← PBD Podcast
PBD Podcast
Fed Rate Decision, Disney vs YouTube WAR, Amazon Layoffs + AOC For President? | PBD Podcast | Ep. 675
02:07:06
Loading summary
Transcript552 lines
- [00:01]
A
Did you ever think you were made.
- [00:03]
B
Again.
- [00:09]
C
Adam, what's your point?
- [00:11]
B
The future looks bright. My handshake is better than anything I ever saw.
- [00:16]
A
It's right here. You are a one of one my son's right about. I don't think I've ever said this.
- [00:26]
B
Oh, okay, guys. So if you're thinking about buying a home, okay. And if you want to know what the hell is about to happen to the market, real estate rates, mortgage, any of that stuff, I don't know anybody that's going to be more qualified to talk about this than the guy that there's this guy that works on. What is that street called in D.C. pennsylvania, Rob, what's the street called?
- [00:49]
A
Pennsylvania Avenue pen 1600. I think he's right.
- [00:51]
B
Between them, his name is Donald J. Trump. He makes a phone call to hire this guy to be the chair of Fannie and Freddie Mac. And outside of that, he's got a bunch of other responsibilities and things that he's doing. With that being said, Bill Palt, he's in the House today. How you doing, Bill?
- [01:09]
C
Thank you. Good. Thanks for having me. Always good to see you.
- [01:11]
B
You got an interesting boss, buddy.
- [01:12]
C
Yeah, I do. It's Tom and I were just talking because he's got an interesting boss, too.
- [01:19]
B
Yes.
- [01:20]
C
So maybe we could share some war stories.
- [01:22]
B
Yeah, I mean, listen, that's the great thing about that DNA, that wiring. So we got a lot of things to go through. This is some of the stories that we're going to be talking about. The timing of it couldn't be any better because today, I think in the afternoon, Jerome Powell and the Fed, I don't know what the exact time it's going to be. They're either going to lower the rate by a quarter or a half. We're going to see what's going to happen. We'll talk about that today. Bunch of other stories as we're talking about this. Trump says China close to a trade deal ahead of G talks TikTok decision China asks us to protect hard won results before Xi Trump meeting Big banks woo Trump for roles on blockbuster ipo which the blockbuster IPO chair is here because the blockbuster IPO they're talking about is Freddie and Fannie. We'll talk about that. Union pressures Democrats to end government shutdown. Oil settles lower as OPEC plans to increase oil output. Oil executives predict 2026 price low point as Permian Basin ramps up production.
- [02:24]
A
Drill, baby, drill.
- [02:25]
B
That's right. Capacity U.S. beef prices. Some of you guys, I was upset last night. I'm like, listen man, just give me some steak. I want my bison. It breaks my heart every time I see about the beef. Prices soaring. Will Trump plans lower them? We will see. Amazon cutting 14,000 jobs as a retailing giant embraces AI. Amazon targets as many as 30,000 corporate job cuts, another source says one is Reuters. One is CBS. Target cuts 1800 corporate jobs in its first major layoff in a decade. Rivian. I mean, there's a bunch of layoffs. UPS has already cut 48,000 workers this year. Homeownership dips in 2025 for the first time in nearly a decade. US mortgage rates fall to the lowest in more than a year. Then you got US Stock market rally defies odds fueled by earnings and Fed rate cut hopes. Intel Stock jumps as Q3 earnings beats expectations. AI drives chips demand. Qualcomm stock jumps 11% as company enters AI chip race, taking on Nvidia and AMD billionaire Larry Ellison's fortune plummets. Folks, if you're worried about it, this guy lost $24 billion just recently. And if you really want to make a difference, maybe start a GoFundMe for him to kind of help him swing.
- [03:36]
A
By, take him to lunch.
- [03:39]
B
Tesla may lose Elon Musk if shareholders don't approve the trillion dollar package. Chairperson warns that's a Yahoo story. Disney content could be pulled from YouTube this week. CBS even news co anchor John Dickerson leaving network OpenAI say US needs more power to stay ahead of China and AI electrons are the new oil. And then we got a couple other stories here that we'll get into. Tens of thousands of white collar jobs are disappearing as AI starts to bite. CEOs are furious about employees texting in meetings. That's a Wall Street Journal story. And maybe we'll get into this other $20,000 robot because Tom likes robots a lot. Maybe we'll show this video of Tom likes showing. Look, people watch different kind of videos. You know, some, some kids watch, you know, the different cartoon Thomas and Friends. You know, some young boys watch different types of videos. Some, you know, adults like scary movies, sports, you know, Tom likes to watch robots. That's what Tom likes to do. You know, like you do TikTok videos. Tom likes robot videos. This $20,000 robot can do your chores. But as one big potential privacy pitfall, we're going to see what that privacy pitfall is. And if you would care about it, maybe you'll still buy it if you find out about the privacy pitfall. Having said that, 2026 is around the Corner. I am convinced this is going to be a very, very special year, in my opinion. I think we got this other rate cut that's coming. I think we're going to have three more in 2026, give or take, based on what Goldman Sachs and a lot of other people are saying. We may even experience a new person that's running the Fed by June. Ish. I think June 26th ish. Around that time, that could turn things around the second half of the year. If the China US Trade deal gets done, it could be an unbelievable day for the stock market. However, all of that stuff going into 2026, what that means to you is nothing if you're not prepared for it going into 2026 with Momentum. So having said that, if you don't yet have a plan to write out a great business plan for yourself, your family, your executives, your employees. Watch this video, Rob, if you have. This is a video we shot of me going into a car, driving a car that goes 1.9 seconds 0 to 60. And I also borrowed Vinnie's old car to see what. What was it? Was it a Prius? We're testing to see the difference between a Prius on 0 to 60 and then versus the Tesla Plaid. The owner was freaking out, saying, I don't know if you can handle it or not. I said, I've been driving fast cars for a very long time, but I want you to watch this video. Rob, what speed do you have it on?
- [06:13]
A
Just one.
- [06:14]
B
Okay. Watch this video, folks. Speed matters when it comes down to business. Go ahead, Rob. How fast you grow your business matters. Behind me, I have a 2019 Toyota Corolla and I have a Model S Tesla Plaid. You're going to see how fast it goes. It's absolutely insane. 1, 2, 3. This is Vinnie's car. Still haven't hit it.
- [06:40]
C
Come on, Corolla.
- [06:42]
B
10 seconds. Oh, my gosh. Still got from A to B, but it's super slow. Any of these companies that eventually dominate their competitors, their edge isn't always just product. It's speed. This took way too long to go from zero to 60. Here we go. Now we're in the plaid. Let's see how this does 0 to 60. Holy. Oh, my God. That was amazing. So notice a difference. 0 to 60 in the Corolla. 9, 10 seconds. This was less than 2 seconds. So at this point, we know speed is critical in business. The question becomes, with 2026 around the corner, it'll be here in no time. How prepared are you going to be versus all your competitors. Once a year, I host an event called the Business Planning Workshop where we cover the 12 building blocks of on how to write a proper business plan that drives emotion and logic. If you've never attended it, do whatever you can for you, your wife, your team to tune in together. It's the only one we do that's through a webinar, which means anybody from anywhere on the world can tune into the Business planning workshop. It's December 12th. We start first thing in the morning. We go till very, very late. If you haven't registered yet, click on the link below to get registered. I cannot wait to see you there. All right, there you go, Rob. Let's put the link below. For some of you guys that are only listening to the Audio, go to bpw.bill betdavidconsulting.com Again, bpw.beddavidconsulting.com order link below. Get registered. We'll spend a day together on December 12th and make that the beginning of the greatest years of your life in 2026. All right, let's get right into it. Bill, everybody is worried. Should I buy a house? Should I wait? What's going to happen? Is Powell going to lower the rates today? Quarter of a point, a half a point? What's going to be happening? What can you tell us?
- [08:28]
C
Well, he should lower him more than a half a point. He should lower him 2 or 300 basis points. The issue with the Federal Reserve, 2.
- [08:34]
B
Or 300 basis points?
- [08:35]
C
Yes. My view. So you know, and I think the president has said too, they're way too high. But here's the problem that I see, Patrick, is you have a guy that President Trump put in this position and he's running the Fed into the ground. He has just completely destroyed the integrity of the Fed. I'll give you an example. I criminally referred Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve governor, for mortgage fraud. There's credible mortgage fraud. I believe that she's committed in a normal environment. If he didn't hate the president, he would have already have launched an investigation into Lisa Cook. He already would have potentially said to her, hey, look, Lisa, it's time that you step down. Now, you have a situation where Lisa Cook and the president are going to be going at each other in the Supreme Court where the president has the right, in my view, to fire her. He did fire her. And so you have this just lack of leadership at the Fed. So, you know, we're doing everything we can at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but these interest rates have got to come down. We got to get a new Fed chair. I think the President will pick a great new Fed chair, but they got to come down big time.
- [09:35]
B
Okay, so let me read this story for you. US homeownership dips in 2025 for the first Time in nearly a decade and here's why. This is a New York Post story. The number of US homeowners fell in 2025, first time nearly a decade. The figure has dropped. According to a realty company, Redfin, about 86.919 million Americans belong to a picket fence crowd as of April 1, down 0.1% to 86 point from 86.28 who own homes at the same time. 2024 the United States saw last saw a drop of homeownership in the second quarter of 2016 nearly 10 years ago, from 74.36 from to 7 74.4 in April. The number 1.1% inflation, high interest rate, mortgage rates and skyrocketing real estate prices have priced a lot of people out of the housing market, redfin's head of economic research, Chen Zhao, told the Post. The key metric had steadily increased each year since then, climbing to 75.41 in 2017, 78.1 in 2018 and so on until now, over a decade of low mortgage rates since the 2008 financial crisis. Ken had helped people buy homes until recently, explained Chen Zhao, Redfin's head of economic research. That's a lot of sudden changes in 2022. What do you say to somebody that's sitting there wanting to buy a house? Should I go in and buy a house? Wait, what should I do?
- [10:53]
C
I think buying a house is always going to work out in the long term because it's an inflation protected asset in many ways. However, I would say this, we are hitting it from every angle. So we're not just blaming Powell because he is to blame and he deserves the blame, but also at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Patrick we just allowed rent to be counted towards your mortgage. So if you have been paying your rent the last 10 years, that should count towards your mortgage. It never was beforehand. We got rid of the FICO monopoly, the FICO score monopoly. We're allowing cryptocurrency to count towards collateral towards your mortgage. So we're hitting it from every angle. I do think though, if people are gonna buy a house right now, the best thing to do is to make sure that even if there was a housing crash, which I don't think under President Trump that will ever happen I think under other presidents like Biden, it could have happened. Frankly, I think in many ways it did. Cuz look at how bad the housing market is and we're trying to turn it around. But if you buy in the right location and you buy something that is a good asset, that's located well, can survive a crash, I think you'll do great long term.
- [11:48]
B
So this is a good transition for me to go to. Brandon, your family, your grandfather, right? William J. Pulte built a Pulte group, God bless his soul. He's no longer with us. 14 kids, massive company, $25 billion company. You know, he was in the building business for many years, from 18 years old building on a house for himself. And I think he built a house for his parents. A second home he built was for his parents, and he built a Fortune 500 company, one of the most powerful builders. At one point. I think his business, his company was number one in that space.
- [12:21]
C
That's right.
- [12:22]
B
So on the building side.
- [12:24]
C
Oh, we're going to get that going again.
- [12:25]
B
Yeah. On the building side. The question I want to ask is Brandon, who just turned 30 years old. Right. You know, wanting to come up buying a house. You and I will have the conversation and we'll talk about the price of lumber, price of concrete. Go ahead. Your question.
- [12:39]
D
Yeah, everything like sheetrock, concrete, lumber, windows, all that stuff is up and up. We always talk about how it seems that's not profitable to build houses, and it's like a national crisis that it is unprofitable to build houses and there's a giant shortage in it. So that's something that concerns me a little bit. With rates going down, I understand that inflation's low, so there's a lot of good reasons to bring rates down. But remember when Covid happened, we brought rates down and the average house price went from like 378 to 500 in just three years. So, you know, I'm concerned about prices going up like that again with the shortage in housing. So, I mean, what do you say about that?
- [13:15]
C
Well, I would say that the builders sit on a lot of land. They sit on over 2 million lots, by what we can tell. And at the present, builders sit on 2 million lots. Yeah. 2 million empty lots. Yeah. Yeah. That's the dirty secret. And look, I love pulte, I love Dr. Horton, I love Lennar, I love all the big home builders. But we've been meeting with them recently. We've had some really good talks, I would say, me and others in the administration and I'M very confident we're going to get them building. But you know, look, they may need to bring their prices down. They may also need to figure out how to make monthly payments only for people who are qualified, but make it more affordable for people to buy homes. So this really is all hands on deck. And the builders are sitting on 2 million lots, Patrick. So they got, they got to get going.
- [13:54]
B
So, so, but you look now they'll.
- [13:55]
C
Say, oh, well, it's not ent and there's not sewers in it. Well then get putting the sewers in them.
- [13:59]
B
Okay, guys, how do you do that though? How do you motivate him? Because price of concrete's gone up 150%.
- [14:04]
C
Oh, we can, we can motivate them. We're trying to do it in a constructive way. You know, I'll say this, the top two homebuilder in the country. We give at Fannie Mae alone, year to date, $8 billion in liquidity too. So.
- [14:17]
B
I got it.
- [14:18]
C
Yeah, yeah. So, you know, we want to be constructive, but at the same time, you know, people have to step up and do the right thing by the American consumer. They can't be like the oil cartel where they collude with each other, keep the prices high, and then gentlemen, like this guy can't buy a home.
- [14:33]
B
But then the other part for me is the following. Incentive. Okay, so the incentive part, Rob, can you pull up a data, you know, the number of two bedroom homes we built versus three bedroom homes versus four bedroom homes.
- [14:44]
D
I just sent it the 1400 square foot one.
- [14:47]
B
Rob, if you can pull that up. So if you look at the number of four bedroom homes skyrocketing, okay. Versus the number of three bedroom homes versus the number of two bedroom condos, you know, starter homes. Builders are sitting there saying, why would I get into building smaller homes? There's no money in it. I mean, if you look at this 1970s, look how many homes we're building per year that are 14,000 square feet or less, half a million per year. And then we go to $400,000, 400,000 of them in the 80s, then we go into the 300,000 in the 90s, then 200,000 and then today less than 100,000 homes being built every year. That's less than 1400 square feet if I'm a 25 year old. Where back in the days, you know, somebody wanted to buy a home, it took two and a half times average salary, average salary to be able to buy a house right now on some years, it's five and a half to eight and a half. So what. What incentive do you give builders to say, guys, we got to go build some 1400 square foot homes, not these 2,800 four bedroom homes. What can we do to incentivize builders?
- [15:51]
C
Well, I don't want to just pick on the builders, but I will say they do need to look at the margins. And one of the companies that's done this is Lennar, they've built smaller floor plans. They are not just saying, oh, we need all these high margins and we need to make a lot of money. Look, I'm all for these companies making money. This is America. But at the end of the day, you know, the builders. Patrick, when I was a kid at Pulte Homes and, you know, I eventually went and worked there on the board, but, you know, when I was a kid, it was less than 10% of the market was the big builders. Now, Patrick, it's almost 60% of the market. So a lot of people say, wow, these builders, they almost have like a.
