← PBD Podcast
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- [00:02]
A
Did you ever think you were made again?
- [00:10]
B
Adam, what's your point? The future looks bright. My handshake is better than anything I ever saw. It's right here. All right, gang. You know, they say times are so hard right now that apparently this guy named Marco. I don't know if you guys are following this or not. Marco already has, like, two or three jobs, and he's got another job that he's working part time as a. You know, taking questions, doing Caroline Levitt's job because she's. She's about to. She's about to have a baby, Rob. Right. So Marco Rubio is like any other jobs I'm willing to do. The hardest working man in business right now is taking questions. And he crushed. We'll play a couple of clips for you to see.
- [00:55]
A
Filling in for a coworker.
- [00:56]
B
Yeah, filling in for a coworker while this is going on.
- [00:59]
C
He's a dj, too?
- [01:00]
B
Yeah, yeah, he was a dj. You're right. For a friend, for a wedding. So while this is going on, Coinbase lays off, announces that they're going to lay off 14% of their employees. That's 700 employees. On top of that, Ken Griffin, who was doxed by this guy named Zoran Mandani. He's allegedly the mayor of New York City. He docks. He says that's where he lives. He's like, wait a minute, you forgot what happened to United Healthcare CEO? You're saying that's where I live? Of course it's public information. But why would you even do that? When am I going to feel safe going to this place? Now. And you're the mayor doing this? Yes. Seriously? Yes. You know what? Forget about it. He's at an event. He's quite. He's asked about what he's going to be doing with New York and a project that they have that's going to create, what, 6,000 jobs? And it was 6,000 construction jobs. 15,000. Vice versa. Like 21,000 total jobs. Nope. Now, we. He says, when we were leaving Chicago, we were thinking about New York and Miami. I am so glad we chose Miami. And that was the right move. You have to see this clip on the conversations with trying to tax these guys. And it could have been anybody else, but no, it was a mayor. The mayor of New York City, who happens to be a big deal for the left. And then Project Freedom paused. Allegedly, the president says they're talking about getting a deal going. Oil prices drop, gas prices. You look at the numbers right now. Tom was reacting. Rob, can you Go to the numbers to see where it's at. Was it 96? It keeps moving aggressively. 96, 26.
- [02:30]
A
Down 6 this morning. Under 100.
- [02:32]
B
That's right. The market is up slightly. I mean pre, but we'll see what's going to happen with that. Down six so far. Jeff's got a lot of thoughts on that, on five dollar gas prices and the lag that it has with pricing. He's got a good breakdown. We'll go through that as well. Vivek wins primary in Ohio by a landslide. It's not even close. And the other person, the opponent on the Democratic side was a, you know, the COVID czar, I believe, Rob, if I'm not mistaken, in Ohio saying Anthony Fauci is a hero. You want somebody that wins who says Anthony Fauci is a hero. If yes, that's your governor for Ohio. If you want to fight that mindset, you may want to consider this guy named Vivek who's a fighter and who loves America. Then you have FedEx driver, the guy that said, you know, you realize I will never see my kids ever again if I go to prison. You should see what just happened to this guy and what he did to that seven year old girl. They just announced it yesterday. We played a club. Michael Saylor is finally saying he may be selling bitcoin. Okay? And people are reacting. Wait a minute. The guy that keeps buying bitcoin is now saying he's selling bitcoin? Some people thought it was AI, some people said he would never say such a thing. But he's saying it now. By the way, bitcoin didn't even react. There was no movement with bitcoin. Who knows what that means. And then aside from that, we had a couple other stories with Starbucks CEO Brian Nichols saying, you know, we have to make the coffee, the $9 experience a great experience for customers that come in. Brandon's not happy about it. Brandon wants that coffee to be 99 cents, like back in the days at 7:11. And he's just, he's upset. He wants that price. So maybe we'll get a perspective from him. Apple lawsuit. If you guys are watching this Apple lawsuit for those features that they said that we're going to have certain AI features with the new phone that didn't deliver. I believe the couple models that we'll talk about, Rob, on the phones, the 15 or the 16, maybe even the 17, there's going to be an 81 on average refund that they'll send to the customers. We'll address this as we go through with the exact details of it as we get into the article.
- [04:35]
A
Marketing lied.
- [04:37]
B
Yeah. So that's. The. Marketing never lies, though, Tom, you better respect marketing. Marketing never lies. They would never do such a thing. And then Tom's just not happy about, like, out of all the stories that I'm going through here, Tom's very critical of California. I'm surprised the first time Tom's ever doing this, you know, with gas prices in California. One of the clips we may want to show Rob is Steve Hilton saying, hey, everywhere prices are going down in red states, but in blue states, it's going up. You got to stop saying everything is Trump's fault. It's your policy. It's a very, very good clip of Hilton in the debate. But California has a massive syphilis problem. And this is a real syphilis is a chlamydia. Right. Is that the same thing that they say? Like, there's. You're quiet, Tom.
- [05:23]
C
Don't want to touch that one.
- [05:24]
A
Well, you know, Adam's not here today. We need the resident expert and say
- [05:29]
B
that he has a. He's gonna. He's gonna come attack you when he comes back. This is how you guys start fighting.
- [05:35]
A
Well.
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B
And I tell you to avoid it, especially after the survey we did.
- [05:38]
A
Oh, well, Ending in y. Yeah.
- [05:40]
B
So anyways, then we have anthropic AI CEO comes out and says, within 12 months, you may not even need coders. You have to see this clip. He's breaking out saying, you may not even need coders. And then Jamie Dimon gave some thoughts on management, saying, you know, he wants companies to get rid of managers who do. Not that, that. That. We'll get into it. It's a great story that we'll address as we get into that part with those of you guys here on the podcast. But before we get started, I want to remind you of something. Those of you guys that did the survey, we originally thought, because it's a lot of questions, it was 27 of them. We said, we're going to give a $25 gift card. So we sat with finance and we said, guys, it's not like it's going to be that many. Anyways, we said, let's put a budget of 25 to $50,000 for these $25 gift cards. Well, the report comes out this morning from our digital marketing team. 11,976 of you did the survey.
- [06:42]
D
Wow.
- [06:42]
B
Which is going to cost us 290 some thousand dollars for this gift card and a Lot of you guys were tweeting saying, am I going to get the gift card? If you completed the survey, you check your email. Today at 9 o', clock, they started sending all the gift cards from Shopify to go to vtmerch.com and so check your email. If it hasn't, just remember it's 12,000 people. So all of a sudden it was put in the system. You're probably gonna. If you haven't already gotten it, if you check your mail, you will check your email. You will, in the next 15, 30 minutes, one hour. But go to vtmerch.com that $25 is a straight up gift card. Buy whatever you want. We have a lot of good things that people don't look at. There's some unique accessories that we have you can go look into. Yesterday we had an event at our cigar lounge. We have this valuetainment cigar set with cutters, lighters. There's so many great gifts that you can give somebody, but you have your $25 gift card to use. And by the way, for those of you guys that are watching, saying it is so revealing, the report that came back, FYI, just so everybody knows, nobody knows what the results were. Tom doesn't even know the results. It's driving him insane.
- [07:54]
A
But I get teased a lot, right?
- [07:55]
B
Yeah. Brandon, this morning's like, come on, tell me, where am I? And him and Humberto are getting to him. Humberto's holding people hostage. I don't like what he's doing, but he loves it. He loves this kind of stuff. If you want to see what the report results were, we may make a 1 pager, 2 pager to kind of share with the audience. If you text the word PBD to 310-3401132, again, text the word PBD to 310-340-3401132. That report will be sent out to the audience. Our YouTube guy called and says, wait, you guys did a survey on your audience to ask what they didn't like and did like? Yes, we did. Nobody does this. And you gave away $25 gift card. How many people you spent? 300,000. You said, well, we weren't expecting $300,000, but it's already too late. So there you have it. So everybody that completed it, I want to say thank you on behalf of the team. This is great intel for us on finding ways to improve the product that we have here. And without your feedback, we're going to read every single one of the pieces of feedback and Some of you guys may even get a call from us. So again, text PBD to 310-340-1132. We may send a video, a report to you guys specifically in a text once we have that report. And some people are not going to like it, but it is what it is. The report was very good for all of us. All right, with that being said, let's get right into it. So today's Wednesday business podcast. One of the stories I want to start off with. Even though we're going to get into the oil and all this stuff, capitalism is a reason why America became what it became. One of the reasons. The greatest country in the world where you can come and build your business as much wealth as possible. And the one city in America that was the hub for capitalism was New York City. Until this one guy named Zoran Mamdani became mayor. And people said, nothing's going to change, Everything's going to be fine. This is going to be great. Give the guy a chance. So what if he speaks the communist language and the socialist language and he's an Islamist? Nothing will change. To the greatest city in America. Well, last week he goes out there and makes a video outside of Ken Griffin's house. Ken Griffin bought the most expensive penthouse in America. Quarter of a billion dollars. He has that kind of money. He's busted his ass in Chicago, Illinois, made his money, and right here, Mamdani made this video to call him out. And Ken Griffin responded to it at an event yesterday. Rob, we don't need to watch the whole thing, but we can watch the first 20 seconds. Go for it.
- [10:19]
D
When I ran for mayor, I said I was gonna tax the rich. Well, today we're taxing the rich.
- [10:26]
B
I'm thrilled to announce we've secured a
- [10:27]
D
pied a terre tax, the first in New York City.
- [10:30]
B
So watch this.
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D
This is an annual fee on luxury properties worth $25 million whose owners do not live full time in the city. Like for this penthouse, which hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin bought for $238 million, this peer to tear tax is specifically.
- [10:44]
B
Can you pause it right there? Can you imagine if somebody, a young 22 year old citizen, journalist, YouTuber, went and made a video saying, that's where you live. Okay, how would you feel? He lives here. This guy's rich. He lives here. Then imagine if this 22 year old kid is not a 22 year old kid, but is a 30 something year old mayor of the financial capital of the world. Points at the penthouse of a guy that Bought a property for $238 million. Whom just recently, last year, a young kid was Inspired. A man, 26 year old young man, was inspired for whatever reason, after being missing for 90 days to kill the CEO of United Healthcare. And you think you make a man like this feel safer after he sees like, I'm investing into your city, I'm buying, I'm putting money into your city to say I believe in this city? Well, he was asked the question yesterday. Here's what he had to say. So where does that leave us at 350 Park?
- [11:48]
D
That leaves us with the fact that we went to Miami and revised our building plan to make it a bigger office building.
- [11:56]
B
You're bailing.
- [11:58]
D
So what do we do at 350 is still a point of discussion internally. But what is no longer a point of discussion is that Miami is now. You know, when we moved from Chicago, there was a debate between New York and Miami. It's unquestionably true that we made the right choice. I'll leave it at that. It's unquestionably true that we made the right choice. And now. And now what the mayor of New York has made clear to my partners, and principally my New York partners, my New York partners, is that we need to double down on our bet in Miami because we want to be in a state that embraces. That embraces business, that embraces education, that embraces personal freedom and liberty, and that embraces people having an opportunity to live the American dream.
- [12:49]
B
And okay, so by the way, this is a $6 billion project, okay, that this mayor called out the guy that was about to create 20,000 jobs. This is what socialism and communism does and bad policies do. Tom, your thoughts on Ken Griffin's reaction to Mamdani?
- [13:06]
A
Well, first of all, elections have consequences. And here you go, folks. Those of you that are working in the city trying to make ends meet. And you thought your, your dad, your brother, or maybe your sister, whomever working in construction, it's not just male anymore. You thought they were gonna get a good job and be working for 18 months on a good project, on a big project. Well, guess what? That job's gonna go away now. That's not gonna be there. So I hope there's something else being built. So elections have consequences. And there it is. Rubber hits the road right there. People with the jobs. The other thing is, it just shocks me that how tone deaf the left is. And the answer is Mandami is a Marxist. He's not a Democrat, he's not part of the core Democrat that wants to build a platform of power in. To get their ways. He is a Marxist, and he wants to seize and he wants to go. What's interesting is in New York City, you know, they say New York City's not dangerous, but yet in 1980 is when, you know, we lost John Lennon, who was murdered in 1980 in New York City by Mark David Chapman. And in Strawberry Fields area of Central park, they put this beautiful mosaic in a tribute to the song Imagine that. Remember Imagine, there's Noah.
- [14:15]
B
Yep.
- [14:16]
A
Well, guess what? They should put another memorial up there on the other end of the city. There it is, in tribute to Mandami and a different Lenin song. But it should go. All we are saying is give thieves a chance, because that's exactly what's happening. And that's what I think. You know, people don't realize he's not a Democrat. He's not trying to run a Democrat campaign, Pat. He is a retributional asset seizure Marxist. And people are saying, whoa, I gotta move. We are on that. This is not Ken Griffin, Jeff Wario. Right, Yeah.
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C
I mean, they gotta pick a different song, because Imagine was a communist anthem to begin with. Imagine there's no property. Imagine. I mean, anyway, you're right. Tom Mandami is not a typical. He's not.
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A
He's a chance.
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C
He's not a typical Democrat. And I think what should worry people is why that message is resonating. I mean, Mandami knew exactly what he was doing. This is what. I don't. I'm gonna disagree. I don't think it was tone deaf at all. I think it was. That was his purpose.
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A
No, I'm saying he wasn't tone deaf. He was on a mission to do this.
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C
Yes, exactly. This was. This was intentional in his message. Is.
- [15:24]
B
What does this do, though? I mean, is this. Jeff, is this gonna. Is this gonna cause some guys to be like, yeah, I don't know if I want to stay here? Do you think the tipping point is here yet? Like, do you think there's even more people that want to leave? Or do you think New York's case study is different than California's case that he would. Well, tax.
