US & Iran AGREE To Ceasefire | PBD #773

Summary

PBD Podcast Episode #773: US & Iran AGREE To Ceasefire

Date: April 8, 2026
Host: Patrick Bet-David (Pat) with Tom, Rob, Brandon, and guest Colin Roche
Main Theme:
Analysis and reaction to the announced US-Iran ceasefire, Trump’s negotiation tactics, geopolitical implications, domestic economic consequences, and evolving challenges in the modern workforce.

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Overview

This episode centers on the dramatic US-Iran ceasefire agreement, the political and military maneuvers involved, global oil markets, Middle Eastern power shifts, and how these events echo through U.S. politics, economics, energy, and technology. The conversation touches on presidential rhetoric, market reactions, the evolving role of AI, defense spending, tax resistance, and the shifting demands on the American workforce.
The show is marked by lively debate, sharp opinions, and deeply personal reflections—particularly from Pat, who brings his Iranian-American experience to bear on global events.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. US-Iran Ceasefire: ‘Kaiser Soze’ Negotiation Tactics

[00:27 - 16:23]

• Trump’s high-stakes posts (“the end of a civilization,” threats on Easter) shocked many and drew criticism for their tone and substance.
• Tucker Carlson’s Viral Reaction: He called out Trump for mocking Iranian religion on Easter morning.
  • Quote (Brandon, quoting Tucker) [07:52]:
    “No decent person mocks other people's religions...to mock other people's faith is to mock the idea of faith itself.”
• Pat and the crew debate if this aggressive rhetoric was just “the art of the deal”—a deliberate escalation to spook Iran to the negotiating table.
• Ceasefire Details:
  • Brokered with Pakistan, involving China, after intense threats.
  • Two-week, double-sided ceasefire for negotiating a 10-point peace deal.
  • Immediate reactions: Despite the ceasefire, strikes between Iran and Israel continued within minutes.

Memorable Exchange:

• Tom [12:39]:
  “President Kaiser Soze...Trump really played a Kaiser Soze moment, and he's been negotiating this...you have to...the other side has to think that you're 1% crazier than they are, so that they become nervous.”

2. Who “Won” the Ceasefire? The Geopolitics & Power Balance

[16:58 - 31:16]

• Divergent Views:
  • Rob: Iran has more leverage and proved the U.S. can’t force the Strait of Hormuz open by brute force.
  • Tom: Iran didn’t win—ceasefire came because Iran realized what would come next might be even more devastating for them.
  • Brandon: The real winner is China, appearing mature and strengthening its position on Taiwan and oil.
  • Pat: If Iran retains Strait of Hormuz control and gains sanctions relief, it’s a massive win for them and a bold model for future defiance.
• Israel’s Angle: Netanyahu says ceasefire excludes Lebanon, indicating plans for further action against Hezbollah.
  • Tom [22:35]: “He's working on creating a buffer zone in Lebanon...They were funding and arming Hezbollah...I'm going to finish this. And I think that's what Israel is saying. Whether you agree or disagree, they are creating a buffer.”

3. Energy & Economic Fallout

[31:37 - 45:43]

• Oil Price Movements: Dropped from $115 to $92 (18%) following news, but prices remain much higher than pre-crisis.
• Strait of Hormuz Power:
  • Drones enable Iran to threaten global shipping without formal blockade.
  • Iran’s demand: Toll on every barrel transiting the Strait, to be paid in crypto to avoid asset freezes.
• Memorable quote (Tom) [41:59]:
  “They want a dollar per barrel that goes through the Strait of Hormuz... It doesn't want Euros, it doesn't want US dollars, petrodollars. It wants crypto.”
• Markets are wary, oil traders see potential for prices to spike again if anything breaks the ceasefire.

4. Defense Spending Surge & Industrial Complex

[55:07 - 66:45]

• Trump proposed a $1.5 trillion defense budget for 2027—up 42%, the biggest since the Korean War.
  • Huge boosts to navy shipbuilding, space force, and F-35s.
  • Motivation: Replenish used weapons/munitions, pivot toward cyberwar and drone warfare.
• Rob: Saddened by inefficiency in Pentagon spending—“25% of the existing $800 billion gets lit on fire...we let these four defense contractors overcharge us...They would shrivel up and die without war.”
• Tom: Distinction between replenishing stocks and proactively investing in new tools/technologies (like drones and space force).

5. US Domestic Policy: Tax Revolt & Business Exodus

[70:47 - 81:59]

• Growing movement of Americans threatening to stop paying taxes as a protest against war and wasteful government spending.
  • Panel: Don’t do it—penalties and jail are real. True reform is needed for wasteful government practices.
  • Notable fact: Milton Friedman originally proposed “withholding” tax from paychecks—he later called it his greatest mistake.
• Jamie Dimon warns of a business exodus from NY and CA due to high taxes and anti-business attitude; growth all moving to Texas and Florida.
  • Quote (Jamie Dimon, relayed at [78:46]):
    “You’ve got to compete. There’s no divine right to success...There were 120 of the Fortune 500 in New York in the 1970s, now 60; 20 left. They’re all going to Texas, basically, or Nevada.”

6. AI Anxiety & The New Job Market

[88:28 - 107:49]

• AI now has a higher negative perception among Americans than ICE (immigration enforcement).
• AI and EVs blamed for spiking electricity prices and more local opposition is mounting against new data centers.
• Jamie Dimon's five risks for 2026: Inflation, competition, loss of trust in gov’t, AI, weak allies (esp. Europe).
• Mark Cuban’s warning: CEOs who don’t intentionally transition their companies to “AI-native” models are doomed.
  • Quote (Cuban, relayed at [96:42]):
    “If asking your models questions doesn’t make sense to you, you are in deep shit.”
• Lowe’s invests $250M to train plumbers, carpenters, and electricians, with CEO Marvin Ellison arguing skilled trades will remain vital even as AI disrupts white-collar work.

7. No Mediocre Worker Is Safe: Rise of “Bullseye Hiring”

[110:56 - end (~121:00)]

• With hiring slowdowns and AI, companies now replace underperforming staff with higher performers rather than add staff.
• “Every seat matters.”—companies constantly seeking to upgrade, not grow.
• Tom [112:25]:
  “So this is a case study...of a real company saying, 'Hey, you know what? Economy could be tough. Before I hire another, let's make sure the ones I have are all performing really well.’”
• Pat ends on a motivational note:
  “This is the WORST time to be lazy...and the GREATEST time for people willing to get in the mix.”

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Notable Quotes & Reflective Moments

• Pat [38:56]:
  “Iran used to be peaceful under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi...There were no issues in the Middle East...They got along with everybody...Iran is a different animal in a big way [now].”

• Brandon [49:42]:
  “You need oil back down to $60 to get back where we were. And we already had an inflation problem before any of this started...With the ceasefire, traders aren’t going to take prices back down soon. There’s still a two-week window of risk.”

• Rob [115:19]:
  “There's no excuse for no effort. Like, if somebody genuinely just doesn't put effort forward. Like, you could control how much effort you put every day.”

• Pat [116:07]:
  “This is the worst time to be lazy. The worst time to be casual...Nasty times are coming for you. Nasty...But if you’re proactive—learn, get new skills—you’re about to have the greatest season of your life.”

