent me an advanced copy of it. It is brilliant. I predict it will be the business book of the year. So those are two that are right off the top of my head. Many more. What I'm going to do, because a lot of people ask me this question. One of my producers, Stanley Goldberg, is going to put together a list of the top 100 books that I'm recommending to people. We'll get that out to people in a newsletter. This is from LinkedIn, Andre Gorsh. Hey, Anthony, I'm a regular listener of the Rest is Politics US.

1:18Thank you for that. I read your book where you give really genuine personal advice. What I'm curious about is why you advocate crypto, especially given how volatile it is. So Andre, it's such a good question. I was a crypto naysayer. I was a doom scroller on crypto. I thought it was ridiculous. And I guess what happened to me is I did a tremendous amount of homework. And then I learned more and more about the blockchain and the technical properties associated with Bitcoin. And I think this is going to be a valuable store of value for us in the future. It's probably not even for people my age, because I think I'm probably too old for it, frankly, but it's for my children's generation.

1:55I wrote a book called The Little Book of Bitcoin, which explains my view there. But that's the reason it is volatile, but you'll probably notice over the last year, it's becoming increasingly less volatile. And so I would just tell people, rather than recommending that they own it, I tell people I recommend that they learn about it and then they can draw a conclusion. But thank you for tuning into my stuff. I really appreciate it. This is from Linda Green, 2395 YouTube. You think Trump is showing signs of dementia? If so, what is your prediction about how the last two years of his term will be?

2:29Do you think his chief of staff will cover it up and try to run the country? Will the Republicans in Congress go along with this? So let me break it down into the three questions. First question is, no, I don't think he's showing signs of dementia. I think he's showing signs of natural aging. I think he could sometimes miss a word or he's got an unsteady gait lately. Those are natural signs of aging for an 80-year-old man. He seems like he has pretty vigorous amounts of energy. He's on the golf course. He doesn't drink or smoke. I think that's really benefited him at this age that he's at right now.

3:02So the answer to that one is no. I think the last two years of the term are going to get nasty. He's a nihilistic guy. And so if it looks to him like he's not going to be able to stay in power, which I predict he won't be able to stay in power, I think he gets nastier and nastier. Unfortunately, cruelty for Mr. Trump is part of the point here. uh if he is ill would a chief of staff for trump or his administration try to cover it up uh the short answer to that is yes the longer answer to that is that we have history of presidents which will rule singe white eisenhower covering up on a heart attack ronald reagan making a decision uh late about his colonoscopy there are so many different things that go on with the presidents and their health and they have a tendency to hide those things so yes, that would probably happen.

3:50And will the Republicans in Congress go along with it? Some will, but many won't. I predict in the second half of this presidential term, lots of Republicans are going to break from Mr. Trump. So let's see if that happens. That's one of my predictions. This is Rossi4142 from Instagram. What is an underrated history, Brooke, you think more people should know about? Well, it's a biography, actually. The underrated history book is FDR Champion of Freedom. It's written by Conrad Black, but it really lays out the blueprint and the framework for the American middle class and the policies that built the American middle class and ultimately the American century after the Second World War.

4:38So that's a great book. Second one, I would say is These Truths. It's by a woman by the name of Jill Lepore. It is a very objective, non-glorifying review of American history, the good and the bad and the ugly. And those two books, I think. You read those two books, you'd be ahead of the game, Rossi4142. All right, this is from LinkedIn. This is Carlos Gemino. As a father, a lot of my time and my thoughts or invested in my two daughters, as it should be, Carlos, God bless you. I understand that a real legacy goes beyond financial inheritance. What could you identify as the most important part of a non-financial legacy to your children and why?

5:21And so I'm going to make this very simple for you, sir. And this is a 62 years of observation and 34 years of being a parent. And so what I would say to you, sir, is I can only really give my children two things. Number one, I have to teach them that they have to celebrate the successes of their friends. I think if you can strain out all the primordial guilt, primordial envy, primordial jealousy, you can strain out all those things from your personality and enjoy your friends and be the first call for your friends when good things are happening for them. You're generally going to be a more happy person and have a great life.