- [15:41]
C
Well, I think the tipping point may have already been reached. I mean, 2020 and Covid. People. People move south. I mean, you said New York is the financial capital. I think it's the former financial capital. A lot of that center of gravity moved down to Palm Beach, Miami, you know, South Florida area to begin with. So, yeah, I think this. I mean, anybody who has the ability is going to see this and say, this is not for me. And it's not for me in a way that this is, you know, okay, it's uncomfortable. Maybe I can deal with this for a little while. Then Mandami goes away. New York as a whole may have reached a tipping point. And it's the tipping point we've seen in various places throughout history. Once you get to, you know, it's almost like the corporate life cycle. When companies go too far, they end up making more and more mistakes, and it just leads them right into bankruptcy.
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A
Yeah.
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B
You think that's what's going to be happening? Brandon, where are you at with this?
- [16:27]
D
Yeah. So it's unfortunate that most people are not sophisticated enough to understand why they're in such a difficult position. And then somebody like him comes along and says in a story that's easy to understand, where it's like, oh, the rich people are greedy. They're, you know, taking all the money, they're overcharging you. It's their fault. Blame them. When it's really, in reality, a very complicated reason why it's the government's fault that the average person doesn't understand. So, you know, simplicity and messaging is the really important thing. And, you know, it's easy to give a simple socialist message, say we want to take from them because they have a lot, and give it to you because you have a little. So, you know, it's a very easy sales pitch to pitch socialism or pitch communism without calling it that.
- [17:06]
C
So isn't it one step further than that, though? Because what they're actually saying is your life sucks because of Ken Griffin.
- [17:12]
D
Right.
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C
And so we need to not just take his money, which is not tax, it's confiscation. We need to make him suffer. Yeah, we need to. We need to demonize that guy. He's the reason why your life sucks.
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A
And they skip you. You said choices and circumstances. They skip that and go to straight to blame.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Of the other guy.
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D
It's their fault.
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B
And. And I. You got. You got to know. I love, I love that this is happening. I'm going to explain to you why yesterday I did a two hour plus podcast with CZ from Binance. He flew from UAE to do the podcast, got back in and went back home. Okay, and how do I know this? Because when there was the bombing in Dubai, I said, were you affected by the Iran? He says, yeah, I was on the plane. They kept saying, we can't take off. We can't take off. We can't take off that clip. We're going to post sometime today. The interview is going to go out next week. But one of the questions I asked him, I said, Binance, we know obviously when he went away for four months that to pay the $4.3 billion fine and $50 million personal, all this stuff was addressed. It'll come out. It's a very good interview. But the one part that was discussed that I think we need to repeat over and over and over and over again is the following. He lives in uae. I said, why do you live in uae? He loves the regulation for crypto and uae. He feels safe over there. Fantastic. What other places have you lived? He goes and tells me all the other places. Do you know Binance has 5,000 employees? Tom, do you know in how many Countries Binance has 5,000 employees. How many countries do you think Binance has employees in? I want you to guess. 100, 100 plus countries. Binance has 5,000 employees in. There is no real headquarters. Is 5,000 employees, 100 countries. Okay. 250 to 300 million customers. Do you know how much money they've processed? $125 trillion Binance has processed. This guy's worth $110 billion. Okay. And yesterday he says he's never been in a Lamborghini in his life before. So we brought up a Lamborghini. He got into a Lambo. You got to see his reaction when he gets in. But this was the question. I said, can you go live anywhere? Yes. Why? His wealth is tied to what intangible assets, which is kind of what we talked about on Monday.
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A
Defi.
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B
That's right.
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A
Just somewhere. And he's got a DeFi company in 100.
- [19:22]
B
By the way, I'm going to keep repeating this because I kept getting. There's 10 states right now in America that are in the process of trying to do exit tax. Julio Gonzalez Menechtoma yesterday and said there's 10 states that want to do exit tax. You know, obviously Julio Gonzalez is account. He does very well for himself. Successful guy. Watch what happens here. They're using the playbook socialist from the 70s. Assuming your assets are tangible, because it used to be wealth was tangible, 85 to 90% of the wealth was tight in the S&P 500 was tangible assets. You couldn't really move and be that mobile. You know what that number is today? 10%. So 90% is what today intangible assets. These. Wow, these guys are going to keep doing this. Not real. And by the way, if let's just say AOC gets elected. Let's just say somebody like that gets elected. These guys can move their assets anywhere because it's digital. So keep doing this. California, keep doing this. New York, keep doing this. Washington, keep doing this. Illinois, see what ends up happening. It's a lot easier for people to move their wealth today than ever before. They can continue trying to bullying people will find a different place for them to go to. It's not going to end up being good for these guys. Although their policies will continue to spread, saying, well, no, we're going to do it better. We're going to do it better. So anyways, that's that part. By the way, have you guys seen a movie? Animal Farm or no?
- [20:47]
D
Mm.
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B
I'm getting mixed views about Animal Farm. Some people are telling me it's and it's by Angel Studios. And there was a comment made in the movie about Sound of Freedom, which I didn't like. I'm gonna have to go check out the movie and I'll give the review on it because, you know, we've done some reviews on a lot of movies. Animal Farm is the whole thing about communism and capitalism and all this stuff. So we'll see, we'll see, we'll see. I'll give my thoughts on that on a separate time. So let's go to the next story. Next story. Project Free, Project Freedom. Rob, if you want to get into that is the peace deal. The president tweets something this morning. You know, because in the last couple days, according to the Strait of Hormuz website that you can track on how many vessels are coming through, Yesterday was only 5. The day before was 12. The average day before the war happened is around 60 a day. So they're around 5 to 12 the last two days. But the president tweeted this yesterday, Rob, if you want to go to it. He made this comment here based on the request of Pakistan and other countries. The tremendous military success that we have had during the campaign against the country of Iran and additionally the fact that great progress has been made towards a complete and final agreement with representatives of Iran. We have mutually agreed while the blockade will remain in full force and affect Project Freedom, the movement of ships through the Strait of Hormuz will be paused for a short period of time to see whether or not the agreement can be finalized and signed. So this is 6:52pm on May 5, which is yesterday. The market reacts today, gas prices go down. You know, we see some movement there. But I'm going to come to you, Jeff with this. Because when you're seeing this message made, some people are like, well, we're in the terms, we're negotiating, but is this kind of. You're set. You said this a week ago, you said this two weeks ago. Is this actually going to be, is this not actually going to be real? What are your thoughts on what's going on here? And then if you can also break down the five dollar gas prices, why there's a little bit of a lag in it?
- [22:36]
C
Well, I mean, I'm kind of conflicted here because you don't really know exactly what's going on. Like you said, Pat, we've seen this before where oil prices start to creep up and President Trump will put something out there and immediately oil prices will slam. Because, I mean, the fundamental price of oil right now is 50, not 150. That's where it was heading to at the end last year and into early part of this year. So he's leveraging the knowledge in the marketplace that when the conflict is over, oil's going down and down by a lot of. So all it really needs to take, all he really needs to do to get oil prices to go down in the short run is to put out a statement, which he's done repeatedly. The downside to that is do we really know what's behind it? Is there anything really behind it? The market reacted immediately. Oil prices, they dropped after they were going up yesterday and the day before. And the other side of this is that he, President Trump, everybody in the administration, everybody around the world understands that where this is going, and that's $5 gasoline. And $5 gasoline is, well, in a territory of demand destruction and economic pain. So you can understand why he would have let's keep energy prices under wraps as much as we possibly can. But there is the fundamental economic reality where you have this much oil sitting unused and not flowing through the Strait of Hormuz, that eventually the energy system's ability to absorb that loss of supply and flow is limited. It's finite. You get to the edge and then physical reality takes over. So what we've seen in the energy markets is that if you look at the wholesale price of gasoline, which is traded in liquid futures on the CME, wholesale gas price of gasoline since April 17th ran from $3 a gallon to 375 a gallon. Now, that's the wholesale price. That's what, you know, businesses trade back and forth to deliver to one another. Sure, the retail price of Gasoline is roughly A$1,$25 higher than the wholesale price. Okay, so just do some quick math here.
- [24:25]
B
So 425 to 495, give or take.
- [24:28]
C
Yeah. And if, if we get wholesale prices of gasoline, it's up around 375 that we're screwed. That's $5 gas.
- [24:34]
B
Right. Makes sense.
- [24:35]
C
So is, is, is Trump tweeting or putting out the truth social in response to oil prices creeping up and wholesale gas prices keeping up and trying to get, trying to get the market to go back down again? Or is there something legitimate behind it?
- [24:46]
B
Tom, where, where are you at with this?
- [24:48]
A
Well also Rob, if you could flip this over, I'm going to echo that. But also I've been watching something else. I watch this too, but my number one I've been watching is Diesel. And right now diesel is now up over five and a quarter. And when you get to $5 diesel, that's. It's the same chart, Rob. You just go to flip over to diesel and where are we right now? No, no, no, no, no, no. Anyway, Diesel right now is five and a quarter, give or take five and a quarter. 5:30. Jeff. That affects everything. Diesel, there it is. Current average 538. And then year ago diesel was I think 338. So I think it's the same two dollars. But the danger of diesel is diesel is the economy. When you look at the price. Diesel is the product economy in the United States, meaning physical products, whether that is a apple or that is a big screen tv. Diesel carries it from here to there. And that is what is so fricking dangerous in terms of destruction in the economy is long term, diesel is, is a danger to internal inflation. Because you're adding, you're, you're adding almost 40%, Pat, to the cost of shipping the apple from the farm to the, to the supermarket, of shipping the big screen TV to the distribution center at Best Buy and then having it delivered to your house by Amazon Prime. That just flips me out that diesel is kind of below radar when the mainstream media likes to talk about gas because the mainstream media wants to talk about gas because gas hurts voters and they want to move voters.
- [26:29]
B
That's it.
- [26:30]
A
The mainstream media doesn't give a crap about the broader economy at all. But the broader economy diesel is. And I keep saying it, Pat, I'm going to stop repeating myself. I don't know what you think.
- [26:40]
C
Oh, $5 gas. The reason why it's such a big deal is you just hit the nail on the head. It's voters, people, their perceptions of The Rand conflict are driven by the pump price. Yes, diesel is harmful to the economy, but the average voter's perception of how things are going is dictated by the retail price of gasoline. So retail price of gasoline at four and a quarter, that's not good. That's painful. Retail price of gasoline at $5 is potentially catastrophic. So that's why there's a reaction to gasoline prices creeping up in oil prices and everything else.
- [27:09]
B
Brandon?
- [27:10]
D
Yeah, the scary thing, though, is that even if this is all to stop tomorrow and you start ramping it back up, it's not like a quick flip of the switch back on. I mean, there's systematic problems now as a result of this. And I wonder if there's ever gonna be like some type of snap effect where the reality of the situation kicks in, because a lot of it's being dictated by headlines of what Trump is saying and how the market's reacting to that. So it's like more headline driven than actual what's happening on the ground driven. So I wonder how detached those two things are. Like the narrative that Trump is putting out there versus what's actually happening in terms of the amount of oil.
- [27:44]
C
Brady there's really two different marketplaces right now. There's a cash price of oil, and then there's the futures price of oil. What Trump has done masterfully is manipulate the futures price of oil. But every time futures price starts to creep up, he'll put something out, it goes back down again. The cash price of oil doesn't care what Trump has to say because that's, hey, I need oil delivered here and this is degrade, and I need it. And the cash price of oil, this entire conflict has been well above the futures price. So the actual legitimate price of oil today is really like 130 to 140. So you see 100 WTI is at 95, but the cash price, something like dated Brent, is like 135.
- [28:20]
D
And how delayed is that? When the future price kicks around, it
- [28:23]
C
takes a while for that actual cash price to work its way through the system. Who's buying that $130 oil? Where is it going? What is it going to be used for? But more and more, as the market shifts to the cash price of oil rather than the futures price of oil, you're going to see the effect filter through. And that's where it's getting into the
- [28:38]
A
gasoline and one of the delay gap effects. You and I were talking right before the podcast. Can you break down aviation fuel and how airlines hedge? And so it's a delayed effect on your plane tickets.
- [28:47]
C
But you only hedge for a certain amount of time. There's a time component to it. So you buy an option or some kind of derivative, usually future for delivery based on a certain price. So if you're insulated because you've got the option to buy jet fuel at, say, a lower price where the price was before the energy shop.
- [29:03]
A
So for a short time, Southwest has a Runway to keep operating at yesterday's aviation fuel price, and all of a sudden they run out of time because the option runs out.
- [29:12]
C
Well, the option runs out and the options to replace them get more and more expensive to the point that you can't hedge. So even airlines that have hedged up until this point, they're on the clock too. So eventually what you're going to start to see is that airlines are going to start to their prices and their ticket fares and their bag fees and everything they charge you are going to start to reflect the actual price of oil, which is more like the cash price than the futures.
- [29:32]
A
And that's why for the first month of the conflict, the airlines held their breath. But at 30 days, Pat, the airline said, I got to do bag fees, I got to do this, I got to touch prices. And because they're looking at their July options, July futures, and they're like, crap, it didn't go down well, now I'm stuck. Now I got to move the price.
- [29:50]
C
And Brandon, what you were saying before I interrupted you here, I appreciate it. There's a time component here. This is not going to be done. Even if they get everything open tomorrow, the market is saying, okay, you get everything open tomorrow, it's going to take a couple of months at the very least. The Dallas Fed did a survey, when was this? A couple weeks ago, where they asked 140 oil industry companies, when do you think the flow of oil will be restored through Hormuz? And the vast majority were August or later, with half of them saying November or later. So even if gas prices or even if the conflict is over tomorrow, the price in energy is going to linger on for quite some time.