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Ceasefire announcement, Trump tweets, market reactions:
  [00:27] – [16:23]
• Ceasefire geopolitics, who “won,” China, Israel, Lebanon:
  [16:23] – [31:16]
• Oil, Strait of Hormuz, crypto, economic fallout:
  [31:16] – [45:43]
• Defense budget, industrial-military complex, weapons, tech pivot:
  [55:07] – [66:45]
• Tax revolt, Milton Friedman, business migration, Jamie Dimon:
  [70:47] – [81:59]
• AI and job losses, Mark Cuban, skilled trades, Lowe’s investment:
  [88:28] – [107:49]
• Workforce upgrade, no mediocrity, AI anxiety, Pat’s passionate close:
  [110:56] – [End]

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Episode Tone & Dynamics

• Direct, passionate, sometimes irreverent, often combative: Strong opinions, debate, and humor.
• Personal angles: Pat shares his own Iranian-American perspective and personal childhood stories.
• Practical and motivational: Repeated calls to action for listeners not to be complacent in changing times.

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For Listeners Who Missed the Episode

This episode delivers a multi-dimensional breakdown of a historic ceasefire and its implications. The podcast offers real-time reaction and spirited analysis—covering the high-wire strategies behind major negotiations, the financial and energy ripple effects, the future of work under the pressure of AI, and personal stories that humanize the news.
It is both a crash course in current events and a call for personal vigilance, adaptability, and self-improvement in a rapidly changing world.

Transcript

[Tom]

Did you ever think you were making.

[Brandon]

Adam?

[Tom]

What's your point?

[Pat]

The future looks bright.

[Rob]

My handshake is better than anything I ever saw.

[Brandon]

It's right here.

[Pat]

You are a one of one my sens.

[Tom]

I don't think I've ever said this before.

[Pat]

You know how sometimes you go to sleep and you wake up in the morning, you're like, man, there's not really any major stories, you know, what are we gonna talk about today on the podcast? Well, last night wasn't the case because the addendum alone is bigger than the stories that we have here. It's stacked. Lots happened. Two weeks ceasefire. CNN says they agreed to the ten point. No, we didn't. Trump's talking about suing them. That was a mess. A lot of criticism on the way. The president came out and said, it's gonna be the end of this civilization. We have to react to that. I saw a guy from MSNBC say, never in the history of America has a president ever threatened the end of a civilization. Hitler never said this. Mussolini never said this. All these other presidents never said this. Obviously, Twitter wasn't around. Imagine if Twitter wasn't around with Hitler when Mussolini and Stalin and some of these guys would be tweeting. It'd be a very different world. We want to know it. We just have to use our imagination so we have to react to that. Was it irresponsible? Was it too much? Was it disrespectful? Do you talk to people like that? Is that the way to talk to people? Where is the madness behind that? Right? And who won with this negotiation? Did America win in this negotiation? A lot of people saying Iran wins. Now they get to, if they qualify, the $2 million, that could add anywhere between 50 to $100 billion of additional revenue a year to Iran so that Iran come out the winner. Is Israel going to sit on the sidelines and not do anything about it? They said the ceasefire has nothing to do with Lebanon. I think Netanyahu said it. Then on the outside, I think it's Oman that's coming in and talking about, hey, we'd like to help you with xyz.

[Tom]

And they're kind of toll booth.

[Pat]

The toll booth. And they're being opportunistic about it. But there's a lot of things to talk about. We'll address that here. Today. Jamie Dimon came out and made some thoughts about New York City and Mamdani. And Mamdani came out and said, the problem with New York City is racism. And, you know, jobs are not being given to colored people. It's more towards, you know, whites and all of that, which I'll let him say it because he knows better on how to tweet racist messages than I do. So I'll let him explain himself properly. And then oil prices. We have the numbers. This morning, oil prices went from. What was the high? 115, 116 to 94 today. Rob, if you want to pull it up to see exactly where it's at, it's an 18 or 20% drop off. Tom gave me the numbers. Tom, give me a chart. There's no way that's the number. No, no, that's not the number, Rob. No, no, no, no, no, that's not. That's futures, Rob. No, that's not the number. Go to actual oil price.

[Tom]

You were wtc.

[Pat]

It's wti, World Trade Center. Oil price. So negative. Listen, for anybody that criticizes Rob, Rob's Farsi has gotten better. His Assyrian's gotten better. His ability to type out Middle Eastern names is the best it's ever been. I'm so proud of Rob. So, Rob, don't let anybody take. You're doing great. Rob can spell Middle Eastern names better than a name like Mark Johnson. That's what's happened to him. He's so good right now.

[Tom]

And Mark, if you're listening, we miss you.

[Pat]

I got a chart right here, this chart right here, which is very interesting chart Rob just gave me.

[Rob]

It is 70.

[Pat]

There's no way it's 70.

[Brandon]

Yeah, no, it's 92.

[Pat]

No, it's 92. It's not 70. No, no. You're visiting the same website. It's like guys who go to whitehouse.com and they miss one word and they go to a porn site. You have to be very, very careful when you're doing stuff like this. And so we have a special friend with us here as well, Colin Roach, who has done great work with finance economics. And he got strong opinions. Right before we started, I said, I'm already going to like this guy with the way he was talking about. I can't wait to start chatting it up. So it's great to have you here as well with us. We're going to put the links to his book. His recent book just came out, the Perfect Portfolio. We'll put the link below. But Tom showed me this, okay. The negative perception around AI is now worse than ice. Okay? And let me tell you who they have on this list. Okay, who they have on this list. They have the Pope, they have Colbert, Rubio they have sanctuary cities. J.D. vance, Republican Party, Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Democratic Party in Iran. And you have to see where AI is. And by the way, the reason why that is is the second chart. As electricity prices keep rising, they increasingly blame AI. This is a very important topic because this kind of goes with the story that Mark Cuban talks about. Mark Cuban put a story out there about CEOs and AI, and do they really know what's going on with AI? We'll address that story as well. Lowe's. I really like what Lowe's did. They made this announcement. $250,000,000 they're investing into. $250,000,000 they're investing into plumbers, electricians. What a great story on what these guys are doing. Their CEO is a stud, by the way. Their CEO is an absolute stud of a guy for doing stuff like this. This is great when you hear stories like that. And then we got a few other ones. You know, more Americans are, you know, saying they're not going to be paying taxes this year. Which, by the way, that's not us. I'm just telling you, that's a story that's coming out that people are saying, why the hell am I paying taxes? Market Watch America. Americans are increasingly saying they won't pay their taxes this year as a political protest. Here's what could happen to them. Okay, that's market. While trying to say, pay it or you may go to jail. I got guys on my neck that manect me telling me, have me on the podcast. Have me on the podcast. I'm going to show your people why they shouldn't be paying their taxes. And I'm like, well, listen, you know, all the best, too. Maybe we'll follow up in the future, see where this goes. Because there's a market that people believe you shouldn't pay taxes. And then we got a few other things that we'll get into. One story that came out we have to address is no mediocre worker is safe. The bar for keeping your job just went up. Okay. And this is a story that came out from Business Insider, and I like that story, and we're going to get into that story. And Rob, if you can pull up this last story that I wouldn't mind getting into is there's a major feud going on with conservatives at the White House getting government employees to go from work in four days to five days. Because right now, the whole work from home is still happening with thousands of government employees, and it's not even in here. Rob, I just read on my own. I just want you to look for it and we'll get to it probably at the end if we get some time to do that. So with that being said, these are the stories that we got for us to get into. I'll be making some big announcements on Friday. So hang tight on what will happen on Friday. Major news that's coming here soon with, with Manect, with a lot of different things as well as with merch. Just stay tuned. We'll be making an announcement to you guys come this Friday. Having said that, I think the first story Rob to get into is a ceasefire. So last night, two days ago, matter of fact, let's go with the two day sequencing. First, the President tweets on Easter the following thing. Rob, go to the Easter one, because the Easter one is what pissed off a lot of different people. So this is Easter's tweet that the President puts up. He gets out there and says, Tuesday will be power plant day, bridge day, all wrapped up in one in Iran. There will be nothing like it. Open to effing straight, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell. Just watch. Praise to Allah. At least he's given credit to their, you know, praise be to Allah. Donald J. Trump. Tucker Carlson reacts to this with a video that went viral. Everybody reacted to it. What is this all about? Tucker's right. Tucker's not right. Why would he say such a thing like this? Here's Tucker. Go for it, Rob. You think you are.