5:59And then the second thing is pick something that you love to do and just do it. One of my kids is in the financial services industry. That was by his choice, not mine. I have two adult, other, two other adult children that are artists and, and that's what they should be because that's really where their passion is and where their pleasure comes from. So you want to pick something, tell your daughters, pick something that they really, really like and just do that. and it'll be a meaningful and fulfilling and purposeful life. Instagram, A. Kerr Bush. Hopefully I said that, right? If you have no money, how do you make money?

6:37Such a really good question. So, well, first thing you got to do, step one, you got to get a job. And so you got to work on personal hygiene. You got to work on attire to the extent that you can. You know, even in a country like ours or in Western nations, There is some welfare support for people that have absolutely no money. So try to get a clean suit or clean garments. Clean yourself up. Go get a job somewhere and begin the process of saving at least 10 % of your money, maybe putting it in the stock account or putting it in the bank. And every week, if you do that, you'll accumulate a nest egg.

7:17I started with very, very little money. And I started practicing that at the age of 18. I read a book called The Richest Man in Babylon by George Clayson. It was a 1926 classic. So it's over 100 years old now. And start there. OK, but personal hygiene, good clothing, work and savings. How can the Democrats get back to the center instead of moving to the far left? This is John Nunzio, too, from Instagram. You got me on that one, brother. I have no idea. I think these guys have really lost the plot. And until they accept people like me, I think they're going to have a really hard time. I'm a non-Trump person.

8:00I'm sort of a centrist Republican. Democrats have to go after independents. If they sit on the hard left, guys like Mondani will certainly win in New York. But I don't think that's a person that could play nationwide. Maybe they'll prove me wrong. But they don't seem to be tacking to the center anytime soon. but the outreach is what they would need to do. It doesn't look like they want to do that. YouTube, Rob Bochick, 1891. Where do you think the housing market and the U.S. overall economy will be in six months? Higher. I think there'll be more supply of housing. I think the administration is working on that alongside of lots of other people.

8:38This initiative maybe to stop the private equity firms from buying individual houses. I'm not even sure if that's legal. If that goes through, that will certainly help prices. increases in certain housing markets. But I think the overall U.S. economy, rates are going to get cut. Lots of money is going to get flooded into the system as a result of the upcoming midterm elections. And so I'm going to say higher. Let's see if I'm right. You guys will beat up on me. Let's do one of these in June or July. You can come and beat up on me. All right, let's keep going here. This is from X. This is NamesNick386120.

9:13Can you define why Bitcoin has value for a layman. So I actually probably can't do that. The best I can do for you is to study the history of money. And you don't necessarily have to read the book, but just go to Google and say, could you summarize for me the ascent of money by Professor Neil Ferguson? And if you read the qualities associated with money, the immutability, the idea that money is really a technology or a spreadsheet that we use with each other to track value. If you start to really understand how human beings have used money for the last 5 ,000 years, and then you look at the technical properties of Bitcoin, you'd be like, whoa, this is like a perfect identity for money.

9:58Everything that Bitcoin has is things that we've been searching for over the last 5 ,000 years. And I think if you sync those two things together, you'll see why Bitcoin has so much value. This is from Joe Aruna, Aruna Joe, Instagram. Do you grow up? Did you grow up liberal or conservative? I didn't grow up liberal or conservative. I grew up Republican because my dad's union was controlled by the Republicans. But I see myself as a centrist Republican, sort of socially inclusive and fiscally, I would say I'm a fiscal moderate. I'm not going to say I'm a fiscal conservative. A lot of people say that, but I see myself more as fiscally responsible as opposed to conservative.

10:41LinkedIn, Peter Karishan. Hopefully I'm pronouncing your name right, Peter. I wonder what sense or feeling you will take away from the ADFW this year. Okay, that's the Abu Dhabi Finance Week, by the way, for those of you listening, especially in terms of the relative growth and importance of the Middle East in contrast to Europe and the United States. Well, the thing I would say, Peter, is that it's growing and the investment is staggering. and I will say all of that is great, but it's still a very small footprint relative to the United States and Europe. Now, I'm not a European, but if I was a European, I would say, guys, wake up.

11:22You got to spend more money in venture capital. The state of Israel, it's a very small country, eight-ish million people, is investing more in venture capital than a 525 million person European continent. And so get out of the sclerosis, start thinking like Abu Dhabi or Tel Aviv. All right, let's keep going. This is Beeta Brand. How are you, Beeta? It's nice to hear from you. LinkedIn, a few questions for you. Do bobbleheads like Scott Bacen and Howard Lutnick truly believe their statements regarding the economy, or do they know better and won't tell the truth? A little bit of both. I think they believe some of the statements.