- [30:34]
D
Yeah. So it's best case scenario, and I mean worst case scenario, if it drags on until they're saying it's going to drag on. So they're like, people are saying it's going to be wrapped up by that time. So what, we're talking all the way until the end of the year before
- [30:45]
B
things are back to normal, potentially by the end of the year if things
- [30:50]
D
are back, if the conflict wraps up by September or so.
- [30:54]
B
My date is June 14th. I've said June 14th. Is that June 13th. June 14th is a day to get it wrapped up. You go past 10, you're in trouble in a big way.
- [31:03]
D
But let's say he'd want to do everything in his power to wrap it up right now, make it happen. Is that even possible? Could he even do it with everything in his power?
- [31:10]
B
I think the blockade is putting enough. We don't know, to be honest with you. Everybody that says whatever they say, nobody really knows what's going on because unless if you have intel on the inside. In those conversations with Iran to see how they're managing, we're seeing what's going on in the climate with the Iranian people. They're not happy, they're paying a price, but the government's not going to be able to. They don't sit there and worry about like, we have midterms in America. Iran doesn't have no midterms. They don't give a shit about no midterms. So they have a lot more leeway of saying, no, we'll go a little. They know exactly the pressure points of what's going on here with the US you're on to me. They got to get it done by June 14th and they'll be fine pre World Cup. If it goes past that, it's going to be a very nasty 2026, second half of the year. If it goes past June 14th, we'll see. June 14th is what I've been saying, June 14th for a while. June 14th is five weeks from now, give or take something like that, five weeks from now. Let's get to the next story. Next story I want to talk about is, in regard to business story to get into is I watched this story by the CEO of Anthropic. Rob, if you want to pull this up, the CEO of Anthropic is being interviewed and he's explaining what's going to happen with coders. Can you go back to it to see where the tweet was? Rob can go, yeah. Anthropic CEO says 100% of AI will be written AI code will be written by AI less than a year from now. So this is Anthropic CEO Rob, go ahead. I think coding is going away first or coding is being done by the AI models first. And then the broader task of software engineering will take longer. But I think that is doing that end to end. I think that is going to happen as well, I would say. But again, the elements of design or making something that's useful to users, or knowing what the demand is, or managing teams of AI models. Like, you know, those things may still be present. Again, like there's this comparative advantage is surprisingly powerful. Right. Even if you're only doing like, you know, 5% of the task, like, you know, that 5% gets super amplified and levered because it's like you're only doing 5% of the task. The AI does the other 95%. And so you become, you know, 20, 20 times more productive again. At some point you get to 99%. 99. And then it becomes harder. But I think there's surprisingly much in that sort of, you know, in that zone of comparative advantage. But I would really think about the thing, the things that are human centered, like, I think there's something to that. I think there's something to kind of
- [33:50]
A
the physical world or things that mix together.
- [33:54]
B
Human centered, the physical world, one of those two. And analytical skills that somehow tie them together, you know, similar to the.
- [34:04]
A
So a bunch happened, I mean, a bunch happened with this statement. And from May 4th, 5th and 6th, I'd like to unpack that if I could, pat. So on May 4, anthropic, Dario, right there, Amodi announced $1.5 billion joint venture with Blackstone and Goldman Sachs. And they said, we're going to help AI do the work. So that's point one. Point two. The multiple outlets say that Anthropic has moved past OpenAI. Anthropic is 40% of US AI spending enterprise. AI spending. OpenAI has slipped down to 27% market share from 50.
- [34:46]
B
So now Anthropic, well, he's saying Anthra, he's saying OpenAI is going to get crushed in five years. He doesn't think they're going to be in business on trajectory.
- [34:54]
D
Yeah, it's pacing to be dead.
- [34:56]
A
Yep. And watch this. I don't Disagree. Then on May 5, Goldman Sachs CIO Marco Agenti was with Jamie Dimon and Dario Modi at an invitation only confab. They're on stage together talking about how this is going to work to replace a lot of white collar jobs and a lot of coders. The next morning, Brian Armstrong announced that Coinbase would be removing 700 people, mainly in coding. And so basically, here's what you saw when you saw Jamie Dimon on stage with Dario Modi. You didn't see the future of AI. You saw a customer and a vendor shaking hands on a mammoth deal. Do you follow that, Pat? Everybody said, oh, it's all About AI in the future. No, you saw it. There it is right there. There's the picture. What you saw was a deal. They've gone from talking about the future of AI to now you're looking at the operational implementation of it in major banks at scale. And that's what we saw and that's what I wanted to unpack. It's no longer about statements. It's $1.5 billion deal where now major banks are in fact eliminating low level jobs.
- [36:06]
C
Jeff, I think that, you know what he said, the CEO said is really the important point is that it's, it will replace jobs, but people who learn to use AI and leverage its capability, you know, you become the 5% worker and you get the 95% productivity, you know, a 20 times productivity boost. For anybody who's listening here, this is the message. The message here is you need to learn AI, you need to leverage AI, because like Tom is saying, it's happening now and it's going to take some time to ramp up. It won't be tomorrow, but over time the people who are going to succeed in this economy are people who know how to leverage the technology, which is true in any economic cycle that we've been through in history. People who adopt the technology as it becomes more and more productive end up succeeding the best.
- [36:53]
D
Yeah, I think he's exaggerating a little bit with the 12 month thing because I don't think we're anywhere close to not needing software developers anymore.
- [37:00]
B
You think he's exaggerating?
- [37:01]
D
Yeah.
- [37:02]
B
You all think he's exaggerating?
- [37:03]
A
I think he's exaggerating a little bit because he's also sitting on stage, you know, this customer vendor relationship I talked about. He also wants to go public and he's going to need Goldman and JP Morgan because the size of these companies going out public, no one investment bank can do.
- [37:18]
B
Oh no, no. They're saying it could be. There's some people are saying this is a 8 billion to trillion dollar valuation company.
- [37:23]
D
Yeah.
- [37:24]
A
Guess what? This would take everybody on Wall street, including Bear Stearns and they've been dead for 20 years to be able to do it, to move that much paper.
- [37:32]
B
Right. Makes sense, Brandon?
- [37:33]
D
Yeah, no, but I mean it makes all sense in the world for him to say that. It's a great marketing pitch, but I don't think we're anywhere close to not needing software developers because you know, it's a disaster when you have AI just purely writing code. So you need some human elements of it. Like maybe it, it'll take two people but it used to take 30 people to do and you could do it much faster which is super productive. And that's why Elon says that we're going to have a hyper charged economic growth cycle. But yeah, I don't think we're anywhere close to that happening because you know, I hear people say things about software developers all the time. I see people who do develop software working with AI saying it, you know, it still gives them a hard time with a lot of stuff, but that's super helpful. But most coders do use AI to write code.
- [38:10]
C
Now they're still in the testing phase. That's what they're doing. This is a real world testing phase to see how it works in outside of the sandbox. Right? That's what they're doing. They're making these deals to, to start testing these applications in real world settings. So they're going to learn a lot along the way. But there's a process there that's going to take a lot longer than 12 months. Be sure about that.
- [38:31]
D
People should start thinking about different things with college though because I mean people have been hearing STEM for the last 10 years but it seems like a lot of the STEM stuff might be most threatened by AI.
- [38:40]
A
Well, entry maybe, entry maybe. But somebody has to be the AI master, right? I'm the AI master of the agent that I'm building and I spent 20 hours this past weekend working on security layers to protect credentials because I see what's happening in the future and I partner with our CTO on this and so that doesn't get built without me. I know what I want it to do in terms of chores, efficiency, research and stuff like that. But I'm still me driving my job but it's going to help me do things faster. And now I'm adding a security layer. You wouldn't going to go willy nilly and just follow a YouTube video that tells you how to get a Linux server server on Amazon EC2 and put open cloud on it.
- [39:20]
B
But let me tell you what CZ said yesterday. I said, you have, you guys have 250 to 300 million users? He says yes. I said what's the vision of the company? He says, well, the current CEO says he wants to 10x that in the next five years. I said, so in the next five years you're guesstimating to have two and a half billion to three billion users? He says yes. I said, what's the long term vision? He says, well, long term vision we're going to have, you know, 100x what we have today. I said, what do you mean, 100x? There's only 8,9 billion people living in the world. He says, yeah, but you're going to understand what's going to happen. Everyone. People are going to have AI agents that are working for them. And all of those are going to need to be their own accounts. Because what you're going to know in one day, you have a hundred, two hundred, five hundred AI agents working to create wealth for you. They're managing your finances, they're making decisions for you. This is, this is going into a space. You know, there's three things that disrupted the game in a big way. One was Internet, two was blockchain, three is AI. And with AI, the speed is a much faster speed. So if the average person is watching is saying, man, I have no clue what you guys just talked about. Look, you know what's the most revealing thing about the report about the 11,900 and something people that did the survey? Yeah. Do you know what percentage were business owners? 35% of the people that did the surveys. You know what's crazy about that number of 35% being business owners? You know, because when you do 25, it's like, well, you know, the people that are going to go get the $25 not going to be the business owner. It's going to be the guy that needs a $25 gift card. So imagine the people that did the survey for $25, 35% are business owners. They're watching this. What are they thinking about? Here's the reality of it. You better find a way to get into it because your competitors will. And if you have kids, if you want to find a way for your kids to be having an edge competing, find a way to get them to play with learning how to code. It'll be a massive advantage for them long term. For me, a bigger part of this is how can we set up our kids? Of course we got to lead from the front, but how can we set them up? Because this is just a space they're going to be competing in. And if you go to a job and they ask you, have you ever coded before? No, never. Versus you go to a job interview no matter what you're hiring for, no matter what you're applying for, what have you ever coded? Oh, I've been coding for many, many years. I learned how to do it and I use this and I use that. And then you start speaking a language in the interview. The other person wait A minute. This person is also versatile. Hey, we were going to make this kind of an offer to you. I want this guy to show me what you build. Can you talk to our cto? Yeah, I built this. You did this all yourself? Yes, I did. It's going to be an. It's going to be a differentiator for them to be a little bit more competitive in a marketplace. Now let's go to the next story. The next story is with Jamie Dimon. Jamie Dimon comes out and says the following. He says he wants companies to get robbed. Is this a clip of what he says?
- [42:05]
E
Yes, sir.
- [42:06]
B
Okay, so here's what he has to say about companies to get rid of managers who do not do this. Go ahead.
- [42:12]
F
I really believe this bureaucracy, complacency and arrogance will take down a company. Bureaucracy is like the petri dish of politics and everything else. And there are. And by. You could be a small company and have it. You could be a big company and have it. You can have it in your branch. You cannot have the other branch. And it's always the manager, stupid. I mean, almost always. The way you fight it is with me, all the information is shared beforehand. So, you know, there's no secret. I remember going to companies and you know, this wouldn't share that part of the company if it isn't shared properly. I can't. I generally just cancel the meeting. You know, if someone comes in and says, you know, Nikolai wants X and I don't believe that's right, I say, well, why did you wait for this meeting to do that? Go talk to him. Everything, no matter how small, get on the road. Go, go see clients. And clients are a gift because, you know, look, they're, they're demanding. They should be. But they also tell you in our case, what our competitors are doing better, why we didn't get something. If we don't do this in that country, you're not going to give us a big piece of business because how important that is for you and I uniquely know it might cost $30 million to build a payment system to go up to a country. But it's easy to say, well, we're going to do it now. I just found out why the staff isn't doing it. So when you have a meeting, people often don't know who's running it. That's a mistake. When you have a meeting and someone ends the meeting by saying, that was a great meeting, we'll pick it up again next week, it's usually a bad meeting. The meeting should end with, okay, David, you're going to do X, talk to these people. Not hierarchical. It says you could, you know, cut across the company. You talk to hr, you know, consumers got the most people. This change in the program is going to affect, you know, their branches. Talk about, come back, make a recommendation.
- [43:53]
B
Pause. I have a lot of thoughts on this. I have a lot of thoughts on this, Tom. I'll come to you first. Go for it.
- [43:58]
A
Well, I love Jamie Dimon and I love this. This is sort of the onstage mellow version of Jamie. There's the famous bootleg recording of him, you know, flipping out on Return to Work and zoom meetings, and you're not paying attention and you're on your phone. This is the common sense Jamie. And my favorite part of what he just said, my favorite part is clients are a gift. They tell you. Not clients are a gift because they run your business. Not clients are a gift, they bring you revenue. Not clients are a gift because, you know, they, they, they give you some sort of ratification. No, he said they're a gift because they tell you where you didn't win. They tell you what the competitor's doing. And this says that this guy's in touch and he says, get on the road. Get out. Get on the road. Guess what? Work from home doesn't do that. AI doesn't do that. It's get out. And I, I love this. And by the way, if you've never don't search for it now, wait till the end of podcast, but go find the bootleg tape of Return to Office and Jamie Dimon and paying attention. It's a little bit of profanity in there, but it great lesson in leadership, Jeff.
