#2064 - Mike Baker

37:11Then we can keep that gravy -train going. But, you know, they would lose their funding from Iran because, you know, the lessing Iran wants his peaceful coexistence with Israel. And part of this was they looked at the Saudis talking to Israel. They looked at the possibility of that meeting that they would be normalized relations with Israel. And I just not going to allow that to happen. And for the time being, it worked, right? You've got, I mean, look, you've got, what are there? How many members of the Arab, like there's 22 member states in the Arab League, and there's maybe half a dozen that recognize Israel?

37:50And Iran doesn't want any more. They certainly don't want the Saudis, right? Because that could be a sea change in terms of other countries going, yeah, it doesn't make sense. Maybe if we do that, maybe if we normalize relations, then maybe that means better prosperity, more stability, economic development, maybe that's a good thing for our people. But, again, that would imply that Israel has a right to exist. And the Iranian regime draws a line at that. Yeah. What is the worst case scenario here? Oh.

38:30Well, the Biden administration would tell you the worst case scenario is we get into a shooting match with the Iranian regime. And again, this is not the Iranian people. I mean, people have an amazing rich history and, you know, they've been under the thumb of the, of the I told us, you know, all these years. I suspect there's a number of them who would like to see a sea change in Iran, right? But I think the, you know, from the Biden administration's perspective, a regional conflict that expands, right? And not just a, not just Hezbollah up north, really getting into it. And things are heating up up there, right?

39:09So it's getting a little testier up there with Hezbollah in Lebanon. But a wider conflict than that, right? And, you know, look, the, the Iranian proxies in Yemen have been, you know, firing their own missiles towards Israel, not with much success. But you're, you're getting these little, you know, probes there. Iran, I think would stop short of being directly involved. You know, they've got enough in the way of proxy groups to probably keep this going for some time. But I think the, the goal here should be, yes, not a wider regional conflict. But you have to be pragmatic and understand that this is all emanating from, originating from the Iranian regime.

40:01Right? So if Hamas is sorted out and the conflict as it currently stands ends and you don't get something bigger up north with Hezbollah, you still have the Iranian regime sitting here. They still have proxies, even if Hamas is degraded. It's not like that's down to zero. The problem continues to exist. So the best answer, I know you, I know you asked about the worst situation, but the best situation would be if the Saudis and other nations in that region would normalize relations with Israel. Right? Is that possible now after all this? Yeah, I think it is. I think it is. I think the Saudis realized that they were going to have to, you know, back off for the time being.

40:57It's, it puts them in an interesting situation. But I do think that they'll look at it in the long term and think, yeah, we have to, I think we have to, we have to move in that direction. I don't know how long it could take. So you can be hopeful, I think about that. But, you know, I mean, until, you know, as long as the, as long as the IRGC and the Iranian regime runs Iran, we're still going to be dealing with this problem. Right? It's not going to go away. Now, interesting thing. I forgot about this.

41:34The Iranian proxies have launched, I don't know, we're almost at 60, 60 different attacks, right? Drone attacks, missile attacks on a variety of, of US facilities and bases and personnel in Iraq and Syria. Oh, since 17th of October, what is that? That's so we're going on a month, right? A month and you've had about 60 attacks. That almost 60 US servicemen injured some seriously. And yet, I think it was, I think they made the announcement yesterday afternoon during a quiet time in the press room. But the Biden administration has agreed to extend a sanction waiver for Iran. And we're giving them $10 billion, $10 billion in what had been frozen assets owed by Iraq, right?

42:32To Iran for essentially, well, for the most part, for electricity, right? For purchasing, they get a significant amount of their energy supply from Iran. So Iraq, I think, gets almost half or 40%, 45 % of their energy supply from Iran. So you had $10 billion sitting there frozen assets. And so in the past 24 hours, despite the Iranian proxies doing this for the past month and before they were to be fair, they were launching missiles at some of our facilities in the Middle East before the conflict with Hamas. Because they've decided that a good idea is to release the $10 billion. And it's going to be for humanitarian aid, they say.

43:21And they won't be able to use it for anything else. That's what they tell us. So state departments very clear on that, they're saying, no, it's just for humanitarian aid. There's no way they can use it for anything else, which is what they said about the $6 billion that they froze or they unfroze before this situation kicked off the beginning of October. And to that, the Iranian president said, hey, well, you said for whatever you want to, right? And money's fungible. So if you give me $10 billion and tell me I can only spend it on, on beer. Okay, well, I'll take $10 billion that I have over in this pot that I was going to spend on beer and I'll spend it on ammunition.

44:03It's all, it's fungible. So it's a ridiculous argument. And then the State Department compounded the ridiculous discussion by saying, well, I forget who it was. It was one of those spokesmen's Miller or somebody. He said, Yeah, look, you know, they've been foaming trouble and creating chaos and causing trouble. I know I'm paraphrasing before this 10 billion and they're going to keep doing it regardless of whether they get the funds. So fine, let's just give them the money. They choose to fund these table as the activities. First he added, they always have as far as we can tell, they always will.

44:42So when it looking at this money, we see the benefit to allowing these funds to move again to restricted accounts where they can only benefit the Iranian people. That doesn't make me sense. Yeah, this is how these people doing this. Yeah, they've decided that, but why would they decide that? That's what I understand. What's in it for them? You know, the optic is awful, right? It's not as if, you know, the American public is going to look at that and go, yeah, that makes sense. We've been reading headlines about these missile and drone strikes caused by Ronnie and the proxies now for the past four years.

45:14So sure, it makes sense to us that President Biden has decided that this is okay. So I don't understand. I'm confused over what they think and they they idea that they somehow imagine that this money won't be used for, you know, purposes other than what they're expecting is, I think it's ludicrous. But just if you if all you said was just from the optic, even if they could even if they could control how that money is spent, politically the optic is awful. Right. And so it's a it's a confusing thing from this this administration. I don't I don't understand it. And it's the wrong. Anyway, I mean, besides that it's the wrong direction.

45:52We should be going in the other direction. We should be, you know, Iran has, you know, they they have realized, I don't want to say a windfall, but they're, they're oil, you know, revenues have not been done.

46:16And so we should be going after that. We should be really stepping on the gas in terms of saying that's enough. Right. I mean, because what we've done, we've had three responses to the missile drone strikes that they've been responsible for over the past four weeks. Three responses. And after every response, we just get more missile and drone attacks. So it's not deterrence. We're not doing anything to deter the behavior. Right. We're just where it's almost like a political decision saying, well, we got to show the American public we're doing something and we take it seriously. So let's blow up a weapons depot in eastern Syria.

46:53And it's doing nothing to deter the attacks. So I don't think giving them 10 billion. If maybe that's their calculation, if we give them something, they'll stop. I mean, that's awful. I don't think they're that stupid. So that can't be the reason. So I don't understand. It's a, it's a confusing decision on their part. Does anybody have any sort of rational argument for why they're doing it? Not that I've seen, but I mean, I'm going to keep looking. Maybe there, maybe there is one. It'd be nice to think because look, you know, you should, you should want the US government to do well, you know, regardless.

47:27We got to, you know, at some point, you got to say, okay, I don't care whether Democrats or Republicans, I just want them to do well because that's good for us, you know, as in the US. Whether it's an economic issue or national security issue. So, but I haven't seen, I haven't seen a logical argument. It's, it's a new development. They've just basically announced this. And I, again, it, it makes no sense. They were, they were incredibly reluctant at the outset of this conflict to even mention Iran. Right. They were fair. And in part because they've, they've, they've spent three years now with a soft approach to, to trying to get back into a deal of some sort with them over the New Queapons program.

48:16And they've been taking this, this approach that said, well, Trump had maximum pressure. So that had to be wrong. Had to be wrong. And just like with everything else that Trump did, they just reversed it, you know, like the border controls. No, that's all, that's all bad. You know, and, and so we just have to throw it all out. And they kind of did that. And they brought into their, to their various Iran focused Iran forward positions, whether it's the Pentagon and the State Department, they brought in people who were like minded, who wanted a softer approach. And that in part was probably driven by an effort by the Iranians, by the IRGC, the Iranians, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, they, they were running an influence campaign here in the States.

49:03They've been running it for almost 10 years now, where they have worked to discredit any viable opposition to the Iranian regime. And they have incurred the risk of the war. They've been averaged and supported the Iran experts initiative, I think it was called IEI. And that was a bunch of academics and others who, you know, all believed in the same soft approach to Iran and changing the narrative. And that's where you got, you know, the U .S. Special Envoy to, to Iran in the Biden administration, Robert Mally, who's now suspended, had his security clearance as pulled. There's no real curious journalist asking where that stands, right?

49:54You've got an individual over the Pentagon who, still there, still in their job, and has been promoting, again, this idea that, you know, we have to change direction with Iran. So, you know, there's, I know I'm kind of wandering down a weird path there, but I guess it's not a surprise. It's just an odd decision, right, from the Biden administration. And you would think at this stage of the game, if you're not convinced that you need to change course with the Iranian regime and treat them differently, every time we try to shake their hand, they smack it away. I don't know how many times that has to happen before the Biden administration learns that's not the way to deal with them.

50:39So, yeah, yeah, it's disappearing down a rabbit hole. It just doesn't seem like there's any, it doesn't seem like there's any rational solution to this. This is what seems so fucked to someone that's watching. There's no like, hopefully this will happen and it'll all work out. Yeah.

51:02This is going to sound weird, but I think long term peace and stability in the Middle East, right, any road you want to take of a serious means to get to long term stability and peace and prosperity and a better life for whether it's Palestinians or anyone else out there. I think that road leads through the Iranian regime and we have to deal with them and I don't mean militarily, right? I mean, we have to, you know, although they keep us up, right, I mean, if one of these missiles hits one of these facilities and kills a, you know, God forbid, a, you know, a number of US servicemen, then what, what the hell are we going to do?

51:44We're going to pretend like Iran still has nothing to do with it. We're going to be, you know, unfreeze more assets. At some point, we've got to have the stones to actually deal with them because it's going to be easier doing that now than when they have a nuke. And I just, I'm curious as to what the current administration is thinking about in terms of their policy towards Iran. I don't, I don't, I don't profess to understand it, but I do think that, you know, that you can't have stability. Every time you're going to get your way towards peace and stability in the Middle East in some fashion, the Iranian regime is going to screw it up because peace and stability means you're, we're talking about Israel.

52:27And peace and stability would, again, would imply that means they have a right to exist. And every time you get near that, then I think the Iranian regime will do whatever they can to stop that from happening. So at some point, we got to, we got to deal with it. And what's the difference between the way this administration handled it in the previous administration? I think it was mostly the attention to the sanctions and the economic pressure on them and trying to enforce those sanctions. You know, there was, again, not, not, not counting for, for the previous administration either, but just saying that their approach was tougher when it came to sanctions.

