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- [00:00]
Tim Miller
Hey, everybody, Tim Miller from the Bulwark. Here it is. Schadenfreude, a Saturday. That's right. JBL has been out this week. It's been on a family vacation. Well deserved. Had to take a week off the FY podcast. We need to give you a little something. We deserve it, you know, not that we enjoy other people's suffering, but it's interesting to see when people experience the consequences of their support for Donald Trump. And I don't know, maybe it'll be a little theme, just a little Saturday treat, a little Schadenfreude, a Saturday. I didn't think that's fair. I think we deserve it. Anyway. There are two MAGA executives, we call them executives, I guess, CEOs that have fallen on hard times this week, which is tough. And first, I want to turn it over to a report from KHOU in Houston.
- [00:54]
KHOU Reporter
The owner of Trump Burger restaurants, which has several locations in the Houston area, has been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and now faces deportation. I says Roland Bianney, a 28 year old from Lebanon, overstayed his visa after entering the US back in 2019. He was taken into custody in May and is now out on bond as he awaits immigration proceedings.
- [01:24]
Tim Miller
Excuse me. Excuse me. Sorry. Boy, boy, did you catch that Trump is right about everything sign. Oops. Well, here's the thing. Just want to say up front, don't know anything about this person. Seems like a decent businessman. He found a niche in the marketplace. I think that if a immigrant wants to come here and live the American dream, get a green card marriage maybe and open a business, even a stupid fucking business, that's great. They should do that. That's great. I'd be for that. I would not, I would not have been happy if Joe Biden went around deporting random business owners because they like Donald Trump. I'm not for that. That's not. It's not. We live in a pluralistic society. We like pluralism here at the Bulwark. And yet in this case, it is. You gotta admit, it's kind of funny that the Trump Burger chain, it was so popular. It was a chain. The Trump Burger chains owner get in the boot, be gone long one. Yeah, that's tough. Why? Somebody on not exactly fully legal immigration status decided to go all in for Donald Trump. Maybe he was purely cynical. I don't know. Maybe it was one of these things where he's only going to go after the bad people. Not me, I guess. Have you read any books about stories where Mad kings start to go after people. You would have learned. I mean, you don't even have to read a book. You could watch a movie. You could learn that usually people who are not bad end up suffering. Maybe this person is bad. But for whatever reason, the burger man with questionable immigration status did not have any issues. He just went full bore ahead with Donald Trump and his Donald Trump themed business. And now he is getting deported. I do want to flashback. I thought I'd heard of the Trump Burger before. I couldn't remember why. And it's because of this epic Houston Chronicle review of the Trump Burger chain. I want to read to you guys a little bit from that. I was waiting for my order at Trump Burger in Houston. Surrounded by Trump 2024 the revenge tour ball caps and you're fake news T shirts. A man with a make America great again hat approaches me and asks, did you vote in 2016? It's kind of an ominous little anecdote. The burger is serviceable like one a cargo short wearing dad might serve when he's cosplaying a Food Network grill master at a holiday picnic. It's missing the craggy edges, which tells you the meat hasn't been on a hot grill for enough time to develop the beefy flavor. There's no trace of char or smoke, and each bite doesn't leave you wanting more because there's no juiciness and a slice of American cheese is barely melted. You know, I'm a man of the people when it comes to burgers. I like a little smash burger. You know, I don't need a, I don't need a fancy hoity toity $18 burger. I like a, like a regular burger, not a McDonald's man, but I like a, like a, you know, regular old, you know, just off the grill. I might. I probably like the cargo short dad's burger. But that doesn't make the creepy propaganda restaurants burger being flavorless any less funny. So we'll see how it goes for Mr. Burger Man, Mr. Trump Burger Man. I guess he's out on body and get sent to Alligator Alcatraz. So maybe he's getting, he's getting leniency. Maybe he's getting the kind of Jelaine Maxwell club fed treatment from ice. But he's gonna have another hearing and we'll see how it goes. If the Trump Burger chain collapses, what will the people of Houston do? I don't know. Anyway, tough break, buddy. I would like to move on to the Montana Knife Company. The story comes from the Montana Dispatch friend of the Borg, Ryan Bussey was writing about this over on Substack. You should check that out. If you're from Montana or you're into guns and knives, you're a lib. A lib gun owner. Those are out there. We honor lib gun owners. Not me. I'm a little guns, a little scary for me. But lib gun owners we honor. And Ryan Bussey is a good guy to follow. Anyway, here's his story. It's about Mr. Josh Smith of the Montana Knife Company. I want to play a video for Mr. Josh Smith to kind of set the tone here. Montana Knife Company, a very, very MAGA knife brand. Pictures on his Instagram with Donald Trump Jr. And his moobs. Very proud MAGA soldier. Like everyone else, he's got a podcast even, you know, he parlayed his knife company success into the podcast business. Welcome, Josh. Good luck out here in these streets. Not as easy as it looks. And he did a, he did a content activation a couple, couple months ago that was going after the companies that were labeling on, you know, their website, how tariffs were impacting the prices of their goods. And he had, he wanted to pick on those companies and, you know, talk to them about how stupid they were. Let's watch that video.
- [07:12]
Josh Smith
All right, so I hear that Amazon is going to put a number next to the price of a product on their website to designate how much the tariff is of whatever you're buying on their website. At Montana Knife Company, we're going to do the same thing. We're going to put a number next to the price as well. And that number is going to look a lot like the shape of this goose egg because we've been preaching this all along. We're American made. Buy American. You don't have to worry about this. Buy American make, American made. And you have to worry about this shit.