[Brandon]

You're tweeting out the F word on Easter morning. You'll be living in hell. Just watch. Praise be to Allah. So obviously you're mocking the religion of Iran. Okay, if you seek a religious war, that's a good idea. But by the way, no decent person mocks other people's religions. You may have a problem with the theology. Presumably you do, if it's not your

[Pat]

religion and you can explain what that is.

[Brandon]

But to mock other people's faith is to mock the idea of faith itself. And we should never mock that because

[Pat]

at its core is the acknowledgement that we are not in charge of the universe.

[Brandon]

We did not build it. We won't be here at the end of it. We can destroy life. We cannot create it because we are not God.

[Pat]

The message of all faith, the biggest composure left. And obviously folks on X went to town. Tucker's right, Tucker's wrong. Then they played the greatest hits in the past of Tucker criticizing Islam and saying, hey, what happened to you? Did you switch? Did you not? So the President here's the message coming from the market. And you would think the next day the President would get a little bit more softer. And then this is what he says the following day with his tweets. And everyone's like, pat, how come you don't react to this? This is not how a President speaks. Rob, if you want to pull up the wild one, a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have complete and total regime change where different, smarter and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionally wonderful can happen. Who knows? We will find out. Tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the world. 47 years of extortion, corruption and death will finally end. God bless the great people of Iran. So then that phrase got people reacting saying who in the history of mankind has ever set a whole civilization will end tonight? Which civilization? And people started speculating, is it Iran? Is it this? Who's he talking about? Anyway, so that happens and then it leads to the ceasefire which the call happened yesterday based on a conversation with Prime Minister Shabazz Sharif and federal Marshal Aseem Munir of Pakistan and Warren. They decrested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran. And subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the complete, immediate and safe opening of the Strait of Hormuz, I agreed to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks. This will be double sided cease fire. The reason for doing so is that we have already met and exceeded all military objective objectives and we are are very far along with a definitive agreement concerning long term peace with Iran and peace in the Middle east. We received a 10 point proposal from Iran and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate. Almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between us and Iran. But a two week period will allow the agreement to be finalized and consummated. On behalf of the United States of America, as president also represented countries in the Middle east, it is an honor to have this long term problem close to resolution. And then of course thank you for your attention to this matter. While this happens, minutes after this tweet happens, there is attacks, Iran attacks, I believe bombs, Israel, Israel attacks them. Jesse Waters retweeted a clip saying minutes after this was tweeted and everybody reacted. Is the ceasemark going to happen? Is it not going to happen? I have my own strong thoughts on this. Is this it? Rob that was shown.

[Tom]

Yes, sir.

[Pat]

Go for it. This is minutes after the President tweets that. Go ahead. Well, Jesse, as anticipated, the sirens are now wailing over Tel Aviv indicating that another missile is inbound. And it looks like those bright lights in the sky are the missiles. And it looks like you can see an interceptor that is in hot pursuit of the missiles. And it's always quite dramatic when you see those interceptors going after it. And these ones might disappear behind our building here, we're going to lose sight of them, but they're still quite lethal. And coming into Tel Aviv, and I didn't see a. An interception in this case. Should be able to hear it in a second or so. You can pause it. Right. Okay, so that's. That that's happening. So people are getting. Keep the ceasefire. All this other stuff. I'll pause here because we got a lot of other things that we'll get into with this here. Tom, your thoughts from the comments. First comments, his second comments, Tucker's comments, and then obviously the ceasefire today and then call them to come to you next.

[Tom]

Well, I think basically what happened over Easter weekend is President Kaiser Sosey. I mean, Trump really played a Kaiser Sosey moment, and he's been negotiating this. He's had Witkoff negotiating this. Vance was in Budapest talking to Viktor Orban, which I think is very interesting because I think that's like a center point there between Putin, Ukraine and this on both sides of it. And Orban can also talk to the Iranians. So what do I think happened? I think that perhaps Iran blinked all of a sudden. We heard that they made a comment in a positive direction on nukes after he's saying, I don't want to do this, but I'm going to do this. And the Kaiser associate principle says you have to. The other side has to think that you're 1% crazier than they are, so that they become nervous. And there's a lot of commentary that went around when Reagan was elected that there were people inside the Iranian government at that time, and it was an early government. It hadn't been around for 50 years. It was the now volatile government. But they actually thought Reagan was bonkers. They thought he was insane and willing to use, you know, nukes and things. And that got the hostage crisis moving. So I think what happened is he went in with a hard negotiating position. I think Iran blinked a little bit and said, okay, okay, let's discuss this. And I think there were other people working on it. I think China was working on it because now we know China is in a crude oil deficit right now, they're in a shortage right now, and they're feeling true economic pinch. So I think then he comes out with this and finishing it up, showing that he can say, he can say fu on one hand, but then at the other side he's saying God bless the people of Iran. And he wants them to see that as well, Pat. He wants the citizens to see that.

[Pat]

Last line column, where are you at with this?

[Brandon]

Yeah, I agree. I mean, it kind of reminds me of the tariff playbook because he did a similar sort of negotiating tactic back last April where he makes these very extreme, almost like seemingly very irrational positions. He goes really far to one side, probably doesn't really mean that, and it forces the other side to come to the middle a little bit. And this seems to be part of the Trump negotiating playbook, you know, so he's doing the same thing here. Is it the most diplomatic way to

[Pat]

do all of this?

[Brandon]

I don't know. Probably not. But at the same time, I mean, this is probably, I mean, considering we're, we're only about six weeks in, this is starting to look like about as good of an outcome as we could probably.

[Pat]

Why do you say that?

[Brandon]

I mean, two days ago it seemed like, you know, maybe something really bad was going to happen, that this was going to escalate, that we were going to have boots on the ground. And so now you're getting into a position where it looks like this is really coming to a close. Everybody, I think, wanted an off ramp for this thing and here we are. So I think that, you know, that he did the same thing with the, if you remember the tariffs, he said six weeks. I'll make a six week deal with you. I'll make a six week Deal with you. I'll make a 6 week deal with you. And he did that for months and months and months and it was slowly an off ramp for everybody getting off of the tariffs there. And the same thing sort of happening here where, you know, he says two weeks. I think, you know, frankly, I think this thing really, the markets probably bottomed a week ago. Oil probably peaked a week ago. So I think we were starting to find a bottom in a lot of this stuff and that's going to play out. I mean, Trump is a master of building a wall of worry for the market. And so, you know, all of this stuff is a persistent worry, but really, markets look ahead of that, the economy looks ahead of that.