53:13Their approach was, we have an adversary here. We're not trying to become friends with them right now, right? Because that's not their mindset. I mean, it's like when you, you know, someone keeps, you know, telling their kid, well, look, the bully, just keep putting your hand out and trying to shake his hand and, you know, trying to be his friend. Maybe he's just misunderstood, he's lacking confidence and he keeps punching you in the nose, right? At some point, you got to figure out, okay, I got to do something different here. So I think the previous administration, they were, they were much tougher on the sanctions and they, they had an approach much like with China, right?

53:48We, you know, they're, they're a, yes, they're a competitor, but they're an adversary and, and she's got a plan that you get some to the top of the food chain. The Iranian regime has a plan that destroys Israel, right? That's their goal. So I think that's what it was. I think the Biden administration is more inclined to think that we can all become a community of nations, right? Unicorns flying out our ass and everybody's singing, Kumbaya, whatever the hell that song was.

54:17So I sound like a cynical asshole. No, you sound like someone who actually knows the fuck is going on, which is scary. Man, this administration is so goofy. They're so weird. It's so, I just don't understand any of this. Well, you know what's happening right now while we're talking. Biden is sitting down. He might even be, might even be right now sitting down with Xi Jinping in San Francisco. Did you see how they cleaned up San Francisco? Doesn't look good. I want to buy a condo there. Isn't that amazing? Yeah. Yeah, it's fantastic. Yeah, it's crazy because that city was a shithole. Beautiful, beautiful physical setting, right?

54:59Great place. But it was a shithole. It was still is still is. Yeah. Yeah. Did you hear that? What was it? Some news organization from another country got robbed at gunpoint? Yeah. Yeah. Camera crew. Yeah. We got robbed covering the convention. Look, this this this APEC conventions there for the week. Today is the big day when Xi and Biden sit down and talk and supposedly leading up to this Biden's main point during a press conference was in the climate climate crisis. Like she gives a fuck about the climate. It's just so again, it kind of it all kind of falls together in this like this world that the current administration is living in.

55:41And I hate to be lovely if that was the case and that was our biggest issue. But I'm hoping that part of this is not that they don't spend a lot of time talking. And although having said that, John Kerry was was there in San Francisco because he's our climates are and he proudly announced whenever yesterday day before that part of this meeting will be to agree to a to resume the climate, whatever it was called climate working group. So the Chinese and Americans will get together now will will be re energized to talk about, you know, how we can both improve the climate. Meanwhile, a very very reputable report came out and said that China, the Chinese regime is building six times more coal plants than the rest of the world combined currently.

56:35They're basically building two coal plants a week in terms of looking at their construction and the permitting process. And you know, people are saying, well, you know, they're trying to find excuse as well. You know, it's because they want to back up, you know, look there, the biggest, you know, purveyor of renewables energy. So they just want the coal casers, they need a backup and that's bullshit. You know, she looks at a coal is a real driver in terms of energy security. So anyway, they're at my point being is they're going to sit down. John Kerry spews this crap about, you know, they're going to look at this.

57:12They were working together to save the planet. And China is just digging coal as fast as they can. It's it's I find that part funny because it just shows that we were still misunderstanding. And so they're standing. You know, the CCP and how they operate. It's it's fantastic. But I hope that I hope they do come to some agreements because again, you want them to you want the dialogue. You want these two countries talking. We don't even have consistent communication right now between the militaries, right? I mean, if we get sideways with each other and you need a deconflict, you know, that's that's a good thing.

57:47If you have regular consistent conversation between the military command structures, we don't have that right now. You would think that the president of the United States and the president of the head of China. No matter who's in the White House, you would think that we would just be having regularly, you know, conversations maybe once a quarter. I mean, between that would make sense, but we don't do that. I mean, it's it's kind of fucked up. So hopefully they come to terms on on a couple of things. I'm sure one will be the climate working group. They are supposed to come up with an agreement on on the use of AI in unmanned weapons systems and in the command and control systems for new weapons.

58:31I don't say nuclear because for some reason that's a tough word and I always get, you know, jammed up on nuclear and then people say you just said nuclear. And that's all I get. I get 2000, you know, Twitter messages saying, what the fuck's wrong with you? You can't say nuclear. And so I just say no. Now, no, Claire. Anyway, I think a better solution is to stop reading Twitter.

58:55Yeah, although although I know you're right. Actually, that is that is probably you and you've told me that before. Don't just don't read what what people write. It's not good for you. Yeah. Although I've been getting a lot of compliments about the president's daily brief. That's great. Yeah. Did I just throw that out there? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's number one on Spotify news now. Fuck yeah. I know. That was my awesome. My primary goal was to beat NPR. And we did. And now we've done a we're doing an afternoon addition to so you get your PDB in the morning, the president's daily brief and then in the afternoon on your way home.

59:33Or when you're unwinding over a cocktail, you get the afternoon bulletin. And yeah, it's been it's been a great experience, but I digress. Do you enjoy diving into all this stuff now because you're you're doing this podcast? I do. I mean, I always I always have, right? So this is just a nice. I mean, I don't even I hate to say it. I don't even view it as work or anything. Right. It's just because it's interesting. And it's the shit that I would be reading and thinking about anyway, which means I've got a sad sad daytime life there. Although I've got the world's greatest life. But I think it's yeah, it's it's it's a straightforward process.

1:00:16The folks that work on it with me, they do a great job. We talk in the morning about, you know, what are the topics that we think are going to be the hot ones for the day that we sorry that we need to cover the next morning. So we talk about that. We put it together. We finalize the morning addition by late in the evening. Now we're doing the afternoon bulletin. So we're kind of doing the same thing, but in the mode of shorter view. And it's yeah, I just I enjoy it because I liked for whatever reason you want to know what the hell's going on in the world, particularly when it's as fucked up as it is now.

1:00:47So you end up kind of diving. Yeah, but you don't dive into social media sites. Right. I don't you know, don't get your news from there. You get your news from, you know, reputable sources if there still are some, but you read a variety of them. So hopefully it balances out. And yeah, I spend a ridiculous amount of time and then and then my boys, you know, the scooter and sluggo and mugsie, they have to they have to put up with it. They have to listen to me bang on about shit. Right. And so usually if I'm driving one of them to school in the morning, that's when I kind of talk to them about things.

1:01:18Oh boy, they're like, oh, yeah, I know exactly. That's what you want when you're a 16 or 12 year old or the middle boy, he's he's still out boarding school at IMG. So he doesn't have to listen to me anymore as much. But I tell you that's an operation. IMG fantastic. He's really loved it. I know that you asked, but I love talking about it. It's it's an academy. It's a boarding school down in Braithington, Florida. He started there in late August, plays basketball and it started as a tennis program, Nick Bolotary. So Augusty and a bunch of folks went there and then they built it up. And it's an amazing.

1:01:57It's like a D1 campus. And they do a great job. So he's he's loving it down there. They're way rooms crazy. Look at that way. Well, I mean, yeah, exactly. That's like a like a major sports teams. That's a great room. Yeah, that's nuts. It is crazy. And there and their teams and they, you know, so he's in middle school plays basketball and but they're, you know, they're they're national champions in a variety of sports regularly. Their football team looks like it looks like Alabama, right? They're high school football team. But it's it's just a good bunch of people and they're and you're given kids an opportunity.

1:02:34You know, a lot of those kids who they just love the sport, right? They're not going to advance to play college ball or you know, because that's a that's a small number. But you give them the opportunity to excel or to see what excellence looks like. And that helps them in a variety of other things. Yeah. And and and propels them, I think, in life because they know I want to get to that point. This is how hard I got to work. Now I got to make the decision. Do I do that or not? Right. And so they give them that opportunity. It's it's it's been great. And being a part of a structured program makes you realize like what's involved in success.

1:03:06Yes, exactly. And if you don't have that, I mean, that's where I, you know, you look around sometimes you think, well, what if people don't have role models, if they don't have mentors, if they don't have what looks like success. Well, then, you know, maybe it's not a surprise that they're not succeeding. And so you got to, you know, and this is a different example. I'm, you know, I'm not making comparisons there between, you know, what happens in the, you know, inner city and they don't get to see things to to that because that's, you know, this is a very privileged opportunity that, you know, that these young folks have.

1:03:40And they hopefully feel very fortunate about it, right? That's the other thing gratitude. You got to feel like you, you appreciate, you know, your opportunities. But, you know, I think I worked on a, I worked with a nonprofit for a while in New York City. That was focused on education of middle school students. And the idea being is that those kids in the city in New York City as an example, they, they make a decision is education for me. Am I going to stick with it? Am I going to high school, right? Make those decisions in middle school. And, and that's a, that's a, that's a hard cutoff for a lot of them, right?

1:04:18If they just get that impression that, you know, this is not for me, I'm not going to succeed. I'm not going to do it. I don't see any reason for it. I don't, I don't understand why I'm supposed to go to high school. So the idea was you work with those kids and you give them the opportunity, you show them what success looks like, you show them what opportunity, you know, can, can do for them. And you encourage them and that, and you know, they've got to do the work again. They've got to, they've got to try. But, you know, a lot of those kids just don't, they don't have that. They got a mom who's working, you know, four jobs, you know, put food on the table, make ends meet, right?

1:04:51They don't have role models that they need. So it was, it was a real eye opening experience and a very good one. But, what was it? It was called citizen schools. And anyway. So, yeah. So I, back to your original question. Yeah. I very much enjoy the president's daily brief. It's a, it's been a really good experience so far. And I think I mentioned that we're number one in news on Spotify. Yes, you did mention that. I did mention that. Okay. What is you take on like one of the wildest things that's happened. We kind of touched on it briefly. Is how quickly everybody forgot about Ukraine. It just went out of the news.

1:05:30Yeah. It's like the moment Ukraine came along, that's when everybody stopped talking about COVID. COVID kind of just vanished because like, okay, now we have a new thing to focus on and virtue signal. That's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It just, the pandemic just ended. Went away. Went away. We're all good. Even with like crazy liberals that are still masking, they kind of eventually took the mask off. And so I think we need to just Ukraine is the focus now. Have you been on planes lately? Wait, you've seen people with masks. I see them walking on the street. Yeah. In New York City, I saw quite a few people on the street with masks on still.

1:06:04Yeah. I don't also in New York City. I was there while the free Palestine protests were going on. Those were wild. And they attacked a UFC bus. There's a bus filled with UFC fighters. Okay. Ruthless Robbie Lawler, the former welterweight champion, Chimal Hill, who was the former Light Heavyweight champion, they're on the bus and they're smashing the windows of the bus and they slash the tires of the bus. And why did they target that bus? Because they were going through and blocking traffic. Okay. And the bus tried to make it through before the protesters did. And they just charged the bus and started smashing it and breaking windows.