11:59The economy is growing. Productivity gains are going to happen. AI is going to help that, robotics, all this technology. I don't think they believe the nonsense associated with the tariffs. I know both of those people personally. They were both anti-tariff people before they showed up in Washington. But power, trust me, I've been there. Power does tricky things to your brain. And you start spouting off things so that you can ride around in the presidential motorcade. So no, I don't think they believe all of it, but they do believe some of it. and does wall street understand the current economic conditions on main street no wall street is pretty insulated and what happens to people is you get the collective biases of the people that you're hanging out with and so you're primarily hanging out with wealthy people and so they don't really get it and i'm going to say something doesn't reflect well on me it was really until the first trump campaign that i really got to see the disparity um so i missed it too, but I get it now.

12:59I don't think there'll be any response from Wall Street. The real question is, will there be a transformational politician in the future that will start thinking about the American people, less about the big corporations and the wealthy? Some of that's tied to the way these guys get their money for their campaigns as well. So this is from Instagram, Colin McBerry. What books do you recommend and gift the most? So I did mention one earlier, The Richest Man in Babylon. I gift that all the time. In fact, I have a stack of them behind me. It's a small paperback by George Clayson. I gift the Iliad a lot.

13:34That's a story from Homer about the Trojan War. And the subtitle has always been The Wrath of Achilles, what happens to Achilles during that period of time. But lots of different books. And as I said earlier, we're going to set out 100 books that I think are mandatory reading for people just to stay intellectually curious and educated. What have you learned over the years about how to be a good husband? This is from Ajizub. Wow, this is such a great question. So priorities. I think the number one thing, somebody like me, and listen, I've had a marriage that ended in divorce, unfortunately, and my current marriage, knock on wood, is going well.

14:18And Deirdre and I love each other, thank God. And we've had a well-documented ups and downs in our marriage, but going well right now, knocking on wood. But I think the number one thing is priorities. I think you have to make each other the priority. And so think about it like you had rocks and you had sand and you had a glass jar. Well, you got to put the rocks in first and then you fill up the jar with the sand. You can't put the sand in first, then the rocks won't fit. And so the rocks are the priorities. That's your family, what your wife wants you to do, to be a good husband, what you need to do to be a good father.

14:53Make those the priorities and fill in everything else after you've done that. I think that's the most important thing. Such a great question. Instagram bashfulapaka. I mean, I love these names. What current cabinet member has the best chance to continue a life in politics afterwards? Really good question. I don't think any of them, to be honest. I think that this was going to end in tears and be a disaster. And I think most of these people will be disgraced before this thing is over. There might be some sub-cabinet officials that will stay in the infrastructure, but I don't think any of these people are going to end up with political careers.

15:34LinkedIn, Mary Lee Dillon, what do you think we can do to eliminate the kleptocracy, cacistocracy, graft, and overall government corruption in the U.S. today? Good question. Well, good luck to that. Elon Musk discovered that that is a beast onto its own. It's a living, breathing organism with a great immune system. So when you go after it, it blows you up. I think the best thing you can do is what President Clinton, Alan Greenspan, and George Herbert Walker Bush understood about the government. You have to slow down the growth of spending. The American economy is vibrant. The people of America are amazing.

16:11and if you can figure out a way to just slow down the spending growth, so instead of 4%, 5 % growth, 1 % to 2 % growth in certain areas, the economy will catch up and the percentage of spending to GDP will go down and it'll make the government's balance sheet much healthier. But I don't think you're going to end the graph and the kleptocracy anytime soon. You could eliminate Citizens United and you could end gerrymandering. Those are going to be tough things to do because these politicians are incentivized keep those in place but it's hard i mean let's let's not kid ourselves right youtube norman woods 88 44 i recently saw an interview with nelson landela describing a situation in south africa where south africa needed help from cuba after the united states of america turned them down later in the process the united states of america did agree to help south africa but only if south africa agreed to dump cuba Mandela, Nelson Mandela, a great man, refused to keep it based on principle.