- [16:23]
B
Monopoly on the market from what year to what year?
- [16:25]
C
From probably 2007 till today, they've gone up about from 10% market share to about 60% market. So, you know, you think about them, they're like the automakers these days. And so if they set the price. But see, it's even worse than the automakers because they control the land. And again, I don't want to pick on the builders. There's a lot of different angles that we have to go at from here, but we got to get it down. Biden destroyed the housing market. And that's not just. I mean, I know it sounds like a crazy political point, but he did. I mean, with this inflation that went up and rates went up as fast as it did, it scared the hell out of everybody. They didn't build supply. They kept margins high and we got our work cut out for us.
- [17:00]
B
Tom, what are you thinking about this?
- [17:02]
A
Well, what I want to. I also see a local angle to it, right? And local permitting and local approvals. We just saw it after the LA fires, local municipalities. And I'd love to see the administration, you know, kind of lead and drive, like council of governors or whatever is necessary to say, look, your states are making it hard to build homes. You have a lot of environmental regulations. You've got permitting that takes forever. Just look at the rebuild they're trying to do in Pacific Palisades. I know that's a wealthy neighborhood, but homes were there in an area that had, you know, decades of just neighborhood existence. It's not new. No one's trying to do it new. And just to rebuild the homes, you've got insurance carriers holding checks ready to start the rebuild and there are sufficient resources to rebuild yet. The permitting process in Los Angeles is taking forever.
- [17:55]
C
It's totally crazy.
- [17:56]
A
And so I'd love to see the administration work with the governors and say, hey, get your state in order and let the building happen faster. So I think the builders, I don't want to pick on builders either, but they need to scream loud and ask for the governors and the administration to put pressure on the permitting process.
- [18:16]
C
I agree. And they need to be not afraid to ask for help or to call people out. You know, the builders have been traditionally not willing to call out people thinking that it won't lead to anything. Well, nobody's going to get homes built if they don't speak up.
- [18:28]
A
Well, they want to be neutral.
- [18:30]
C
I understand, but you know, how can you be neutral when you have people who have all of the permitting ready to go? Palisades is ready to be built, but California and Newsom aren't making it happen. They gotta make it happen.
- [18:42]
B
How do you accelerate that though? Because part of it is so the one part where you know, as a, we want to build something here. Okay. The construction guy will come in, he'll say, well, it's going to cost you $600,000. Great. How soon can you build it? It'll take me six weeks to build it, but I can't control the permitting process. Got it. What can we do to accelerate the permitting process while you're dealing with XYZ city laws? And so you're going to have to probably wait. What if we go pay somebody? Well, that would be other thing that you have to do. That's that part. But what, what can we. The White House and then the individual. What can we do to accelerate some of these states to move their permitting and the regulatory process faster? And how can we incentivize builders? This is the chart I was talking about earlier, by the way. In 73 we were building, 70% of homes that were being built were three bedroom homes. Then it drops all the way down to 43%. Back then, only 20% of homes were four bedroom homes. Now it's at 48% and two bedrooms have been around the same number, 10 or 9% that's not moved. But the three bedroom starter homes has dropped nearly 30%, 25% of homes. How can we incentivize both the builders as well as deregulate from the federal side?
- [19:59]
C
Well, the issue is, as you know, is that at some level at the federal government, you kind of want to stay out of the way. And so it is very much a local question. However, I do think we are looking at some different ways, both at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to make sure that the municipalities are being competitive. And I would tell you this too. We recently held a meeting, me, Scott Turner, the Secretary of hud, Kevin Hassett, the Secretary of Treasury Besant and many others, Kevin Hassett of the NEC and looking at all types of different ideas on housing, looking at is there a way that we could incentivize with federal funds or otherwise, some of these municipalities to get going? The good news is, Patrick, I do think that in 2026 this is going to be a huge issue both in terms of the election. But I also think that the House and the Senate, they're telling me, and this is what I don't understand some of these Democrats who didn't vote for me because I'm just a housing guy is they sat there and they sat there and they said, oh, we're going to vote for you and everything. They didn't end up voting for me, but they said in the same meetings in the confirmation hearings, they'd say, well, housing is the number one issue amongst my constituency. So I think there's enormous momentum going into 26 and I think you're going to see some meaningful announcements out of us in the coming months.
- [21:08]
B
I look forward to it.
- [21:09]
C
We're going to ask some real action.
- [21:11]
D
Is it overhyped the impact that corporations are having on buying up these small houses or is that something that's actually problematic? I've heard a lot of rumblings about that. Like I don't know if it's just BlackRock or private equity companies or just corporations are looking for a good yield that are buying up rental properties at like over asking price. Have you heard about that? Are you concerned about that at all?
- [21:31]
C
There's definitely something to that. Now, one thing I want to say is that in addition to what we're doing, right, with the rent being counted towards mortgages, crypto being counted towards mortgages, credit scores, credit bureaus trying to bring down title, insurance costs, all of these things. You know, the number one thing though, that has driven, in my view, in addition to Biden's reckless policies, this housing problem has been mass immigration that he let in, illegal immigration, you know, letting in 20 million people. What does that do to our housing supply? I mean, think about that. If we build, the big builders will build, I don't know, you know, quite a bit of homes this year. Just shy of a million. Okay. Do you know how many years that would take to make up for all of these illegal immigrants that came in under Biden? It's significant. And it's the number one thing that, you know, obviously the media doesn't want to report on, but when they talk about the housing shortage, they need to talk about how many illegals they let in during the Biden term. I mean, because it has an upward effect. Right. It pushes rents up, and then it just goes right up the food chain of housing.
- [22:29]
B
Were you going to say something?
- [22:30]
A
Well, yeah. And then what happens is private equity looks around and says, hey, wait a minute, some of these people are going to get rent subsidies from the, from the Democrats. Hey, why don't we just buy up the houses and then we'll get the subsidies? So in a way.
- [22:43]
C
And then what happens to the price of land?
- [22:45]
A
Exactly. Now, now you've, now you've lost. Now you've got artificial bidders being fueled. It's the same thing happens to tuitions, Pat. Tuitions were driven up by student loans because students could go get loans regardless of what the tuition is, regardless of it went up. And the federal government will say, no problem, you qualify. No problem, you qualify. And then they dumped it on all the processors. And then you had these students, had these giant student loans that they went in eyes open, but the cost was up. Well, now you've got all these people come in, they're going to get rent subsidies from the government. I'm blackrock, you're Citadel. We say, why don't we buy a bunch of them? Because we're guaranteed the rent. Oh, I got an idea. We'll do section eight and we'll just put all these people in there. So now you can't find a condo to start with because you've got too much demand. That's artificial. That's. The government is almost like paying student loans to immigrants to have a place to stay. It's artificial. And guess what? Now the land goes up, everything goes up.
- [23:44]
C
Guys in the housing business would tell me for the last few years that it was the Biden trade. So you'd buy this land, you'd buy these homes, you'd buy these rentals, and then you'd hope that this is not me, but I'm saying this is other housing guys saying that then they'd let in more people, and then it would just go up with price and that's exactly what happened.
- [24:02]
A
And then they all scream and then they get more subsidies.
- [24:04]
C
Yep.
- [24:05]
B
Yeah. I mean, obviously to me, when you hear the younger generation as they're coming up, they're sitting there saying, I want to find a way to buy a property. Do I just sit this one out? Do I just say the idea of owning a house early on, forget about it. Just go do other things. And then these other guys are targeting renters. So maybe they don't want me to buy a house. Maybe it's, this is not a market for me to buy a house I can't afford in the first place. What do I do? It's not like my income is skyrocketing. It's not like the median income is skyrocketing. So to me, the issue becomes how do you win over the youth that is wanting to pursue the American dream. Hence we marketed it for many years. That's homeownership. They're, they're sitting this out and they're saying, I don't know if it's part of me. So I think if somebody in a marketplace thinks about how to win them over, how to address that issue in whatever way, you know, prices are going up. So how. Even the builders are sitting there saying, well, don't make me the bad guy. I want to be able to build. There's no incentive for it. Why would I build it? I don't want a nonprofit. So I don't think builders can do it by themselves. I do think they need help from incentives to be able to get them to say, whoever goes out there building more three bedroom starter homes at this, you know, I don't know, I don't know how you do that, but I do think there's a massive market for it economically. I'm sure there's a lot of different people that would want to have a blue ocean and doing that, but they can't do without the help of some kind of benefits from the top.
- [25:35]
C
Yeah. And I think you'll see us unveil that. Right now we're just trying to work in a constructive way with the builders and say, hey, how can we make this a win win? But we do have a lot of wherewithal to effectuate change and hopefully we'll be announcing that in the coming weeks.
- [25:48]
B
All right, we'll look forward to it. Let's go to the next story. Here's another big announcement that's coming up. Big banks woo Trump for roles on blockbuster ipo. This is Wall Street Journal story. This was a couple Weeks ago, Goldman Sachs chief David Solomon was at the White House this summer pitching President Trump on why his bank should lead a huge coming deal, the initial public offering of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Midway through the presentation, Trump invited a group of athletes from his Council of Sports and Fitness. Solomon continued speaking as former president, professional wrestler Triple H and golfer Bryson looked on. It was surreal meeting befitting what is perhaps the strangest IPO takeoff ever. Bake off ever. All of the major banks have been working to land roles on what could be one of the largest stock offerings in history. In doing so, the banks are wrestling with a host of novel issues. Thanks to the unpredictability of Trump and complicated nature of taking government back entity entities public, the winners stand to earn not only hefty fees, but bragging rights for having worked on a deal that could reap the government billions of dollars. What could you tell us about what's going on here?
- [26:56]
C
It's the biggest potential IPO in history, and I would say you have the world's best dealmaker working on it. And it's been nothing but a joy to see him in action, both in that meeting and in other actions. You have every bank, Patrick, coming into the White House. I mean, they all want to come in, but we've had about six meetings with six different banks.
- [27:15]
B
All the big ones.
- [27:15]
C
All the big ones. And they're sitting right there in front of the Resolute desk and they're pitching the president and, you know, oh, sir, sir. You know, and it's funny because some of these guys, you know, they weren't so friendly to the president and in his years where he wasn't a active president, you know, for the last four years.
- [27:32]
B
Does he remind them in those meetings?
- [27:33]
C
I don't want to say what he does or doesn't do, but I would just say I'll talk about what they do, which is they kiss his ass. And they deserve to kiss his ass. Number one, he's apologized.
- [27:44]
B
Do they apologize? Can you say that? Do some of them sit there and say, look, I was an asshole to you four years ago?
- [27:50]
C
It's even worse than that. You know, they're just kissing his. You know what? And, yeah, that.
- [27:58]
B
Sincerely. Do you feel sincerity or do you.
- [28:00]
C
Feel like I stop depending on the person? But I would say it just depends on the CEO. CEO. So it's been fascinating, but, you know, you're seeing, you know, again, I don't want to get into specifics, but, you know, CEO of Bank of America, CEO of Goldman Sachs, CEO of JP Morgan, CEO of Citigroup. They're all coming in. It's been. It's been fascinating to watch them in real time, too.
- [28:19]
B
What? Look, we've all read the Art of the Deal right now. My youngest son is reading the Art of the Deal. My oldest son already read a few years ago on. I think one of the most important skill sets is learning how to negotiate and maneuver in these types of fields. What did you see? That's from the book that Mar A Lago. Hearing him speak in different places versus now. What have you picked up on the negotiation side that is maybe. Well, I never know. This was an interesting approach he took.
- [28:48]
C
He works with people, he'll work with people, and then when they won't work with him, well, then he has to do what he has to do. But what's been super interesting has been seeing people who've been adversarial at first. First. And it's just like, why aren't you working with him? I don't understand that. What do they think that they gain by being adversarial with this guy? It doesn't make sense. And I think you see that even with the trade partners, right? The countries that have come first, and I think Howard Lutnick and Scott Bessen have done a good job with this is they've teed these things up. And it's the countries that wanted to work for Trump, they didn't have animus or this anti Trump or this Trump derangement syndrome. I mean, it's a real sickness. And if you're not infected with that, you can actually negotiate pretty well, in my opinion, with him.
- [29:32]
B
What was the phone call that was made that he wanted you to work from? What did that phone call sound like?
- [29:38]
C
I think it was in person meetings. So it was kind of interesting. I'm trying to think about everything that I can say, but it was super interesting. Elon Musk was actually in the first meeting that I had with the president about serving in the administration. So that was super. It was like a job interview with Elon Musk.
- [29:58]
B
And so Elon was also asking questions.
- [30:00]
C
He asked a couple of questions. This is back during the transition. So that was very interesting. And yeah, so that was just for a generic job, not for this specific job. But then once I did this job, the president, he said some nice things and he said, make sure you do a good job, et cetera, et cetera. He's been on it. And that's what's cool, is he's a real estate Guy. So he's all over this.
- [30:22]
B
Well, well, you're also a real estate guy. The family. One question I want to ask you is last year, every year, Goldman hosts this family estate planning meetings where you come in and you meet with. With all these other, you know, billionaires, the Crow families there, all these other guys are there. They're talking about G1s, G2, G3, G4, G5. Your grandfather, who starts a Pulte Group, the valuation today, market cap, give or take, 25 billion bucks, is where it's at. And at one point, he was the chairman, 10% running a company, doing his thing, of course, as the founder, but at the tail end of it, when he passed away, I think his net worth was around $4 billion. Did very, very well for himself.
- [30:59]
C
Yeah. I don't know if you know, but we had to go in and kick out the CEO. Did you read that part of the story?
- [31:04]
B
No, I did not.
- [31:04]
C
Yeah, in 2016, I led a fight to kick out the CEO of Pulte Group. And shortly.
- [31:09]
B
Was it still relative or.
- [31:10]
C
No, no, it wasn't. And it was disappointing because he had thought, okay, I'm gonna give it to this guy. And he didn't give it to his kids. My grandfather didn't. And then the stock just continued to suffer. So in 2015, 2016, I led this initiative to remove the guy. And, yeah, it was quite crazy. So talk about G1, G2, G3.
- [31:28]
B
That's kind of where I want to go with it, though, because when I'm sitting there and you want to get ahead of it, to see what things they did. Right. You'll see a lot of videos and pictures of him and all the kids and the grandkids and the great grandkids and talking about the role Faith played and charity played and all this other stuff. But when you're at that level of money and you have that kind of wealth and that many kids and grandkids, what did the family do? Right, that you can teach others that are going through this for estate planning to manage G1G, like, hey, one kid is sitting there saying, I'm a Pulte. I'm automatically going to get this. No, this is not how it works. He says, I'm not here to solve your problems. You have to. I'm going to take you there. But from there, it's got to be on you to go out there and do it. Did you see some ways that the family, the way he structured it, where it was like, you're going to fall into this Tier, into this tier, into this tier. If you want to really go up and do something with the company and make a lot of money and have, you're going to have to do xyz. Was there certain structures set up in the family?