1:06:44They thought the bus was trying to run them over or something. Yeah. And you know, Robbie Lawler was on the bus. He told everybody to stay calm. I think because we're going to need our energy if we have to fight. Because that is the last fucking dude you want, calm and ready to fight. I mean, he would have gone out slaughtered 20 people. I was going to say could you imagine? Because you've seen what these protesters look like. Most of them are best or are buck. They look like a bag of milk. Yeah. If any, a lot of, you know, a lot of milk and veggies. Not that that's bad. But they're so confident in numbers.

1:07:20It's so crazy. Well, yeah, I was there last week. There was a massive protest. Not massive. I don't want to overstate it. But there was a big protest outside the New York Public Library. And I was just walking down. I was heading towards, yeah, where a grand central or something. And you could hear the noise start to build. Right? You kind of block after block. It gets louder. It gets louder. And then there you go. And you see it. And I was kind of fascinated because I thought, okay, well, who is here? And there's all these diverse groups. Right? There's like LGBTQ for free Palestine. I'm thinking wild.

1:07:53That's wild. That's wild. That's crazy. I saw a sign that say Koreans for free Palestine. I'm thinking, what? How did you get roped into this? Or was it just like a side hobby of yours? You just you've always loved Palestine. And it was it was an interesting moment. But you could also see people, the faces of people walking passing you on the streets. And sort of the unease. Right? Because it was underlying it. It just seemed hostile. Right? And it was it seemed angry. It wasn't it wasn't it wasn't a protest out there. Just like you might normally see for some benign issue. This was this was a little ugly.

1:08:36And it's shocked people, I think. Is this organized and is it organized and funded and if it is organized and funded by who? Well, when you look at it, you see lots and lots and lots of graphically well designed, professionally produced posters being held up. And then you see occasionally you'll see the like the one offs the the handscaled Koreans for free Palestine. And you see the rows of portapodes. Right? Somebody's putting this together. Right? And so somebody's spending money. And they're getting permits. And they're doing these things. Right? It's not like some random. They want you to believe that it's this grassroots thing.

1:09:12It's it's it's funded and it's organized. And you know where that money is coming from? Who knows? I'm sure it's coming from a variety of of of leftist organizations and and you know, it's who knows? Maybe some of it's coming from Hamas, you know, businesses and organizations. That is exactly what they would do. Right? Is to promote this. That's in the Iranians are busy, you know, on social media sites doing the same thing like disinformation everywhere. You can't swing a decat without hitting a disinformation campaign.

1:09:47And which reminds me that we'll talk about that later on, but the Chinese have been kind of caught with their hand in the cookie jar over a very large scale disinformation campaign trying to influence policy and decision making and attitudes here in the US. But it's it's what Hamas would do. It's it's what the Iranians would do with more resource is to organize these types of things. And ideally, again, you want to make them seem spontaneous. You want to make them see. And so, you know, and it works. You see that on the news. You see, oh, I got these protests and say, well, you know, there's a lot of people against this.

1:10:25And you know, the next thing you know, there's this international pressure and suddenly the White House is talking out of both sides of their mouth. They have unequivocal support for Israel. And you know, I think we might need a pause here. You know, we might need a we can't do this. You know, and they go, okay. That's simply because of the Biden administration looks out there. They make a political calculation. They see all these protests here in the US. I mean, the college campuses. They've got a 2024 election coming up. They don't want to lose the Arab American vote. They certainly don't want to lose the youth vote.

1:10:57So what do they got to do? They got to pivot a little bit. They got to start talking about ceasefire or long pause or, you know, by God, don't be firing up a hospital or whatever. Yeah, no shit. Sure. I think the IDF knows not to, you know, go in, you know, full bore inside a hospital. Right. I think they're going to be a little more strategic than that. But the White House does it for. So they're basically driving foreign policy because of US domestic political concerns. Right. What's going to happen in the 2024 election? So I don't think that's necessarily a good way to run foreign policy. What is the China thing?

1:11:32You're saying China got caught with their hand in the cookie jar? Oh, yeah. It's another good thing. I'd be nice if Biden would mention this to Xi when they're sitting down, which they are. But they called it spam a flush or I think it had a codename of dragon bridge. And the idea was the Chinese Communist Party through their Ministry of Public Security is running a large scale disinformation campaign. And part of it is targeted at Chinese dissidents. So part of its targeted here in the States at Chinese journalists and activists and others who speak out against G and the regime. And so the idea being is that they basically hunt these people down online.

1:12:19They troll them. They they overwhelm their message by using thousands and thousands of accounts that they've set up in these farms. Most of this has run out of Beijing. And the idea being they're just basically either trying to push down the activist voice and create a better, more positive narrative for Xi. Or in some cases, they're actually trying to find them. Right. And influence them directly. And so there was that story about New York City that the secret police stations that the Ministry of Public Security, the Chinese Communist Party's Ministry of Public Security. And so the Ministry of Public Security was running here in the States and still continue to run frankly.

1:12:59But they had a couple of their MPS agents here in New York or in New York. And part of what they were doing was dealing directly with activists basically threatening them harassing them and trying to again shut them up. And they've done other things too. I mean, they they were involved in spreading messages related to the the George Floyd protests. So they've got evidence. And this is this is a report that who did this CNN, I think put this together after studying a vast amount of documentation and and information that was foyer and brought out from a variety of places and also from social media sites that pulled together their own research.

1:13:45So George Floyd, you know, protests, then the second year of that, they're still promoting it and the idea is they're pushing out narratives that say, you know, America is a completely racist society, you know, and democracy doesn't work. And you know, that that's exactly what you would expect them to do. But it's it's on a scale that I don't think we understood completely right and the US government has just come out basically and felt like they had and I think meta was also involved in the in the research and they've come out and talked about it and said, yeah, this is this is a problem. Now whether Biden talks to them about that or not, I don't know, but the other thing they do is that they came out and identified, but we talked about this before is, you know, the Chinese regime using this disinformation campaign, this spam of flies or whatever.

1:14:31Everybody. Some of the specific examples where they went after a Texas based rare earth's processing facility. Right. So basically working to to shut that down essentially right to get the to get the voices in the community against this. And how do they do that? Well, they promote the sponsor they they encourage environmental groups and activist groups. And so, you know, it's not it's not it's not it's not as if people want to make a direct connection and say, are you telling me that green piece is taking money from the CCP? And no, it's more sophisticated than that, right, but they are doing that.

1:15:12They are promoting these environmental activist groups to basically push that message that mining is bad. Right. You don't want to go after rare earth minerals because that's bad for the earth, right, and certainly not processing. And so meanwhile, meanwhile, they have a fucking monopoly on the whole thing, right. But they've been doing that for years, right. And they know. And so what they've realized relatively early on was even more so than going out and locking up the community. So, you know, they're not mining rights overseas, right. If you're talking about, you know, the Congo, you're talking about Australia, South America, you know, for for lithium.

1:15:49Then even more important was impacting your main competitors regulatory policies. Right. And so they they understood that if they if they can encourage local and city councils, state governments and the federal government to. And they're they really focus on local and state because that's an easier lift, right. Going changing federal policy can they probably got tired of the bureaucracy. But they they understood that if they can do that to enact anti mining regulations, no, you can't explore. And so they're not going to come to the provider provider of rare earth and critical minerals because they also understood they're smart enough they've got a long fission here.

1:16:44And they look at the US they look at Europe and we're all self -righteously banging on about how we're going to it's all electric. We're going to nothing but electric. We're getting off this fossil fuels. So they look at that and go great. Well, we're going to we're on top of that right we're going to be in charge of that market. So that's what they've been doing and they go after these local governments and they and they encouraged through the spam of flies or whatever. And also again in supporting environmental groups to push this right and create this grounds wall some guy in a city council looking and going, oh yeah, I'm not approving that that phosphate mining exercise right I'm not approving whatever and you know you can't have agriculture really without phosphate for fertilizer.

1:17:26So that's a that's a pretty important thing. But some city councilman he's not going to sit there and go, well, I think this is probably you know maybe sponsored by the CCP. And he just hears some environmentalist who comes to the city council meetings and you know protest or make an argument and things. Yeah, I'm voting against it. It's good for the earth. Now I get to feel good about myself too. So anyway, those are the sort of things that that take place that you know again. Do most people think about that sort of shit? No, I don't think so right but it's what makes the world go around right everything's interconnected and so shit doesn't happen without a reason.

1:18:06So when you ask, you know, are these protests sponsored? Who's paying for them? That's a great fucking question for journalists to dig into right if they were curious enough. You know, I don't think they are. But it would make an interesting story. And if someone did that, yeah, maybe they you know getting the word. I don't know. Well, at least it should be discussed to the point where it's a narrative where the general public is aware of it and Congress is aware of the general public is aware of it. So this is something that's on the table. You can't just openly say we can't mind because of this environmental groups have said that there should be some discussion like, hey, why are they saying that what's funding that?

1:18:49And if you look at the funding, oh, look, it's tied to China. Oh, look, they're running cobalt mines in the Congo. Oh, look, they're the ones who are doing all of these rare earth mineral mines. They have a monopoly on this business. They don't want us doing it for business reasons. Right. And then also they are the providers of that the more we buy electric, the more they sell these minerals. Yeah, I mean, they've got a lot of time processing. It is. It's a it's but it's you have to admire the fact that you know, they they've thought this through. Right. Right. And they kind of went soup the nuts.

1:19:25They started the process to the finish. All right. What do we do? How do we control? I never understood that. I mean, it's term soup soup to nuts soup to nuts. What is that? Do you get it? Jamie? Yeah. Have you ever understood it? Can we look up the origin of soup to nuts when you say it? I know what you're saying. But I like where the fuck did that? It's derived from the description of a full course dinner. Really? So you start with soup when you finish with nuts. Who finishes with nuts? They may also refer to a what 1930 feature film starring the three stuages called soups and not three stuges.

1:19:58That's it. The three stuges all roads lead to the three stuges. But only curly. Yeah, like chap. No. Yeah. Yeah, that was not a fan. Yeah. My wife, the world's greatest person. She has a theory that women only like the three stuges when they're dating you. They'll pretend that they like the three stuges. She says, but no woman out there. No, nobody likes the three stuges. She's on the female side. But if they're dating you, they'll pretend they like the three stuges. I know. I think she's not wrong. I think she's not wrong. I don't want anybody pretending they like anything. Yeah. No. You know, if a woman was pretending she liked things, I'd start thinking maybe this lady's pretend she likes me.