- [07:48]
Tim Miller
0 goose egg Mr. Smith said about the Montana Knife Company goose egg. The tariffs will not impact him. In fact, he is having a lot of success. Knife companies growing, which is great. We love an American brand. I love entrepreneurship here at the Borg. We. Everything's going well for him. He's expanding. Here's the trouble, though. He's expanding on to scale up, you know, do it so many other entrepreneurs have done over the decades, over the generations. You know, start. Look at Jeff Bezos. He started just with books. Look at him now as a penis rocket wedding in Venice. I forgot. Don't tell. I forgot. My nephew's birthday was today, so I already overnighted him a present. Thanks to Jeff Bezos. Right. So this was Mr. Josh Smith saw the Bezos plan for him. Start with knives, expand. So he builds a factory and a factory though has equipment and. Well, I have an update for you. I have another video. Let's play what happened. And I appreciate our guy Die Workwear over on X for grabbing this because he's deleted some of these videos. But let's see what's happened to kind of the cost and the inputs for The Montana Knife Company since the tariffs went into place.
- [09:03]
Josh Smith
July 17, 2024, base price 519. July 23, 2025, base price 612. The thermocouple interface upgrade 14,900. 16,700. The loader 10,200. The loader 11,400. So this is my point. This is what I'm getting at. We're trying to build American manufacturing. This is American made equipment. 100% made in America. This stuff has an effect. Again, I'm questioning why is the cost of equipment to manufacture in America going up that drastically in one year. I'm not hating on the Trump administration again. I'm trying to point out that their policies need some adjustment.
- [09:58]
Tim Miller
That was. Yeah, that was. That's like a sticky little fact that he hadn't thought about when he did the goose egg video. Right. Which was his is an American made company, so he doesn't have anything to worry about. And if you are a MAGA patriot who loves America and makes all your goods in America and buys all your goods from America, the tariffs won't impact you at all. In fact, they might be a good thing. They might help. They might bring about a golden age, golden egg. The problem with that was, yeah, it just kind of slipped his mind that he had bought all this equipment. Now as he's trying to expand the business and where was the equipment made? Not America. Hmm. Sounds going up that. And you saw that six figures, 100,000 plus maybe 200,000 just in this one little invoice. Think about how much that adds up when you start thinking about the other equipment. Hmm, not great. Turns out it's not going to be a goose egg. Actually, the tariffs impact on his customers. He's going to have to raise the prices or maybe slow the expansion, not hire as many jobs. I thought we were trying to make manufacturing jobs here. That is something that Josh Smith pointed out. Now, I would love to play you the video of that, but after Ryan Bussey at the Montana Dispatch posted the video, he deleted it. Embarrassed. A little embarrassed. So I'm Just going to do a dramatic reading. I'm not, I'm not going to do the he haw voice. I can't do that. But do a little dramatic reading here from this is this was Mr. Josh Smith, the Montana knife company who has got a pinned photo of him and Donald Trump Jr. On his Instagram. All right, Donald Trump, I've got a bone to pick with you and your administration. I'm off about your tariffs. Why am I paying tariffs on manufacturing equipment? It makes no sense. It's about as dumb of a government policy as government policies get. You cannot buy that equipment here. He goes on, why are we talking so much about Epstein now? Granted, he's a piece of shit and I'm also not happy with Trump about that. But maybe call me Mr. Trump because the bigger problem is the tariffs and what it's doing to MAGA business owners who are trying to create jobs here in America. Sympathetic with Josh, you know, his company. I guess I should mention Josh's company seemed to boom, kind of skyrocket during the Biden years. He doesn't kind of mention that or not it. But he was on the way up. On the way up, had a good product, was growing, was expanding during the Biden administration. There was no government policy or regulation that was limiting him. He's in Montana, good tax base there, good client base. Everything was going good. And I'm sure he had some disagreements with Joe Biden about various policies. But if you just look at the Montana Knife Company, if you just look at his interests, might even call it a golden age of the Montana Knife Company during the, during the Biden administration. And here we are, Donald Trump comes in and puts in, let me get this quote one more time, about as dumb of a government policy as government policies get. Well, we'll see how it goes. I don't know. I'm not a knife purchaser. I don't exactly know the competitive set out there with the quality, etc. I'm sure that he's going to find ways. You know, entrepreneurs are agile. They find ways to overcome the burdens put on them by the government. But it is important just to remember in the case of Montana Knife Co. That the burden put upon him was by the Republican MAGA president. And I haven't, I haven't heard any. Have you heard, I haven't heard any of the Republican Montana elected officials that are supposed to represent him criticizing that because technically they could fix this. I do think it'd be worth noting Tim Sheehy and Steve Dane, Senators from Montana. They could. They could take back the power of the purse. They could say, Mr. President, Guy, I got to look out for my guy in Montana. You know, you hear about this. Lisa Murkowski's always like, I'm looking out for Alaska first. I gotta do that. You have some Montana Republicans look out for Montana first. Montana knife companies haven't heard anything from them. So maybe, I don't know, shoot them a call Montana Knife Company Josh Smith might be something for you to think about. Shoot Tim Sheehy and Steve Dane Zakoski, where are you? And using your power to ensure that plucky maga small business owners aren't just crushed by the dumbest policy imaginable put in place by Donald Trump. All right, so there you go. Little schadenfreude to Saturday. We'll be keeping our eye out. What else is happening out there? I should say we got some serious material. I mean, this is serious. These are serious consequences. But, you know, coming up later today, make sure to check all that stuff out. All right? 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