- [32:21]
C
Yes, but there always is at the end of the day. And you probably know this with your kids, kids who are interested in the business and want to do things, and then there are other people who don't want to do right. And it's, you know, there are winners and then there are losers. And I'm not saying people in the family are losers, but I'm just saying, you know, it's all about your interest level. And so I think he kind of came to the conclusion at some point in his life, like, look, it is what it is. I can't change a lot of my kids. If some of them want to be in business, great. If some of them don't want to. His biggest regret, Patrick, was he gave some of the family members when they were 18 years old some stock and pulte, and it ended up being worth a lot of money. But a lot of them pissed away the money. And so he was very upset that he had done that. And he never got over that with himself. So I think if he had to go and do it all over again, he would have restricted their wealth, restricted the ability for them to have any resources. And my dad actually did the same. And I think that really helped me out quite a bit. Because, you know, if you give a kid, you know, when they're 18 years old, a bunch of money, you know.
- [33:16]
B
We know what he's saying is he's not upset that he gave him the equity. He's upset that he gave it to him at 18, where they could cash out and take the money. He didn't put the restriction that they can activate it at 35 or 40.
- [33:27]
C
Years old and then they get married, and then their husband or wife, you know, they want to hire a financial advisor. And then the financial advisor says, oh, you might not want to own Pulte homes. You know, you might want to diversify. Well, that's the worst effing mistake you could have made, you know, was diversify. Because Pulte just went boom, boom, boom. You know, the stock just kept going up.
- [33:43]
B
So how does he, as a big, strong person, how did he keep everybody together? Were there traditions, rituals, gatherings, Thanksgiving, Christmas? What were some of the rituals in the family?
- [33:54]
C
He was the godfather, he was the patriarch, you know, and it's not the same now with him being gone. But I just learned a ton from him. I'll say this. Working with him is very similar to working with the president. They're very similar type of people.
- [34:07]
B
In what ways?
- [34:08]
C
First of all, they don't see mental prisons. And you know this. Because of your great success you've had. Nothing is impossible to the two of them. They're also very visual thinkers, so they think in construction and building type terms. And so that's fascinating. A lot of other presidents, I think, are more wonky ish and stuff like that with the ballroom and stuff. It's like they just hate it because they can't build what he could build. They don't have the talent to build what he could build. This is a guy who knows quality. Right. You've been to Mar a Lago. Right. There's no other president. You put nothing against Obama in this sense, but he couldn't put together a ballroom. He was out in tents on the White House lawn. So I'm just saying that the level of business genius that I observed in my grandfather and learned from him, I also see that in President Trump. Yes.
- [34:56]
B
But was there structures like. I guess what I'm trying to find. And this is the last question we'll ask him. We'll move on. If you want to work in a family business, you must do that. Get an MBA if you want to do this. You have to. Was there certain requirements that he put together?
- [35:08]
C
No. And at some level, he just wanted to see who wanted it. And I was like, I was the only other Pulte in Pulte homes other than my grandfather, but I was with him. You know, I remember one of my uncles.
- [35:18]
B
You're the only other Pulte in Pulte homes outside of your grandfather, even though your grandfather had 14 kids.
- [35:24]
C
That's correct.
- [35:25]
B
That's unbelievable.
- [35:26]
C
Yeah. Him and I were extremely close.
- [35:28]
B
Well, when you. When you go to his profile.
- [35:30]
C
Yeah.
- [35:31]
B
For a man to have 14 kids, the only other name that there's a link to is you right there. If you look. And that. That's kind of. Because if you go to click on relatives, don't click on relatives. Right there. It's only Bill Pulte, right?
- [35:44]
C
Yeah. He had the same name as me, too. Which is ironic.
- [35:46]
B
Yeah, that's fine. Which is ironic. Yeah. So which means your father was. Was your father's name Mark, who named you after his. His father.
- [35:56]
C
His dad. Yeah. Which.
- [35:57]
B
Which shows admiration. That.
- [35:59]
C
Yes. Yes.
- [35:59]
B
That's very cool.
- [36:00]
A
Yeah.
- [36:00]
B
So. So only you. So you know, how is that was it because you wanted to the other.
- [36:05]
C
You just wanted it. You just wanted it. And you did everything that you could to learn to be of value to him. I'll give you an example. Like in 2011, it was terrible. My. One of my uncles passed away. So you had nine biological kids, five step kids, so 14 total. One of the uncles passed away. And he was just a tough German guy. He was very sad that his son died, but, you know, he was just very matter of fact. Well, we would be in the. We were in the funeral home for a couple of days and him and I were in the corner talking about business, you know, and it's just everybody thought we were crazy. Like, what are they doing? You know, we're here at a funeral or what have you, or at a wake and you're over there talking business. So. But it's. He was just that kind of guy, you know, it was just pragmatic. He was very upset about his son, don't get me wrong. But you know, it's like, are you there in those moments with him? And then, you know, we would do a bunch of different things. I started my business, we were in the countertop business. I got him involved in the countertop business. I'd fly him in to meet with the company. This is when he retired from Pulte Homes. And he'd help design different sink products, different faucets, all kinds of things. So I was learning with him and from him and a lot of other people. And I don't want to say this about my family, but, you know, they weren't really interested in spending that amount of time with him and getting him to help in that way.
- [37:13]
B
Was he hard charging? We're like, I would never work with him. He is crazy. He is like non stop. Is that kind of like that scared him a little bit where they didn't want to work that hard or was it just like, no, I just want to go work for a charity. I just want to go.
- [37:25]
C
No, but he was very tough. But you had to listen to what he wanted, you know, And I think a lot of people, they don't listen to what he want. They didn't listen to what he wanted. The kids didn't listen. He had all the secrets, he had all the wisdom. So I would just shut my mouth and sit there and, you know, just try to get as much information out of him as I could.
- [37:42]
B
I love it. Great story. I mean, you know, the setting up the family to keep everybody together and keep everybody going. It is not an easy thing. To do. It's very complex. And then there's a book. Everybody who is watching this, if you ever want to read a book that you're making money or like, I want to find a way I can protect myself against this happening for me, go read the book the Ultimate Gift by Jim Stovall. It's one of the best books ever on estate planning. Not the movie, not the movie, the book. The ultimate gift. Good luck putting this book down. I've been recommended this book, God knows, for since 2004, so 2005, whenever the book came out. Phenomenal book. Okay, let's get to next story here. Tom. Layoffs, Amazon 14,000 jobs. UPS already this year 48,000 jobs. Rivian 600,000 job Chegg slashes 45% of work for workforce blames new realities of AI meta layoffs Amazon another 30,000. Target Target 1800. Rob, I think you got some of the videos on this one. Why don't we play the ups one? 48,000 for the year so far. When you're seeing these types of things. We talked about this briefly yesterday. To the average person, this looks like, oh my God, this is horrible. Look at all this stuff that's going on. Go ahead and play this clip, Rob.
- [38:57]
E
So new tonight, UPS has announced that they've cut 4,48,000 jobs so far this year. That announcement made on their quarterly call this morning, the company said their 2025 revenue is more than $21 billion. But that's partly because they've consolidated to create what they call a more efficient operating model. 14,000 workers were primarily on the management level. On top of that, they reduced their operational workforce by about 34,000 positions and close, close daily operations at 93 sites.
- [39:32]
B
Tom, this looks bad, but is it really bad what's going on here?
- [39:34]
A
No, this is natural. And what's happening natural. I'll give you three points on it. Point number one, we are having a pretty good economic year. Wall Street's having a good year. And when you come to the end of the year, what do you do? You make budgets. Your company make budgets. You require everybody to take a look at it and bring you their, their, their ideas, their thoughts, their creativity for next year. And what are we going to budget? What are we going to not? And a lot of companies are discovering, look, UPS is competing with Amazon, if you want to think of it that way. And every time Amazon automates a warehouse, UPS has to cover. It's like sailing. You have to cover the tack. You have to cover what your competitor's doing. So number one, the layoffs are coming as they realize these efficiencies and then they're going to return that profit to the shareholders. That's what's happening. Point one. Point two, we're in a transition in America. There's more efficiency happening as AI happening. And I like to go, Rob, can you go to the link I gave you? We used it last week. Let's take a look now. And Bill, also want to know what you think about this. Take a look at this, what's going on here right now. These layoffs are the responsibility of the Democrats that have inhibited the progress on the President's agenda. And before you tell me you're just all pro Trump, go look at this, look at the trillions of dollars investments that are happening in the United States. These are new jobs, new manufacturing that were being held up by Congress, that are being held up because people like Chuck Schumer are getting in the way of the President's agenda. The president's trying to encourage companies to build factories with new jobs, tomorrow's jobs here, so that as UPS gets more efficient and they lay off jobs for this, there's places for the American worker to go go. And so I put this at the feet of the Democrats who are by the way, the Democrats have their own unions yelling at them, saying oh, what happened to my job? I'm the union supported you during the election. Where's our jobs going? And so you got the unions actually harping at the Democrats, which is a fun irony. But what's happening with these layoffs? It the market likes to see cost consolidation so the stock market goes up and companies are making layoffs in the name of efficiency and things. But the president's agenda to bring more jobs to America and $1.5 trillion of investment just since March of this year. The, the total number is bigger. It's like 5, 6 trillion over five years. So I see the two sided coin here and I think the Dems need to get out of his way because the Trump effect is happening and these people need new jobs as America evolves forward. And you, yes, AI is a part of it, but AI is not a villain.
- [42:08]
B
Bill, your thoughts?
- [42:10]
C
I think that 2026 is going to be huge. I think it's going to be huge. I think obviously these jobs matter, but I think people are underestimating what GDP and what growth will be next year.
- [42:23]
B
Brandon?
- [42:24]
D
Yeah, no, this is such a normal thing. Every 100 years, like 50% of the job market gets wiped out by new disruptive Technology. You know, it happened with agriculture in the 1800s. Like 90% of the workforce got wiped out. They went into skill trades. Then the industrial revolution happens, then it wipes out the skill trades. Then computers come along, it wipes out the industrial factory jobs. So, you know, like every 100 years a new disruptive technology comes out, wipes out half the job market, and then people get jobs. They didn't even realize that, like, that were going to be needed in the future. So we're not even imagining the jobs that are going to be created. People are thinking it's to going. Gonna have to be UBI or something. But no, I think we're gonna have a whole new job market that we're not even fathoming right now.
- [43:01]
B
Yeah, I mean, look, like Tom said earlier, if. If the. If some of these companies as they're coming into the fourth quarter, they're cutting the cost to show up. You know, you see we just laid off this many people. Boom. You know, stock valuation goes up for the last quarter. To have a strong finish ending to it. I don't see these stories slowing down the next couple months. I think we're going to hear a couple more of these stories, Tom, coming up. So if you think this is a big deal, I think there's more announcements.
- [43:27]
A
These companies are not in trouble. These companies are actually surging.
- [43:30]
B
Yesterday we're sitting in a meeting, guys, we're preparing for the podcast and Tom starts talking about all these companies are laying people off. And I look at the people sitting the room, I'm like, tom, are you threatening the people sitting in front of you? Are you threatening people? What are you telling people right now? What's going on and why? It's a good decision. You see Humberto panicking. She's got like sweat dropping because of all the stuff that's going on cheap Chile. But I think Humberto is going to be okay. I think he's going to be okay. I don't want to. Yes.
- [43:54]
D
You attribute more to earnings than to AI, to automation.
- [44:00]
B
I think. I think it's lazy to say due to AI. Like for example, Chuck says slash is 45% of workforce, blames new realities of AI as the operator. You need to just take responsibility of why you're doing this. Yes, some of it may be AI. 45% tied to AI.
- [44:16]
D
Amazon's invested 10 billion, though it's an AI part.
- [44:19]
B
I think there's an element of it that is AI. But Amazon is not coming out saying we're firing people because of AI. Amazon is saying, look, here's what we're doing. And by the way, did you see the numbers of how many unions members we had? What was the number of how many union members we had 50 years ago versus today? You remember the number? It was double or triple. No, it wasn't double. I think it was much more than double.
- [44:42]
A
Can you.
- [44:42]
B
Can you see the number of union members membership in the history of us, what's happened to it? Okay. Versus today? If you actually go pull up charts on how many members we've had in the union. Look at that.
- [44:58]
D
Oh, wow.
- [44:59]
B
Do you see the number?
- [45:00]
D
Yeah, it's went from 20 to like 7 million in the last 40 years.
- [45:06]
B
Okay, so check this out. We went from 22 million in 1970 to how many people not being members of unions? You know, 14.3 million. Okay, and the numbers dropping off. So what is that, 7 million 33% membership dropped on unions. Why is that? Why is unions taking a hit that they're taking? Because you know what some of these companies are saying, like, imagine you're working for a company that's, you know, being pushed to be union, and a company is saying, oh, you guys want to become union? No problem. Guess what? You're forcing me to become AI. So the antonym to union has become who?
- [45:48]
D
Well, automated.
- [45:50]
B
Yeah, yeah, automated. I'm gonna automate everything. And that's kind of the direction they're going. And by the way, then the argument becomes, well, I think that's going to happen no matter what. Whether you like it or not, we're going to go to that direction. Maybe you're right. Maybe you are right. Maybe we are going to be going that direction. But I think for some of the companies that are just saying AI, at least if Amazon says AI, guess what they're doing. They are putting their money into AI. And don't get me wrong, I saw, you know, Sean o', Brien, who was the president of the Teamsters, going after Jeff Bezos and Amazon. You know who else I saw going after them? Josh Hawley. Josh Hawley's not a liberal, pro union guy. Josh Hawley's, you know, one of the biggest powerhouses, and he's going after Amazon. So I don't know what's going on there with Amazon. Left, right, center. Everybody is targeting Amazon. Why would you say that is, Bill? Why do you. Why do you think Amazon's being targeted right now by everybody? I don't know, Tom, what would you say? What do you think?
- [46:41]
A
Well, there's a couple angles to it, right? It's what, it's what they represent. All the unions represent the truck drivers. They're scared to death of autonomous vehicles, driving vehicles and they want to unionize distribution system centers. Anyone who that. So the unions are going to come out that way. On the other, other side you've got aws. And AWS just had an outage and so obviously they need to be a little bit more stout if they're going to be the backbone of so much telecommunications infrastructure behind companies using aws. We had a major outage just two weeks ago. Right. Or less than that. Where for, for a whole day. Look how many services. And they say, oh, they, these apps were down. Those apps are providing critical services. Those are like banking apps. There were like.
- [47:26]
C
Yeah, we use AWS at Fannie and Freddie runs essentially $8 trillion of mortgages.
- [47:31]
B
Through Fannie and Freddie use AWS.
- [47:34]
C
They do.
- [47:35]
B
Have you guys thought about moving elsewhere?
- [47:38]
C
I mean, we are actively looking at other providers, not just because of what happened the other week, but just generally. Yes.
- [47:44]
B
So if somebody came in, offered something more efficient, higher security, higher upcoming as the stuff that matters for Freddie and Fannie especially, let's just say you're going through to possibly the biggest IPO of all time. Are you guys seriously considering 100% leaving AWS?
- [48:04]
C
No.
- [48:04]
B
Okay, got it.
- [48:05]
C
But we would look at. We want to diversify within reason. The problem is that when you get on these cloud networks, as you know, and you get so pregnant on them, so to speak, it's hard to move off of.
- [48:14]
B
It is very hard to move off.
- [48:15]
C
Yeah. And you know, it's a safety and soundness issue. But then a couple of weeks ago, what happened with aws? You know, it also makes you wonder.
- [48:20]
A
Wow, where's the safety? Where's the soundness?
- [48:22]
B
Yeah.