1:20:40Yeah. That's could be a fucking full on scan. Where does this end? Yeah. Where is this deception? Oh, God. Tell me you think the three stuges suck. We could still get along. I don't know. No one has to like curly doesn't. Yeah. No one has to like what I like. I'd never understood that. Yeah. Imagine dating someone they have to like everything you like. Oh, God. No. My wife was getting up in the morning. Like, when are we bohunting? Oh, no shit. Oh, that's right. He did. That's right. That's where I heard it recently. Mark Norman, the fucking man. But we go back to the same question. Who finishes a meal with nuts?

1:21:18Yeah. Have you ever done that? Never. Anybody wants some nuts? No. Nuts are something for a snack. Yeah. Start maybe. Maybe you start. You have a drink before you sit down at dinner. Sure. Or maybe there's some nuts. Yeah. No. I. There's a lot of. Was I think they did back in the day? They and nuts was dessert. I think that was it. Yeah. Maybe you had nuts in the cheese plate. I think you finish with cheese too. That is odd. That is odd because you got a full meal and then somebody brings you a big wheel of cheese and you're supposed to put that down. Isn't like that something also that you have like a charcootery board.

1:21:52Right. That's like the beginning of the meal. Well appetizer. Is it charcootery or a charcootery? I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. I never know what to say. This is the sort of thing that you know I may have to dig into. Yeah. So just look at this. Yeah. So anyway. So that's the that's a spam of lodge. That's a dragon bridge program that the Chinese were running or are running. They must be running. But only running something like that too that we have to be. It would be kind of irresponsible if the government and the United States knew that all these other countries were involved and propaganda against us and we weren't during the same.

1:22:26Yeah. No, I don't disagree. I probably the best example would be voice of America right back during the Cold War days. The whole point of that exercise was to change hearts and minds, convince people behind the wall that the democracy was the you know was the the bees knees. Can we look at up to the bees knees? Oh, the bells and whistles was coming up too, but I don't know where that came from. All the bells and whistles. Oh, that seems like just like, oh, everything's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Run it up the flag. Stuff. See you, Salutes. We got a million of them. But let's not.

1:23:04So I completely forgot what the fuck with whether or not we're running some sort of a propaganda campaign as well and that we have to be. Yeah. Does that ever happen to you though? Well, you just in a second, you've forgotten what it is that you were just talking about. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I worry about that sometimes. I would like. Okay. I'm advanced age and is this is it. Should I be paying attention to this? Right? I'm going to mitigate that with the new tropics. You ever take new tropics? No, what's that? New tropics are new. Do we have any leaner right here? Neutropic. Yeah, here. Alpha brain.

1:23:33This is my favorite. This is alpha brain black label. This is the stuff that I take. If ever I'm going to talk to like a scientist. Well, I did. I take it from most podcasts. I didn't take it today. But I take it from most. I take it when I'm talking to a smart guy. Yeah. Yeah. I just did. I just being honest. Yeah. No, I appreciate that. Most of the times I take it. I wouldn't want you to pretend that I'm smart. No, I was thinking for you. If I don't want to actually like me or not. Listen, I came right out of the gym and walked right in here. That is true. So it's like I'm already energized jazzed up.

1:24:04We already did the sauna. You know, so I'm fired up. How hot is that song? Can I ask you a question? Yeah. Is it true? Because my wife always says like don't don't do the sauna. I mean, I you know, because I've had some hard issues. And so. But is that true? Son is bad for someone with a heart condition. I don't believe it is. I think you could probably overtax yourself in the sauna just like you could overtax yourself with extreme cardiovascular working out. But what the sauna does do for sure is elevate your heart rate. But what's essentially like it's like doing static cardio. What I would say is someone who has a heart condition.

1:24:39Definitely speak to a physician. Definitely talk to your doctor about it. What does this say here? Can individuals with a heart condition use a sauna and is it dangerous? While the use of a sauna is considered safe for most individuals, exceptions for those with unstable heart disease. For individuals with any of the following conditions, it may not be safe. Unstable and China pectorus. Do you have that? So let's see what the heart disease is. I think these are people that are like ready to die. Yeah. Recent heart attack within two weeks. I haven't now. My wife controlled hypertension. Decompensated heart failure and severe aortic stenosis.

1:25:16Yeah. I don't think it's bad for you. This is what it does. First of all, the benefits of it are vast. There was a study out of Finland that showed up 20 years. They did this long term study. People who use this sauna four times a week experienced a 40 % decrease in all cause mortality. 40 % decrease in stroke, heart attacks, cancer, everything. And the reason for that is heat shock proteins. What happens when you're in the sauna? You can't stay in there. You can only stay in there for a short amount of time. So you do 20 minutes. And what happens during that 20 minutes is your body is freaking out because it's 185 degrees in there.

1:25:57And you're sweating and your heart is pounding and you develop static cardio. So your heart rate, many times when I do it, I go straight from working out. My heart rate is already elevated. And I climb right into 185 degrees. My heart rate stays elevated. And it gets as high as 150 beats per minute sometimes, especially if I'm doing like heavy duty cardio and then I jump right into the sauna, it's rough. But it extends your cardiovascular output and it creates heat shock proteins and heat shock proteins reduce inflammation throughout the body. There's amazing benefits for the sauna. Does it say word dilute blood vessels?

1:26:36Does it constrict? I don't know. I was just asking cardio isn't constrict. So I don't think you can. I'm just saying. You just have to make sure a you're hydrated. You have to take electrolytes, which I do. I take a lot of electrolytes and I stay hydrated. And then you get in there and you you're essentially. You know, you're treating your body in a way that your body it's not sustainable, right? So your body knows like, oh my god, I'm going to fucking die if this guy stays in here. And so that process of your body compensating for that heat creates these heat shock proteins. And these heat shock proteins are amazing at reducing inflammation in your body.

1:27:16You feel great when you get out of there. He just feel loose and relaxed. And there's an overall sense of wellness and well -being. It's just really good for you. I always like the sauna. It was never as aggressive as you know the protocol you go through. But you don't have to do that. You could do 160, 160 for 15 minutes or two. It just any time you can get into the sauna and get those heat shock proteins. It's good for your body. And if you're worried about your heart, just don't do it so hot. Just do it 160 and do it for 15 minutes and build up. Build yourself up to it. But it's great for your overall health.

1:27:51Yeah, that's I mean, I've been meaning to like mention it to my cardiologist, but I'm too disorganized. What is the issue with your heart? You know, I was, I think I ever told you I was on a plane boarded a plane with with my wife. We were going to Puerto Rico. So we went through Dallas, Fort Worth. So we get on the plane to go from DFW to Puerto Rico. And we're taxi. We're basically gotten to the runway and now they're turning out of the runway. They're ready to wind the engines up. And I'm just sitting there and I look at her and I say, you know, I don't feel that. And that's where I went out.

1:28:29I had what they called a widowmaker. So yeah. And so I just went down and I woke up at Baylor Heart Center, which thank God is only a few minutes away from DFW. But ever since then, I've been on, you know, whatever blood pressure medicine, blood thinners. You know, if I'm out, if we're out doing something outdoors and everything and I cut myself pretty much it, just put a bullet in me because I'm bleeding. And so, but that's what the blood thinners do for you. What is the condition? You know what? It's heart disease. It's, I forget, they have a word for it. It sounds very depressing when they say it.

1:29:14It's a congenital heart disease or something like that. So, you know, so it's a genetic thing. Nothing I can do about it. Right. So, you know, I could, I could modify my diet, obviously, and kind of adjust it the way that I work out. But none of that's going to make much difference. It's in your, if it's in your family, it's in your family, it's in a sense. And it's the high rate of passing it on. So, you know, all my, my parents went from that. My brothers all have various issues and are carrying around hardware. Right. I've got some stents. So, it's nothing, you know, I don't, I don't sit around it.

1:29:48I'm not deep enough to sit around and worry about it. And that's why, except for things like this way, I think, well, can I do that still? Is that so? But I'm not, you know, then again, I'm also like I said, I'm not organizing enough to say, well, I should talk to my cardiologist. I think, I just do it or I just, yeah, I won't, you know. But I need to be a little more curious. If you're not a, and this is, you know, I hear this all the time. If you're not an advocate for yourself in healthcare, you're fucked. Yeah. Or if you don't have somebody to advocate for you. Right. Because the healthcare system in the US is so complex and not geared towards preventing.

1:30:20It's geared towards treating sickness. Right. It's geared towards giving you medication. Yes. It's geared towards giving you medication. So if you're not, if you're not curious enough and if you're not aggressive enough and proactive enough and take care of yourself or having someone who's doing that for you, you know, it's, it's a tough ride. But back to Neutropics. What they're essentially the building blocks for human neurotransmitters. And what has been done through this. Like this is how we created on it in the first place. When we created on it, we were trying to fit. Well, I got, I got really interested in Neutropics from a product called Neurone.

1:30:56And I was on this radio station in San Francisco. Sarah and no name. And they had one of the, no name that was, I forget what his real name is. But he had this stuff called Neurone that Bill Romanowski created after his football career. Because he was having brunch problems from concussions and memory loss and all sorts of different things. So he started researching different nutrients that enhance memory. There's a bunch of different ones that are considered Neutropics. There's some stuff that I use called Neurogum. And this is, this is some stuff Neuromins. I have no affiliation with these people, other than I buy their stuff.

1:31:40I do have an affiliation with on it. But so we created this. And when we created it, we, it was a lot of people like, oh, this is snake oil. So we ran two double blind placebo controlled studies at the Boston Center for Memory. And it showed increase in verbal memory. It showed increase in reaction time, peak alpha flow state. It works. And with on it, we have 100 % money back guarantee too. So if you try it, it doesn't work. You get your money back. What it does do is it enhances, well, make sure they still have that. I'm saying that. But the bottom line is what it does is enhances your memory and it, your mind works better when you take it.

1:32:20And again, it's not just alpha brain, which I do take. There's another stuff that I've, another product that I've taken called true brain that works really well. I really like that Neuromone stuff. You just mix it with water. The Neurogum is great because I'll, I'll chew a couple pieces of Neurogum before you stand up before, you know, do different things where I have to really think clearly it works. Okay. Yeah. Well, I'm sold. I give it a try. There's, there's real nutrients that have been clinically shown to enhance memory. And what we have done is created a synergistic compounded blend of these.

1:32:53And we sell it in that form. And this is the strongest form of it was alpha brain black label. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because there are times. Yeah. There are sometimes when I just like, I don't, it'll help you. Yeah. Yeah. 30 seconds. And I'm like, what was I talking about? It'll help you. Why guarantee it'll help you? It's, there's a ton of my friends who swear by it. I've given it to them. And they're like, Holy shit, this stuff works. You know, my friend Anthony is the director of the UFC. He takes it every time. I mean, you know, when you're producing the UFC, there's all these fucking moving parts.