- [45:04]
C
I mean, it's kind of rich coming from a top banker because next to maybe the Department of Motor Vehicles, banks are just famous bureaucracies that they're built on bureaucracy for a lot of good, legitimate reasons. So maybe you take it as, you know, Jamie Dimon now saying that bureaucracy is bad, or at least it's a hindrance to operating a bank in the way that needs to be operated. You have to wonder, does something change? Because over the last 20 years, the banking system in particular, the banking sector in particular has gone, you know, 2000 and tens in particular became more and more bureaucratic. So maybe they're starting to loosen the reins a little bit. Understanding that it is trying to micromanage everything has held them back over the last, really since 2008. The banking sector changed dramatically in 2008. Before then, it was sort of like what he was talking about people just did things, got together in small meetings. We have a common, common task to perform. We figure out who's going to do what and then we move on and do it. After 2008, for understandable reasons, there were just layers and layers of management bureaucracy, committees and everything else. So you wonder if maybe the tide is shifting a little bit in the banking sector, where it's starting to loosen up and maybe being loosened up because he can see that there is a competition element to it. Just what he's talking about with his customers, what are we doing wrong? And the customers these days are not just other banks. The cartel is breaking down. Because for the longest time, money flow, money intermediation and credit was just. Especially the largest banks, they got bigger, bigger, bigger, smaller number of them. Now you've got hedge funds, you've got private credit, you've got shadow banks, you've got decentralized finance. Seeing that down the road, he's got to compete with a whole bunch of different people. I wonder if he starts to see the writing on the wall here that this is, this is a big deal.
- [46:48]
B
I think, I think, listen, no matter what, when Jamie talks, people listen because it's Jamie Dimon. So he carries that weight. And he's run the biggest bank with 318,000 employees. Just 65,000 engineers. Engineers alone, they have 65,000 of them. So imagine how many engineers you have in your company. They got 65,000 engineers working for Chase. So massive behemoth. I think they transact around 7 to 10 trillion dollars a day is what they do. 7 trillion dollars a day. But here's a part of it when I'm listening to Jamie, Tom. You know what I think about Tom? I'm thinking he's in the legacy mode. Because as time's coming up and he's moving on and he wants. He has probably. He's probably coming out of a meeting or a conference call. Because sometimes when you're being interviewed, what people don't realize is you're going to give the answer of whatever experience is fresh in your mind of what happened last 24 hours, generally the last six hours. I don't know if that makes sense. So you just came from a crisis or something you have to overcome or a dumb meeting or something that happened. So you're really talking about that meeting than what was on your mind pre that meeting taking place. I'm going to talk about these three things. Boom, you shift, you're talking about this experience. I will tell you a couple things. Though, when you're talking about this is when you're smaller and you're coming up, if you don't get ahead and control the manipulation, the gamification, and you don't teach people to deal direct, it's going to be harder for you to fix it when the company gets bigger. It's got to be addressed when the company is small. At a call the other day with a guy, he says, one of our clients, he says, I've had this person with my company for nine years. She's been here from day one. And you can tell he's nervous talking about her because he needs to fire her. But he doesn't know how to fire her because his COO is sitting right next to him explaining what this girl is doing and how much chaos this person has created in this construction company. And I said, does she know your expectation of how she needs to be in a company? Do you get. What do you mean by that? How clear are you about what things you're not willing to tolerate, or do you avoid the conflict? There's a great book out there called Five Temptations of a CEO. If you've never read it, I mean, I don't know how many thousands of copies I've sold for this guy. Patrick Lencioni, if you're a CEO, do yourself a favor and go buy this book, Five Temptations of a CEO. You'll see you're dealing with one of these five temptations. And he was. Rob, can you pull up what the five temptations are just on an article? Yeah, just type in what are the five temptations? And he breaks it down. Go to images that come up right there. Status over results. Okay. Oh, my God. My status. Let me tell you how important I am, right? Focus on career development. And we have that in our company as well. We have it everywhere. Popularity over accountability. I want to be liked. I want people to like me. Certainty over clarity, right? And then harmony over productive conflicts. You need conflict. And last but not least, invulnerability over trust. Like, hey, every once in a while, we have to, you know, be willing to talk about areas that we need to improve to develop trust. And then if you don't do that, what ends up happening is triangulation. Departments compete with departments, and they find ways to throw them under the bus. And they'll say, well, let me tell you, that guy got a higher score and this guy got a this, and that guy got a this. Vs guys, cut it out. Everybody's got to get better. One of the things we did the last two years. Because I hate company conflicts, corporate, I hate the politics. I cannot stand it. And sometimes when you bring people that have never worked in startups, they don't know anything different. All they know is Cor. We had a guy that used to work with us many years ago. He was one of our C suite executives who managed the finances. I won't get any more specific than this, but I remember I was sizing up a handful of our guys to see who was going to replace me to be the president. And I held a meeting one time and I went to Dallas and one by one by one, I asked everybody, I said, who do you think should replace me and be the president? And I was kind of watching to see what people were going to say and who was going to be recognizing themselves. And I think it's got to be me and I think it's got to be him and I think it's got to be this and I think it's got to be there. And I said, who do you not think is ready to be a president? And one of them kept targeting one person. And that one person was Merle. Okay? Because to me, she was the one that wanted the job, was willing to do the job, and she was hard working and I trusted her. And so when the decision was made, the other guy went. And one by one by one, I kept seeing people being in his office. Hey, let's do one on one. And he's doing one on ones with all these people in his office. Like, why are you doing all these one on ones in your office? And it's one on ones. It's not like them and the manager. So imagine like, let's just say Tom reports to Jeff, but I don't have a meeting with Jeff. I'm just having a meeting with Tom. And I said, hey, we're hearing that Jeff is doing xyz. Have you had that experience? Well, I heard it from somebody as well. Oh, really? Tell me more, tell me more. And then they go into this mode. And then I'm like, hey, are you doing this? No, they're coming to me. So you're not setting it up?
- [51:49]
A
No.
- [51:49]
B
Handful of the employee came and said, is there a reason why this guy keeps calling us into the office to have these types of meetings? I said, so he is prompting. Yeah, but that he's not hr, but he's from. Yes. Why is he getting ahead of it and undermining moral Collecting information?
- [52:03]
A
He's going to drip out later.
- [52:05]
B
Let me tell you, it was so Disruptive. So what he's talking about caused us to create higher metrics. We created higher metrics on a calibration that we do for every single one of our employees based on five different metrics that we go through. And we score 100% of our employees every quarter based on these five metrics. Effort, attitude, leadership, innovation and results. And then quarterly, we also send a 10 questionnaire to every manager and every employee in the company. You know what the questionnaire is about? It's about how well of a job is your manager doing with career planning. How well of a job as a manager doing talking to you about what your long term plan is going to be five, ten years from now. And they score it and it comes out and managers get a score and departments get a score and business units get a score. So now we sit there and we're like, wait a minute, you don't spend a lot of time to career planning with your guys. So then the managers, when this questionnaire went out, guess what? The managers are saying, oh shit, I better start talking to you about your career, Jeff. Hey, I care about your career. What do you want to do long term here? Right? And then employees are like, oh, this is the first time this guy's ever come to me and asked me about. So everybody was. And by the way, if you're, if you're a small business owner wanting to find out the software we have, it's a SaaS software that a lot of our small business owners are taking advantage. Go to the bottom of it. Fill out your information@highermetrics.com highermetrics.com Most people don't even know we've been running this business, changing a lot of people's lives with their companies to get it more efficient. You get more out of your employees, it eliminates politics. People know when to get a promotion. People know when they're going to get a raise. People know what to expect. People know the recognition. It becomes very clear and very honest. So I love the fact that Jamie said this. I thought it was a great point he made and I hope more smaller business owners get ahead of it instead of being afraid of having this type of a conversation. So let's get to the next story. The next story I want to go to. Brandon, I'm coming to you first. Starbucks CEO Brian Nicole, whom we love, were very complimentary of, he had a rough week after he made this comment about finding ways to improve the $9 coffee experience at Starbucks. Some people said at least he's being honest. Some people Said this is a little bit crazy to talk like that, especially at a time where people are dealing with inflation, gas prices. Here's the CEO of Starbucks, Brian Nicholl. Go ahead, Rob.
- [54:22]
A
In some cases, you know, a nine dollar experience does feel like you're splurging. And then what that means is we have to make it worthwhile.
- [54:30]
B
Right?
- [54:30]
C
We've heard so much this year about
- [54:31]
A
the K shaped economy fortunes for some
- [54:33]
C
Americans very different than for others. Is that not really something that's coming
- [54:37]
A
up in your sales? You know, we're not seeing that in our business. What we're seeing is people, you know, they want to have a special experience. And regardless of what your income level is, in some cases, you know, a $9 experience does feel like you're splurging. And then what that means is we have to make it worth worthwhile.
- [54:57]
C
Right.
- [54:58]
A
And then in other cases, people believe, well, this is a really affordable premium experience, because they're saying like, well, it's less than $10 and I get a really premium experience. So regardless of where you're stationed in those income cohorts, we want to make that experience worth your while. And what we know is what's definitely something that drives that value is to be able to have a great seat, have a great moment of connection with barista Brandon.
- [55:24]
B
Thoughts?
- [55:25]
D
Yeah. So I think I'm gonna surprise you here. So I, I mean, I think this guy's a beast. I think he crushed it at Chipotle. I think he's doing the right thing here. And I, you know, the people are gonna get mad because they have the impression maybe that everybody is a Starbucks person. But no, it's not the case. It's probably 20% of the population that are Starbucks people. And then, you know, everybody's a Dunkin Donuts person maybe. So the most money comes from that upper echelon of people that the top 20% of income. So people who could afford $9, that's their target customer. They're not targeting the people who are, you know, living paycheck to paycheck. And I think that's a smart move. And I think, you know, when you talked about experience like something as simple as not having long line waits like that, that was the biggest thing that would turn me up from Starbucks is like, you, bad service, you know, rudom baristas, long waiting in line, dirty tables, dirty seating, whatever. So if you get that stuff squared away, if you get the experience faster, more efficient, then people, you know, in that top 20% won't mind paying $9. And that's who they should be concerned about. So, yeah, people who are outraged about that, I think they don't understand who Starbucks ICP is.
- [56:28]
B
Tom, do you agree with them?
- [56:29]
A
I agree in principle. I think what happened here with Brian Niccol is number one. You know, everybody's looking for headlines, and this was the Wall Street Journal doing their. Their AM mini pod or something, something like that. I think it was where this was covered. And he was Talking about a $9 experience making it worthwhile. So he's talking about, I have a duty to deliver to my customer. You spend $9 or $3. And he used $9 in his example. I have the duty to deliver to you something great, deliver a product, deliver with the experience, deliver with. Everything's on there. That's what I have a duty to do. And instead, people take it and warp it, and they use the $9 to create clicks and a headline. Because you know what? By and large, the Media thinks that CEOs are bad. You know, I could go out one morning and say, good morning, and people say, people are dying in Iran. And Tom says, it's a good morning. Oh, my gosh, they'll spin anything. And so I think they've latched onto this to make it bigger than what it is. This was a CEO saying, I need to deliver on experience for whatever price you pay. And in the case of $9, that may feel like a luxury to you. It may feel like you're splurging. And if it does, I don't want you to feel ripped off. I have to feel like you felt like you got something out of it. And so there's a little part of me, I'm not defending Starbucks particularly. What I'm defending is the fact you have a CEO goes on a mini pod like that and you say things and words get twisted and they make little headlines. And that part of it I find is kind of disgusting.
- [57:56]
C
Jeff, I think. No, I mean, Tom, you're exactly right. What he was saying is, look, you pay $9, you gotta give your value, otherwise you're not gonna come back. I think the reason why people are having fun with it is because you don't think $9 value from Starbucks, given everybody's experience at Starbucks. But he's exactly right. And the reason why this is coming up, I think is even more important. They talk about the K shaped economy, but the K shaped economy is now starting to impact higher income Americans. Look at Walmart. Walmart has had a fantastic year. And the reason they've had a fantastic year is because $100,000 plus income earners are now shopping at Walmart. Dollar General is remodeling a ton of their stores to cater to higher income shoppers. So what basically the CEO of Starbucks is saying is this economy's tough and we gotta start delivering value over and above what we thought we were delivering before. So he's recognizing the economic climate and saying we need to do something about it.
- [58:49]
B
And by the way, let me tell you, I saw a Walmart commercial yesterday in one of the games I was watching, we had a couple friends over and the commercial showed how quickly they're delivering. Faster than Amazon in an hour, two hours. You order something, it shows up. Why? Because there's a Walmart within a 10 mile radius of your house. So they're able to do things. So Amazon is, may have a. They have how many warehouses in America? If you think about it, every store to them is what? Every store to them is a warehouse. Every store for them is a place where you can go. Amazon doesn't have as many factories as they do. Right. So you have all these different. Even though it says logistic facilities for Amazon, Amazon's got 600 of them and very 1100 fulfillments. How many stores does Walmart have in America? It's a lot of them.
- [59:31]
D
Thousands.
- [59:31]
B
It's thousands, yeah. And so they have an edge. But going back to what Brian Nichols said, 4,611 retail units in America. Think about that. Super Centers, 3500 Neighborhood Market 673 discount. Walmart realized what their competition was and they rebranded themselves. Very good point there, Jeff. But let me go back to Starbucks. I want to know what is the profile of a Starbucks customer? I just pulled it up. So the average customer makes 60 $250,000 a year. Okay. For Starbucks. And if you go Even tighter, it's 80 to $100,000. The average person that goes to Starbucks. Okay. Estimated customer serves 4 to 5 million customers every day in US alone. 90 to 100 million customer visits per week worldwide. They have 35 and a half million active rewards members in America. An all time high. 35 and a half. That's a. Never had. Did you think there was going to be 35 and a half million? That's. That's 10% of America.
- [60:31]
D
That's insane.