[Pat]

Yeah, it's true. And Rob, if you want to pull up the market watch numbers. Crude oil is down $20. Okay. From 112 to 92, down 18%. Dow Jones futures up 2.7. SMP futures up 2.67. Nasdaq futures up 3.5. Gold is up 3%, up to 4, $800. Silver's up 7.73%. And then you have Bitcoin is up to $71,000. And, you know, some of the stuff that's happening. But, Brandon, do you have a opposing opinion on. Okay, I want to hear that. Go for it.

[Rob]

Sure do.

[Pat]

Go ahead.

[Rob]

So, listen, I'm supporting Trump. I hope everything he does is the best thing for the country. I support him this whole time and everything, but I think he stumbled upon the fact here that we've put ourselves in the terrible position of not being equipped to deal with a situation like this. Ukraine went through, I believe, 10 years of weapons that were built in the first five weeks of the Ukraine war, so that we've been seeing that in the headlines for the last four years. There's huge shortages of these defense missiles we've been using. And I don't think we have the capacity to keep this up for much longer. You know, the oil is the one thing, but, yeah, sure, we're the best military in the world. We have the most advanced technology, but we've had our manufacturing hollowed out over the last several decades. So that's the most unsettling thing to me. I think that's what we need to be putting our effort in behind the scenes is to ramp that back up, because we're not in a position to carry this out if we wanted to. So, yes, I agree that the Kaiser Soze thing, where I don't think Trump's crazy or unhinged, Iraq, I think he was acting that way to try to scare them into something that was palatable. But I don't think this is an optimal outcome at all. I think we're in a worse situation than we were before he started this thing because now Iran has realized, okay, we could flip this switch of shutting down the straightforward moves, which they didn't even blockade it. They just have the mere threat of a drone hitting a ship that's going through. So it's not like they're moving ships out of the way when you say they're clearing the straight. They're just promising not to drone strike any boats that go through sound, even though if boats are going to have the courage to go through it, even though they're saying, yeah, there's A ceasefire?

[Tom]

Yeah.

[Rob]

We're not going to do anything to you.

[Pat]

So who. Who wins from this? Because for me, you know, Trump's negotiation, when people are like, I can't believe he said this. I can't believe. Stop being surprised with what he says. I mean, he made that. You should have already been baptized to that in 2015 when he started campaigning on this stuff. They're rapists, they're sending their wars, they're this. He's been doing a shock job, you know, to. To get people to react to it for a long time. So I do think you have to act crazier. I do think you have to act like you have nothing to lose. I do think you have to kind of come from that strength position, and especially when you're dealing with people from Iran. That part I agree with. But who? I just send a poll to Rob, and I want to see what our audience is going to say, because our audience is fairly reasonable. Who do you think won in this ceasefire? Iran. Us or. Too early to tell.

[Rob]

Iran's in a better position than they were before because they have more leverage over the US and the rest of the world.

[Pat]

Now, do you agree, Tom?

[Tom]

No.

[Pat]

Tell me why now?

[Tom]

I think Iran agreeing to a ceasefire. I don't know. You see how you say they win because basically, we're about to escalate from military targets, and we hit another military target on Kharg island two days ago. So they know what's coming and they know what's next. And you're talking about power plants, you're talking about that, you're talking about the pumping station on Carg Island. They're one step from that. And so do they win? Technically, yeah, they win not being more fully destroyed. But I don't think they win anything in a ceasefire, because we're not saying, I've had enough, let's have a ceasefire. We're saying to them, have you had enough? Do you want a ceasefire? Have you had enough?

[Rob]

Yeah, that's one way to look at it. But think about it like this. How frequently do we disagree with Iran in terms of they want something, we want something different? Probably frequently. Right? So they've now realized that they could simply put out the threat of, hey, anything that goes through the. The straightforward moves, we're going to knock it out, we're going to hit with the drone and shut down global traffic there. Like they didn't have that before, you know, and we wanted them to stop doing that and couldn't make them stop by brute force, you know. That's an objective fact. I don't think we were able to do that. You know, I think we would have done that if we were able to do it.

[Pat]

So, so you're saying, okay, so let me give some stats here. 92% of Iran's largest vessels destroyed. That's 140. Plus Iran's missile drone attack rate down 90% from week one. The death rate for Iran is at, I don't know, 10,000 killed, nearly a thousand civilians, you know, six, seven thousand military personnel. That's for the first 34 days. We're at what days? Right now we're at 39, I believe. 39 days. Okay, so 4 million people have displaced 3.2 million in Iran, 1.2 million in Lebanon. So when you look at that and then the argument, Tom, is made by some people saying, I do think this is, you just gave Iran a two week timeout. And that two week timeout is for them to go out there and figure out other ways on what to do with Russia and China. Because this negotiation was involving who? Pakistan is the one that brokered it. They said China made a phone call to get Iran to kind of be like, hey, listen, this is a good thing for you to do. So China was involved in helping with this, but what do you think Iran's going to be doing next two weeks?

[Brandon]

I think China's the winner, actually. It's funny you mentioned them because, I mean, you look at everybody in the room here. China all of a sudden looks like the adult in the room. And I think they're negotiating position in terms of everything involving Taiwan. I mean, it's, that's the, my big worry. I typically, I look at big geopolitical risks like this, the tariffs last year, even this thing, I said this, this can't last. This won't last more than a few weeks. It's just politically, it can't, you can't go into the midterms with $4 gasoline and 6 1/2% mortgage rates. It's just, it's impossible. It's a narrative killer. And so, but the, the geopolitical risk that is extremely worrisome in the long run is China going into Taiwan because it disrupts so many things that has the potential to turn into such a big flare up. China's position, I think across the board has strengthened sequentially across time as well. We get closer and closer to that potential inevitability.

[Pat]

Yeah. And by the way, while this is happening, Israel's like, look, Netanyahu says he backs Trump's ceasefire with Iran, but he says the deal excludes Lebanon. Why would he say that, Tom?

[Tom]

Because he's working on creating a buffer zone in Lebanon similar to what they created in Gaza. I mean, let's just objectively look at the attacks, let's look at where it is, and that's what's going on. And what did he have in the hills of Lebanon up there on the northern border? He had problems. He had a combination of independent and Hezbollah had strike areas up there. You can check me on that. But I think what he's looking at is saying, listen, you know, Iran was funding and arming Hezbollah. They were here in my backyard on the northern border. I'm gonna go take care of this as part of taking care of Iran now, you don't have to agree or disagree with Israel, Pat. But that's what they said. And so they're saying, I'm not done with these guys over here, Hezbollah. I regard them as my problem. Across from my border, they're in Lebanon. Tough. I'm going to finish this. And I think that's what Israel is saying. Whether you agree or disagree, they are creating a buffer.

[Rob]

You know, it's kind of annoying.