1:33:24The camera. Get this guy over here. Move with that. You have to be on point. And he said it's made a tremendous difference for him, but it'll help you remember. Yeah. It does work. And it's what do you get it online? Yeah. You get it. I'll send it to you. I'll just give me a dress. I'll have a bunch sent to you. Cool. I was going to mention Ukraine, because we started talking about that and how quickly we turned off it. But you see Zelensky's asking for credit now, because he won't give him any more money. Yeah. Yeah. Give me credit and I'll pay you a buck. Yeah. That's, hey, that's not a good road to go down.

1:33:59But look, they're, they're in a bind. I was going to mention that UK intelligence. They came out with a report looking at a total number of casualties on the Russian side so far. And they are basically on, they've done a fairly exhaustive study. And they, they're basing it on, they think it's about 300 ,000, right? 300 ,000 casualties. Not all dead. I mean, I think there's a hundred and twenty thousand of those are dead. But to put that in context, right? It's not even two years yet for, for Russia in terms of this war. And so 120 ,000 dead, they lost in Afghanistan, which for them was ten years.

1:34:43They lost about 15 ,000 or so. Again, according to estimates, right? I mean, that's because neither the Russians nor the Ukrainians are, you know, being transparent for, you know, reasons that you can imagine in terms of morale, but they're not being transparent about their numbers. On the Ukraine side, it's, you know, again, decent US estimates. It could be about 70 ,000 or so. So there's a lot more Russians than Ukrainians. A lot more, but they have a lot more personnel, right? I mean, you think about it. They're three to one, right? In terms of numbering the Ukrainians on the battlefield. They've got a, that's pretty extraordinary though.

1:35:17It is, it speaks to poor command and control. It speaks to poor battle management, right? It's, it's, there's a lot of reasons. It also speaks to it, just a complete lack of concern over the lives of a lot of the soldiers that are throwing out there. Those numbers, by the way, they don't even involve or the Wagner group or private contractor groups. So who knows how many of those folks went, but the problem is is that, yeah, you look at that and you go, that's awful, right? But it shows Putin's mindset. He doesn't care, right? He's, he's willing to keep throwing people into this grinder and say, yeah, fine.

1:35:55So it does look like, and the winter months are approaching, which slows everything down. It does look like this thing is going to go on for a while. And I mean, unless they can come up with some settlement, but right now the Russian military is pushing offensively, right? They're trying to actually regain and gain some ground, right? Before the winter months really set in the counter offensive, Ukraine's put together has been, you know, somewhat disappointing to put it mildly. And then during the winter, what's going to happen? The Russians are going to, they're going to spend their time attacking Ukraine energy targets to try to freeze them out during the winter, which they tried last year and had some success with.

1:36:39But they're also going to dig in, they're going to harden their lines where they're at. You got the Ukrainians, they're, you know, things slow down, they're probably going to end up focused most of the time on, on supply chain, right? If they can, if they can cut the supply chain or the supply line, sorry, for, for the Russian military, that's a big win, right? And, and that's why they've been so keen to get more advanced artillery systems in there, because they want to be able to hit those facilities. They want to be hit the lines, they want to be able to hit command and control. Because I think they realize, you know, they're getting into one of their generals actually said this and then Shulensky had to come out and clean up and say, no, we're not in a stalemate, but one of the generals said, we're kind of approaching a stalemate here.

1:37:24So, but to your point, yeah, all those people who are out there waving flags saying we stand with Ukraine, nobody gives a fuck right now. It's over, right? It's over. I mean, so, and, you know, Republicans are, I always thought the Republicans wanted to defeat communism and defeat, you know, somebody like Putin, but, you know, they're the ones breaking ranks right now saying, all right, we don't want to spend, now, you know, their point is we want to see transparency, you know, we want to know where that money's going and that's a good thing. Some of them are just kind of reading political tea leaves and saying, you know, I think the general public's getting tired of this.

1:37:56Some of them are legitimately saying we're spending way too much money on Ukraine, why aren't we spending it here? And what kind of accounting do we have on the money that goes over to Ukraine? Well, and here's where it's complicated in the sense that we spend a lot of time berating Ukraine for being very corrupt, and it has been. It's been very corrupt. And so, that's part of the problem is we knew going into this that they had a real corruption issue, right? And then we give them 80 plus billion dollars, and we don't necessarily have the best accounting, right? Going back to we're giving 10 billion dollars to Iran, but by God, we're going to know exactly where every penny spent, no, they catch one guy in Ukraine that embezzled a billion dollars and they just fired him.

1:38:45That's it, they're in the rest of them, they didn't. They've got some, actually they've got some of their military personnel now who are responsible for procurement. They've got them in jail and coming up on charges and, you know, they'll probably be convicted. Now, they have to say they've stamped out the problem is ridiculous, because the Lansky knows that he's got to be seen as being very aggressive towards corruption because that's going to keep the money flowing, right? And he desperately needs that if he doesn't have US assistance in USAID, this thing goes from being a potential stalemate to it swings the other way in Russia's favor and not in a really lengthy period of time.

1:39:24So he knows he's got to be seen as doing everything possible to stamp out corruption and also having the optic of stamping out corruption, right? Regardless of how successful he may be, but it's a real problem for him. And look, the EU is sticking closer to them. I mean, we're getting these cracks in support here in the US. The European Union is, they're still all in because they're right there, right? And so they understand that you can't let Putin win this. So they're tightening sanctions. Look, the biggest problem we've got is we haven't gone after the energy sector for Russia. Just like we haven't for the Iranians, right?

1:40:07We've, you know, the EU implemented what they call an oil price cap. So they said, okay, you know, will only allow Russian oil to be sold on the market at $60 a barrel. That's the cap. Now, the Russians figured out pretty quickly because that's, you know, what they're good at, how to bust that sanction, right? So they created their own tanker fleet and they started getting ready. And, you know, they've, they've initially when the, that oil cap was put in place by the EU, their revenues really dipped. And when oil revenues dip in Russia, Putin can't fuck around, right? He can't do what he's doing.

1:40:43He can't support it. And we haven't been serious about maintaining that. We haven't, because, you know, in part it's energy. Europe needs that some of that energy. So they got to keep it flowing. But, you know, they figured out a way to beat those sanctions. And so, you know, they've, they've doubled the amount of money that they made in October compared to September. So they're, you know, they're generating enough to keep the war effort going is what I'm saying in a, not particularly eloquent way. So, yeah, I don't know where is the Nord Stream pipeline, right? So see more HERSH reported that the US destroyed the Nord Stream pipeline.

1:41:20But now it's being talked that Zelensky and the Ukrainians destroyed it. Yeah. Yeah. It looks like, what's his name? Zhvinsky. One of the, I forget what his name is, but it does look like based on the latest reporting that it was a special operations effort by Ukrainian military. And the reporting is that it was a small team operation that Zelensky was kept in the dark. In part because, you know, they wanted to give them plausible deniability. It's not necessarily good luck if they don't, you know, go to the leader and say, this is what we're thinking about doing to authorize it. Zelensky probably would have said, no, so there's an element of that.

1:42:06They probably that will, we think it's a good idea. So we're going to do it. Let's keep them in the dark. And then he can say, he didn't know anything about it. But it does look like it was a small team operation. They sailed a boat. Maybe two boats out there. You know, dove down, blew up the pipeline. And then it's been, but it's been confusing ever since, right? Where's the sea more hers get it wrong? I don't know. I don't know what his sources were. So I don't want to say anything. He's a very, you know, he's a focused and energetic investigative guy. He's certainly got a lot of experience.

1:42:36So I don't know what his sources were.

1:42:41But there was, you know, it was Russia was, was, was being blamed. People were saying Russia did it, which, you know, was not out of the realm of possible. People were saying it's the US. People were saying it's Britain. People were saying it's Ukraine. It, you know, everybody was blaming everybody else. And it's still not completely clear, but it does look like it was something that the Ukrainians did. And, you know, at the end of the day, that would make sense, I think, but it's, so it still needs a little more clarity. But I think that's, that seems to be where it's going in terms of the reporting.

1:43:12But it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's remarkable because what February will be two years.

1:43:23And we were in Afghanistan for what, 20 years before people just said, fuck it. We're done. Right? We can't do it anymore. This has been two, not even two years. And you've got some people in the States going, fuck it. You know, we're kind of done. You know, do we really need to worry about this? And, you know, yeah, it'd be great to figure out a way to be more efficient with our, our spending of our money and more transparent with it. But, you know, I don't think people should underestimate putt and stability to keep putting people in the front line and just riding this out because his calculation, much like it was with Hamas, Hamas knew what was going to happen with their narrative.

1:44:03I think putt and looks at the West and says, you'll get tired of this. All right. I'll just outlast you because I don't care. And he's, he's dedicated to, you know, rebuilding in some fashion, this deals so union. Aren't they taking prisoners out and giving them like there's what was the report that they were taking people that had these long term prison sentences and they were giving them the option to fight in the war. Well, they would release them. Yeah, that's exactly right. And that's where you've got any progression who, who ran the Wagner group or was the owner essentially of the Wagner group.

1:44:45And then he died in that completely mysterious plane accident after trying to stage coup. Yeah, I don't know what happened. I'm going to look into that because I'll bet there's a conspiracy there. But I hope that we could get to the bottom of it. Unverified, but that's I mean, they are reporting it. Ukrainian POWs being sent to fight their own army, Russian news claims. Oh, wow. So they're taking Ukrainian POWs. Unverified footage from state media shows captured soldiers swearing allegiance to Russia as a part of new battalion. Wow. Well, that makes sense. Well, now it depends on where those folks were taking POW and it depends.

1:45:24Because if they were in eastern Ukraine, remember, then the last region. Yeah, the Russians have been there for, you know, what going on 10 years. And the Russian argument as always, well, these people are more Russian than they are Ukrainian. They're actually should be with the motherland. So, you know, you may be talking about folks who got picked up and were like, fuck it. I just got conscripted into this. I didn't, you know, not me. I'm Russian. All right. I consider myself to be Russian. So it made there may be something more to this. But yeah, on the other side, yeah, the Russians have the Wagner group built itself up by pulling recruits out of prisoners out of prisons and, you know, throwing them in the front lines.

1:46:06And, you know, that's, but I guess, you know, the point being is that Putin is doing what in a way the Russian military has always done. They've just outlasted. Right. You look at World War II. I mean, you know, what they put up with there and the losses that they had. I mean, it's insane. It's insane. And, you know, I think the German calculation was always well, we'll just, we'll get to a certain number and they'll give in. They never did. Right. Because they can put up with a lot of suffering. So I think that that's what Putin's counting on here. And again, he looks at the West and goes, yeah, you guys are going to last this one out.