- [60:32]
B
That's insane. 35 and a half million. That's part of the rewards. The rewards members drive nearly 60% of all of US company operated revenue. Crazy. Those loyalty members spend $13 billion in America in 2025 alone. Okay. Loyalty members visit Starbucks 5.6 times more frequently than normal customers. About 71% of Starbucks app users visit at least once a week. Roughly 21% of customers return within three days. Wow. Crazy. Revenue annually 2025. $37 billion. So you're not going to get to a point that without knowing who your customer is targeting it. So he is saying that $9. I got to find a way to get the experience to be better. And if there's a guy that can figure it out, it's this guy. He took Chipotle from 7 billion to 71 billion. They know who they hired. This is the guy that knows how to work this business, his expertise. Chipotle order became on the app. You would make the bowl in the app and you'd go pick it up. He knows that business. And Starbucks knew if we got 35.5 million active reward members in America, let's bring the best guy that knows how to do this. So I'm pro Brian Nicholl. And what do you say at the end of it? You know, I endorse this message or whatever. I endorse Brian Nichol. I'm a big fan of what he's doing.
- [61:50]
C
Well, this is being honest, right? I mean, come on, Are you kidding me?
- [61:53]
F
Exactly.
- [61:54]
C
What else do you want?
- [61:55]
B
You want me to lie to you?
- [61:56]
F
No.
- [61:57]
B
Yeah. This is the price.
- [61:58]
C
Yeah.
- [61:58]
B
You know, I think we need more. And by the way, same with Jamie. Jamie's kind of telling you, here's where we're at. So kudos to Brian Nicol, and I think the 35 and a half million people in Starbucks, they're probably going to keep going back and doing business with those guys. Let's go to the next one. Next story I want to get into is a. Well, I got a couple stories I can go to. Let me see which one I want to go to first. Let's go to the Nvidia story. Very weird. Let me tell you what Nvidia on the Pulte Group, which we had on the podcast here before, he's great at what he does. But the Pulte Group and Nvidia had a conversation, and apparently they're starting a startup. They're helping the startup put many data centers on homes. So let me say this one more time. So imagine you have a house, and you're buying a house, and Nvidia and Pulte Group is saying, hey, let us build a small data center on top of your house. Wait, what? Yes. Is this real? Apparently it is. Span, a California based startup has developed a small fractional data center or nodes called the XFRA units. The idea is to take advantage of unused electrical capacity on local grids which dispense smart panels can pinpoint Nvidia GPUs are powering the units and the Pulte Group is testing the system in a handful of communities. Tom, your thoughts on this story?
- [63:11]
A
Well, you know what's really interesting is, you know, you started with homes and as we started getting things like I'll say something low voltage wiring. What is low voltage wiring? I don't understand that. Guess what? That was fiber and stuff that were in your walls. So suddenly Pulte Group and others were adding that to your home and so you could do it for alarms. They were pre wiring by windows and things like this so that when you called ADP and have some in there, it's done. So home building has tried to follow the waves of services that people want to put into homes.
- [63:43]
B
Right.
- [63:43]
A
You don't find, you know, coax going room to room anymore because WI fi powers the whole place. You find things coming up to like a closet where everything can be secured in there. And what I think what they're doing here is they are making it possible to put those nodes up right on the house. And now you say to your house, hey, your house is AI ready. If you're going to have a small LMS or you're going to have services or maybe you're working from home or you have a home office, you're not going to have all this available to you. And we're testing this and we're also testing the energy part of it. So I think it's, I think it's great. I think it's Pulte riding the wave and trying to stay in front of the kind of things that people are going to want on their, on their new house. It's like when you got into Microsoft, it never worked very well. Microsoft will hate that I said that. Remember Microsoft first put their stuff in the dashboard. What was it, Ford or G? I think it was Ford.
- [64:37]
C
Ford.
- [64:38]
A
Microsoft put the thing in the dashboard and it didn't really work well. And then later, you know, CarPlay on Apple. As long as CarPlay could work on your dashboard, it was great because you had CarPlay on your phone and whatever you had on your phone, suddenly on your dashboard, it was the same thing. Pat is when the automakers made it easy for us to drop our phone into the center console where there was an inductive charger There you didn't even need a cable and it could talk to your car. This is Pulte doing the same thing, riding tomorrow's wave to give you what you want in your house. So you buy a new house and then you have to say, wow, now I got to spend 10 grand wiring and doing all this stuff. Nope, you can buy it. And thanks to Nvidia, it's right here.
- [65:15]
B
Jeff?
- [65:15]
C
Yeah, I think, I mean there's a couple of things here. One is electricity, trying to find spare electricity and capacity rather than having to build new capacity, which is expensive and it's leading to all sorts of problems. So they're saying, look, there's spare energy in people's houses, let's take advantage of it. But the bigger idea here, looking in the future, I mean we're talking about AI data centers and everything else. I forget who it was just recently said there's going to be a market for compute. Rob. Was it Goldman Sachs? There's going to be a market for computing power and computing, which is
- [65:52]
D
far
- [65:52]
C
reaching idea envisioning what the future.
- [65:55]
B
Larry Fink.
- [65:56]
C
Yeah, Larry, that's okay. BlackRock. So a market for computer and in order to achieve a market for compute, you're going to need a ton of capacity. You need a ton of a lot of players. And so they're going to wire everybody in and so you have computing capacity all over the system.
- [66:11]
B
To the average person, what does this mean? So the undergoing and unprecedented explosive growth plays driven almost entirely by an demand for AI training and reference. What does this mean to the average person?
- [66:21]
A
Well, I can sum it up quickly. Airbnb allows me to rent out a room in my house overnight to someone as long as I can trust that it's not a crazy person. Uber allows me to use my car to drive other people around. What if I could Airbnb certain computing power or energy that was at my house that the part that I was not doing, I just set it up Airbnb and I let it go out to a market and then I get paid for that excess that gets used by someone.
- [66:47]
C
Yeah. Or Amazon says, look, I have a service that requires a lot of computation power and it's up to me to find out where this computing power would be all throughout the the system. Then you're engineering essentially tons of efficiencies because Amazon can be as a centerpiece of the computing market and everybody competing with Amazon.
- [67:04]
A
Could I borrow your CPU while you
- [67:06]
C
sleep or I'm going to buy it from you. I'm going to rent it from you. So if you have it already installed in your home, you're actually making money off of the grid.
- [67:12]
D
Yeah. So first things first. Pulte Group worry about building houses before you start doing all the complicated stuff, because we have 10 million short that we're not up to speed with. So want to hear about that before and start building AI data centers on top of houses. But when it comes to the shortage in computing power makes you think of the shale boom and how bad of a situation we were in before we learned how to frack for oil. Because you know what was, we were getting up to like $5 from gas around that time. Right. Like $100 a barrel for oil. And the shale boom really saved us in a huge way with like America became the biggest producer of oil because of that. So I mean, people really overlooked that in terms of like energy demand and like how vulnerable of a situation we were in, how expensive energy was at that time. So I just a guess, just a prediction, but I don't think we're doing this in the optimal way. I think it's like a really expensive, messy way that we're looking for and building computing power right now. So I think there's going to be some type of innovation that makes it, you know, easier, cheaper and more abundant because it's not sustainable at this way they're trying to do it right now.
- [68:14]
A
Well, I disagree, actually. Can I just.
- [68:16]
D
Yeah, tell me more.
- [68:17]
A
You know, I respect you, but I'm
- [68:18]
D
going to just be here, please.
- [68:19]
A
What do people do with solar in certain places in America? You can have a net meter that if you're, if you're at work, let's say, let's say it's you, and let's say you own a small house that maybe someone like JP Morgan bought you or something. And so you take that small house and you have some solar grid and you go to work and during the day it's making more energy than you use. And you have a Tesla battery power wall in your garage. It gets filled up, but then the excess, what does it do? It goes out to the grid. And if you're in certain jurisdictions, you could have what's called the net meter, where you're actually getting paid for the little kilowatts that you're putting to the grid because you're at work, your air conditioning is turned up to 80 degrees on your house, no one's home, and yet your roof is putting energy into the grid and you're getting paid for it. How is this any different I mean,
- [69:05]
D
yeah, I used to sell solar, so, I mean, the government had to subsidize it for a reason because, you know, they gave you a 30% tax credit because it's not really that efficient. When you boil it down, especially if you're in certain areas, like if you have a southern facing roof and have sunlight most of the day, then it's good. But if you're in the north and it's not efficient, if you're in a place where there's not sunlight for more than a couple hours a day, it's not efficient. So, I mean, it could work, but I don't think the cost versus benefit is quite there yet. Shelling out this amount of money just for computing power, that's going to be exponential in demand.
- [69:34]
C
Brandon there's two major constraints here. One is hardware, which, I mean, the more efficient model is to build these gigantic data centers. But the other is energy. What they're basically saying is we're running up against hard limits on energy, so we got to find it somewhere. What they're saying is there's spare energy in people's houses, so let's unlock that untapped potential and use that to help
- [69:53]
B
cheapen the cost of. You'd be open to it if they came to you?
- [69:55]
C
Absolutely.
- [69:56]
B
You would be as well, Tom?
- [69:57]
A
Yes, I would.
- [69:57]
B
Okay. Rob, would you be open to it?
- [70:01]
A
I'd have to look more into the cost of it. But if it's not going to cost me anything, it's going to be inside of my own.
- [70:06]
B
They're going to give you free Internet. They're going to give you, they're going to give you. Your electricity prices are going to go down and they're just going to be using some of the Power Power 25
- [70:13]
A
gift card of my.
- [70:15]
B
What did the poll say? You ran a poll. What did the audience say with the poll?
- [70:17]
A
75% said no.
- [70:19]
B
7. What was the question? Can you pull up the question?
- [70:21]
A
Would you allow Nvidia to install a mini data center inside of your home? 25. Yes, 75.
- [70:27]
B
I'm interested to see why.
- [70:29]
C
No.
- [70:29]
B
Yeah, can you put in the comment section, audience, if you could, why did you say no? Why wouldn't you do it? Is it. Do you think about it as a. They're invading your privacy?
- [70:38]
A
I think it's probably privacy surveillance. You know, one man's privacy becomes a government surveillance. Right. And Brandon, you know, you think entrepreneurially, you work with clients that are entrepreneurs and I kind of feel like you were like, wow, I don't Know if this will ever work. I won't work in the, in the north and stuff. I think. Where do we start? Innovation, where we have a power crisis. I think this is kind of a good way to start that, don't you think?
- [71:03]
D
I do. I just get frustrated with when it comes to energy because I feel like energy has been thwarted by the powers that be. Things like where Elon Musk says, yeah, we just need 100 by 100 miles in the desert somewhere that there's sun all day and we'd have enough energy to power the entire country.
- [71:17]
C
Can you imagine if we had nuclear plants?
- [71:18]
F
Right.
- [71:19]
D
That those have been thwarted by lobbyists for the last 30 years? I get frustrated when it comes to energy because it has been thwarted by whether it's big oil or the solar companies or the clean energy companies. I don't know exactly why. I could imagine why. Because if you control the energy, you control those society. But that's why I, you know, I don't love this particular idea because I don't think it's, you know, the best way to do it. I think there's a lot of better ways to have infinite energy that we've thwarted over the years.
- [71:46]
B
Yeah. I mean, if you look at some, some of the comments AI mass surveillance. Some of it is health.
- [71:50]
A
Home radiation.
- [71:51]
B
Some of it is radiation. Yeah, these are valid issues. Health, Privacy. Privacy. Privacy. Okay, great, great. Maybe they're going to have to find a way to overcome this. And if it becomes a norm and all of a sudden people start saying, hey man, it's not even electricity, it's not even this. They actually send me a $580 check every month. What? Yeah, they actually send me 300. This could turn into a very different era. Like, you know, the whole UBI thing. Companies can have a form of ubi.
- [72:15]
C
Absolutely.
- [72:16]
B
Because think about companies start having a form of UBI and one of the bigger reasons why Binance blew up is because they decided to say we're going to do free. Everybody else was charging fears. They're like, no, we'll do it for free. And that put out a lot of people out of business. So there's going to be some people creatively that may come up with ideas that others are not thinking about. Let's go to California. With California. There's a couple stories I want to get into. Okay. One by one by one we can get into it. We have to get into the game. Stop. And the ebay story, Rob, for whatever reason, I want to get into that because that was the strangest thing I saw in a long time with a guy saying that we're going to find $56 billion, how we're going to find it, you got to see that. But let's first go to California. So with California, which story do we want to go to first? Let me see this. Okay, let's go to. Man, that's a nasty one. I don't want to go into that one. You want to go into the fire one, Tom, you want to go into oil. You want to go into the California oil one? Let's go into the California oil story. What page is that on? There it is. Okay. Oil Titans blast. Gavin Newsom over California's oil and energy crisis. Okay, energy crisis. And by the way, there's a clip on the debate about this as well. We don't need to get into that first, Robbie. You can go into what you have first, and then we'll get into the California was. Oil industry tore into the Democratic leadership on Monday after the last oil tanker arrived in the state carrying fuel from the Middle East. Not that the state will face its real test of how to replace 200,000 barrels of oil a day as Iran restricts the passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz and its ongoing war with the US Last year, based on the state data, California refineries sourced around 30% of foreign crude oil from the Persian Gulf. Unless action is taking, gas prices could spike even more. Experts have warned. Tom, thoughts on this?