- [48:23]
C
So it's, it's not going away. It's become. Not a stage five alarm fire or whatever, but it's become an issue.
- [48:30]
B
Who are alternatives, by the way?
- [48:32]
C
I don't think there's that many Oracle. I think you got Oracle handful. Yeah, it's, it's.
- [48:37]
D
They're like 37% of the cloud market.
- [48:40]
A
Google Cloud.
- [48:41]
B
You used to have independent AWS's. Yeah, yeah. I mean it's big enough to the point where Andy Jassy, who was running it, became the CEO of Amazon.
- [48:48]
A
There's a good chart on the cloud.
- [48:49]
D
There's a good chart, Rob, if you.
- [48:51]
A
Do the Oracle cloud infrastructure is, is quite good. It's going to be running TikTok. Right. Larry Ellison there. But you take a Look, there's very few choices. There's very few choices.
- [49:01]
B
Well, it's not like TikTok had a chance on what cloud services they were going to use. No, no, but I mean, you know what I'm saying.
- [49:07]
A
Yeah, they were already on it, but had there been a force.
- [49:10]
B
They were already on Oracle.
- [49:12]
A
Part of. Part of.
- [49:13]
B
But now they're going to go full. They're going to go TikTok full. TikTok is going to be Oracle.
- [49:18]
A
One of the requirements is it's got to be US based servers. Right? One of the requirements of TikTok. The data can't go out the back door back to prc and so we got to have it on US servers and there cannot be backdoors for transmitting US user data back to China. So that has to happen. And so you have Oracle's cloud infrastructure, Google Cloud platform. People don't hear a lot about it. A Google Cloud platform. And then of course Azure, you take a look last year Microsoft accelerated ahead on valuations. You saw how big they got. Part of that was Azure cloud.
- [49:51]
C
Well, they're just so critically important. I get a report every day with how much mortgage volume we do at Fannie and Freddie. We have a subsidiary that we rebranded from Common Securitization Solutions. Nobody knew what the hell it was to US fintech. It's basically a fintech company that Fannie and Freddie own. We've put over a billion dollars in at each company. So Fannie put in a billion, Freddie put in a billion. We do all of the underground piping basically for the mortgage backed security market through this US fintech. Nearly 100% on AWS. Big part of it on AWS. So this is a problem that is not going away and in our case we have to be very focused on it. We're doing anywhere from 2 to 25 billion dollars a day of mortgages just through this pipeline.
- [50:34]
B
2 to 25 billion a day.
- [50:35]
C
A day. Got it.
- [50:37]
B
What's the number for the year? 8 trillion.
- [50:41]
C
We oversee 8 trillion in assets. About 4 trillion roughly at. 4 trillion roughly at Fannie, roughly 4 trillion at Freddie.
- [50:50]
B
Got it.
- [50:50]
C
And then the federal Home Loan banks I also oversee is about a trillion two. And we're trying to get them on the US Fintech platform now too. This is not going away and I'd be very bullish on these companies, frankly.
- [51:02]
B
Yeah. So are you bullish still on AWS keeping the lead or are you bullish on the fact that somebody could come in and disrupt and take over aws?
- [51:10]
C
No, I think they Will. I think they'll stay in the lead. But I think it was a, I think it was, I think it was a good scare. You know how you have that in business where it scares the crap out of you And I think this was a relatively innocent scare the heck out of you know what moment at least from what I've observed at Fannie and Freddie.
- [51:25]
B
There you go. So AWS is 30%, Azure is 20, Google is 13. Then you got everybody else, Oracle's only three, IBM's two. So. Meaning all roads lead to AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.
- [51:39]
C
But they were a first mover, right?
- [51:41]
D
I don't even think they intended to be that at first. I think they originally had just such a big cloud database for their inventory that it ended up being useful for what they the for the cloud situation. So that might be a security problem too, is that wasn't originally built to be a security or a secure thing to that level.
- [51:58]
B
Yeah, I mean look, you're right. But it sometimes and great thing about businesses, you'll start something and you don't know what it's doing and then all of a sudden it takes off. You're like, wait a minute, we didn't even think about this was going to be this big. And then remember the history of Amazon, what they thought they were selling to the point that AWS became so big. We talked about this. I think Adam brought it up where Andy Jassy, the guy running aws, is not a CEO of Amazon. Why would Bezos and the board make a decision like that? Because they see that business unit driving all the other things in the future and it has the biggest potential. But when things like this happen, you make people think about hey maybe we got to go elsewhere. Maybe we got it. Like when a hurricane happens or a, you know, massive crisis takes place, an.
- [52:39]
C
Earthquake or supply chain during COVID or.
- [52:41]
B
Supply chain during COVID you start sitting there saying, wait a minute, we've been relying on 80% on you. Maybe we got to go to 40%. No, no, no, trust me, we can manage it. That's. I don't know about that right now. I believe you. Yeah, so. So to me it's kind of like looking at other options instead of I am sure Amazon's AWS sales guys are having to all role play how to overcome the objection of I need a second option in case this happens again. I don't know how you overcome that objection. How are you going to make the reassurance that's not going to happen? You know, you're not, you're not going to be able to do it. So now it's about incentives. Well, if you stay with us, we're going to give you this, we're going to give you that. So I think this is a good time to put, probably negotiate aggressively with Amazon with what they're going through. Not like I'm making any suggestions. I'm sure you guys are already doing that, but it may not be a bad time. Okay. Government shutdown. Yeah, government shutdown. Okay. I don't know what the number is, but 12 times I believe Republicans have tried to allow the government, you know, encourage the government to open up and they've said no. I even think one time the conversation came about finding ways to be paying the, you know, essential workers, and they also turned it down. Where, where are we at right now with government shutdown? You're on the inside. You know, you haven't probably had a job like this in a while working with the President, but being on the.
- [53:56]
C
Inside never worked in government. Have a whole experience of what, nine months now or something?
- [54:01]
B
Yeah, well, listen, a lot of people just made it seven days. So nine months is, it's like working 40 years. I know a couple of guys that only lasted seven days, but nine months is a lot of respect. So. But going back to it, what can you tell us with what's going on with the government shutdown right now?
- [54:15]
C
I can tell you that the President really knows what he's doing this time around. I mean, just the piece at which he has every day. I think even as I've seen him throughout the shutdown, he just, he really knows what he's doing. And I think this is really hurting the Democrats now. We'll have to see what the polling data. Have we seen any of the polling data on this?
- [54:33]
A
Yeah, we've covered it over the last couple weeks. I mean, it was like a week ago, it was very interesting.
- [54:38]
C
There was a poll.
- [54:39]
A
What was. Who do you blame for the shutdown? Congress, Trump, Democrats, Republicans. And when you gave them those four choices, Congress wins with the Americans believing that that's Congress that's responsible for the shutdown. And then you've got the crowd from the Republican side, Democrat side. So some of the polls are not fair. I mean, who do you think's responsible for the government shutdown? Donald Trump or this dead owl, obviously. Right. These are unfair polls that are, that are. Come out and do that. Polls are so often the average American believes that it's Congress. And you can find Rasmussen polls and a Variety. They've. What do we got, Rob? Was there one that you were going to. No, I'm still looking.
- [55:25]
B
Well, let me show you this clip. I don't know if you guys saw this one yesterday or not. This is Jake Tapper, you know, talking to another Democrat about the government shutdown being Republicans fault. And his Democrat is finally saying, listen man, you're just not telling the truth. So now Jake Tapper is acting like a politician instead of a journalist. Just watch this clip here.
- [55:47]
A
So nothing's changed from New Mexico, your home state. Vote to open the government so that these SNAP funds are not at risk.
- [55:56]
E
Let me be clear. The administration is choosing to starve American children with money that they already have. Appropriate.
- [56:07]
A
I'm not applauding this. I'm not applauding their, their tactics.
- [56:10]
B
The White House.
- [56:11]
E
Well, this is a choice by the White House.
- [56:14]
A
This is also.
- [56:15]
C
Congresswoman.
- [56:16]
A
This is also a choice by Senate Democrats to not vote to open the government. Yes, it is. I understand why they're doing it. Medicaid funds restored. They're doing it because they want Obamacare premiums to be extended past the end of the year. I understand the reason.
- [56:32]
B
I.
- [56:32]
E
Let me just be clear. The money for contingency plans is sitting there. That is why the states are suing. The White House is withholding funds from.
- [56:40]
A
Two to three weeks worth of staff.
- [56:43]
E
Yeah, yeah. Well, it may not be a big deal to you, but it is a.
- [56:46]
A
Big deal to me.
- [56:47]
E
The grandparents for. For grant is a big deal. Literally are feeding their children.
- [56:51]
A
My point is that it's a short term solution.
- [56:53]
E
Those accounts, it's a short term. At the end of the day, people need to be able to feed their families and Saturday is when those funds run out fighting.
- [57:03]
A
Congresswoman, why not ask the Senate Democrats from New Mexico to vote to open the government so that the SNAP funds.
- [57:11]
E
I am here in the House of Representatives, it is shut down. I am fighting to get the government reopened. I am fighting to get funding put back into SNAP that is already existent. And I am fighting for the American people. I am here. But show me a single Republican that is here. Not a single one is here to make sure that Americans are fed on Saturday. That is why I am here.
- [57:32]
A
Democratic Congresswoman Melanie Stansbury from New Mexico.
- [57:35]
B
How do you process that? How do you process that Bill?
- [57:38]
C
Oh, I just, I look at some of these politicians and they just, they do not like our president and it makes them kind of go crazy.
- [57:47]
B
You know what is cool though? I said the complete opposite way. But it's Cool. When they are forced to hold each other accountable. Where it's kind of like you have the right to do it. If you're so worried about it, why don't you do something about it? And they're not. And then Speaker Johnson, Rob, if you have Speaker Johnson's.
- [58:03]
C
But that really shows that the President's on the right side in my view here. If you've got somebody like him questioning her and she really doesn't have any good arguments.
- [58:13]
B
Yeah, but, but MTG comes out and responds to what. And this is the conflict. So this is the part where I'm curious to know what's really going on here. This is Speaker Johnson. Rob, if you want to play this.
- [58:23]
F
So I brought you a little visual aid here to just remind everybody what the simple facts are. Four simple facts here. The Democrats are required to open the government. They keep saying Republicans are in charge of government. We aren't. Not in the Senate. 60 votes control the Senate. Not a bare majority. And so point number one, Democrat votes are required to open the government. Point number two, they refuse to do it. They have now voted 12 times to keep the government closed. And they'll have another chance today or tomorrow, maybe multiple times this week. And we'll see what they do. Now the third point is very important because they've been trying to confuse the American people. They've tried to say this is a fight about health care or this or that or any other thing. And it's very simple. They put this on paper, they made this their demand in writing in the record of the Senate and it has not changed. These are just four sub points there under fact number three. But there's many more. But among the things they're demanding, this is what the Democrats in the Senate are demanding to reopen the government. They want to give $200 billion in health benefits, benefits to illegal aliens and non citizens paid for by US taxpayers. That is in their proposal. They want billions in wasteful programs to be returned to foreign countries. See, we stopped these things. They want to turn it all back on. They're demanding that we do all that to get the government open for hard working Americans again. They want to give a half a billion to left leaning news news organizations and they want to cut $50 billion from Russia, rural hospitals. We cannot, we will not do those things. And they know that very well.
- [60:00]
B
You can pause it right there. Now a lot of people are saying, wait a minute, that's not what they're doing. This is not about, you know, illegal immigrants getting benefits and all this stuff, but this is what AOC said with Kristen Welker. Tom, I don't know if you saw this one or not. Rob, if you want to play this, I just texted it to you. When asked about whether they want to deny illegal immigrants or undocumented citizens insurance, this is what AOC had to say, which contradicts what a lot of Democrats are saying, that that's not what they're trying to do. At least AOC is just putting it out there. Go ahead, Rob.
- [60:33]
E
But can I ask you on this to follow up because you said that it is federal law that people, undocumented immigrants can't get Medicare, Medicaid, the Obamacare subsidies. Do you believe that should be the law though, or do you think undocumented immigrants should have access to federally. I believe personally that health care is a human right. I believe that every person should be able to go to the doctor. But I believe that right now federal law is the federal law. And that, and that absolutely, you know, that, that U.S. citizens and people who pay into our programs deserve to, to be covered by these programs. And I mean, once again, I do believe that the federal laws that we have on the books are appropriate. But if the right we choose. Do you believe that that should be changed? Pardon? If you could choose, do you believe that the federal law should be changed?
- [61:20]
F
I don't.
- [61:20]
E
I believe in a single payer health care system where if you go in and you need a doctor, you can get the medical attention that you need. But can I ask you, so how.
- [61:29]
B
Do you process that? What's your interpretation of what you said?
- [61:32]
D
That's a running for president type of answer. Yeah, like the way that single payer, well, they're just like that stance to begin with to say that undocumented immigrants don't have a right to medical insurance. That's not something she would have said in the past. It was reminds me of like Newsom trying to go more towards the middle to Europe for 2028. But you know, the number of what we're potentially either saving or spending on this bill. What they're fighting for is 1.3 trillion. So you know, the, the 350 billion that they're fighting for that was just thrown in, I believe in the last couple years that was even part of what Obama did. And then the trillion for Medicaid cuts, like Medicaid's one of the biggest waste pits of money in human history. So I don't know like exactly like who we're fighting for with this. Like a lot of it seems to be like potentially undocumented immigrants. So I think that they're trying to throw them off here with the shutdown because it doesn't seem like they have like a, like, sub substantive base for what they're doing.
- [62:24]
A
Tom, I, I think when you see AOC going there, I mean, she's campaigning, absolutely campaigning. You know, health care is a human right. That makes her sound, oh, you know, lorded over the rest of us, but who's going to pay for it? That would be like my daughter saying, dad, I think transportation is a human right. And then I'm like, okay, where's the budget? And who's going to buy you that car? I mean, that's exactly the crux of it here. It's like, health care is a human right. Okay, but should 300 million people, the citizens of the United States, come together and put all the money in the hat so that an incredible number of other people can have the human right? That's the point. And what they want is they want to convert those immigrants to voters and they want to give them things for free so they have a voting bloc in power. It's very simple. Health care is one of the free things to give them so that they have that. And I, you know, I thought she was asked a very straight question and she gave a very fluff, you know, fluff enough answer. That's what I think. You know, it's, there's nothing to it. And it's like, oh, let's, let's just dump it on, kick the can down the road. Let the American taxpayer pay for it. Health care is a human right for you and you and you and you. I said, wait a minute. The people that live in the house called. These 50 United States are being asked for pay for everybody that's coming in the side door. It's like, time out.
- [63:44]
B
What is the issue between Johnson and Marjorie Taylor Greene? Rob, if you want to put this up there, the tweet I just sent you is, you see this picture between the two of them? And if you said, this is Mario Nefall. Let me read the top. Private GOP call. Rob, go back to the other one. I'm 47, buddy. I can't see that stuff. Yeah, zoom in. Okay. Speaker Johnson, Representative. Private GOP call turned fiery as Speaker Johnson and Marjorie Taylor Greene went hand to head over the party's stalled shutdown approach. MTGQ's leadership are wasting their majority by keeping lawmakers home and demanded an off ramp from Obamacare subsidies. Johnson defended strategy, insisting Republicans are working around the clock before snapping. How does that help us, Marjorie? Some GOP members sided with Green, others with Johnson revealing deep fracture inside a House majority right now. Go a little bit lower on that video. I think he is calling on someone. Zoom in a little bit. Speaking. I don't have any more MTG fan fiction. Okay, play this clip, Rob. Play this clip if you could.