1:46:41And, you know, again, if he's right. And USA dries up for Ukraine. You know, that's fine. If that's what people want, but they better understand what that means. And it means Putin's going to win. Right. And so, you know, just understand what your actions could lead to. When Trump comes along and says, I could wrap all this up in 24 hours. How is that even possible? What is he saying? Yeah, that's a good one. I know. I'm the only guy. What does he say? He says, I'm the only one who can solve this. I'm the only one who can sort these things out. Look, you know, he's, you know, Trump's being Trump.

1:47:21And but he's, you know, he doesn't believe that. You know, I think he's he's not an idiot. He says these things and he knows it's he's saying it and it is going to get a sound bite. And for Trump, you know, all media is good media. So, but no, there's there's no way to solve this one easily. Look at this. We've got two fucking major conflicts going on in two different parts of the world that are enormously complex. Right. And you look and go, okay, what is this? How we wrapping this one up? Right. How are we going to end this? It's a very, you know, I'm not saying anything that's particularly clever, but it's an enormously difficult time right now.

1:48:02And people talk about, wow, World War three, you know, that was always the beef on Trump was he's going to lead us into World War three. Well, I mean, I don't know. Can he do any worse than what we're right now? Yeah, again, I think, you know, maybe so, but it's just I don't think we're I don't think we're at the World War three point. We would be the potential for a bad thing to happen if Iran had the nuke. Right.

1:48:34That increases exponential, right, because then in that situation, you know, you don't know and maybe it does happen. And you get. And you get. Ron attacks Israel. Yeah, around attacks Israel. I don't think it's going to happen in part because I don't think Israel's going to allow that to happen. Getting good intelligence on the state of the weapons program in Iran is a very heavy lift, but I think Israel, you know, has certainly better intelligence than they had on the potential. Homos attack that that was building. So I think if they if they get that sense, I think they will act because they're probably thinking, well, same calculation, right.

1:49:11We can't. We're certainly not going to be able to find stability. It wants to get that, right. Because that's just going to loom over the region. And then the Saudis will say, okay, we won't want to. Maybe maybe more than one. You see more than one in your closet. And and then I'll help Rex, those. So, you know, people always worry about why are we why are we talking about the Iranians and getting the nuke. Look at the fucking regime, right. And look at what they're willing to do and look at the trouble that they instigate and the problems that they create, the instability that they generate. You think really you think it's going to get better if they get what they want with a with a weapons program.

1:49:48So I think the Israelis, the idea would would make every effort to degrade that capability if they thought that the breakout was too soon. And who knows, you know, maybe the US military, you know, depending on the administration, maybe they would step in and provide that support. So the previous administration had harsher sanctions. And what else did they do that was mitigating a lot of the problems we're seeing right now. Well, they did remember they killed Soleimani, right. From the RGC. That sends a message, right. Soleimani had a lot of blood on his hands. You know, look, you have to remember.

1:50:29The Iranian regime is also responsible for the death and and and and injury of a lot of US service personnel, right. And because they were, they were actively involved in working to get IDs into Iraq and and they were training and and providing support and and and I mean, so they were killing US service people, right. And you know, again, we we keep trying to imagine that somehow we can disconnect around. Okay, we're not talking about the Iranian regime. We're talking about their proxies and everything, but it in and all kind of kind of flows back to them. So I don't know. I think I'm not I'm not suggesting a military conflict with them.

1:51:13You know, they'll get me wrong. But I do think there are things we can be doing that can then they can perhaps minimize their desire to pursue. This path or at least make it more difficult for them to you're not going to you're not going to get rid of that desire. But yeah, so killing Soleimani was was a good example of what they understand, right. They look at that and go, okay, they fired a couple of missiles and they gave us a heads up before they did it, right. Because they were like, fuck, you know, if they want to do this. Now we have to respond because we have to show are, you know, the are proxies and we have to show our regional neighbors that that were serious, right.

1:51:51We, you know, we're not going to get pushed around. But they give us an edge up and say we're going to fire a couple of missiles and, you know, so that's that shows you that's deterrence, right. And that did that that tamped them down occasionally you get a hoodie missile flying over from Yemen, but. So I think that's again, you have to you have to do something that's deterrence and blowing up a weapons depot in response to a couple dozen missile drone strikes and then they keep doing that. And then the last one I think was Sunday this past Sunday we we hit a training site and a safe house, I think used by IRGC and also by some militants that they have in the area.

1:52:37And then immediately after that that was the third response immediately after that we get more missile drone strikes. So, you know, again, you know, repeating the same thing over and over again expecting what is that saying, expecting a different result. So definition of insanity. So the previous administration, you know, they had a lot of, you know, flaws and problems. You got to do it. But I think in dealing with Iran, I think they were they were demonstrably tougher. I think also in dealing with China, I think they were demonstrably tougher. We'll see what happens out of this meeting today with Biden and she not particularly optimistic.

1:53:16What do you what to take on this whole Trump trial? Because one of the wildest aspects of it is that every time they go after him, he rises in the polls. And you know, he was at the UFC this weekend in Madison Square Garden and he's showed up at the UFC before. And the response back then was a lot of cheers. There were some booze. This is a couple of years ago. Now when he walked out of Madison Square Garden, it was fucking bananas. Really? It was the whole place was cheering. He walks out to Kid Rock's American badass with Kid Rock and Tucker Carlson walking in like the right wing of Avengers.

1:54:04And the place went nuts. He's on the screen. And I'm telling you the 99 % of them billbers wife 99 % well billed pitch wife. Yeah, that's a Bud Light moment right there. Yeah, I mean, can you hear it? Oh, no, give me some volume. Why isn't it? Hmm, so you can get some volume because I'm telling you the fucking cheers of the crowd were nuts. I mean, it was overwhelmingly in support of him. And it lasted a long time. I mean, it was a roll.

1:54:57That's crazy.

1:55:09I mean, you had to hear what the crowd sounded like before he walked in and then he did. I mean, it was just overwhelming cheers. That's for like over a minute. I mean, just imagine a minute of people screaming at the top of their lungs. Yeah. Well, obviously you look at the trial and you have to assume.

1:55:35You can kind of sell this. This is the Ferrari. Okay.

1:55:47And obviously, there's a cage fighting crowd. Yeah, right? This is not the like a fucking unbiased sample of the general public say. The New York elite buying tickets to the cage fight. It's certainly not the liberals. But yeah, if you look at the trial, the Democrats look at that and they think the same thing, which is what the fuck. How do we beat that? And so, you know, maybe you beat it by just keep throwing shit at the wall until something sticks. And but to your point, every time they do that, his poll numbers go up. And you know, Biden's doing his own thing over there where his poll numbers are going down because of his own actions and the current administration's behavior.

1:56:37But I'm not just that. It's not just real. He's really rapidly deteriorating. Yeah, yeah. There's a video the other day that we're showing before the 2020 election Biden was talking and is a market difference between his ability to communicate then versus now. Yeah, I mean, it takes years off of anybody, right? You look at it. Look at any of these presidents. It's just Trump. He did see him manage that by water off a duct. Yeah, he just went right through it. Despite all the crap, right? Despite three years of the Russian collusion, you know, witch hunt and story and all that that went on. And yeah, it is.

1:57:15This people that still believe in the Russian collusion, I know someone. Yes, I know some wild. I've had conversations with people. What about this whole Russia thing? Like what Russia thing? Tell me what happened. Tell me what the reality of it was. How much of it do you know how much it was bullshit? How much of it was just Hillary Clinton propaganda? Well, and then we have on the other side of this. So you have that. You have these guys, Jamie Rask and Adam Schiff, all these guys. It's spent every day in front of the camera talking about the evidence they've got. And this is to save America.

1:57:45And this is the angst over trying to destroy our democracy. And it's all about compromise, you know, being compromised and disinformation. And then I go back to that story I'd mentioned earlier about Iran, right? And the Iran initiative, which there's a lot there, right? It's proven that there was an effort by the IRGC to influence government policy. And through the use of government staffers who were sympathetic to the Iranian regime. And also academics to push that narrative into school. You would think you'd like to think that Jamie Rask and Adam Schiff and all the others who were so concerned about being compromised and all that.

1:58:32You would think that they would be out there spouting this thing we have to get to the bottom of this. But we still don't really know the story behind the US special envoy to Iran, you know, being suspended and having his security clear. They don't pull security clear for no reason. So we don't nobody's asking about that on the Democrats. They're barely asking about to be fair on the Republican side because they're focused elsewhere. But I think they're starting to, I think they're going to call in Mali and I think they're going to call in the Pentagon individual taboo to buy, to come in and I think there's a pin of them.

1:59:02And say, okay, what the fuck's going on? How could you not be concerned, right? With everything else that's happening with Iran that you now know that they've been running this disinformation campaign through cooperative contacts. And the White House has been putting people into places that were amenable to talking to Iranian regime members, telling them what sort of the agenda could be for a meeting, getting talking points to talk through. You know, all in the desire to have a normal relationship with a regime that sponsors organizations like Hamas. It's, again, it goes back to other things that they do.

1:59:39It's a confusing thing. But I don't expect any curiosity coming from from Schiff and the others on a subject like that. So which means maybe the Russian collusion story was all about politics. I believe it probably was. I think it might have been. But what happens with Trump now? Is there any weight to these allegations? One of the things that's so bananas is the overvaluing of Mar -a -Law though. Because they tried to say it's worth $18 million, which is so fucking crazy. It's an enormous piece of land, some of the richest real estate in all of America. And even if there wasn't a Mar -a -Law go there, like this insane, beautiful resort.

2:00:20Even if that wasn't there, just the real estate's probably worth $50 million. Absolutely. Just the land itself. And so at least. I think all the liberals that may be living in the area down there were probably like, oh god, this is going to completely devalue our property. So they were probably pissed off as well. But nobody in their right might actually believe that that's a legitimate assessment of that property. How can you get away with doing that and trying to enforce that in a court of law? Well, I think they'll lose. They'll probably win the day in terms of this trial. They're going to pound this thing until, and then certainly it appears as if the judge is all in.

2:01:06I mean, he doesn't seem like he's inclined to throw anything out. So I think, but it's not going to win on appeal. But what they're looking for, what they're hoping for is, again, they see that, they see the video at the fights. And they think, good god, we got to keep him tied up. We got to keep him wrapped up in these trials throughout the whole campaign period. I think that's their goal, whether they can make anything stick. But I think it has the opposite effect. The problem is it galvanizes his base. And it also makes cynical objective people that are on the outside realize what's going on.