[Pat]

What's that?

[Rob]

I mean, wasn't this something that they care deeply about, the. What was happening with Iran, Israel?

[Pat]

You talking about Israel?

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Rob]

And something they were kind of invested in terms of, like, care about the outcome.

[Pat]

You think Israel is happy about the ceasefire?

[Rob]

I don't, but I'm not happy about the fact that they had any attention at all on a whole different country, different conflict, when we were doing something that was helpful for them. Like, shouldn't they be allocating the resources to do everything they could to help us. I know they're taking out some leaders with precision airstrikes and everything, but, I mean, you shouldn't be sending out your resources to something completely different, unrelated, if, you know, you have this big thing that you're supposedly invested in.

[Pat]

Tom, what do you think?

[Tom]

So, what do I think? I think that two things about Israel in this. I thought they should have been participating, and I thought they were selective about. Well, I'm gonna do this, but I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna put boots on the ground over here, but I'm gonna do this over here. Wait a minute. You were lobbying for this. You had intelligence, you had your own Mossad. This is not a dispute what I'm about to say. You had multiple Mossad minicamps and infiltra through the arid regions of Iran. That were snooping out where you had, you know, training facilities, small drone airstrips, all these things, and you had buckets of this intelligence and you're out there and you've openly said, I want this, this Iran to be put down because they were funding Hezbollah and Hamas that were causing problems for me right here. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with their intelligence reports, they were already there. So why don't you step up and be part of the solution that is actually benefiting you? And I thought they, they should have. I think it's kind of selective, in my opinion, to say, well, I'm not going to do this, but I'm going to do this. I'm not going to do that, but I am going to do that. Oh, you cease fire over there. Thanks for your help. Wait a minute. Israel complicated the first two weeks of the war when they killed more people than they had told us that they were aiming at. That's a fact. And even Trump said, well, there was a couple guys, we kind of like,

[Pat]

they keep killing them and they keep killing him.

[Tom]

Who's they? Trump was saying that, he said, well, there was one guy we thought we liked, like even he wasn't sure, but he said, but they killed him.

[Pat]

Yeah, so, yeah, so you can't, you can't.

[Tom]

Sorry to rant, Pat.

[Pat]

No, no, I'm with you. But you think in a situation like this, Israel sitting around saying, I'm glad the ceasefire happened.

[Rob]

No.

[Pat]

Or you think they're sitting around saying, you know, let's finish this, because we could have just emboldened Iran to give a timeout for them to go back and restrategize. How do you.

[Brandon]

They'd like to see a lot of these neighbors gone?

[Pat]

Israel?

[Brandon]

Yeah, I think they would have liked to. I mean, frankly, specifically around jerking us around. I mean, I think they, they roped us into this whole thing and they would have loved to see this go on for a much longer time period than it has here. So I don't know, I look at it and I keep coming back to, you know, why are we fighting their fight in a lot of ways here? I mean, they're big boys, they've got big guns, they've got big missiles too. So I don't know why they needed us to come in and start fighting their fight. Cuz they're perfectly capable of fighting this.

[Pat]

How many military bases do we have around the Gulf? How many military bases do we have around the Gulf, Rob? What's the number?

[Rob]

At least a few dozen, probably.

[Pat]

Yeah, that's the destiny. The problem is the number used to be we had 780 military bases around the world. Okay, I don't know what the numbers around Gulf. I want to know exactly how many military bases does the US have in the Gulf. And the only reason I'm saying this, I'm looking at this because, to answer your question, for us to be involved, if you wonder if Israel attacks Iran and the war is one on one, what is Iran going to do when. Well, not Iran's going to win, how would Iran retaliate if it's 1v1? If it's a 1v1 war, okay, it says 8 to 10 major US military bases in the Gulf region is what we have two in Qatar, one in Bahrain. Rob, go a little bit lower to see how many in Kuwait. Three in Kuwait, one in uae, one in Saudi. So you wonder, like, because what is, what has Iran done so far with the war? You attack them. What do they attack? Gulf states. And then you want to. They want the golf stage to call and say, hey, man, now we're being impacted by. Can you guys stop? So they, they're like, hey, you're hitting me. Those are your best friends. I'm hitting them because they're weaker than you. And I'm saying, hey, hit those guys. And then they're calling him and they're saying, hey, Tom, this is getting a little bit out of control, man. I just got hit by this. I just got. How long do you think you're going to do this, Tom? How long are you going to go about this? So they know he's not going to listen.

[Tom]

They were putting pressure on mbs. They were all calling mbs.

[Pat]

You understand what I'm saying? Yeah. So. So to me, I think this is a part where Iran figured out what buttons to press to get the call back. And yeah, look, here's the reality with the President. Vinnie showed me something very important this morning. He says, look, and you know, we've been kind of talking about this, but he says if Trump brokers a peace deal, Trump's a taco. Okay. If he broke the peace deal, what a sissy cannot believe this. Iran won. If he drops a bomb on him, he's a what war criminal. If he didn't get involved, he's weak. So the reality of it is anybody who is critical of Trump, those that no matter what he does, you know, he's never going to be getting the victory, period. You know, but he knows in this situation, you know, what, what his outcome is and what he wants to do. Nobody really knows how this is going to go. I will tell you, if it goes ceasefire and right now, the 10 points that they're talking about, who knows if these 10 points are right or not. I'm just saying These are the 10 points that are spreading. Number one is no further US attacks on Iran. Number two, Iran keeps control of Strait of Hormuz, which by the way, that is a lot of power to give lots.

[Rob]

That's why I'm saying they win.

[Pat]

I know that's a lot of power to straight up Hormuz. Recognition of Iran's nuclear enrichment rights. Lift all sanctions. End UN and IAEA resolutions against Iran. Realize frozen Iranian release. Frozen Iranian assets. US withdrawal forces from the region. Compensation for Iran's war damages. Formal non aggression guarantees. Binding UN Security Council agreement. People are saying this is not true, but this is what's spreading. So what I'm reading to you is what a lot of people are saying, that this is what's on the line.

[Rob]

Right?

[Pat]

You know, but we're going to see what's going to be negotiated. If it comes out and they get anywhere close to this. Iran won.

[Rob]

Yeah, 100%.

[Pat]

Iran won in a big way. And then guess what happens. You think they're going to sit on the sidelines and not do anything the next two, three decades? No, I don't think so. I think they just got bolder, I think they just got tougher, I think they just got stronger and they're going to come out. And timing just, you know, especially if this kind of income is not going to be coming in every year. What types of weapons do you think they're going to have in their arsenal?

[Tom]

Oh, yeah.

[Pat]

What type of investments you think they're going to be making? What do you think they're going to go back to doing? You think they're just going to sit and not do anything about it? You know how they said the money that was sent to him, to Iran, that, hey, he was going to build bridges, he was going to do this to Iran. All those monies went to what weapons? They were waiting. Some of them went to them, some of them went to. So I don't know, I think it's too early to tell. I'm not a fan of the ceasefire right now. I'm not. I just think ceasefires are not gonna be kept by anybody. I think the other. We claim we agreed to a ceasefire and what did we do? We attacked. You know, Iran claimed that. Boom. Same thing happened with Ukraine and Russia. Remember how many times I Said, oh, we agreed to a ceasefire instantly. Hours later there was an attack. So I don't know how much historically ceasefires have never worked historically.