- [73:56]
A
So. Well, first of all, if you're going to run around and say, well, I'm governor of the, you know, fourth largest, fifth largest, you know, economy in the world, okay, and you're going to call yourself a country, okay, Prime Minister, who's your secretary of energy, and what are you doing for your citizens? And Gavin Newsom, you've made policies that cause people to leave. And now that is Iraqi oil, I believe, that is coming on tankers all the way. By the way, go take a look at a map. The tanker has to leave Iraq. Go all the way over here, past Hong Kong, pull over to Macau, gamble a little bit, go past the Hawaiian Islands, get yourself a Mai Tai. And finally, the oil in a tanker gets to Southern California when there are small rigs off the coast of Santa Barbara with rocks and fake palm trees. Remember those, Pat? We used to look out Yevidab, all these rocks that they put out there decoratively, and fake palm trees trying to make an oil derrick look like anything but an oil derrick. And yet you had oil out there, and you have A little bit of oil in central California and you had also the ability to build pipelines. But no, but, no. This is where bad policies. And so guess what, Gavin Newsom, prime minister of the fourth, fourth largest economy, you don't have a secretary of energy, and now you're allowing this to come in. And now this is the energy industry. And you may say, oh, those are CEOs that are evil. They just want to sell things to us. Yeah. At a lower price than what you're getting it now. And you chase Valero out, you chase Chevron out, and people close refineries because he said, we're going to put more inspectors out there and if there's a paint chip on your front door, we're going to fine you for it. And they made it so onerous. And so I think that Gavin Newsom deserves this heat. And I hope the people in California, the voters are paying attention because you could have been not only in a great climate state, a great business state, but you could have had very economical energy using today's regulations and things to help keep things going.
- [75:52]
B
And by the way, Steve Hilton addresses it very eloquently in this debate that they were having. Go ahead, Rob.
- [75:58]
A
Mr. Hilton, go ahead.
- [76:00]
B
It's not Donald Trump who's given US gas prices $2 higher than the rest of the country. It's Democrat policies which Antonio and all
- [76:07]
D
the Democrats here support.
- [76:08]
B
It's not Donald Trump that's given us the highest housing costs in the country. It's Democrat policies that all these Democrats support. Donald Trump is the president in all the other states of America where the cost of living is way lower than in California. Obviously it is way past time for change in California. And endlessly going on about Donald Trump doesn't serve the needs of the struggling families and small businesses.
- [76:33]
A
Can you say Whether or not, Mr. Hilton, go ahead.
- [76:36]
B
Thoughts on this, by the way? Very well said.
- [76:38]
C
It's unintended consequences. Right. You know, the, the reason why they chase the oil industry out of California is to appear to be virtuous about the climate. And where do they get their oil? As Tom was saying, you get it from Iraq and the Everglades or the Amazon. So now they're buying oil from Brazil that comes out of. I mean, they don't care about that, though. That's not the point.
- [76:57]
A
It's virtuous signaling right here.
- [76:58]
C
Yeah, it's. We need to feel better about ourselves. So we get rid of our domestic oil. Now we have to buy it overseas, but we don't care because we don't see that. And so what Newsom and everybody in California are doing is simply detaching their responsibility and saying, look, it's not us, it's Donald Trump. Typical political playbook. And we talked about the price of gasoline being $5 a gallon. It's $5 a gallon nationwide. That's potentially. It's gonna be 7 or higher in California. So you're paying essentially a tax for what? I mean, just to feel better. I mean, that makes absolutely no sense, but.
- [77:31]
A
And meanwhile, the prime minister runs around ducking podcasts and ducking people that want to have an honest debate on why did you make the decisions? What do you do?
- [77:39]
C
Does Nat Newsom.
- [77:40]
A
Newsom.
- [77:40]
B
No, no, he's not ducking podcasts. I don't know if I put him as. He's trying to get on places to talk. I'd love to see somebody do a tough conversation with them to have him sit down and talk about it. I'd love to see a good long form. He called out Rogan recently about Rogan. I'm not gonna play the clip. He calls out Rogan about. Is this it, Rob?
- [78:02]
A
That's an older clip.
- [78:03]
B
Yeah, there's a clip. Oh, it was an older clip of. I think it was even Joe and I, when we sat down on a podcast that he was reacting to where Joe said a few things about it and he says, why are you ducking me? Why are you ducking me? I do think he needs to go in one of these bigger podcasts and be pushed respectfully. I do think he needs to do that tomorrow. I don't know if I put him in the ducking side. When we were in California at Simi Valley when the Republican debate was taking place, you know who was there the entire time? Newsom. Guess who he's talking to Everybody. Newsom was the only Republican Democratic candidate that showed up to the presidential debate. And Simi Valiant is talking to Fox, walking around saying, go ahead. What's your question? What's your question? So we'll see. We'll see what's going to happen with this guy. He does the. He does need a good sit down with somebody to challenge him on his position. Brandon, your thoughts? And by the way, before you go to it, if you look at the highest gas prices in America today, average gas prices, you know who's the highest today? Tom, of course we know. California, $6.13 today.
- [79:02]
A
California beat your prior best.
- [79:04]
B
That's right. You know, Rob, can you pull up who's the lowest? So look at these states. Look at these states. Real quick. Okay, California, Washington, Hawaii, Oregon, what's the lowest gas prices? Some parts of California is at seven bucks. Can you flip it, Rob, and go to AAA and put lowest gas prices? Just flip it and just put lowest gas prices. Watch this. This is the question. Oklahoma389. Georgia391. Mississippi392. Louisiana392. Arkansas395. California, 6 bucks. These are the things that if a Steve Hilton knows how to drive this issue and if the average Democratic voter that's sitting there saying, I'm sick and tired of these policies, I hope he creates more momentum there.
- [79:47]
C
Jeff, what's common about all of those states?
- [79:49]
A
Georgia, they're very close to Texas. Whereas getting Venezuelan heavy crude and refining
- [79:54]
C
it in the river state refining capacity in the Gulf coast, that's what California used to have an advantage. They had all sorts of capacity to be able to not just, you know, pump oil out of the ground, but refine it into a useful product. That's what they chased away. That's what they're really missing is the ability to refine so you get cheaper gas where you have the ability to make gasoline. It's not rocket science.
- [80:13]
D
Yeah, there's two really key events. I mean, the Santa Barbara spill apparently made it. They legislated offshore drilling out of it. You know, that was the emotional thing. And then Arnold Schwarzenegger actually legislated that carbon emission rule where now like, I think it's like 54% of production domestically within California has been cut since that bill was signed. So, you know, they're attacking on all fronts up and gotten rid of the refining, gotten rid of the drilling offshore, gotten rid of the actual production in California. So that. And they have always been at a disadvantage because there's less railways that connect like from the east coast to the west coast because the Rocky Mountains. So yeah, I mean, but they have all the resources in the world. It's really a self inflicted problem. And I wonder if it's a similar thing to Europe because, you know, I always wonder like, are they consciously doing this? Is it like ignorance or is it malice? And in Europe, I know that Putin actually did a propaganda campaign that convinced a lot of European countries to go with the green energy sources because they want, you want them to be dependent on, you know, Russia's oil pipeline. So I haven't looked too deep into it with California specifically what the intentions are, but it feels like one of those things like where it's almost intentional destruction.
- [81:21]
B
If you just look at the highest Gas taxes in America today. Okay. Gas taxes in America today. California has just a state gas tax per gallon of 71 cents. Why? Why do you have that? Illinois has 66.4. Notice. Blue State. Blue State, yeah. Washington, 59 cents. Pennsylvania, 59 cents. Michigan, 48 to 52. Indiana. What do you notice about all this stuff? 40, 54.5. Maryland, 46.2. Jersey, 44.95. New York, 40 to 62 cents. And if you go to the lowest, Alaska, 9 cents. Okay. Hawaii, 18 and a half. New Mexico, 18.9. Arizona, 19. Oklahoma, 19. So these are. These are if a. If a candidate in California. By the way, did you see the Katie Hopkins commercial that they did for her running for governor? She actually addressed the fact that she. She got called out for being rude to one of her snapping on Live Zoom. I don't know if you saw her ad or not.
- [82:27]
A
Rude. She was belligerent, militant.
- [82:29]
B
I keep saying, Katie Hopkins. Katie Po. Porter. Is this the one where she's. That's the one. Watch this clip. This is another one that's running. She's my favorite because she's crazy, but she's my favorite. Go ahead, Rob.
- [82:40]
C
I'm Katie Porter and I'm not like most people who run for governor. I actually get what you're going through. A single mom of three kids, I know what it's like to push the shopping cart. My Minivan has almost 200,000 miles. I have a grown kid who may soon be living on my couch. To give Californians what they need, it's going to take standing up to Donald Trump, calling out greedy corporations and stepping on some toes along the way. Now, could you guys please get out of my shot?
- [83:11]
B
You know the whole thing. Could you please get out of my shot? You know what that is, right? Could you please get out of my shot? It's the clip when one of her staffers was. And she was actually asked about it and she said, well, unlike others, I'm not perfect. I have made mistakes. But I talk about it. And that staffer and I, we ended up working together for another four years. I mean, I hope she stays on TV more and more because I love her. She. I'm truly. I'm good. Press play. She is a natural villain.
- [83:41]
C
Get out of my fucking shot.
- [83:43]
B
Don't you love this girl? That should be the ad. It should be the ad. And then she shows Steve Hilton maybe with the shopping cart.
- [83:52]
A
Get out of my open way. And then at the gas station, I'm filling my effing tank, right? You Know, by the way, let's just turn her into the avatar.
- [84:00]
B
I have so many.
- [84:01]
C
Did you actually say that she's a single mom?
- [84:03]
B
Yeah.
- [84:04]
C
Wasn't there a thing with potatoes? Oh, yeah.
- [84:09]
A
She scalded the poor bastard with.
- [84:12]
C
Now she's saying I'm a single mom.
- [84:13]
B
Now listen. It reminded me of the Frank Rizzo clip of Back in the days from Potato and the tennis ball machine. I don't know if you know that one, Rob, or not. We can't play it. It's appro. It's not appropriate. But if you know Frank Rizzo and Jerky boys, you know exactly what reference I went to. Meanwhile, Spencer Pratt, running for mayor of la, did another one. Okay, another one. And by the way, you know ear muffs, because there's some foul language here. Nome's in it. Kamala's in it. Everybody's in it. This is funny as hell. Watch this. He's phenomenal. Go ahead, Kamala. Noos them nice.
- [84:50]
A
Please, I'm begging you.
- [84:52]
B
There's homeless drug addicts in front of the schools.
- [84:54]
C
My children aren't safe. Look, if you were a transgender migrant,
- [84:59]
A
I could get you a free move.
- [85:02]
C
The drug addicts closer. Bass already solved crime.
- [85:06]
B
I endorse her.
- [85:08]
C
Next.
- [85:13]
D
Yeah.
- [85:18]
B
Is that not a great clip?
- [85:20]
D
That's awesome.
- [85:23]
A
Please, I just want to rebuild my home. It's been over a year.
- [85:32]
B
You gotta give it to him. He's doing it right. This is a machine. If we want to burn this town to the ground,
- [85:51]
A
feel so close.
- [85:52]
B
You can do it, Spencer. It's great.
- [86:16]
C
Wow.
- [86:17]
B
Yeah. LA is worth saving. LA is worth saving. So that's the way you're doing that. Okay. The difference between Katie Porter and LA and. And Spencer Pratt.
- [86:26]
C
So anyway, he has the benefit of the truth on his side.
- [86:29]
B
He does.
- [86:29]
C
I don't think Katie Porter can pull that off.
- [86:31]
B
No, no, no, no, no, no. It's impossible. But. But you know what? As crazy as California is, you have no idea who they're going to be electing. It could be the guy. What's his name, Rob? The. The Hispanic guy that they may be electing as a governor.
- [86:44]
A
Xavier Becerra.
- [86:46]
B
Yeah. Javier Becerra. Yeah. That guy right there who was to the right of Steve Hilton. This is the leading guy today that they're looking at. This is the leading guy today.
- [86:53]
A
He's probably going to be number two on the. On the ballot where there is, because right now in California, and it's a jungle primary, Pat, which means everybody's in, and this guy is probably Gonna be number two out of the primary.
- [87:06]
B
Let me get to this next story. Cause I do know you wanted to talk about this next story, Tom, because we're on California. California's rising syphilis cases. Prompt warning to get tested. To get tested. By the way, this is a business story, apparently. I don't know why Tom wanted to talk about this, but allegedly there's links to this and business. What product does well, we're about to learn. So let me read this to you. Is this it?
- [87:28]
D
Yes.
- [87:29]
B
Go ahead, Rob.
- [87:30]
D
Experts say the surge is due to a decline in consistent screening, reduced public health resources, and because the early symptoms can go unnoticed.
- [87:40]
B
Keeping an eye on the ongoing.
- [87:42]
D
That's it.
- [87:42]
B
That's it. Yeah, that was it. Okay. Well, Tom, that was incredible, Rob, that we played that clip. So, Tom, what is going on with syphilis cases? Because I'm looking at some of the numbers here. It says across the country, syphilis cases have risen sharply over the past decade. In states like New York, infections have increased fivefold since 2013, reflecting a broader nationwide trend. This is a New York poster. Even more concerning. Federal data showing that congenital syphilis, when the infection is passed from a pregnant mother to her baby, has skyrocketed 700% compared to roughly 10 years ago. And the center CDC has a set national goal of reducing syphilis rates amongst women of reproductive age of 4.6 cases per 100,000 by 2030. What's going on here, Tom?