2:01:46This is banana republic shit. Well, but I think it also, at the same time, they're hoping it reminds suburban moms and the people that he didn't get the second time around, because they were tired from the chaos and all the tweeting and everything. I think it reminds them, they're hoping it reminds them of the chaos and all the tweeting and everything. And so they're hoping to keep those people off the field when it comes time to vote. And, but I think it's right. Of course, it definitely galvanizes his base. And I think it will, people who sit and think about this and ponder and say objectively, maybe they don't have a dog in the hunt.

2:02:26But then, you know, so how many of those people do you appeal back over to the Republican side? Who knows? I think a lot. I really do. Well, I don't, I don't, I think there's a lot of closet Republicans out there now. There are a lot of people that have switched over. I get tapped on the shoulder all the time in Los Angeles in particular from there. People just kind of go, yeah, like this, but they don't want to talk about it. You know, they don't want to say anything like what you're doing for a man. Yeah, good job. Good job. Keep it up. And, you know, so you're right. You know, maybe that changes, maybe they come out and vote because like you said at the end of the day, who's going to vote for Joe Biden again, right?

2:03:08But do you think they're going to run him? Because Vivek, you know, during the Republican debates, he came out and said that like there's no way they're going to run him. And they need to just step up and tell us who they're going to run, whether it's Gavin Newsom, Michelle Obama. Who is it? Yeah. Who are you running? Because you know you're not running Biden. Yeah, I don't think they will. I think they'll be a hard stop at some point. But they're not where a year away now. I know, but they're probably going to clear the decks of Kamala Harris, right? Of course. You know, they know that, you know, if if their concern is that Biden can't win because he's just, you know, it's a good look.

2:03:48Everybody gets older, right? So not just older, but the corruption that they've been exposed. Well, there's, yeah, it's the whole package. But if you just look at the, at the agency, okay, look, you know, if they look at that and go, okay, we can't run him. Because I don't think they'll factor, you know, the Biden family activities into that calculation. They'll just go, okay, we can't win because people view him as too old. They're certainly not going to then pivot and say, okay, we, you know, up goes Kamala Harris. She's top of the ticket. So they got to figure out a way to delicately or elegantly clear the decks.

2:04:25And then I think, I mean, God, because he's so desperate for it, but also because, you know, who else is running right now is Gavin Newsom. And the DNC, the White House, would have approved his meeting. He met with G, you know, and during his trip to China. That sort of thing has to be, you know, cleared. You know, he's not going to do that. And then surprise the White House. So by the way, I was there and I got a chance to stop by have coffee with G. So that, you know, there's a planning that goes into that. And so that, that tells me that's an indication that, yeah, they're looking to set the table.

2:05:00Get them some international experience and exposure, right? That's always important. You know, are your presidential, what do you have foreign policy experience? Well, you know, sat toe to toe with G and, you know, bullshit. But it's Gavin Newsom. He's fucked up California. Hey, you know, fuck up America. Did you see what he said about this whole cleaning up San Francisco thing that when visitors come over, you clean your house? Yeah. Like what do you just let everybody else shit in your house all over the carpet when visitors aren't coming over? Like what are you talking about? That's the dumbest excuse for it ever.

2:05:31And just the anger that people must have, particularly people that own stores there that had to close down. Yeah. When you're going, you mean you could have cleaned this up the entire time that quickly. Commercial doing it because of dictators in town. Commercial estimates are that over 30 % of space down there in downtown San Francisco is vacant now. It's, you know, it's, it's an unsustainable situation. But, but yeah, I saw I'm talking about that. I thought you got, you know, I agree with you. If you're, I know some folks at live in San Francisco and they are legitimately pissed off, right? Because, and they're very progressive.

2:06:08Yeah. But they eventually, I guess it's like, you know, I don't know. And I, you know, it's probably not a good analogy. But if you're a friend of mine, it was an alcoholic well recovered now as a terrific guy. But he, he said, you know, I didn't even think about recovery until I hit the absolute bottom. Right? And he said, I didn't even know where the bottom was. And then I found it. And it was fairly self evident. And I think maybe progressives are the same way in some of the, some of these cities until it really hits the shits, then I think they, they're willing to let it go. Right? And then, and then it gets to the point where they think even for them, it's, it's, it's not good.

2:06:48So I was looking at an article from earlier this month on Newsweek. That's may explain why there's a difference in value for Mar -a -Lago. Yeah, but it's Newsweek. I know this explains what happened. So he changed it in 2002 from a private property to a club. In order to do that, that's what changed the value. So if, as a private property, as a house that someone would live in, it could be worth over 100 million. But it's not, it's a, it's a club. In order to make it a club, they have to make a bunch of agreements. I found another article from 2017. That explains some of the agreements he agreed to make.

2:07:23And that a little like right when this happened in, from 1996, it changed the value of $6 million just from signing this piece of paper. Yeah, but still the property. It's still the property. It's still, it's still in 2000. And you know you're always good. Yeah. Yeah, you're going to get somebody that's the explanation. Yes, right? Somebody roll in there and say, I, I don't want Mar -a -Lago. I'm going to raise that fucker, but I want that land. Well, that's the, and I'll pay it like you said 50 million. Yeah, that's part of it. It's signing it, make the historical property. He bought it in 1998.

2:07:52And he has to keep, he agreed to keep it in this, like in the status it was, including carvings, columns, doors, windows, life fixtures. Or as well as ceilings in 25 different rooms. That's interesting. I would imagine that probably would devalue because you can't do anything with it because it's an historical property. However, yeah, still just the property itself if you could buy if I could buy it for 18 million, I'd buy it. If I found I was for sale, I'll, you know what? I'll chip in with you. Yeah. And I'll live in the carriage house. Oh, crazy. Yeah, let's start as a podcast studio. You know, we could do the present daily brief from there.

2:08:25I have a bunch of podcasts out of Mar -a -Law, they're brought in $69 million just between 2017 and 2019. So in two years, it made $69 million and they're saying it's worth 18. That's, yeah, it's low. Yeah, that's, I mean, it's not what, it's not what Trump's folks are saying it's worth, but it's definitely not what the, the quarter of the prosecutors are saying it's worth over a billion, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, hey, billion dollars here or there is a, the, the, how much political leadership could buy it? They got the cash or China or China buys Mar -a -Law. I go, if Biden wins again, China buy a far more, because Trump goes to jail.

2:09:08It has to go for sale. Oh my God. So, do you chance he can go to jail? Yeah. God, never say never with, with, with this situation, but I don't know, that's, that's way above my pay grade. I just think, I don't think they even care whether he goes to jail. They, they want the noise to extend as far into the campaign season as possible. That's, that's my take on it. There's also he has said that he has unequivocal proof of election fraud, but where, yeah, where is it? I think if he was, again, what do I know? But if I was a political strategist, I'd probably tell him back off of that, focus on the shit that's happening around the world and the economy, right?

2:09:56And he, how does he get back those people who didn't vote for him? He gets him back by seeming normal, right? So back off all the other shit and just start, because, you know, the Biden administration is giving the Republicans all sorts of things to talk about, to campaign on. And, you know, the one thing they know they can, I think this is them thinking it, I don't know, I'm not saying he, you know, they can win, but the one thing they think they can do is beat Trump, right? Because he, he just, he does it to himself, right? And they can keep pointing to all these problems and they, and they know what energizes the base, just like Trump's base has energized.

2:10:32But I think if Trump just swept all that to the side, just, he's not going to, he's not going to change his stripes, but if you could do that and just talk about all the shit that's happening and, and, and how you improve the border and how you improve the economy and do the things that people actually care about. Yeah, maybe that's, maybe that's a pathway to get those people back and then the numbers work, but then again, if you look at the numbers, it looks like he's, you know, on the pole results for, you know, the potential match of a Trump and Biden. It looks like he's flipped Pennsylvania, right?

2:11:04And, and I forget, three other, three other states that didn't vote for him the last time, but now pole numbers are showing that they would turn around and vote for Trump this next go around. So maybe they've got the pathway they need. I don't know. Do you put any weight at all into his claims of election fraud? Do I think there's some election fraud, sure. And, and I think we'll get more of it. The further way we get from in person voting. Show up at a fucking voting poll or a poll center, show your ID, whether it's your fucking driver's license or your immigration card or whatever you got, right?

2:11:37That's not tough. Everybody can get a fucking Costco membership and, and just vote. We used to be able to count all the votes, right? And, and of course in the evening you go, okay, they won. But the problem during the pandemic was the mail and votes mail and votes got everybody scared. You don't want to go there and the campaigns are the Democrats want to keep that. They say, well, it's really good because it promotes it. And yes, you want people you want to make it as easy as possible for everybody to get out and vote, but it's get out and vote. It's not in public. Yeah, it's not. It's not create some, you know, endless runway of opportunity for you to mail in some ballots or, or, you know, get out there and and and not bother to have your signature.

2:12:16Check check, whatever it is. But I think I think we're going to stick with the, you know, the, the protocols are put in place because of the pandemic. And do I think there's room for voter fraud? They're sure. I, you know, I'm not saying it's not the same thing as saying, you know, was the election stolen. It's just saying you've created a system that allows it to be easier to commit fraud if you want to. And do you think that's the intention of the system? It could be. It could be. It could be. It could be. And never say never. And I think that there are a lot of people that legitimately say, look, you, you have to make it as easy as possible for people to vote to participate.

2:12:58Yeah, I agree with that. So open up more voting centers. Right. Use more of the schools. The most cynical take is that the reason why they're letting all these people in through the border. And the reason why they're pushing for no voter IDs. Yeah, is because they want these people to vote. Yeah, they let them in. And they know the people that let them in. And they'll. They'll, yeah, I mean, loyal to those people. Yeah, although the people that are bossing up the New York, they're pissed off now at the administration because their hotels aren't nice enough. So who knows, maybe they'll switch their flip their vote.

2:13:32They got more concern when they come said that folks coming across the border. I'm more concerned that it's a bunch of folks coming across the border. And we don't know who they are. Right. And then as a real concern. And it's a real concern. And particularly in an environment like today, where you've got a lot of chaos in the Middle East. And you know, that raises the stakes that creates a more of an alert level for law enforcement and intel community. It's not tough to have a controlled border and a fair immigration system. You just have to have folks in Washington that aren't fucking dysfunctional.

2:14:04Right. And they're willing to work together and make it happen. We could have a secure border and we could have a fair immigration system. But yeah, for whatever reason, we seem incapable of doing that. Every other country out there protects their borders. You know, yeah, I just I that one continues to be a puzzle. But I will say if you've got a million and a half, which is a conservative estimate of million and a half gotaways over the past couple of years, which is wild, which is wild. Then we have no idea. We've got thousands of known encounters of special interest aliens, right. Thousands of known encounters.