[Rob]

Can I recommend an idea to the President?

[Pat]

Yeah, of course, go for it.

[Rob]

So, you know, one of the most controversial things of all time I think would work perfectly here. The Ivan Contra affair where we built an arms manufacturing base secretly in a place close to the, to Nicaragua to send arms to the rebels to help them overtake the communist regime. So need to build an arms manufacturing facility in something like Saudi Arabia, somewhere close by and just get as many guns as possible into Iran, into the hands of citizens there. Because it's not going to be like, you know, when you say what does like finishing the thing look like? How do you finish them? You can take out as many leaders as you want, but there's still 25% of the population that supports the IRCG. So there's always going to be somebody that pops up and will take the leadership. So it needs to be a civil war type of situation. Right now the population that's against the regime isn't equipped for a civil war. So if we could equip them for a civil war, it's not something that happens overnight.

[Pat]

You do it though, go ahead and do it.

[Rob]

Put a, put an arms manufacturing facility as close as possible to Iran and smuggle it in. And so long term thing, not something's going to happen overnight. But aside from that. Yeah, the two options are either let them win or just nuke the country. So because you can kill as many leaders as you want, but there's still millions of people.

[Pat]

Let me ask you a question, Let me ask you a question. Day one of the war versus today. Do you think the world is looking at Iran and they're saying how weak they are, or do you think they're looking at Iran and saying, okay, they're more capable and strategic than we thought we are. What would they are? What do you think the world is saying?

[Rob]

They have more power than we thought. And part of that is that.

[Pat]

Do you think?

[Tom]

I think that they're, wow, they're more resilient than I thought. It took that, it's taken a long time to take it to this level and they're still kind of standing. This is surprising. I think that's what they're saying. And by the way, I. Iran already has an arms manufacturing factory, it's called China. And if you don't think that in the net, by the way, for itself

[Rob]

though, for the government.

[Tom]

Well, you asked me Who I thought won the ceasefire. That's different from whether. I think it's gonna work. I don't think it's gonna work, number one. And number two, I think we've just given them a training. So now they're gonna figure out different techniques to use and they're gonna figure out ways to do it. And if this is really impacting China's economy, then guess what? China is the arms manufacturing factory that's

[Rob]

going to help Iran, but that's the helping the government. I'm talking about smuggling weapons to the citizens there. Like we need a rebel group to form that's against the government. Like, that's not for the ircg. So that's what I'm saying with that.

[Pat]

But. Yeah, no, but going back to it. So if you're, if you're talking about doing that, what I'm trying to say is the following. If, like the war with Ukraine and Russia, when they, when they started attacking, what was the first thing everybody thought

[Rob]

Putin or Russia was gonna.

[Pat]

Russia's gonna what?

[Tom]

They're just gonna walk in and take all that country back? Humpty Dumpty, USSR is getting rebuilt.

[Pat]

What happened?

[Tom]

It became a quagmire.

[Pat]

But why, though? This is different. These are two different stories, but similar. The reason why it's different is who had Ukraine's back?

[Tom]

All of Europe and the US and the democratic regime.

[Pat]

So Russia was by themselves. Of course, they got a couple other people that are helping them out, but they realize, wait a minute, that's not enough. And Ukraine is destroying you with the smaller Ukraine. The little drones that they're building, you know, $2,000 drones, $20,000 drones flying into $4 million tanks, you know, whatever. $4 million equipment explosion. Right, okay. But they had backing. Iran did this with two backing them up. Not that much from anybody. No, if you think about it, no

[Tom]

one that would admit it, no one

[Pat]

that would admit it. But maybe a little bit, but not that much. So to me, I don't know to me, if this goes, this goes the way it's going. So if you're saying, well, let's give weapons to their people. Well, if US And Israel went after Iran thinking there's going to be a regime change or regime collapse, if the IRGC still runs Iran after the ceasefire, there is no regime collapse or regime change.

[Rob]

That's correct, yeah.

[Pat]

No, let me say it again. If IRGC still runs Iran, there was no regime change or regime collapse. So if you give weapons to the people, you think the people are gonna have better weapons than America. And Israel has no. So I don't even think that's gonna work. I don't even think that's gonna work.

[Rob]

I think you need a civil war there.

[Pat]

Yeah. The difference between a civil war that we had in America versus a civil war in Iran is the civil war in Iran. The government is willing to kill its own people.

[Rob]

Right.

[Pat]

It's a very different kind of a civil war. It's not the civil war that you think about. Yesterday I was talking to Jiang, the guy that's, you know, he made the prediction with. I said, so tell me what it's like, the climate in China. I said, what does China say? When it comes down to Covid? He says, china's position is that US funded a bioweapon and they dropped it. And that's what the mainstream media said in China. I said, really? Yeah, the state media, because he's in Beijing right now. I said, how many Chinese question that narrative? He says, you don't understand. That's not the culture in China. What the state media says, guess what you do you buy because that's the culture that is in China. So in Iran, the state media says, what do you know the state media? There's a clip of a guy on state media saying, hey, parents, send your kids to get killed in the war. Okay? Send your kids because it's the right thing to do. Rob, I don't know if you have it in the notes or not. I, I, I send it to you. Maybe you have one of the two. One of them is very aggressive. The other one is. Here, let me send this to you. I just texted it to you, Rob, if you want to go to it and find it. But I, it's in my note. There you go. That one right there. Watch this. This is footage earlier, but look how they're speaking. Go back a little bit. Go ahead. Mother's. Take your child, children hand by hand. Come to the street. Do you want your sons to be

[Tom]

a man

[Pat]

like the hero? Send your children at. Your child will turn into what? What was the last word? Men turn into men. That's state media. That's state media. So you think a civil war is going to work in Iran, like the way you think, even with weapons, the government will gladly kill their own people. So if there's, if you're, listen, the debate of if you're going to do it or not, we're past it. We're here now. If you want to get the job done, you either have to show up and get it done. If you don't, you just emboldened Iran in ways we've never seen. Because if IRGC is still in charge, there was not a regime collapse. It was not a regime change. They're still in control. And if you think they're going to, they're thinking six months, they can't wait for Trump to be out. Somebody else will come in 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now, it'll be a 9, 11 times 10. And then they're going to sit back and say, well, let me tell you, we should have finished a job 20 years ago. They're not going to stop. They right now feel so confident. They right now feel so confident about themselves.

[Rob]

What is going all the way look like to you? Like 10 out of 10, like extreme in terms of trying to take it out all the way? Because that's what I'm stuck on.

[Pat]

I agree with you. I don't think there's winning here for him. I think whatever he does, I think if they go out and take out Iran, Republicans lose midterms. AOC is going to be the president 20, 28 or Newsom, Newsom's wife. The more she speaks, the more she hurts him. She's horrible. But I think winning, you're winning for 20 years from now, you're not winning for the next 612 months. If the President's doing what he's doing right now for midterms, then you're thinking marketing and PR wise. You're not thinking long term America. You're not thinking long term. War protection.

[Brandon]

Can you win this war long term? I mean, this is a war that's been going on for thousands of years basically with irgc.

[Pat]

Iran used to be very peaceful under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. They were allies with everybody. They got along with everybody. There was no issues in the Middle east when it was Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi. Nothing. There was no issues. Go look at the death toll. Nothing. They weren't picking on anybody.