- [64:45]
D
Thank you. Thank you.
- [64:46]
C
What is your reaction to Representative Margaret Taylor Greene saying this is a serious.
- [64:52]
E
Issue in regards to Representative Corey Mills.
- [64:54]
C
And accusing you of hypocrisy over the handling of this situation versus George Santos?
- [65:01]
F
I don't know. I haven't tried not to react to what Marjorie Taylor Greene says every day. I did see somebody told me that she accused me of ousting Santos, which of course is the exact opposite of the history. Everyone can go review what happened. I opposed his expulsion from Congress. I voted against it. I advocated to my colleagues not to do that. And. And you can take Jorge Santos word for it himself. I think right before he submitted to prison, he did a very friendly social media post about me and how I'd been such a great friend to him and a help to the guy. I had a lot of, you know, I was trying to reach out to him as I would any colleague who's in a difficult situation. And I, you know, be frank. I talked to George Santos about redemption and about, you know, God's mercy and grace. So, look, I don't know what Marjorie is talking about. Corey Mills. I noted a few days ago when I was asked about Corey Mills. I'm aware of the allegations against him. I'm an attorney. So I'm going to reserve judgment on that. Let the legal process play out as I should, as anyone would expect.
- [66:04]
B
What do you think is going on here?
- [66:06]
A
I think you've got. Look, in any party, you don't necessarily have perfect unity. You look at Christians around the world. You have the Catholics, you have the Protestants, Presbyterians that all agree on Jesus Christ and agree on core things, but they feel very different about a whole bunch of things. Methodists, no dancing. And there's all these things below it. And I think that's what you're seeing in the Republican Party, but I think you're seeing a unity of American conservative. And I believe that there's largely unity behind the president. But when MTG and the speaker are getting into it over Jorge Santos, who is now out and it's a settled situation, that doesn't help us come together as a group of conservative Republicans and negotiate through the Shutdown. How does relitigating or going back over Jorge Santos and what happened with him, does that help us come together on this? They should be coming together and scrumming over exactly what she was talking about. Okay, how are we gonna navigate the Obamacare subsidies now, the end of the year and what the Democrats are trying to do and hold this thing hostage at the shutdown? How do we come together as a conservative bloc in support of our president and get that done and set aside these grievances and things they have over stuff? George Santos is settled. He's out. It's done. He's gonna get a book deal. He's sitting on morning talk shows talking about how appreciative he is of the President and that he's out and it's done. How does that help us with the shutdown? I think these things need to be set aside. And let's talk about what is the play we're calling to deal with the Democrats that are intentionally holding this place shut down, intentionally causing the SNAP benefits to be held back and our. What is our play call to come together on the Obama subsidies and go forward? The future.
- [68:00]
B
Have you seen the number on SNAP and the videos that are going viral with everybody talking about, I can't believe this. Take a look at this chart, by the way. This is a chart, Tom, that shows food stamps by ethnicity.
- [68:12]
A
Who's on SNAP and what is their citizenship status?
- [68:16]
B
$7.8 billion on a monthly on SNAP. If illegals were removed from SNAP, the cost would reduce 70%. Oh, my go is what they're saying. Zoom in a little bit. Rob, take a look at this. Okay, zoom a little bit. Percentage of U.S. households receiving SNAP benefits, food stamps by ethnicity. Afghan 46%. Somalia, 42%. Iraqi, 35 Dominican, 34. Caribbean, 28. Native 27 Puerto Rican, 27 Cuban, 25. Black, 25 Arab, 24 Cambodian, 23 Haitian Pacific Islander. Honduras, Armenians made it on there 19%. Bangladesh, Moroccan, Mexican, 18%. But when you go all the way to the top, what do you notice?
- [69:01]
A
Yeah, they misspelled Minnesota on the second line.
- [69:04]
B
Yeah, yeah. But when you, when you see this number, if illegals are removed, it saves 70% of cost.
- [69:13]
A
There's the proof. There's the proof that the Democrats are bringing people in the side door and giving them a free living on the backs of the rest of Americans or on the backs of our grandchildren who are going to be covering approaching $20 trillion of long term debt. There it is. There it is. There's exhibit A. SNAP benefits that they're screaming about is not for the neighbor down the street. And sure, you'll find one person, put them on the news, do a little video. But 70% of it is illegals that were brought here, a huge trove of that under the Biden administration. And this is part of the free stuff they're trying to ask you to pay for. American taxpayer. You are being asked to pay for this. You are buying someone else's lunch. They have a free lunch. You cooperate and you pay your taxes. You turn in your 1040 form. You live in America and they are putting the debt on your grandchildren and they're giving free stuff to people they want to turn into voters. It's that simple.
- [70:13]
B
Do you know? Do you know? Do you know?
- [70:14]
A
Sorry, I get upset.
- [70:15]
B
Yeah, I love it. No, go ahead.
- [70:16]
C
I love that you're. I love that you're emphatic.
- [70:18]
D
Remember how big of the budget the, the entitlement programs are. I mean, this is just snap. This is a small piece of entitlements. But, like, what, what's the total number of entitlement spending that goes towards potentially illegal immigrants? Like, that's such a drag on productivity. Like over two and a half trillion dollars going towards things where we're just giving handouts to people. Like, talk about a bad return on investment. I mean, that's.
- [70:40]
B
I saw multiple videos of people saying, if you guys stop giving me my snap, we're going to start robbing businesses and we going to go on a strike. And this guy reacts to it and say, you're going to go on strike for what? For free money you're getting from taxpayers? What strike? This is a clip here on it as well. Go ahead, Rob.
- [70:57]
A
There are 42 million people in this country that need food stamps on a weekly basis. And we're saying people deliberately instead of Americans because most of the people that are on food stamps aren't even from this country. 45% of Afghanistan immigrants are on food stamps. 42% of Somali immigrants, 34% of every immigrant from Iraq, 23% of Haitians, 59% of all illegal aliens are collecting food stamps. Meaning that most of the people getting food stamps from the US Government and the US Taxpayer are not even Americans. Think about that. And we didn't know about any of this before the government shutdown started. But thanks to Democrats, we can confirm tonight that millions of Joe Biden illegal aliens, people who crossed the border when Joe was president, are now collecting food stamps from a program for. Funded by hardworking American taxpayers. There are 42 million people. By the way, Brandon, we can go back to what we talked about a year ago. We covered in great detail on multiple podcasts. Pat, remember, we went this on the. The plight. What was happening to Medicaid in California. And they. And that hospitals closed because they were going broke, because if a gunshot victim, a stabbing victim, or an unconscious person for foaming at the mouth and convulsion came to an emergency room in downtown Los Angeles, they got treatment. They didn't sit there and say, well, if you can stop bleeding long enough to reach into your pocket, give me your insurance card, I'll take care of you here. No, they took care of it. And then the hospitals went to Sacramento and said, newsom, I need to cover the Medicaid shortfall for all these services I gave to all these people. Like what? Well, here's the gunshots, the stabbings, the unconscious people, the drug overdoses, the fentanyls, the narcissist bringing someone back from the dead. This is what I need. And guess what? They. California was so broke, they were unable to do it, and they lost a downtown hospital. So in South Central la, and the plight of it down there in these African American neighborhoods that are. That are not filled with illegal immigrants. These are people that are American poor. They lost the hospital down the street that was providing them basic coverage because it went broke on the Medicaid system. That's the other part of it. States come crying to their senator and congressman. Medicaid's killing me here. All these illegals are here. I got Medicaid. I got to cover this. Who do you think. You think the food stamps in Somalia. Go look at what's happening to the hospitals in Minnesota and giving services. Who's paying for the Medicaid shortfall? The state of Minnesota, Omar, is in Washington getting funds and grants back to the state to cover it. Food stamps is just where it starts. Now go to hospitalization and healthcare and all the rest of the stuff being given to people. And $40 trillion that can kick down the road. And now our grandchildren are gonna pay for it.
- [73:51]
B
Yeah. By the way, you know what the number is? How much we gave to SNAP last year? Almost $100 billion. $100 billion towards SNAP. And people will sit there and say, well, we gave 2 billion to that guy and we gave 1 billion to this. He gave $100 billion to SNAP and came out of your pocket. And most of them are not even from here. And you can get rid of 70% of it and say, 70 million. $70 billion. Of taxpayer money with all this, you know, illegal.
- [74:18]
C
And while I don't want to talk about food and stuff like that, I'll say this with regard to housing, the illegal immigration, this is exactly what I'm talking about in terms of legal immigration. You get all these people coming in the country and they have to live somewhere. Right. You're talking about they have to eat and they're subsidizing it. I think we have yet to see fully the full effect of illegal immigration on housing.
- [74:37]
B
Yeah. By the way, what was your involvement with Letitia James and Adam Schiff and the indictment? Were you at all involved with that? Did you start the process or.
- [74:45]
C
I criminally referred Latisha James for mortgage fraud. We believe that that was mortgage fraud. She was indicted. Yeah, that was our agency. Yes. And then also criminally referred to Adam Schiffer mortgage fraud as well. And I only talking about this publicly because they've talked about it and it's been out there publicly. But those are two cases that I believe are mortgage fraud. And mortgage fraud is a huge problem. Also, one of the contributors rising to increasing housing costs.
- [75:10]
B
So what was. Exactly. How did they. Exactly. We've read these stories, but from your mouth, how did they exercise mortgage fraud?
- [75:16]
C
Well, Letitia James has, in my view, a long history of alleged mortgage fraud. She claimed many years ago in the 80s that her father was her husband. On a mortgage document, multiple mortgage documents.
- [75:29]
B
Letitia James claimed her father was her husband.
- [75:31]
C
That's right.
- [75:33]
B
Wow.
- [75:33]
A
The Omar playbook. Oh, gee.
- [75:35]
C
And so, you know, you look at that, and then you look at the fact she has a house in Brooklyn, she has a house in Virginia that she declared as her primary residence. She's the Attorney General of New York. How is she declaring primary residence in the state of Virginia? Then? On top of that, she's also declaring that she has a second home in Virginia. So she has two homes that we know of in Virginia, and she's claiming that that's a second home when we believe it is not a second home. So, you know, it's very weird to me, Patrick, that these politicians, I don't know where they get all this money from. And it does raise the question, is it because of mortgage fraud that they're able to get a lot of these properties that other people might not be able to.
- [76:16]
A
And Bill, for people listening, tell them what happens when you declare a house as your primary resident. Tell them about the discount they're getting. So they're cheating to get a discount on their mortgage. And that's where the fraud is because they're claiming multiple primary residences.
- [76:31]
C
That's right, yeah. So they get significant discounts. And what happens is from the federal government, from Fannie and Freddie, essentially, in so many ways, it's a little bit more intricate, but, yes, there is benefits that are. Yes. And we as taxpayers. Right. We saw this in 08. We cannot have another housing crash again where people have multiple homes, where they say it's for one thing and then it's really for another. You know, you have a primary home, a secondary home, and then an investment property. And it looks to me like in many cases these should have been primary. In the case of Letitia James, the secondary home should have been an investment property. And I believe that the primary home should have also been an investment property.
- [77:05]
B
Yeah. So by the way, I just asked the question on ChatGPT, Rob, if you can pull it up, what the question was. The question is, did Leticia Letitia James claim in a mortgage that her father worth her husband? Yes. There are credible reports that she, the Attorney General from New York, is allegedly to have listed in a mortgage document as the spouse of her father. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, in a letter to the United States of DOJ, states that in 1983, a mortgage document for property purchased by James and her father listed them as a husband and a wife. The FHFA further notes that a similar listing husband and wife showed up in documents again in 2000. James lawyer says otherwise, but. And so what's the case? This is pretty wild to be thinking about this. What is the crime for something like this?
- [77:52]
C
Well, remember, this is back in the 80s, but to me, what it shows is a pattern in practice of mortgage fraud. And this is somebody who went after the President and went after many other people, frankly, for fraud and for different things. And it turns out, in my opinion, that she's the fraudster. And so you have the situation where now, as you see in this, this quote, it says that Abby Lowell, who's, by the way, it's very odd. Abby Lowell is also representing Lisa Cook, who I've alleged has committed mortgage fraud. She's the Federal Reserve governor that the President fired, if you remember. So it's very odd that Abby Lowell is representing, in my view, this is just my own opinion, both Letitia James and Lisa Cook. And here he is allegedly saying that it's a data entry or clerical error that you listed as a wife.
- [78:36]
A
But look, not that it's not there, not that it's not present, but it's a data entry error.
- [78:41]
C
And you know, this is the thing in 1983.
- [78:44]
A
Yeah.
- [78:44]
C
And then again in 2000. And, you know, these are the things.
- [78:47]
A
No one is above the law. Repeat after me.
- [78:50]
C
So it's disappointing. But look, we, we have to hold everyone accountable who commits mortgage fraud. And we, if we see it, we're going to say something.
- [78:56]
B
What is it with Adam Schiff? How different is his case?
- [78:59]
C
It's similar, but different. He claimed two primary residences. So he claimed that his primary residence was in the state of Maryland. And he also claimed that his primary residence was in the state of California. And what his attorney has done is gone on a public relations campaign to defame me and say, you know, try to attack me for reporting this for what is alleged mortgage fraud and try to make it political. They've tried to make it political. Look, if you say you live in Maryland and that's your primary residence, you can't simultaneously say that your primary residence is, is in California. And what's also concerning is that he said allegedly that he lived in this. His primary residence was in California in a one unit condo. So a one room condo. And he has a family of four. So explain that. So, you know, this is the type of stuff that, you know, going into Washington D.C. if I see something, say, I'm gonna say something. You know, I'm giving away my salary. I'm there to serve the president. If I see it, I'm gonna do it. And, you know, if they're gonna attack me, they're gonna attack me, me.
- [79:58]
B
Will anything happen to these guys?
- [80:00]
C
Well, Letitia James has been indicted for mortgage fraud and she just had her arraignment last Friday, if you may have seen that. And so that's that situation with regard to Adam Schiff. That's up to the doj. And the Letitia James thing is up to the doj. I'm not a prosecutor. I just mortgage and housing guy. And if we see mortgage fraud, we're going to say something. And I'm not going to be intimidated by all these people's, all these politicians, lawyers, who are, you know, trying to, trying to attack me. Because, you know, we're saying that they're not above the law.
- [80:31]
B
That's pretty wild to see this, that the claims they made against others is exactly what they're doing themselves. But nobody is surprised by that. I mean, it keeps happening over and over and over again. All right, let's go to the next story here. Next story I want to get to is Disney content could be pulled from YouTube TV this week. Here's what to know. So there's something going on with Disney and Tom's going to break this down, which is quite interesting, the challenge that they're having with YouTube. But let me read this to you. So Disney, YouTube TV and Disney carriage deal expires Thursday night at 11:59pm which is tomorrow. Meaning if a deal is not made before then, Disney content could be removed from the streaming service. YouTube has accused Disney of proposing cost economic terms that would hike prices and lessen choices for YouTube TV customers while benefiting Disney's own live TV products like Hulu Live TV and others. Soon, FUBU YouTube said if Disney content is unavailable for an extended period of time, a $20 credit will be given to YouTube TV subscribers. Meanwhile, Disney has claimed that YouTube parent company Google is exploiting its position at the expense of their own customers. ABC and ESPN are on the chopping block, according to Disney, which noted In a statement, YouTube subscribers could lose access to NFL, college football, NBA and NHL season and much more. 15%. This is the increase in viewership Disney's network and YouTube TV households year over year, according to multiple outlets. Tom, what's going on over here?