- [88:27]
A
So what's going on is that California is out of control. And they have this in terms of everything from education in the schools, resources, and it's up. Which means that people with syphilis are giving it to people without syphilis. That's how you get. The number of cases go up, it says. And the thing that's really horrifying is they said that. But these are women that are giving it to their unborn babies. This is horrible. Which means the father, somebody gave this woman syphilis. So she either had it before she conceived, or it was the guy that conceived, gave her a pregnancy. And syphilis, it's horrifying, and it shows just a decline in the moral fiber of, you know, communities. But it also talks about, you know, this is. What's. This is what's spreading. And so it's spreading among who, you know, and it's spiking in California. So I think it tells you everything you need to. Need to know about California. And it just. It makes me sick. It breaks my heart. I mean, it Literally breaks my heart to see this and story we haven't covered what's going on. San Diego.
- [89:43]
B
Jeff, what insight do you have on this?
- [89:46]
C
I don't. Look, I'm going to make an economic argument because that's what we're going to do. I'm more comfortable doing that. I think a lot of it has to do with just people. First of all, Obamacare did not fix health insurance and health costs. So things have got, as we know, have gotten even more expensive. There are more people who are going without health insurance, which means they don't get tested. They don't get screened when they start showing symptoms. They don't go to the doctor because they're afraid, oh, my God, if I have something serious, I'm going to be bankrupted. So they can't afford to access health insurance, even though there may be, you know, the local government has a local screening. That's not the same thing. And that's the argument that a lot of politicians certainly in California are making. Is that, okay, we need to replace the private sector that we made so expensive that nobody can access and replace it with the public sector that will just offer terrible service. But I think there's an economic element in here that's just gotten way too expensive to access health care.
- [90:38]
B
Brandon?
- [90:39]
D
Yeah, I mean, California, setting all the records, I mean, it's not surprising. It's like the, you know, gay capital of the world. It's the homeless capital of the world and the gay homeless sex capital of the world. So of course there's going to be like.
- [90:52]
B
Are you sure about that?
- [90:53]
D
No.
- [90:54]
B
You're guesstimating.
- [90:55]
D
Yeah, guesstimating based off observation of observation, statistics. Statistics, not direct.
- [91:02]
A
You're observing statistics or you're observing people observing statistics?
- [91:06]
B
Well, listen, it's, it's a shame when that happens and what they're going through. They have to find a way to fix it. Of course, right now it's very easy to dump on California because they got so many things going on. But I wonder, like, how is Newsom going to spin all this stuff in 2027, 2028 when he runs, what's he going to say?
- [91:25]
D
He's really good at it.
- [91:26]
B
I'm just a regular dumb guy. I'm not that smart. I don't know how to read. That's why I didn't look at these policies. And the reason why the $24 billion because. Because I'm dyslexic and I couldn't read the whole thing. I thought it was $24 billion we were going to give to our homeless and everybody was going to disappear because it's not my fault. How's he going to spin all this stuff? I don't know.
- [91:43]
D
He's incredible at it.
- [91:44]
C
He's not going to spin it. Their whole thing is, I'm not Trump. I'm going to get Trump. So ignore everything that I've done up until now. I don't know, just vote for me because I'm anti Trump.
- [91:54]
B
I don't know if that's going to be a good market for.
- [91:56]
C
Although I'm not saying it's a successful strategy.
- [92:00]
B
I get that Calci has newsome what at 244 today. Yeah, but Kamala is 10 8.
- [92:04]
A
AOC has gone from 5 to 11. And most of these polls over the last three years.
- [92:11]
B
I'm still going to say do not pay very close attention to AOC. Pay very close attention to AOC. Quietly, very close attention to AOC. If Mamdani won in New York City, AOC is going to be formidable going into 2028 for people that look away from her. But anyways, with that being said, just some breaking news that came in. Ted Turner, the founder of cnn, the owner of the former, you know, the former owner of Atlanta Braves, Atlanta Hawks, a bunch of different things just passed away 30 minutes ago that was reported. He's a legend in what he did in his space. It was a book I read many, many years ago about Ted Turner Club, they call me Ted. It was a phenomenal, phenomenal book. I believe at the end of the book, he says, CNN turned into something I didn't want it to be. He says, I wanted the news to be the star. And now at cnn, the hosts are the star. That was never the mission. That was never the vision. He opened up this business space for a lot of different people. May he rest in peace. We tried many times to do an interview with him and they kept telling us he's not doing well. He's not doing well. So rest in peace, Ted. Turn our prayers goes out to his family and those who are dealing with this loss today.
- [93:19]
A
Listen to the book, call me Ted and get the audiobook. Because he narrated and you hear the tone of his voice. You hear everything. A great, great primer on entrepreneurship and
- [93:31]
B
ran for president a couple of times if I'm not.
- [93:33]
A
And you know, an American success story.
- [93:35]
B
Yeah, a great American success story. All right, so let's get to the next story. Next story I want to get into is we hit Starbucks, we hit Jamie. Which one? AM I missing Rob. I do know there's a couple ones. Oh, Michael Saylor. So rumor came out that Michael Saylor is entertaining, possibly selling bitcoin. What do you mean he's entertaining selling bitcoin? Isn't he the one that MicroStrategy keeps buying, buying, buying? Yes, he said he would never sell bitcoin. Now he's saying he might. This is a story that came up from this morning. Strategy's first quarter loss is bigger than expected. Michael Saylor is the bitcoin evangelist who has reportedly emphasized that he would never sell. However, this. His company, MicroStrategy, announced a net loss of 12 and a half billion dollars. For the first quarter of this year, Sater did what had been previously unthinkable. He told investors on an earnings webinar that he would consider selling the cryptocurrency he's long promoted passionately, will probably sell some bitcoin to fund a dividend just to inoculate the market, just to send a message that we did. Look, the company's fine, the market's fine, the world didn't come to an end. So what do you think is going on here with Michael Saylor, Jeff?
- [94:43]
C
Look, the, the knock on strategy was always that numbers don't add up. If he has trouble raising funds through all of his creative ways of raising funds, liquid cash, to be able to pay back all those investors and pay the dividends that needed to be paid, eventually he was either going to have to bring in new investors or he's going to have to start selling bitcoin. That was always a knock on him and he always said, no, we'll never have to do that. Everything's fine. I love how he kind of spinning it here and saying that, oh, we're doing this for the benefit of the market. We're just going to test it out so that you can see that everything's good. But I have to, you gotta give it to the critics here because I think the numbers are not adding up the way that they're supposed to. And this is potentially something more substantial. And of course he's gonna want to downplay it. But like I said, the knock on this has always been they don't have the cash flow to pay off the investors. And the rates of return that they were giving new investors were just astronomical.
- [95:39]
B
How is that sustainable?
- [95:40]
C
It's not.
- [95:40]
B
How is that sustainable?
- [95:41]
C
That was the argument. It was not sustainable. Now it's, you have to wonder is, is the crack starting to show the
- [95:47]
B
average price of the bitcoin? He bought is 75,500 to 76,000. Total Bitcoin holding is 818,003,34. Roughly 64 to $67 billion, depending on Bitcoin's price on that day is what the numbers are at. So Strategy owns nearly 4% of all Bitcoin that will ever exist as of today. Tom, your thoughts on this?
- [96:13]
A
Yeah, I agree. At some point in time, the music has to stop because you need liquidity to go in and do this. And the theory that a lot of people had on Microstrategy was that they were going to be so far ahead on bitcoin value that they could get low cost commercial debt and then pay the dividends. And there's nothing wrong with that strategy except for the back end of this little chart here, which is sort of taking you all the way back to the beginning of 05. Just take the dot where we are now and go. And just draw a horizontal line across. You see that, Pat? You take away the whole surge there, the lump in the back of the camel, and you end up back in January of 2025 a year ago, and then January 2024, two years ago. And now you're like, wow, okay.
- [97:04]
B
Also January 2021, though, like, yeah, yeah.
- [97:08]
A
The first run above, I think that was, was 68. If you show that, Rob, I think that was in January 21st.
- [97:14]
B
A little bit higher. Rob, you're at the right place. Just. Oh, okay, you can do it. Got it.
- [97:17]
A
Yeah, got it. Hang on one second. The point is, he's been long on this. And if it grows enough, well, look at it this way. Real estate holdings grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. And let's say you and me, Pat, owned a bunch of commercial buildings in Miami. And now all these things are having, you know, the Citadel. Ken Griffin's coming down, going to build a place with residences. I'm sorry, he's doubling the size of the office because of New York forgotten. And all of the value of our portfolio goes up. We go out and get commercial debt to do bigger improvements or buy more. And I think that was the play here. But he's kind of stuck. So I think he's going to sell a little bit to show the system's working. But I also think there's a test going on because Saylor is very astute about the crypto market. I think he's testing the supply price drop. I think there's a test throw. If you're the biggest guy in the jungle and you jump in the pool, you make the biggest Splash. I think he wants to see, okay, how much water comes out of the
- [98:14]
B
pool if I jump in, hasn't moved anything yet.
- [98:18]
A
I think that's great. What I think that means people under there are saying, hey, if he's profit taking, maybe I'm going to be supply taking.
- [98:26]
B
Yeah, go to five days, Rob. Go to five days.
- [98:29]
C
Well, the other side of that too, Tom, is that he's also has to take into account the investment market. Market. Is he saying that the investment market for not just strategy, but maybe overall has shifted so that it's not as friendly that he can continue to raise US dollar funds from the investment market and therefore he has to at least explore other options to maintain his investment position?
- [98:48]
A
Yeah, you're going to be a bitcoin balance sheet company. And then the market says, well, maybe I don't like those at 3% debt. Maybe I like them at 7% or
- [98:56]
C
even 8% or 9%.
- [98:58]
A
Exactly. Well, no, no, we've, Pat and I experienced that. You know, we've studied roll ups and we can identify a couple roll ups that had like, what was it, Pat? Two billion, $3 billion. But there was a floating price on the debt, number one. And number two, they were coming up on five to seven year windows on private equity investment. And every five to seven years, private equity wants to take a big chunk out. You got to go find liquidity to do it.
- [99:25]
C
Yep.
- [99:25]
B
That's a tough place to be, but that's where he's at. I mean, look, the good thing about him is his temperament is so cool. If there's a guy that you will look at him and he just lost $12 billion. Like.
- [99:36]
C
Yeah.
- [99:37]
B
How are things? Great. I just had great salad. Things are good. We're excited about where bitcoin's going. Bitcoin's the greatest. He knows how to keep it very smooth there. Brandon, where are you at?
- [99:45]
A
Loss is just a word at a point in time. Yeah, that's all it is.
- [99:51]
D
I, no, I think like Tom said, the, like, the plan could work in theory if he wasn't buying so much of the top, like that top. The chart that Rob showed shows showed way more buying at like high prices than low prices. But you. Do you see how, how much the stock got hurt? The MicroStrategy stock got hit with just like a sheer, you know, 120 to 80 drop. In Bitcoin, it went from 400 down to 1, 130. So it lost $6 billion in how long from October 2025.
- [100:22]
C
Six months. Yeah.
- [100:23]
B
In micro go to year, to date.
- [100:25]
C
Yeah.
- [100:25]
D
One year.
- [100:26]
B
No go. One year. One year. There you go.
- [100:28]
D
So it was at 450 in October, July last year and down to 185 today.
- [100:35]
C
Yeah.
- [100:36]
D
So the market cap, steep drop off.
- [100:38]
A
Yeah.
- [100:38]
D
So the market cap, 64 billion. So what? It's lost like, what's that, 75% if it's 450 down to like 180.
- [100:45]
B
Yeah, it's a lot of money. So that means it used to be probably $150 billion market cap and hit
- [100:50]
D
all time quick, Rob. So look what happened to it in the dot com bubbles. I mean, I just, I think a similar thing's gonna happen there. It's gonna look just like that.
- [100:57]
B
That you think he's gonna have that big of a drop off.
- [100:59]
D
Yeah, because, I mean, I think, I just think that it's not sustainable. Like the, you know, the average price of 77, like there's gonna be bigger drops in bitcoin than this. So I just think he put himself in a delicate position with them being so reckless with it. Like, it could have been a sound strategy if he just bought the dips more, but he just like aggressively bought at the top a bunch.
- [101:15]
C
It was almost like he took on just a ton of bitcoin leverage right at the top, or at least the recent top, believing that the. The market was going to turn around really quickly and then the val. The number. Numbers would all look. Be in his favor and then, you know, the market would still continue to give him a huge premium and he could leverage that to continue the cash flow. It was a tight strategy in a narrow window.
- [101:32]
B
Do you hold bitcoin?
- [101:33]
C
I don't know.
- [101:34]
B
Do you hold bitcoin?
- [101:35]
D
A little bit.
- [101:36]
B
Tom, do you hold bitcoin?
- [101:37]
A
Yes.
- [101:37]
B
Are you going to sell or are you going to just stay on it?
- [101:39]
A
I'm on it.
- [101:39]
B
Yeah. Are you staying? Is it changing anything you're doing?
- [101:42]
D
No, because it's not. And like sell everything I have and go in as much as possible to buy it the way, like, I'd be stressed out if I did that.
- [101:48]
B
I mean, he took a very dependent position. But I think the people that are owning crypto and they're long on it, they're like, yeah, okay, great. You know, you chose to build your business model this way, not me. That's a lot of stress. Respect to you. If you make trillions, awesome. If you don't, this guy's either going to be a trillionaire who's going to go bust. That's going to be One of those two things. That's kind of what he's shooting for. Right on. What's going to happen?
- [102:07]
A
Yeah. They're sitting there at their board meeting and it's like having Princess Leia there. Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope. Only has helped me. Kevin Walsh, you're my only hope.