[Tom]

Have you seen the historical pictures of the citizens? They were not wearing hijabs. They were. It looked like a Western country and it was actually Hollywood. People like Frank Sinatra used to go there on vacation.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Tom]

And ski.

[Brandon]

It's just interesting to me because historically you look at the region, there's always been a conflict there.

[Pat]

Right.

[Brandon]

Isn't there always going to be a conflict there?

[Pat]

There is. There's always going to be a conflict there. But if you.

[Brandon]

This is a different adversary. When you see clips like that, like they're fighting a different war from the war that we think I know to us this is a, this is an economic war. This is a war for our living standards and things like that. This is a different, this is, you

[Pat]

know, theological to these people, to the extremists, which is the one out of five. Yeah. The 80% don't want this. The 80% are begging for this thing to be done. The 80% are begging for the IRGC to be gone. By the way, look at Gulf states in uae. You can't act like that, you're going to jail. Crime is low in uae. Crime is low in Dubai, crime is low in these steps south. They're not gonna tolerate this behavior. So even the Gulf states have now said, look, we wanna have a good relationship with the West. Even Turkey wants to have a good relations with the West. Iran is a different animal in a big way. And if they continue and they keep getting stronger, like this event comes out and they stay stronger, you're gonna have this issue to come up for decades to come. And I don't think it's gonna slow down. I think they're gonna get tougher and. But again, short term, I don't think there's a win. The win is only a long term win. 10 to 20 years, I don't think there's any short term win. And the noise in media is so loud, the noise and media so flipping loud just to see the power of the message. Every time somebody comments something negative, the first thing I do is I go to their account, I say, no, this guy's really started his account nine years ago. And then I go, this guy started his account a week ago in April of 2026. You're a bottom. No followers. And by the way, it's not everybody.

[Rob]

Yeah.

[Pat]

So it's not like you can cop out and say everyone's a bot. No, no, no. Some people are converters of the bot's influence that their brain got rotted to believe that is happening. But my concern is this thing. If ceasefire goes, Iran's going to come out and say we beat the biggest empire in the world and against Israel. Imagine you're on TV and you're going to say Israel and us try to take us out and they failed. We were right. And the Iranian people are like, oh shit, now what do we do? We have to listen to exactly what they're going to be saying now moving forward. If you thought they were extreme, they're about to double down.

[Brandon]

I don't think people realize how much of a stranglehold Iran has over the global oil market. I Mean, that was really the crux of why this ended up being as difficult as it was, is because people woke up and realized like, holy cow, they don't even have to actually drop bombs to, in the Strait. They just have to threaten to drop bombs in the Strait and you can shut down the global oil market to a large degree.

[Tom]

And they're thinking deeply about the future. Financial Times reported this morning that in addition to the toll booth that they want to put together and Oman says, hey, I can help you with that. They want a dollar per barrel of oil that goes through the Strait of Hormuz. That's the toll that Iran says it wants. And it doesn't want Euros, it doesn't want US dollars, petrodollars. It wants crypto.

[Brandon]

Why?

[Tom]

Because you can't seize crypto later. You can't tolerate, you can't freeze assets.

[Rob]

You can't tolerate that. If that's, if that's actually.

[Pat]

What do you mean you can't tolerate? Don't you think that's strategic on their behalf?

[Rob]

Yeah, it is, but there it is. That breaks everything, though.

[Pat]

What do you mean that breaks everything?

[Tom]

Well, now you can't freeze the bank account, right?

[Rob]

It's crypto that undermines.

[Tom]

The petrodox tells me that they're thinking a step ahead.

[Pat]

Guess what? They're going to be like, look, you guys in the US Are all about crypto. Now why not just pay some crypto? Why are you not doing that? So I'm telling you, you have to respect a vicious, nasty, divisive, creative, critical thinking enemy. And these guys, these guys, they're doing, by the way, even marketing, they've done such a good job, even propaganda, they've done such a good job. And to ask something like this. But go back to what you were saying. So what power did Iran have with Strait of Hormuz, with oil, pre the attack? And what level of power will they have with Strait of Hormuz post attack? Depending on negotiation, what do you think is going to happen?

[Brandon]

I mean, they, they obviously I think they, they always had this power just because, you know, geographically, like you've done great work on that geographically. I mean, it's so easy for them to control because of the, the sheer, you know, the mountainous region of it. It's almost impossible for, you know, a foreign invader to put boots on the ground and actually control that region the way that Iran can. So I mean, there's a lot of strategists who have known this and it's why I think people were always Very tepid about doing something like, you know, invading Iran, in part because this disruption was always so front and center. Going forward now though, it's just, it's become so obvious to everybody that hey, Iran plays a much bigger role in the global oil market than they, than we suspected. And that's not going to change going forward.

[Rob]

Big X factor though, is the drones. Because it's not even like you have to put a blockade there now. Like before, people worried about them blockading or putting mines in the water. But now they can make these drones in their garage for a couple thousand dollars and just the mere threat of that will stop people from going through. So I think the drones have made the straightforward moves. Chokehold even more power.

[Brandon]

Yeah, it's interesting how much the technology is starting to change now and influence the way the militaries are fighting because you're seeing these autonomous vehicles increasingly play such a big role that even a poorer country can actually defend itself pretty well against the United States.

[Rob]

A $10,000 drone could take out a multi billion dollar ship.

[Pat]

It's such a great case study. It is such a great case study.

[Tom]

So guess what? I'm a small, I'm a small oil nation. I will never have enough troops to do anything in the name of traditional warfare, nor will anybody sell me airplanes. I can't get the Mirages and the Exocs, all those things that used to happen. Arab countries will buy from France. I can't get that. Nor can I get stuff from the United States. But I've got billions and billions and billions of dollars. I will never have enough troops. There's your case study, Pat. But guess what? All of a sudden, overnight, I got 10,000 drones. I got 10,000 drones. Guess what, Little old me is now a military power in my region. And the only question is what payload do I have on them and what is the sophistication of the electronics to keep. Because you can shoot down drones with a variety of electronic things. But this is exactly what we're talking about. It's no longer who's got the biggest army line up on both sides like Rome or Braveheart.

[Pat]

The question, Tom, for, for. Right, but for sure. But how many of these shipping companies are even going to trust the cease fire? Like here's one of the biggest. They're going to wait, right? Look at when the story just came out five hours ago.

[Tom]

I don't understand why we're talking about shipping companies. They didn't close the Gulf. Lloyd's of London close the Gulf. The insurance guy closed it so if mayors is cautious on straits or Hormuz, my question is do they have insurance and from who? Well that's really what closed the member Lloyd said you're not covered on insurance. And everybody said well I don't want the risk and I have no insurance.

[Pat]

The president said he would take the

[Tom]

risk and we said that we would make the United States Insurance Company and we said.

[Rob]

And then they said well we're worried about the lives of the people too. That was their next excuse after the insurance. But I mean through the prism of the insurance company, would you feel comfortable insuring boats going through the Rob, how

[Pat]

many have already gone through through this morning? Do we. Has anything been reported that anything's gone through yet?

[Brandon]

There was. I saw a report right before I left the hotel that there was a ship going through.