- [82:03]
A
So here's what's going on. Disney theme parks are, you know, doing well. Oh, wait, sorry, sorry. They're not doing well. They were losing a lot of money. People weren't there. People are not interested in, in seeing a, a, you know, all of the themes and stuff that gets pushed on you through the Disneyland and get frustrated about that. And so YouTube is built, YouTube TV and oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. Hulu is, majority of Hulu is owned by Disney. So Disney owns Hulu that directly competes with YouTube TV. And we know these are over, over the top, meaning you can get them anywhere. The alternative to cable now. And you can go on your laptop, your phone and get Hulu or YouTube TV. So both YouTube and Disney, the owner of Hulu, are trying to get our dollars for our 50, 60, $70 a month, whatever package we get to get TV makes sense, Pat. That's what we want to do. Well, now also, Disney happens to own espn. And then the middle of college sports sports season in the middle of the fall, with so many things going on, the NFL in full bloom and things like that, YouTube TV has generated 15 increase in viewership for Disney and YouTube is paying for the content fair and square. And now Disney's coming up going, hey boy, you addicted that heroin? Price of heroin's going up. And Disney is trying to raise what's called carriage rates or, or Channel inclusion rates or the licensing rate. And YouTube's like, wait a minute, wait a minute. We have an agreement. We have things down here. And when we renew the agreement, we'll negotiate in good faith. And YouTube TV paid a bunch of money to the NFL to bring Sunday tickets. So YouTube is trying to operate an alternative to cable it. In the process, it has to compete with Disney, who owns Hulu. And I think that's a huge conflict in. In this huge. Because Disney has bought so many channels and has so much content and it's operating Hulu. So it's got this triangulation there.
- [84:08]
B
And I really was in the wrong here. Who's in the wrong?
- [84:11]
A
I think Disney's in the wrong here because they're trying to leverage YouTube TV grew and gave 15% more viewership to Disney. And Disney sees an opportunity there. Oh, all those people expect their ESPN, they want it to be there. And YouTube's like, wait a minute, I just gave this to you. It worked. You gave me a license. I offered YouTube TV and I gave you more.
- [84:34]
B
Are they trying to renegotiate a license at a higher cost, at a higher number?
- [84:37]
A
Oh, yeah, they're trying to get.
- [84:38]
B
What are they asking for?
- [84:40]
A
I don't know what the percent is, but the renewals says is what's coming. But it's. You have to remember Disney owns Hulu. So Disney got it is levering because.
- [84:50]
B
They want to get away from YouTube and just go put it on Hulu.
- [84:53]
A
And if you people are upset, upset that You've lost your ESPN on YouTube TV, come over to Hulu because remember you, the days are over where someone has to come to your house and switch the box. All you do is switch the subscription and now you can watch it everywhere. I think Disney right here is in the middle, is in the wrong. They're the black hat, in my view. YouTube, you could say, well, Google's big. They're trying to get antitrust thing with the government. Yes, that's true. And they have that thing with Chrome. They're still trying to sort that out. But right now what Disney is trying to do is protect hulu and make YouTube pay more for all the Disney channels. And YouTube is kind of digging in a little bit saying, Neil Mohan, our friend, and when I say that we don't have coffee every week, but we like what he's doing and he's out there fighting the fight, trying to get people a fair, reasonable economic choice in YouTube TV.
- [85:45]
B
Brandon, how are you processing?
- [85:46]
D
Oh, this is awful. I'm devastated because I'm. I'm addicted to Red Zone. I always happen. It's my favorite thing ever. NFL red zone and YouTube TV is a fantastic product. It's like, it's almost better than YouTube itself. So, like me and Humberto watch Red Zone every weekend and you literally stream YouTube TV onto the TV and then do stuff on your phone while it's streaming there. So you could watch videos on your phone while it's streaming onto a tv. So it's a fantastic product. And you know, it's only $90 a month, which it used to be like $500 for the year to watch Red Zone.
- [86:16]
B
So it's only $90 a month or $90 a year?
- [86:19]
D
90Amonth.
- [86:20]
B
You pay 90amonth to get all of it?
- [86:23]
A
Yeah, he's also paying for the NFL on YouTube, the All in package. He's paying the Super Pack.
- [86:28]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [86:28]
A
There's also $35 and $40 packs for average Americans.
- [86:31]
B
So what do you get with the 90 bucks a month?
- [86:33]
D
You can watch each game individually.
- [86:35]
B
So now what? Disney is threatening them?
- [86:39]
D
Yeah.
- [86:39]
B
For that $20, we're gonna drive it to Hulu and that 90 YouTube is gonna make $70 a month, which I.
- [86:45]
D
Get it, but I don't know why they made that deal in the first place. I mean, so I sent Rob this chart because Disney bought Hulu because they're getting crushed by YouTube in terms of streaming. And you know, like this chart makes it look like YouTube is the future of TV. Like once it makes it user friendly to watch, like to stream on a TV for old people, people, you know, that's going to be the future of TV is YouTube TV. So I don't know why Disney would have made that deal in the first place.
- [87:06]
B
What. Where did Disney leave off of before they started their ott? Didn't Disney.
- [87:11]
D
They were way down.
- [87:12]
B
No, no, no. But, but when did Disney start their ott? Rob, can you pull up? What, what year did Disney start their ott? Was it.
- [87:18]
A
It was a multi. It was a multi step acquisition of Hulu. Hulu 19.
- [87:22]
B
Yeah, 19 is when Disney. But, but where were they before? Which OTT were they on?
- [87:27]
D
Oh, Disney plus was.
- [87:28]
A
They created Disney plus for their own content and then they owned part of Hulu. But so did AT&T, so did Providence Equity, so did Comcast, and over time, Disney bought them. Actually, there's a very funny clip that I did which is Brooker. Do you remember when Brooker broke down how Disney bought Hulu? It's in one of my old case studies. Bit by bit, price by price, they paid billions. They bought out Providence Equity. They bought out at&t.
- [87:52]
B
Yeah, what I'm saying is, Tom, we're. Disney plus was on before, was on Netflix. So where I'm going with this is they had a deal with Netflix from 2012 to 2019. Disney is doing the same exact thing today that they did in 2019 to Netflix. It's the same playbook. So they were on there. They're sitting there saying, why the hell are we giving Netflix $100 billion valuation? If you remember when Disney plus announced, it was the fastest ottoman coming out overnight, everybody's like, wait a minute. I watch Disney on Netflix. Now I have to go get another ott. What is Disney plus OTT valuation at right now? Rob, can you just pull up Disney's OTT valuation? How many total members they got?
- [88:33]
A
Hulu plus, Disney plus subscribers.
- [88:35]
C
Where do you think this is in five years? Who do you think's winning it?
- [88:38]
B
Oh, I think YouTube's gonna crush all these guys. But, but, but, but to me.
- [88:45]
A
There'S Hulu, and then they put it together. It's inside. Now you just pay for Hulu.
- [88:49]
B
That's not what I'm asking, Rob. What I'm asking is how many total subscribers does Disney plus have right now? What's the valuation of Disney plus? That's what I want to know about. What is Disney plus? His valuation alone today? Yeah. What. What is their evaluation right now, today? And how many subscribers do they have? So they're bullying YouTube the way they did to Netflix. So look at it. That's a real number, Tom. They got 128 million subscribers. Okay? That includes Hulu and ESPN plus, recently valued at $29 billion. I would guesstimate that's a low number for that OTT, if you ask me. I think if you go to Netflix, what is Netflix? Total number of subscribers, and then what's the market cap? If you can just ask the same exact question, Just change it to net Netflix.
- [89:32]
A
Wasn't Netflix in the vicinity of 130 now?
- [89:34]
B
No, no, no, no, no. They're way more than that time. They're 300 million subscribers. Okay, so. So check this out. 300 million subscribers at a $494 billion market cap. Go back to the Disney OTT. So they're at 4. 4. So they got 128 million subscribers at only a $29 billion market cap. So to me, I think if Disney replaces Bob Iger, they bring a new CEO, they change things up, and they go back to Being away from Woke, I think this is a value stock. My opinion, I think Disney over the next five to 10 years. If you're buying Disney for 10 years, I think you're going to be very happy with it. I am not giving you advice. I'm just saying what I'm.
- [90:11]
C
How do you know they won't go back to Woke?
- [90:13]
B
Well, but, but there's a risk in investing in certain stocks and companies, right? There is a risk, but what Disney's doing right now, it's an asshole move. But I understand their move because they're showing you they did this before Bob Iger did this where they pinned Netflix and they stepped away and he gained $30 billion of market cap when he went and build the OTT. I think that's a very undervalued OTT that they have. Very. A guy like this Brandon, how many Brandons are there right now that are watching Red Zone on Sundays and they're on their phone while they're seeing all the different games for 90 bucks a month? That's nothing. YouTube's gonna lose that to Hulu. And yet I'm being serious with you that I think Disney's. What is Disney stock worth right now, Rob, can you pull it up and look it up?
- [90:56]
C
I don't know if I've ever talked about this publicly, but I was the third investor ever in Mr. Beast.
- [91:01]
B
You were the third investor in Mr.
- [91:02]
C
Beast? Believe it or not, yeah.
- [91:04]
B
What kind of an investor was it?
- [91:05]
C
Was it like investment? I put it's, it's out there publicly in my disclosures but I invested 5 million bucks into this company so hopefully it'll do very well.
- [91:14]
B
At what phase did you invest?
- [91:16]
C
Pretty, pretty early on, A few years ago, three, four years ago.
- [91:19]
B
This is when Reid announced that they're racing money, raising money and his, his right hand guy that I think it.
- [91:26]
C
Was before then, I don't know but it was. Hopefully it'll do very well.
- [91:29]
B
No, it's not. Hopefully it's going to do very well. Yeah. The. By the way, if anybody's watching this right now, you need a loan. Call 1-800-Bill Pulte.
- [91:40]
C
If you're Mr. Beast. But now I can't invest because I'm in the government.
- [91:45]
B
Well, I don't think Mr. Beast is going away. That guy's going to build something significant.
- [91:49]
C
No, it's a big business.
- [91:50]
B
It's going to be a very big business.
- [91:52]
C
Somebody said I haven't tracked it, that it's already valued at 5 billion. Around 5 billion.
- [91:55]
B
And you invested how many years ago?
- [91:57]
C
Three or four years ago.
- [91:59]
B
Great timing. Great timing.
- [92:00]
C
Yeah.
- [92:00]
B
I think fantastic timing. I think the guy, believe it or not, even though he's gone through some controversy with that one guy, he had all this other stuff. He gives me the vibe of somebody that actually has a very stable.
- [92:11]
C
He's incredibly talented.
- [92:12]
B
Yeah, extremely talented.
- [92:13]
C
He's brilliant.
- [92:14]
B
Yeah. But going back to Disney, if you go to market cap. What's the market cap right now? 199. The P. As was at what time 380 was.
- [92:22]
A
Was Disney go back five years ago?
- [92:26]
B
Yeah, I think at one point it was a 380.
- [92:28]
C
Like during COVID During the streaming stuff.
- [92:30]
B
Pre Covid. You. You almost have to go wrap to 2020. Go Max. No, just go back to the chart you're on and go to max. Max. There you go. Yeah, right there. Go to that peak right there. What is it? 20, 21, 200. Yeah. So stock, right? Yeah. It was a 380 billion dollar company. So I think Disney. My opinion, if I sat on the board, Bob Iger put him on the list of hall of fame. He crushed it. He did some of the biggest deals ever with the assets that he bought wars. Bob, go run for president. Go run to be the secretary of whatever for Newsom or whoever else that's going to run. Have the aspirations of politics if you want to go be a president. I know you're a liberal, I know you're on the left and I know you support some of that stuff. Even though I think you're center left. I don't think you're a left left crazy guy. I think you're a center left guy. Bob wanted to run for office at one point when he was talking to News Corp. And they were asking him, I think Murdoch or one of those guys asked him saying he wouldn't run for president. He talks about in his book Right of a Lifetime. Disney brings the news. Let me just put it to you this way, Tom. My opinion. You ready? My opinion, my opinion. If Disney recruits a Brian Nicholas.
- [93:46]
D
I.
- [93:46]
B
Think Disney within five to 10 years is a trillion dollar company.
- [93:50]
C
Could be a game changer. But are they gonna let is. Is Iger gonna let them hire somebody like that?
- [93:55]
B
He doesn't have a choice because Kathleen Kennedy is about to get fired. Kathleen Kennedy, who was the person behind all the LGBTQ stuff. They're not. She's not getting fired, but they said her contract comes to an end January 1st of 2026. Can you, can you tell me when is the last day her Contract ends when? I think it's June. January 21st of 2026.
- [94:15]
A
Yeah, I think they're calling it retired, and I think the Hollywood Reporter called it perfect refired.
- [94:20]
B
End of 2025, her contract is done with Lucasfilms. She was the woke leftist lgbt. I even think one of her kids is part of the lgbtq. So she was extremely protective on Zooms, talking about candidates and all this other.
- [94:34]
C
Get rid of her. But what about the others? I mean, I don't know if you see the board of Disney, but isn't it pretty protectionist for.
- [94:40]
B
No, there's a couple board. There's a couple board members on Disney that own two or four billion dollars. Some of the biggest shareholders who are actually fighting the fight and they're doing. They. They're doing the right thing. Not shareholders, but guys who have big stock in the company. Look this.
- [94:58]
C
Remember, Nelson Peltz led an activist fight.
- [95:01]
B
That's what I'm talking about.
- [95:02]
C
Yeah, but he's not on the board, is he?
- [95:03]
B
I know he's not, but he's a four billion dollar guy. He owns a couple billion dollars of shares in it. It was him and another guy. It was Nelson Pelt and another guy. Rob, can you pull up who was the other person with Nelson Pelt that was going against Disney? All I'm saying is. Bill. All I'm saying.
- [95:17]
C
Perlmutter.
- [95:18]
B
That's. That's who was. Yeah. If you think about. Are you freaking kidding me? Netflix at 300 million subscribers is worth a half a trillion dollars. And Disney plus would only. With 130 million subscribers is only worth 25 billion. And they're about to cut and do to YouTube what they did to Netflix. And of course, this is not a negotiation. Tom, what's the likelihood Disney is negotiating with YouTube right now? I put zero. I put zero. Let's say less than 5% that they're negotiating. Yeah.
- [95:54]
A
The word you're looking for is legitimately negotiate.
- [95:57]
B
You know what's about to happen with you.
- [95:58]
A
They are not. They're like, oh, no, no. We're at the bargaining table. No, you're not legitimately negotiating.
- [96:03]
B
Let me tell you what Brandon is doing in 2026. Brandon in 2026 on his phone is going to own Disney Plus.
- [96:11]
A
Yeah.
- [96:12]
D
This week. This week I'm going to. If this happens.