2:14:42And then it's a special interest aliens simply means they're from a country that promotes supports or is otherwise troubled with terrorism. And so you think about that. Think about, okay, we've those are the known encounters. Then you've got a million and a half or so gotaways. And we don't know who they are because they're fucking gotaways. Right. So how many of those are special interest aliens? How many of those are people who are intending to come here to cause trouble? We don't know. Could be a small number. Could be a big number. But because we're seem incapable of taking this seriously, you know, we've got a real security issue.

2:15:25It's a self -inflicted wound. It makes the job of law enforcement and the intel community much more difficult. Right. And anyway, but I, you know, again, that's that's barking up a tree there. They're looking to impeach my orcs. I don't think they will. But that wouldn't solve anything because he's just the messenger. He's just delivering the policy that the White House wants. Right. Impeaching my orcs. Okay. Again, it makes people feel good. I don't know what I did. But it doesn't solve a problem. Border policy seems so fucking insane. It just doesn't understand how anyone would ever support that.

2:16:01It's just the possibility that someone could get through. That's a terrorist is so high. And when you fly in, there's all these checks. If you fly in, like what is it about an airplane that if you fly on an airplane, they have to check me. But if you just walk across, like, oh, you're good. Here's 1200 bucks in a cell phone. Yeah. Well, never never underestimate the power of folks wanting to feel self -righteous. Yeah. And so the idea that they make look go, we welcome everyone. It's like, I can't swing a dead cat in my neighborhood without walking. That's an interesting saying. Yeah. So we should look up the origin of swinging a dead cat.

2:16:43Yeah, why is that? I don't know. So I thought he was going there. God, I get it. Take some of this. Fucking blanked out again. What the hell? Well, it's a lot to juggle. Yeah, it's a lot to it's a lot to juggle. The border talking about it. People coming across potential for terrorism, potential for terrorism. I mean, if you've got a million and a half getaways, just think of just small terror cells. Yeah. Yeah. That what the kind of damage they could do if they're well funded. They don't you know, and that's a good point. You don't need. It's not an army that's coming across, although it's an army that's coming across.

2:17:24But it's you don't need that, right? You need a handful of people who are motivated, who have a support structure here in the US that we don't have on our radar screen. And who are getting funding, whether it's from, you know, five different cut out businesses that are ultimately go back to the Iranian regime or Hamas or Hezbollah, whatever it is. That's what you have to worry about, right? Because that's what, you know, that's how these things get kicked off. And one of the easiest things you can do, not it's not easy, but one of the things they should be doing is securing the border. And again, you can do that and have a fair immigration system.

2:18:00I keep combining those two things because one doesn't defeat the other. So it's and and the White House should always want to do that because it's a national security issue. And their primary objective there. Number one job is to keep the citizens of the country safe. I again, it goes back to other things. It's like, who in the White House sat around the other day and said, you know what we should do? So you know what would look good is if we gave the Iranians $10 billion. I'll bet that would get those poll numbers up. Who makes these decisions? So I agree with you. It makes no sense who are the people that think open borders are a good idea other than people who think everybody's welcome.

2:18:38I know what I was going to say. I couldn't swing a dead cat around the neighborhood without hitting one of those signs that says all are welcome here. You know, and then it lists all the people who are welcome there. And it's in their front yard. And I guarantee you they wouldn't be welcome there. Pull that bus up that's been dropping people off in Eric Adams. That's in your neighborhood. Yeah. Yeah. A boy see you say it's a great town. But it's also, you know, it's a Democratic City Council. It's a it's a blue spot in a red state. How does that happen? Is there a university there? There is a university there, but it's not.

2:19:10Yeah, it's a good question. I don't know. Yeah, it's a good question. I don't know how it happens. But it in part it happens because liberals progressives. I think are better at the concept of, you know, we want to control things. That's controller at the base. Right. Let's control at the bottom. Let's get the city council. Let's get the PTA. Let's do those things. And, you know, the next thing, you know, then, you know, conservative folks were publicly like, what the fuck up? But I can't, you know, they deal their best in boys is a great town. The state is fantastic. And I'm supposed to shut up about that.

2:19:47I'm not supposed to talk about that. I, what did I do? I mentioned this. I go there's a great bar in, in a bar in restaurant in boys. He called the stage coach. And it's, I think it's the greatest place. And it's been there forever. And people are fantastic. bartenders are great. You always know what you're going to get. It's a very, very old school. The waitress issues to wear these cowgirl outfits. They got rid of that. But, but with the French skirts, you know, and it was, it was just a great place. And I mentioned it at some point when I was, and people were like, you know, no, stop, stop talking about, stop talking about boys.

2:20:22How great it is. Stop talking about this because you know too many people. And we're getting a ton of people moving up there. I bet getting it's it's it's a lot of people are fleeing California. Yes. Exactly. And then they're bringing their fucking goofy ass politics to boys. Yeah. Because they don't, they don't draw a line. Right. They say, well, this place has really gone to shit. I got to move. That's nice. That's a nice place, whether it's boys here at Montana or wherever. And they don't draw a connection between that and how they voted in the previous location. Right. So, yeah, I mean, maybe one day it gets to be like that.

2:20:51But then we'll just move up to the mountains. So, oh Christ. What? Oh, no, no, everybody just keeps moving away and hiding. And the problem just keeps getting bigger. Yeah. No, you're right. There is that element. You're right. Yeah, you can't you keep moving. But people were worried about that with Texas because so many, you know, there's all this turn Texas blue, which good luck with that. Yeah. You don't think that's going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Especially when it's guys like Beto or Roke or work. Oh, God. Your fucking choice. That door. Well, and I will say it is good in the sense that it doesn't seem like anybody's talking about Beto anymore or Pete boot boot boot boot judge.

2:21:32Some of these some of these cats that were running previously. Yeah. And you thought who are these people and why would you possibly think this is I mean, they were running FANITY fair articles about Beto or Roke and you know, he's the man. I think I think such a fucking tool. Right. 330 million people and that that's your guy. So, yeah, maybe maybe they don't have success with Texas. But I do think it's it is a problem that you I mean, you've seen it here in Austin, right over the years. And so I think we're going to get that same issue with with boys eventually. But yeah, people just move and they think, I'll just keep voting the way I voted.

2:22:05And then they're asked shocked when when things start to go to shit again. And then they move. There's like a swarm of locusts. I just compared the progressives to a swarm of locusts. Yeah. That's probably not good. Well, I want to hear about that. It's there's certainly infected with a mind virus. It doesn't allow them to look at reality. And just they're so loyal to their party. And when you're connected to an ideology, subscribe to everything in that ideology. And you think you're on the good side. And there's social pressure from the people that are around you and your neighborhood. And they all want to think that they're doing the right thing.

2:22:38So that you know, you're on their side. We're all in this together. And Trump's Hitler. Yeah. No, I think that's that's where it's. And that's what the problem. We've got how do you correct that? How do you how do you write the ship? How do you get? And when we talked about that before, I don't think there's a I don't think there's a way to do it because, you know, people have retreated to the trenches. Right. And it's like it's like the Ukraine Russia conflict. Right. I mean, they're doing both sides. Nobody's moving. Right. The lines. It's like World War One. Nobody's nobody's moving the line.

2:23:08And so here we got the same problem. Everybody's sitting there trenches on the right and the left. And throwing fucking anger at each other. And you think how do we how do we get back to something that's normal. And you got this primary system that encourages right this divisiveness. The primary system encourages the the hard and edges to get out and vote during the primaries. So then what do you do? You end up with a candidate who appeals to them. And they're going to try to soften it up a little bit for the general election. But you know, it does it's a selective process that I don't think does our country any good.

2:23:43So for that's worth well. I disappeared down that right. You never disappoint but you always freak me out. You know, you have a rare ability to sort of distribute this information and make it accessible. Well, I think, you know, there's a, no, fuck it. No, I was about to say there's a positive side here. There's a, you know, to look on the bright side. I'm not the work on that. I'm not sure what that is right now. Yeah. Yeah. Real concerning. Yes, back to all this. I don't know what the positive side is. I'm not sure what that is. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm I keep going to I don't know how this ends well.

2:24:25That's what scares the shit out of me. Yeah, both American politics and global conflict. It's like all of it seems like it's moving towards a very bad direction that keeps accelerating. Well, I think. Yeah, the problem is if we can, you know, there's got to be a very short timeline on on the idea on the Israelis degrading Hamas. Right. I mean, look, they have. By some accounts, Hamas was made up of about 30 ,000 fighters, 30 ,000. Numbers aren't clear in terms of how many militants been killed. The health ministry newspapers always cite the Gaza Health Ministry. It's run by Hamas. Right. So when the Gaza Health Ministry says there are 11 ,000, you know, fatalities and 40 % of them are children.

2:25:12That's coming from Hamas. Right. So you have to understand that you have to step back and go, okay, there's a lot of civilian casualties. But what is the number? Right. I'm not going to get I'm not taking the word of Hamas for anything. But you also have to have to be, you know, empathetic and you have to look and go this can't keep going on. But they've got a right to exist and defend themselves. And yes, they need a solution. Is it going to be a two state solution like they talked about that all the way back in the late 30s? Right. That was when it was first come up. Two state solution. It was, you know, before World War II.

2:25:47And they were saying, you know, this is this is what we need to do. It came out of previous to that. I mean, Palestine, the history of Palestine is fascinating. Right. Control by what the Ottoman Empire for 400 years. And then the Ottoman Empire lost it because they sided with the Nazis during World War II. And so that broke up the region and they kind of split it all up. And Britain was given the mandate to control it. And then they realized what a mess that was becoming World War I. They create a, what was it called the Balfour Declaration. Right. I mean, this thing is a, and then eventually they got to World War II.

2:26:25The late 30s and the pill commission decided let's do a two state solution. The Arab world unanimously said no. Right. The Jewish population. Some said, OK, we could, we could consider that. Another said no. No, there's no good answer, you know, to this. And that's why I guess I was about to, I always try to end on something. My wife says I need to end on something positive. I could, I can come up with one. Tell her to come up with one. Yeah, exactly. Let's give her a call right now. Let's get her on. Let's say what do you get? Give us the bright side. Anyway, listen, I appreciate it, man. I always, I always love the conversation.

2:27:05I do as well. I appreciate you coming on. And one more time, President's Daily Brief. It's available. Number one on Spotify. I heard that is a, you know what? I'm glad you mentioned that. It is number one on Spotify news. That is actually pretty fucking awesome. Congratulations. Thank you. That's fantastic. It's available wherever you get your podcast. It's so great. The beat NPR. I know. Right. I hope that continues. Thanks too. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

2:27:37Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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