17:13Do you believe that a policy guided by core principles, one that is principle driven, has completely vanished from the global and American political landscape? Or is there still an opportunity for a leader to have fortitude to uphold such a stance? So this is an amazing question. The short answer is it's not completely abandoned. No, but it's never completely principled. I think what we find is when Jimmy Carter was completely principled on his human rights initiatives, he was too brittle and too inflexible, and it caused America a problem where we were acting against our self-interest. And so I was more in favor of the Reagan approach where there was some levels of principality to it, but he was also willing to be practical and negotiate with people that he wasn't supposed to be negotiating with, et cetera.

18:03So it's got to be a blend. I appreciate what Mandela did. He really wasn't a politician. He spent 27 years in jail. He was more of a political activist that rose to power and became president of that country based on his principles. So it would make sense that he would adhere to them. But I think it's very tough in America to be fully principled. Again, I'm being honest with you guys. I think that's the purpose of this program. Instagram, LukeWeb7. What three ways have you been using AI that's accelerated your work? I'm not telling, not telling. Okay. I'm kidding. I am telling. Okay. I use chat GDP, chat GPT, excuse me, and Grok.

18:45And I use cloud, believe it or not, from Anthropics, C-L-A-U-D-E. And I ask lots of questions, political analytical questions, summaries of books, medical advice, fitness advice. device. I find myself sometimes, I don't use them to write, however, because I think for some reason, these things are still clunky. Cloud is the best one for writing, but I think it's still clunky, but you can get good ideas and you can get some consolidation of ideas from this stuff. And so I would just tell you to think about it this way. First of all, I subscribe. So I pay the$300 a month in certain cases or$200 a year.

19:26And I subscribe because I want the deep analytical capability. I would just treat this as a really smart business partner, a really smart friend, ask it questions and see what it says. There's still some hallucination, by the way. So it's not a hundred percent accurate, but I do like it and I do use it. And I would recommend that you get to use it too, because it will be a useful tool as you get more facile with it. Okay. What are your favorite novels? Such a great question. I'm going to give you my number one novel. And it was written 35 years ago. It's called The Gold Coast by Nelson DeMille.

20:03And it's about this area that I grew up in. And my second favorite novel is The Great Gatsby, also about the area I grew up in, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. So those are two. Start there. One is very funny. And one is a classic American story that I think is timeless as it relates to what America really is. okay youtube brian smith 3836 do you believe that when you die it's lights out or is there something else wow brian you know i gotta tell you something i believe there is something else i'm gonna stick with isaac newton on this that energy is neither created or destroyed i do think you go somewhere else i think that there's a potential almost infinity to the universe and the permanence there.

20:50And when I look at the math associated with this, and after reading lots about Albert Einstein, I think this vessel known as time is a persistent illusion. That is a quote from Einstein. So yes, I do think there is something else, Brian. What it is, I don't know. If you can figure it out, please write back to me because I think the whole world and the 100 billion people that have lived on this earth would like to know the answer to that. but I do think there is something and that is part of my faith. Okay. Brad David 902. What is your favorite movie about world war two? Whoa. Well, I like inglorious bastards.

21:28I thought that was really funny. Uh, you want something historical. I would go to the longest day, which was the 1962 black and white movie, the battle of the bulls. These are movies from the sixties and seventies. You want something, you know, from 30 years ago, 28 years ago, I would say Private Ryan, but there's great, so great World War II movies. And I have two uncles that were veterans in that warp. And I think about that war often. And so, but what a great question. Okay, that's a wrap on this month's Q &A episode for Open Book. I hope you enjoyed it. I read all your comments, primarily because I'm a curious guy and I love hearing what you think about different conversations we're having here on Open Book and also what's going on around us.

22:14So please keep me activated by sending this stuff in. Subscribe if you're somewhere out there in the YouTube universe, or even if it's just on the podcast, subscribe on Apple or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. If you missed any of the questions, this time we'll be back next month. So if I didn't get to your question, I'll try to get to it next month with another round of answers. So please keep sending them in anyways. We're also gonna have a newsletter that we put out. will hopefully answer some of the people's questions. But in the meantime, don't forget to subscribe and share and leave a review if you've enjoyed the episode.

22:48Until then, let's keep the conversation going. And I'll see you next time on Open Book. And for those of you that listen to the rest of Politics US, thank you for doing that as well.