- [96:14]
B
If this happens, he's going to Disney. He's like, why do you have Disney plus for Red Zone? Because I got on Hulu and all this other stuff. I think this is massive. And by the way, you Know what I think is going to happen? I got to make a phone call after this meeting is what I got to do because I think. Okay, question open to all of you guys, you ready? 130 million subscribers Disney's got right now. They cut this relationship with YouTube. YouTube goes from red zone, goes from 90 to 70 bucks a month. What do you think that 130 goes on Disney? 130 million subscribers. What do you think goes to how big you think the move is going to be?
- [96:48]
D
20 million pop.
- [96:50]
C
What do you think in terms of subscribers?
- [96:52]
B
So they got right now, if you want to watch Red zone, it's on YouTube.
- [96:55]
C
At least 20 million. Yeah, I think, I think over 100.
- [96:58]
D
It's the NFL crowd.
- [96:59]
B
Tom, are you hearing like, I, I.
- [97:02]
A
I think it's, I, I think we're at, we're at nine digigit impact, not on subscribers, but on revenue. I think it's a nine digit impact because you know what, how many times have we seen this as consumers? We see it all the time. And they black out.
- [97:17]
B
Wow.
- [97:17]
A
All of a sudden this blacks out. That blacks out.
- [97:19]
B
This is small.
- [97:20]
A
They put the black screen on there. It says due to negotiation with Fox. When we're trying to talk to Fox and we're trying to help Fox understand and they'll put Fox five times in a black screen, that we're trying to get Fox back for you. And it's like, and I'm saying Fox, but they've done the same thing, abc. It's like the cable guys are trying to put a package together and put it out there for you and me. They're not innocent. They got things to do. They got to run a business. They want to make a profit too. But what I'm most annoyed about, I've already made my point, Pat, is that Disney owns Hulu and it's not playing fair on YouTube TV because it's in my view, invoking monopolist position because of the scarcity of the one critical resource that Americans want. So, you know, where's the Federal Trade Commission?
- [98:10]
B
Yeah, this chart here, Brandon, if you want to talk on this chart.
- [98:13]
D
Yes. I mean, this is really what we're talking.
- [98:14]
A
I'm going to go into the Federal Trade Commission, change my name to Attila.
- [98:19]
D
So this is from 2022 to 2025, the streaming versus cable market share. So just in three years, cable was at 35 in 2022, stream was at 33. But then three years later it goes to 24 versus 44. So that's the pace at which streaming is outpacing cable. Then on the side column it shows the top streaming platform. So Netflix and YouTube are dominating and then they start pulling away and then Disney plus and Hulu get together and they start catching up to Netflix and YouTube. So yeah, no, I totally understand why Hulu's doing what it's doing. And I'm surprised they let YouTube have NFL in the first place. So yeah, I mean this is the future of tv I think. Like whoever wins this.
- [98:59]
C
So you buying the stock or not? Are you buying Disney stock or not?
- [99:04]
A
I am not currently a Disney shareholder and I'll say I'm long. I'm long YouTube.
- [99:10]
B
Are you long Disney?
- [99:11]
A
But I'm well under a Form 4.
- [99:13]
B
So I'm not like are you long? Are you long Disney?
- [99:18]
A
Not right now because Disney, remember Disney, you have to buy the whole flywheel. When you buy the stock, you're buying the Flywheel. And right now they're doing horrible things with management of pricing and things at the theme parks. Theme park is down. Merch was I guess flat or down as I record call. And so when you buy Disney, remember you're buying the whole thing. You can't just say oh that's I like that sandwich. The bread is delicious. I just want the bread. When you buy the stock, you buy the whole flywheel. The good, the bad and the ugly. And so I'm. I'm not long Disney.
- [99:50]
B
Tom, let me put it to you this way. I think Disney plus alone, forget about everything else. Do you think Disney plus alone has the chance of going to 300 million subscribers like Netflix?
- [100:04]
A
Yes, if they, if they stop the rectal cranial inversion. Yes.
- [100:09]
B
But you know what that means? That means I don't give a shit what's in the flywheel. Disney plus alone has what it takes to be a half a trillion dollar company within the next five to ten years.
- [100:20]
C
More.
- [100:20]
B
Two and a half times Disney's entire market cap today.
- [100:24]
A
So it could be like an AWS play on Amazon. Suddenly I don't care what is the country.
- [100:29]
D
Exactly.
- [100:30]
B
Exactly. I don't care what you're doing with all of it. You don't have a choice. The only Disney. Disney simply needs to bring a business person in with no woke bullshit. You bring that person has changed the board up. Get rid of Kathleen, get rid of some of these guys, clean house, get the families to start trusting Disney again. We all grew up on Disney. It just people are on strike right now with Disney and that 199 billion dollar valuation they have right now. Should be a half a trillion dollar valuation. But they're making some dumb decisions and I think eventually chaplists are gonna show up and say, get your act together. You're fired, you're fired, you're fired. If you care so much about all the LGBTQ agenda, go run for office and do something about it. Stop paying attention to the kids over here in the company. Go do something else for yourself. And not with a company like this. All I'm saying is I'm making a phone call after this podcast. That's all I'm saying.
- [101:18]
A
This is why I'm a big fan of what people like.
- [101:20]
B
Nelson Pels and what you understand what's going on here?
- [101:23]
D
I do.
- [101:23]
A
Bill Ackman and Steven. Bill Ackman's Disney. What Bill does with other companies calling.
- [101:29]
B
Them out and there's no way calling.
- [101:31]
A
Them to deliver returns for sure.
- [101:32]
B
They're not negotiating with like, hey, YouTube, let's YouTube is sitting there saying, you think we're dumb? You don't think we know what you're doing? You don't think we know what you're doing? We know what you're doing. We know we saw what you did to Netflix. No, I, I, I think something's going on there. Okay, let's go to next story. Tom, I don't want you to think I forgot about your robots. I'm going to get to the robot stories. I know Tom loves robots, so. Okay, let's go to that. Which one should I go to?
- [101:57]
C
Do the robots work?
- [101:59]
B
So, so check this out. I'm glad you brought it up. Do the robots work? Okay, so here's a $20,000 robot. Rob, I don't know if you have the video on it or not. This $20,000 robot can do your chores, but as one big potential privacy pitfall. Go ahead, Rob.
- [102:16]
A
My name is Bern, and today we're.
- [102:18]
B
Launching Neo, our humanoid for the home.
- [102:22]
A
Neo, the. The robot ninny let you live with it? Yeah.
- [102:26]
B
You just now telling me, what does it do?
- [102:29]
A
Like, my chores? I, I just leave and I come back and they're all done.
- [102:32]
B
Are you kidding? Okay, Rob, what is this?
- [103:09]
A
This is the promo video from the company. I believe it's 1x that is releasing the. The.
- [103:15]
B
I feel like I'm watching porn. Like, what kind of music was that? They couldn't have picked a better song than a Pound B. Like, very inappropriate, Bill.
- [103:23]
C
I don't know why the robots always dancing too?
- [103:25]
B
I don't know. I think people like it to that.
- [103:27]
C
Because they make it look like it's doing something if it's dancing.
- [103:29]
B
Let me read this to you so we can kind of figure out what's. Because listen, this is coming. It's whether we like it or not. We're headed in this direction. A Palo Alto company is taking taking Pre orders for $20,000 humanoids. But to get most out of it, you might need to make some privacy trade offs. On Tuesday, 1x Technologies introduced Neo what it says the world's first consumer ready humanoid robot designed to transform life at home. The company published a 10 minute video about Neo. We're not going to watch all 10 minute video folks. Rob wanted to watch it. We'll be skipping it. A 66 pound robot that's supposed to run up to four hours on a single charge. The machine stands at 5ft 6 inches, can carry up to 55 pounds and contain cameras that let you remotely view what it sees. The machine can be controlled via mobile app or through voice commands. This includes being programmed to handle a variety of chores such as watering the plants, unloading the dishwasher or tidying up the house. But it looks like the robot's AI intelligence still needs work for more complicated tasks. The machine hasn't been trained in 1x built in expert mode for new that involves a company employee supervising a company employee supervising the sessions while the robot works. This means a 1x employee in the US will be able to see inside your home to control the robot in expert mode which occurs through a VR headset. The Wall Street Journal reports the obvious trade off of its privacy. But co says if you buy this product it is because you're okay with the social contract. If we don't have your data we can't make the product better. Do you buy this product, Bill?
- [105:00]
C
Oh man, this is tough. I don't think so.
- [105:03]
B
Tom, what do you think about this? Do you know what the CO saying? You can have the robot but we're watching everything he's doing in your house.
- [105:11]
A
Correct.
- [105:12]
C
With cameras, you know Siri and everything is auditory.
- [105:17]
A
Correct.
- [105:18]
D
Walk into the slaughterhouse and by the way.
- [105:21]
A
So there's.
- [105:22]
D
Did anybody see iRobot?
- [105:24]
A
There's some angles there. Nest. Nest has a micro camera and it's the Nest thermostats, the new ones that are much more sleek and everything I looked in there and it has it and in the setups says you can shut that off. And what it does it detects motion and looks for movement. And to find out is it a person or is it just a cat or a dog and then it'll turn on your AC and adjust it accordingly to save energy. So what's happening is the old. Do we have the Jetsons? Do you have a picture of the Jetsons robot? Way back when we were young, you had the Jetsons. There it was. There she is. That's what we're seeing. That's what's coming. Jetsons had this robot that used to clean their house and stuff. And now we're finding robots that are doing useful things. Like, we saw the robot last week that could be deployed to an assisted living facility, and each day it comes in and cleans the bathroom for each of the retired people living there, saving tremendous costs on a live maid to do basic chores and basic things. But just like with Alexa, just like with Ring, just like with Nest, read the fine print. It's home monitoring, and there's data that is being collected on you as well. And I think that is the big privacy issue, you know, during a prototype stage. Yes. You're going to have one of their. There are people watching your house, you know, and watching what goes on inside your house. And that could be kind of. Kind of weird, you know, but this is what's coming. These things are coming.
- [107:02]
C
So do you think it works?
- [107:03]
A
Huh?
- [107:04]
C
Do you think it works?
- [107:05]
A
I think it's going to get to a point. It works for basic things, the robot.
- [107:10]
C
Like, if you buy this robot tomorrow, do you think it'll work?
- [107:12]
A
No, I think there's all kinds of issues, and they, they need. They need data and they need prototype experience to do all this stuff. And also, it's got to go. You know, I don't leave clothes all over the place. When I get up in the morning, I take my sweats that I wore to bed. I throw them in the hamper right there so I don't leave a bunch of stuff around.
- [107:31]
B
Be honest, Thomas, listen, this. These markets are out there because people would buy them.
- [107:36]
A
Exactly.
- [107:37]
B
But, but in Rob, would you do it in exchange for an employee from headquarters watching what is cleaning in your house?
- [107:46]
A
I mean, we've already got the. Like you mentioned the Alexa. So I've already got Alexa inside my house, so it's monitoring what I'm doing. I have a ring doorbell cam, so when I'm leaving my home, I'm being filmed, and then I get in my Tesla that has a computer that watches me as I drive. So I'm already being monitored all the time.
- [108:01]
B
So you're open to it?
- [108:02]
A
If I don't have to cut the lawn and. The lawn. Yeah. And the robot can do it.
- [108:05]
B
You would do it?
- [108:06]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [108:06]
B
So you're 100?
- [108:07]
A
Yeah. Yeah.
- [108:08]
B
Can you run a poll?
- [108:09]
A
I already did.
- [108:10]
B
And what are they saying right now?
- [108:12]
A
92% said no, they would not buy the $20,000 home robot to waive their right to privacy inside their home.
- [108:18]
B
Where's the poll? I'm trying to find it. I can't see the poll.
- [108:20]
D
I feel like we're missing the headline, though, like, that. I don't think the data collection is a scary part. Like, every. All of our devices do that. Right. But the thing could kill you if it gets hacked or if it, like.
- [108:29]
B
Misfires, you know, you went to iRobot.
- [108:31]
D
Yeah, it looks like that looks like the movie iRobot. Literally, in the movie iRobot, they're advertising it just exactly this way.
- [108:37]
B
By the way, here's what's crazy. Of the 91% that said there's no way in the world they would buy it. How many of you, when Facebook first came out, you said you would never post a picture of your personal life on there. How many of you? How many of you, when Alexa first came out, I would never buy something that can hear my voice. How many of you put the sticker on your camera of your iPad or your computer so nobody can see what's going on? Who is part of the sticker community? How many guys have given up on the sticker? How many guys go into a hotel room, open up your iPad, you forget to close it, you don't put a sticker on the camera. You know, somebody may be watching you. Okay? There's some names for that kind of stuff. You know what I'm saying? How many of you are. Okay, so meaning do you think. Look, it's going 92, 91, 90. Gradually. They're like. I don't know. I think Pat's telling me robots today. No, I think. I think Rob sold robots. It's because Rob sat there and he's like, you know what? I would entertain it. I would entertain it. But listen, I'm telling you, I think 10 years from now, maybe not even 10 years from now. I think five, 10 years from now, when we go into a house, I think the house is going to be. Hi, Tom. Would you like your usual? No, I'm okay. Mary. No, I insist. No, no, Mary, I'm telling you, I'm okay. Can I just get you some sparkling water? You liked Tope Chico last time, and it's got this memory to remember what you ordered, and a memory comes up. I mean, listen, there's some things to it, Tom.
- [110:00]
A
You know, this is very interesting. I had a friend that went up to Bill Gates house up in name dropping, name dropping. But I'm gonna tell you what he did.
- [110:10]
B
God. I was at Bill Gates's house.
- [110:12]
A
I was not at Bill Gates house.
- [110:14]
B
Michael Wolf.
- [110:14]
A
And you know, I, I, I swung by Bill Gates house. He wasn't home. He was on an island somewhere, apparently. But my friend was at Gates house on a big event that was there, and he said that you were given like a little bracelet, and when you walked down the hall, the lights would turn on and off, kind of following you like this. And there were screens on the walls that Andy Warhol art showed up because he had indicated he liked Andy Warhol. So there you have a house that's responding to who's in what room with temperature, music and art on the wall. So, yeah, and this was apparently Gates showed some of the people, hey, say, look, this will be the house of the future where there's a, and they call it personalization.
- [110:59]
B
But do you know how his house is? Like, I'm actually not being his house. If there's six people living there. If you go into the room, the room knows it's you and you like 73 degrees, it lowers the temperature 73. If he goes and he likes 66 degrees, it goes to 66. If Rob walks in, all of a sudden starts playing Kenny G because that's his favorite music, it adjusts to what you like.
- [111:23]
A
That's right.
- [111:24]
B
Bill Gates's house, apparently. Yeah. And look at this. Rob just went there.
- [111:29]
A
Yeah, it's.
- [111:30]
B
Are you doxing, podcast buddy kid Rob. Rob is about to get us in trouble. But that's a pretty. Oh, it's a nice looking house. Yeah, it's a nice looking house, but.
- [111:41]
D
Okay, I painted a quick hypothetical.
- [111:43]
B
Yeah, go for it.
- [111:43]
D
All right, So I mean, 10 years from now, you have a robot in your house that's bigger than you and ten times as strong as you. And they're like, oh, there's a pandemic. And you go to leave your house and robot's like, oh, we're not allowed to let you outside right now. Stay in the house. And it keeps, it's blocking you from the door. Do you think that's impossible?