- [102:16]
B
Yeah, yeah. Rob, do you have the Apple story? Do you have the Apple story on what happened with Apple and iPhones? So a story came out of this lawsuit with Apple where they promised certain AI features in their phones that didn't deliver. Okay. So Apple has now agreed to pay iPhone owners $250 million for not delivering AI Siri. This proposed settlement, a class action lawsuit, will get some cash back to people who bought the iPhone 16 lineup and the iPhone 15 Pro. If you go a little bit lower, there's different numbers that they're saying on the $250 million people submit, qualifying claims can receive $25 for each eligible device, which may decrease or increase up to $95 per device. So that's the number you're looking at. Tom said there's some places that are saying the average number is going to be around $81. Rob, if you want to go a little bit lower on this and this settlement will resolve a 2025 lawsuit alleging Apple's advertisement created a clear and reasonable consumer expectation that Apple Intell would be available with the launch of iPhone 16. The lawsuit claimed Apple's product offered a significantly limited or entirely absent version of the Apple intelligence, misleading consumers about its actual utility and performance. Tom, thoughts?
- [103:28]
A
Well, first of all, marketing needs to come to the product management meetings. Something, by the way, that's never happened to us. We have never seen any company that I've ever that pats ever run anything. We've never had a mishit like this. We have no idea. But what happened was marketing went out there was saying things and somewhere in product they were unable to have that feature. And then it's like, hey, we just sold 5 million upgrade phones and you know, we're talking about Siri. And this is one of the things that they were actually giving credit to Tim Cook about. Tim Cook is letting all the AI guys fight it out and then he's going to pick the winner and put that one on the Apple iPhone. Yeah, it was just like you remember when the, when Apple did Apple Maps icon, what was the Apple map debacle like? IPhone 9, iPhone 10, remember the Apple map that didn't work. We have been working on it. We don't need Google. We will put the map here on this iOS 6 in 2012. So that was like. That's got to be like iPhone 8, something like that. So it says, you know, we don't need Google. We're going to put this on here. And then Tim Cook later cited it as his biggest mistake because they put the map on there. It didn't work. It didn't show you things. It wouldn't direct you to stuff. Things would be completely. The streets would curve and they don't curve. And so suddenly it was all right, I have to go do this press release. I know. And after that, Larry and Sergey are in the lobby with an agreement and they had basically, Google Maps had to save the day. So, look, you're a big company, you're going to make mistakes and everything. And this is, this is now another one.
- [105:14]
B
Just put, just to put things in perspective, they have $46 billion on cash they're sitting on right now. $250 million on 46 billion is.005%. This is as if you have $100,000 in the bank and you get fined for $540. That's what this is.
- [105:31]
A
That's exactly right.
- [105:32]
B
It's not like it's massive for them. They'll pay it and they'll move on. What are your thoughts? You sound like you have something.
- [105:36]
D
I thought you were going in a different direction. Say the same thing. Like there famous for sitting on a ton of cash, like a couple hundred million billion dollars at a time. And like, it's another thing with Tim Cook. I mean, I'm not happy with Apple right now for a lot of reasons, but they haven't invested in AI at all. They. Yeah, I know they haven't invested in AI. No, worse.
- [105:56]
B
It's something else. Go ahead, keep going.
- [105:58]
D
No, but, so, I mean, I don't. I don't see any reason why they couldn't have invested a ton of money to get the best engineers in the world. And to, you know, like, I was excited when they. I almost even forgot this was happening, but I was excited about them integrating like Chachi BT with Siri, because that would have been awesome. But, like, it goes back to Tim Cook not being bold, not being innovative. Like, Steve Jobs set that company up pretty much really primed and ready to take off like a rock. And he just sat there and wrote on it and didn't do anything.
- [106:23]
C
Wow.
- [106:24]
A
I don't know about that. I give a lot more credit than that.
- [106:27]
D
He just protected something that was Already an immaculate product. I think maybe I'm being a little bit hard on them, but I don't
- [106:32]
A
know how many iPhone versions and the Apple Watch and stuff.
- [106:35]
D
How different are they?
- [106:38]
A
Well, they've successful regardless of the difference. They've successfully sold more of them to all of us.
- [106:44]
C
So marketing rather than innovation?
- [106:46]
A
No, I think there was innovation in there. The last three, I would, I would agree with you. The last three, I don't think have been spectacular steps forward. But they corrected the battery. I agree with you. They made their missteps. But I have a hard time, you know. You know, being hypercritical of a $3 trillion company that's kind of changed history. History.
- [107:03]
D
I mean, maybe this is a crazy thing to say. I think you could have put Tom off.
- [107:08]
B
He's taking this personal.
- [107:10]
D
It's a good conversation, by the way.
- [107:12]
B
But Tom, to be, to be, to be honest with you, a lot of people agree with Brandon on the fact that this guy was just trading on the dollar and not creating anything new. Now, I'm a Tim Cook guy. I like him. He took the company from 100 billion, give or take, once Jobs died to, I don't know what it is today, four trillion, four and a half trillion. So 40x45x. So he's done pretty okay for him. And you know, this cash thing that they're always sitting on cash, you know, was a Steve Jobs thing, right? Steve Jobs has always been, you have 4.2 trillion today. You know, he wasn't a guy that gave money to charity. He didn't believe in giving money to charity. It was like, hey, we're going to stay tight and we're going to take our money and reinvest it into the company. Put him in a nice place. But let's see what this new guy's going to do. Tom made a very good point about how Tim Cook came. Tim Cook went from being the director of operations to VP of operations to COO to then becoming a CEO. Right? Where the recent guy they put up is a senior developer, Apple, back to product. So this next phase of Apple could be very spicy, exciting, and interesting because Apple is choosing to go back to product instead of just op. So we'll see, we'll see, we'll see. What happened. Are you going to continue buying Apple products or are you going to Droid?
- [108:21]
D
I'm stuck.
- [108:22]
B
Yeah, I'm worried you may even go all the way to Huawei and Huawei legal here years. I. I just don't want to see you go that side.
- [108:27]
D
Bootleg yeah, it's too good of a product. I'll still do it.
- [108:30]
B
He walks around with the old neck. One of these things anyways. All right, so let's go to maybe one last story, and then we'll wrap up Marco Rubio. This guy's just a stud, man. And, you know, he gets. A lot of people are like, well, you know, because there's two camps right now. You got the JD Camp and you got the Rubio camp. And the JD Camp cannot stand Rubio. They, for whatever reason, cannot stand this guy. And then Rubio does things like this. Okay, go ahead, Rob. Let's play one of the two clips. Is this him doing Caroline Levitt's job because she's on leave of a. How dare she choose to have a baby, by the way? I mean, you have this tough of a job and you choose to have a baby and. But respect to her for doing that. May all of it be great, healthy baby. And I'm sure we'll see the pictures when it's. What's this. What's this video here, Rob?
- [109:19]
A
This where Marco Rubio talks about Cuba.
- [109:21]
B
Go for it. Here's Marco Rubio talking about Cuba.
- [109:24]
E
There's no oil blockade on Cuba, per se. Here's what's happening with Cuba, okay? Cuba used to get free oil from Venezuela, used to give them a bunch of free oil. They would take like, 60% of that oil and resell it for cash. It wouldn't even go to benefit the people. So the only blockade that's happened is the Cubans have decided. I mean, the Venezuelans have decided we're not giving you free oil anymore. There are economic model.
- [109:43]
B
Venezuelans have decided it doesn't work.
- [109:45]
E
And the people who are in charge
- [109:46]
A
can't fix, including CIA guy sitting behind the desk.
- [109:50]
E
It also happens to be friendly territory.
- [109:52]
B
I can't go back five seconds.
- [109:53]
E
So it's an unacceptable status quo, not giving you free oil anymore. Their economic model doesn't work. Doesn't work, and the people who are in charge can't fix it. And we have, 90 miles from our shores, a failed state that also happens to be friendly territory for some of our adversaries. So it's an unacceptable status quo, and we'll be addressing it, but not today.
- [110:11]
B
How long before we take over Cuba?
- [110:13]
A
Cuba.
- [110:14]
B
He said something. He says, when this is over, you go, all we're going to have to do is bring a big ship and put it right in front of Cuba. And then they're going to say, here you go. Take it over Right. What? Trump said that. And then what's the other clip? Rubio's asking? He sells America. Is this the one where, you know, he's asking him a question and he talks about how amazing America is?
- [110:34]
A
No, I can find that this is. I'll find that this is where he talks about Operation Fury being over in the next part of the war in Iraq.
- [110:40]
C
Go for it.
- [110:42]
E
I think you're linking it. The operation is over. Epic fury. The President notified Congress. We're done with that stage of it. Okay. We're now onto this project of freedom as far as a negotiation is concerned. I think the President has been clear that part of the negotiation process has to be not just the enrichment, but what happens to this material that's buried deep somewhere that they have still have access to if they ever wanted to dig it out. That has to be addressed. And that's being addressed in the negotiation. Negotiation. I'm not going to go further on what progress has been made on that topic, because I don't want to endanger the negotiations. But suffice it to say that the President and this entire team is aware of the centrality of that question, and that will have to be addressed one way or the other.
- [111:20]
B
Thoughts, Rubio?
- [111:22]
A
Sharp, clean, crisp, authoritative. You feel confident. You feel like he's going to leave and he's going to do something. You don't feel like Superman. You don't feel like Incredible Hulk. You feel like that guy knows what he's doing and he's going to go out and get something done. That's the feeling. He yet.
- [111:36]
B
This is the clip I wanted to show you guys. This is the dream. Watch him sell the dream. Go ahead, Rob.
- [111:40]
C
You've had a deep faith for God and country.
- [111:44]
B
At the end of the day, with
- [111:45]
E
all that you've been involved in. Keep going.
- [111:47]
B
You've been extremely busy.
- [111:48]
A
Go ahead.
- [111:49]
B
I'm sorry.
- [111:49]
D
As we all know, I gotta ask you, what is your hope for America
- [111:54]
B
at a time such as this?
- [111:56]
E
My hope for America? And how do you deal with that? Yeah, look, I mean, my hope for America. America is what it's always been. I think it's the hope I hope we all share. We want it to continue to be the place where anyone from anywhere can achieve anything, where you're not limited by the circumstances of your birth, by the color of your skin, by your ethnicity, but frankly, it's a place where you are able to overcome challenges and achieve your full potential. I think that should be the goal of every country in the world, frankly. But I Think in the US we're not perfect. Our history is not one of perfection, but it's still better than anybody else's history. And ours is a story of perpetual improvement. Each generation has left the next generation of Americans freer, more prosperous, safer, and that is our goal as well. But it is a unique and exceptional country. And as we come upon this 250 year anniversary, I think we have a lot to learn and be proud of in our history. It is one of perpetual and continuous improvement where each generation has done its part to bring us closer to fulfilling the vision that the founders of this country had upon its founding.
- [112:49]
B
So don't you just love that?
- [112:52]
D
Yeah.
- [112:52]
B
How do you feel about it, listening to it?
- [112:54]
D
I mean, he's transformed since 2016. I remember he was like the sweaty, nervous guy, that little Marco lean out into the picture and sip the water and I'm like reading off a cell phone when he's giving speeches. So, yeah, transformed into a different guy. Very impressive.
- [113:06]
B
Yeah.
- [113:07]
A
Straight from the heart. And it's exactly what I want to hear. I want someone to say we are still the best place and we are still the best history. No, we're not perfect, but we got to wake up and work on it every day. Guess what? That's the whole message. That's why I'm here, that's why I'm working hard and that's why it matters.
- [113:23]
C
That's it. The improvement. When he said we continuously try to improve. And, and what's different about the United States? I mean, there are other countries too, but different about the United States is that's actually possible.
- [113:33]
B
Yeah, it is. This is the greatest country in the world, hands down. And it's our job to make sure we maintain it and we fight for it. And if you have a way of positively influencing and protecting this, I think we should do what we do. This is one of the reasons why we started Valuetainment. It's one of the reasons why we do what we do with our companies. Because we think every day somebody wakes up, up, you know, wanting to destroy America, wanting to destroy what we've built. And every day a group of people wake up wanting to protect and take it to the next level. I think there's more of group one than group two. And I think group two needs to unify, come together and keep fighting. And we don't have to be 100% agreeing on every single thing. But as long as you are on the position of capitalism is the best economical system, America is the greatest country in the world as Long as we rely on that and we're doing whatever we can to make it better for kids, I think we're going to be on the same page. And this is why when I run into people, especially when we go to our conferences or event or cigar lounge or people will come up that follow the content, you speak to them. We share common values and principles and I love running into you, especially when you got the gear on. By the way, for some of you guys that are commenting below, you're like, my God, is it too late for me to do it? Here's what we'll do. I just told the guys we're going to keep it open for the survey for one more hour before we close the survey. It's going to end up costing us a million bucks.
- [114:55]
C
Run that by the accountant.
- [114:56]
B
No, no, to be honest with you, we. But we're going to keep it. I talked to the guys, green light. Don't worry about it. So this is what, 11:10 right now? We will keep it open till 12:15 Eastern Standard Time. If you haven't done the survey, you want to participate in it and answer Thoroughly, go to survey.vt.com survey.vt.com It'll be up for one more hour. The $25 gift card applies to you guys as well. If some of you guys are saying, I still haven't seen the gift card that came in for us. Added the 12,000 emails, we've already sent out 4,000. The other 8,000 is in the process. So it's coming. You're going to get it today. But with that being said, you already know with Jeff Snyder. Go to eurodollar university YouTube channel. Support the man. He's got some very interesting things to say about what's going on with the economy. But we know specifically economy don't ask the question that Tom's bring up with California. He's not interested in that. He just wants to talk about business again. Go to Euro Dollar University. With that being said, we have a show coming out tomorrow. We'll see you guys on Friday as well. God bless everybody. Take care. Bye bye. Bye.