- [111:59]
B
I don't know if that's going to happen.
- [112:00]
A
Why?
- [112:01]
D
Our phones blocked us from doing things when Covid happened.
- [112:04]
B
No, I, I, I don't, I don't, I don't know.
- [112:06]
A
Turn on the sprinklers, run in the back.
- [112:08]
D
Impossible or Unlikely.
- [112:10]
B
I didn't say impossible. Okay? I didn't say it's impossible. Listen, there's a reason why these movies do so well. Because we love fear porn. Yesterday, we're at dinner at this restaurant I've never been to before called Casa d'. Angelo. And we're at this restaurant. We're sitting there. I get hit every time I talk about this restaurant. But I'm at the restaurant and we're talking about scary movies. Are you Scary Movie Guy or not at all?
- [112:36]
C
No, I see enough in Washington.
- [112:39]
A
Exactly.
- [112:39]
B
What. What is the scariest movie you ever seen? Number one, Tom. What's. What's your. What's your Washington.
- [112:45]
C
I don't even. No, no.
- [112:45]
B
Period. In your life. What's the scariest movie you ever watched?
- [112:47]
A
I think the scariest program I ever saw was. I was watching C Span. You should have seen.
- [112:52]
B
I'm actually. Guys, I'm not being sarcastic. I'm asking you, what is the scariest movie you've ever seen in here?
- [112:57]
A
I. I was really young when Jaws came out and we went to the movie theater. And I have no idea why someone thought this a good idea, but that scared me to death.
- [113:04]
C
The birds. Have you ever seen that?
- [113:06]
B
The birds? Legit. That's bad.
- [113:08]
C
Yeah.
- [113:08]
B
Rob, where are you at with scary movies?
- [113:09]
A
I'm probably with Tom. Jaws, it was terror. Especially growing up at the beach. It terrified me. Swimming.
- [113:15]
B
Yeah. What would you say?
- [113:17]
D
Paranormal Activity 1.
- [113:18]
B
Okay, listen, for me, guys, it was Exorcist. Let me tell you. I. My dad tells me there's a movie that he watched once in England while he was there for a business meeting at the ge, and it was called Jangir in Farsi. That's what the movie was called. But the movie is the Exorcist. Never watch this movie. Anyways. The movie comes out in the. The. What is that? Theater. Chinese Theater in Hollywood.
- [113:42]
A
Man's Chinese theater. Everybody has the footprints.
- [113:44]
B
They say they're bringing back the Exorcist. And I said, dad, I'm thinking. It says, I'm telling you, don't go watch. I said, what are you talking about? Chinese theater, Rob, Type in Chinese theater. Exorcist movie, 2003. It's going to be something like that. So they bring this movie. And me and my friends last night were talking 2004. I was there. That's the one. Exorcist, the beginning premiere at Chinese Theater. I was there that night. Okay? So I take my friends. The place is so. I mean, there's not an empty seat. What can you type in how many people does it fit? Chinese Theater, literally. There's not. I've never been to movies in my life where there's not a single empty seat. Nothing. Even when I went to Wolf of Wall street was 80% back. There was not a single seat for Exorcist. I'm sitting there and 9:32, and she starts doing her thing. And I have this cup, this drink that's empty. You know how you have an empty cup and you kind of go like this so that the ice drops? You can have because like little slush and stuff. It goes like this and the ice hits. Literally, everybody in my section jumps up, okay? And then I tell my friend Saul to go watch the movie. And this is back in the days. And the next tell days, the walkie talk talking is I say, who? What time is Saul going? He says, sa's going at this time. I said, I'm going to get him. So good. Sa's in the theater. And I go, hey, Sa. He said, jumps up. Anyways, we come back after watching the movie. We go to my sister's place. I said, listen, pet, we're just going to spend the night here tonight. It's been a long night. I don't know if we want to go home. Three guys, we slept on the floor after watching Exorcist. It mess with you. But the point is fear porn. With movies, you and robots, there's a part of you that's kind of like, what if these guys come and get me? What if these guys come and do this? What if they do that? I'm not saying that can't happen. I'm telling you, the chance of that is going to be less than 5%. Come on. That happened. It's less than 5% for me.
- [115:39]
D
All right, what about getting, like, hacked or something? Because, I mean, like, we are still talking about things like, I think whoever creates the first robot fleet has the most powerful military in the world.
- [115:47]
B
I. I think instead of what it's going to do to me physically, my concern if I don't buy it's not because of that. I don't buy because it's being reported back to somebody or what we're doing.
- [115:58]
D
In our house, I'm more scared of the strength.
- [116:00]
B
I'm not. I'm. I'm the other way around, okay? I'm the other. Because there's these things called guns that if. Yes, they're indestructible once.
- [116:07]
D
No.
- [116:07]
B
No way. No way. Listen, I don't care. You haven't bought Real guns yet. If you think they're indestructible, they're some real good.
- [116:13]
C
Bigger question is drones, right?
- [116:15]
B
Yeah. And they're here already with drones.
- [116:17]
C
Yeah.
- [116:17]
B
Right, the drones. Yeah. And you know what the number one country in the world is right now for making drones and using them in war?
- [116:23]
C
Ukraine.
- [116:24]
B
Ukraine is number one. Half a million. They make them like this super fast. It's just popping 2,000 a day. And then small little thing goes boom, blows up an equipment for Russia, and Russia's using all these big equipment and they're like, nah, we'll just make small drones and destroy you. What a way of winning.
- [116:41]
C
Yeah.
- [116:42]
B
Someone's got a more multi billion dollar machines. They're beating you with $500 machines.
- [116:47]
A
Yeah.
- [116:47]
D
Build them in the garage.
- [116:48]
B
Building the garage. Ukraine is doing that. All right. Someone's asking right now on the podcast. They're saying, bill, can you tell us, is there any idea of when the IPO could potentially happen?
- [117:01]
C
Could be as late as, could be as early as December, but it's more likely that it will be early next year into Q2. I think probably, if I was a betting man, I'd probably say Q1, but it's totally up to the President.
- [117:14]
B
I just say do it right before World cup and right before 4th of July because I want to see all of these big deals being done before that. Because if it is, I want fourth of July to be a magical celebration.
- [117:29]
C
Next year is going to be amazing.
- [117:30]
B
Oh, I can't wait for it. The parties, all that stuff. I'm sure you're going to be going to the UFC fight at the White House.
- [117:35]
D
Sure.
- [117:36]
B
Yeah.
- [117:36]
C
He's excited about it. It's great.
- [117:38]
B
It's.
- [117:39]
C
It's an exciting time to be in.
- [117:40]
B
D.C. no question about it. Tom, you were going to say something.
- [117:43]
A
Yeah. Is the, is the IPO going to be traditional in that there'll be an S1, retail investors and people can go see it@sec.gov or will there be a different kind of process because these are kind of government associated.
- [117:56]
C
No, it'll be traditional. I think the President is entertaining a variety of options. He'll ultimately decide, but I think It'll be about 5% of the stock of both companies and about 25, $30 billion in capital potentially would be raised. So I think it will be a very, very hot, oversubscribed ipo.
- [118:16]
B
Are you kidding me? People will be begging.
- [118:19]
C
Yes.
- [118:19]
A
I think that on the American mortgage market going forward. Oh, my gosh.
- [118:24]
C
Yeah. And there's so much we're doing with technology and stuff that's not that we haven't shared yet in terms of the future of Fannie and Freddie. But these are enormous businesses and they hold enormous power. And so we're trying to unleash that. And I think they'll be very, very valuable assets one day.
- [118:40]
B
Are you more long Freddie, Fannie, Disney or MrBeast?
- [118:45]
C
Well, I don't want to talk about the securities of Fannie and Freddie. Everybody should read all of the risk factors that are associated with that. I believe that like you, the future is bright and, and I believe that the mortgage market in the country has yet to see its best days. And if some of the things that we're doing with you name it, mortgage insurance, credit scoring, title insurance, rent for mortgages, crypto for mortgages, and then just getting these businesses to run very well, I think these businesses could be worth trillions one day. But I say everybody needs to read the risk because those risks are out there. And I don't think anything about a specific security. I'm just saying Fannie and Freddie, I believe are very, very valuable assets. And it's about time we have a president that actually knows that they even exist.
- [119:33]
B
Okay, so the question for you is there's names of people that could potentially replace Powell. Okay, we have Kevin Warsh, who is the former Fed governor. We have many people are saying he could be the front runner. We have Kevin Hassett who you mentioned multiple times in.
- [119:54]
C
Well, I work with him actively.
- [119:56]
B
Right, for sure. You have Christopher Waller, not Christopher Walken. This is Christopher Waller. Right. They're rap. You have him up. You have Mr. Besant who I think is crushing it, doing a great job, but I'd like to see him stay where he's at. You have Michelle Bowman and a couple other names. What can you say about, you know, how you feel about each one of these or if there's anything can say about these five candidates?
- [120:20]
C
I can't say much. I can just say I only know one of them and that's Kevin Hassett and I've enjoyed working with him. But ultimately the President will have to decide what he wants to do and who knows the President? I think the President's the only one who knows what he wants to do.
- [120:35]
B
I agree. But by the way, is there what Kalshee is thinking they want to do with this? Rob, is there a couch number we can look at? Look up Kalsh and look at polymarket to see if there is anything to do with who they're guesstimating based on numbers. Brandon, I think you're trying to say something but let's see, one of those.
- [120:53]
D
Guys stood out to me. I, I'll wait a lot if you want.
- [120:56]
B
Is there anything on Cali, Rob? You can get prediction Mark, is there a link to go to look at what Cali is talking about or. No, nothing yet.
- [121:05]
A
No.
- [121:05]
B
Okay, go ahead. You were going to say something.
- [121:07]
D
Out of those five people, did you notice anything different about one of them?
- [121:11]
B
Yeah, one of them on the right was blackrock.
- [121:13]
D
Well, I was going to say like just the government workers or I guess like private versus public sector. So no matter what we think about BlackRock, I think that the guy that you know works for BlackRock director of fixed Incomes or I think that he's probably more competent and capable to do the job. Like a lot of the emergency stuff that the the Fed had to do, BlackRock handled. So I don't know, no matter what we think of that, I think maybe he could be good at it.
- [121:38]
B
If you're who the blackrock.
- [121:39]
D
Yeah. Rick Reeder.
- [121:41]
B
Okay, go back to the candidates, Rob.
- [121:42]
D
Because I mean he's obviously a smart guy if he's running BlackRock's fixed income.
- [121:46]
C
Rick Reeder, he's a nice guy. I know him too. But I just say this. No matter what happens, if you have inflation running at 1.5%, which the president has completely crushed inflation and you're holding the fed funds rate at four, four and a quarter quarter percent, rates are way too high and they need to come down. What were you going to say?
- [122:04]
D
I was going to say that, but when you talk about inflation, I think you have to factor in housing and that it's going astronomically higher because that's the biggest expense of a person's life.
- [122:11]
C
But it's down year over year and it's going to continue to. In my view. Yes, in my view, in many ways you've seen home price inflation decelerate. And I think that there's a chance that it will either continue to decelerate or go down, rates go down.
- [122:28]
D
You don't think it's going to accelerate back up?
- [122:30]
C
I personally don't think so.
- [122:31]
D
Why?
- [122:32]
C
I think that most people would say that it would or you would think that it would. But I think for all the reasons I described, in addition to all the things that we're going to be working on with the home builders and then the cost of inflation, I mean lumber is down, drywall is down, all of these raw commodities that go into. Remember when they were all saying the Tariffs are going to cause this massive inflation and the cost of building a home. It just. It didn't turn out to be true. It was completely false.
- [122:57]
D
Yeah, no, I thought that was gonna be false from the jump, but I mean, I just like. So what do you attribute the 378 to the 500 number from pre Covid to Postco, when rates were, you know what? I think they were zero for the fed funds rate and they were down to like 2 or 3% for mortgage rates. So you not think that that increase in prices was because of low rates?
- [123:14]
C
I don't think it's just because of interest rates. No. I think a lot of it had to do, in my view, with, in part, like I said, a lot, illegal immigration. You can't let 20 million people into a country illegally and not expect there to be some effect on the housing market. You just can't. So I think interest rates are one big component. They're a very big component, but there's a lot of other factors. So we need to get this country building again and we need to stop the illegal immigration, which the president has done.
- [123:40]
A
To be fair, Biden printed money. That's the wrong way to put it. But he inflated the money supply with what he did with a bunch of relief and a bunch of programs that he put out that were very inflationary. So it wasn't just. It wasn't just interest rates, interest rates. It was also, you know, stocks, you know, bonds, commodities, people buying their second.
- [124:03]
C
Home and all of those investment property.
- [124:06]
A
Yep, all of that stuff went up.
- [124:08]
B
I fully, fully understand what he and his generation are going through. Through. Fully understand because of what it is to buy a house today and how things have changed. Fully, fully. You saw that one chart on what the valuation of homes are compared to the stock market. If you would invest into the stock market. You see that one that we talked about, there's a chart of saying from 1970 to today, if you had a choice between invest into the stock market versus real estate, it's not even close on how to. To compare on. On how the market is done. So some of the younger generation is flat out just sitting there. Which chart was it, by the way, do you know? We literally just talked about.
- [124:48]
C
Let's talk about in part though, why that is. Right, because when you go to buy a home, you're buying a leveraged, illiquid asset that is not easily disposed of. When you buy a stock, it is not always a leveraged asset, not as significant as a home, and it is a relatively Liquid asset. So that's the one right there.
- [125:07]
B
Zoom in a little bit, rob. So $100 in 1970, if you put it in U.S. treasury, if you put it in gold, it's 5,005 45. If you left it in cash, it's down, it's up to 956. Real estate, it's 1542. If you put a hundred dollars at 15x US 10 year treasury 2200 gold 55x corporate bond 77x. You put in the S&P 500 it 220x. So, so you know what this is doing to this and this is my concern Bill, is the younger generation is saying why would I buy? Let me just put money into stock market instead of relying on real estate. There has to be an incentive for them to buy. And I get what you're saying. If you're buying a half a million dollar house, you put in 20% down. So it's $100,000 you're financing half. So if the half a million goes to $700,000, you made $200,000 and $100,000 which is a 200% and gain. You know, it's also a place to.
- [126:00]
C
Live and call home and raise a family in and all the things that we love about American home ownership.
- [126:06]
B
I would love to see you guys with your background, the part that makes it exciting with you is that you have the building background with one of the greatest we've ever had in the history in America. Pultegroup with what that business turned into, you and your family is to sit there and say how can we work with these builders to build smaller homes? So guys like him who are getting ready to want to get through the next phase, maybe they can't buy $800,000 house, $1.2 million house, maybe we can get them in a four to six hundred thousand dollar house, something smaller. And it looks like you're already working on this. We will see what's going to happen. Folks, we covered a lot of different things. This is Business Wednesdays. For those of you guys that are watching. If you haven't yet gotten yourself registered for the business planning workshop, let's put the link below. Bill, it was great having you on.
- [126:52]
C
Thank you.
- [126:52]
B
Congratulations on nine months. We can't wait to do it again next year to celebrate 21 months of you being on here, come visit in DC. I look forward to it. I look forward to it. Take care everybody. God bless. Bye bye, bye bye.