[Pat]

There was one going through. You know where it was from?

[Brandon]

I'm not sure.

[Pat]

Can you pull up Rob, it was.

[Tom]

It's the street. They have a straight tracker. Sounds like straight jacket if you say it fast.

[Pat]

Restricted today. I just want to know how many went through today. Are there any. So it says 10 transit, 10 ships in transit. Is there any other place to go see this rap if anything's gone through. Interesting. If he's safe. If Colin is saying one went through, I'd be curious to know who that one was right here.

[Brandon]

Where from transiting now?

[Tom]

7.

[Pat]

7 right now over the last 24 hours? 10.

[Tom]

Normal daily activity.

[Brandon]

60.

[Tom]

They're at 10%.

[Pat]

So can you find out if those 10 that went the last 24 hours paid anything to Iran? Those 10 that went through the last 24 hours, did they pay anything to Iran?

[Tom]

Great question.

[Pat]

I'm curious to know if they're already demanding that and if the world is organically accepting the terms, you know, to say, look, just pay the cash.

[Brandon]

I saw a report that Trump was saying that they're going to split the tolls. I don't know how truthful that is, but he said he was going to try to negotiate some way to split the tolls.

[Pat]

Yes. Some ships have reportedly paid in some cases.

[Brandon]

I don't know if that's a good thing or not.

[Pat]

What do you think about that? 50, 50 split ownership?

[Brandon]

I don't know.

[Pat]

It seems like a Trump thing.

[Brandon]

This seems like sort of a classic government snafu where the government does something overplays its hand and then all of a sudden they're taxing everybody. Because who ultimately pays for all this stuff? I mean taxes, taxes don't get paid by. By nobody. Taxes ultimately get paid by people who are consuming. So all of this, you know, what does it do in the long run? It drives up, you know, inflation marginally and ultimately people who consume oil end up paying for all of this. So I don't know.

[Rob]

Yeah, those prices will get passed on to the consumer.

[Brandon]

Exactly.

[Pat]

We'll see. I mean, look, the reality of it is, do you think the President's going to come out of this without him not seeming like the victor in the negotiation? Make it sound good, not sound. It has to be because today guys will filter out sound versus it being good. It has to be good. Like I can't, I can't see if any of those 10 terms happen. Iran won.

[Rob]

Yeah.

[Pat]

If that, if that 10 stuff I just read that happens. There's no way he's going to let that happen.

[Rob]

I'd be shocked if he did.

[Pat]

There's no way he's going to let that happen. There's no way he's going to let that happen. I don't think, I don't think he's going to let that.

[Brandon]

I think at this point, Trump, Trump's win is do they win the midterms? Do they even split the midterms at this point? Because now, I mean, God, a month ago, the Senate, there was almost no chance the Senate was going to go Democrat. And in the last, you know, 10 days, it's 50, 50 now, which is

[Pat]

kind of crazy to think North Carolina, which he won three times. A guy's running in North Carolina, a senator, Democrat, who I think the last time he won by three points, the President did. The North Carolina race is now going potentially Democrat, Senate race. So I don't know, me, that's an

[Brandon]

economic issue to me, that is you affordability. And this is why I don't like the cease fire. The cease fire. You know, somebody, I said last night on Twitter that the problem with what's going on is that you've got a flow through effect economically from the way these prices are going to be reported in things like CPI and in all the economic data. Where you could get into a point where we're into say the middle of June, July, August, where inflation is still high in all of the readings, in large part because the year over year oil prices are just going to be so high in comparison. You've got to get, I mean, you even look at the prices today, like people are saying, oh, the price is down so much. The price is still $92. It was 60 bucks six weeks ago. So we're up 50%, you know, still. So you need a, you need another 30, 40% decline in oil prices to get back to just where we were. And we already had an inflation problem before any of this started. Yeah, you know, there was some tiptoeing by the Fed around, you know, can we actually cut rates more or do we need to start, you know, you know, being more cautious about all this?

[Tom]

So this unemployment rule, all these things that handcuff the labor market looks weak,

[Brandon]

you know, so there's so many things that were already going on and this kind of throws a wrench in so many of those narratives where, I mean, you need oil back down to 60, 60 bucks yesterday at this point to otherwise, I mean, with the cease fire, the way traders are going to look at this, they look at a cease fire and they say, okay, we, we know that the risks are reduced, but we need to hedge our bets still because what if something transpires in the next two weeks where, you know, oil potentially goes back to 115 bucks? So they're looking at this and they're, they're kind of waffling on this, that they're not going to. Oil traders aren't going to take this right back to 60 bucks anytime soon because now they're looking at them to say, well, there's still, there's still two, a two week window of risk here at least. So I would have preferred to see something that was definitive, that where, you know, you were able to actually look at this and say, this is a done deal, this isn't a cease fire, this is over. I mean, at least in terms of the economics of what's going on.

[Pat]

Yeah, because the pressure is never going to be as high as it was 24 hours ago. Now it's gone. And the time that you're able to negotiate exactly what you want is when the pressure is at the highest. You think the pressure is going to get any higher than 24 hours ago? I don't think so. I think you just lose a lot of leverage for negotiation. There's time to break, there's time to rest, there's time to think, there's time to restrategize, there's time now to think, make maneuvers, move people from different areas, assume what's going to happen next. They've shown they're pretty ready for the east of Iran in case something happens with those mountains. I don't know. Look, my heart breaks. Let me tell you where I go to. Of course I'm an American, but I was born and raised in Iran. And when the Iran revolution happened and the war with Iraq. I sympathize with the families and the parents, how scared they are today. I saw the other day Armenians were celebrating Easter at an Armenian church and Armenians were in the church. It reminded me of when I was a kid and we'd go to these churches with my mom and my sister, or we'd go to the Assyrian church down the street from my grandmother's old house, that she would live there, Rosa, with Johnny and Victor. And we would go to her house right after the church. And it was a great experience and how afraid we were of what could happen. The wars. When my dad would put the black tapes on the window, me and my sister, I would sleep right by the window. I had a yellow Porsche poster above my bed. But my dad would come and tape the windows and I would ask, why are you taping the windows? He says, because the blast is not going to cause the windows to go out if we tape them. So you would come to every house. It's black tape windows there. I sympathize with these kids that just want to be free. I sympathize with these parents that are there that just want to do the right thing for their kids. That's hard, very hard. And I'd love nothing more for them to have similar liberties and freedoms that we have here in America. But unfortunately, as long as IRGC is in power, that'll never happen to them. They don't think that way. They are fanatical type of people. And then the argument can be for people to say, you know, well, that's not our problem, that's their problem. I understand that logical libertarian argument. Trust me. I used to be a libertarian full on, or I would see that. And this morning I'm reading scripture and I come across psalms and Psalms 82. 4 says, Rescue the weak and the needy, deliver them from the hand of the wicked. Man, there's some wicked people in Iran, man, and they, they don't run it like you and I do. They don't live their lives like we do, but all we can do is pray. There's certain things that happens in your life that is out of your hands. And the only thing you can do in those moments is pray. God is a big God and he's done things that seem impossible to the average person. And my faith is always going to be there to see what miracle could happen here. Anyways, we'll see. Having said that, let's get into the next story while this is going on. The Pentagon comes out and asks for a 42% year over year hike in their budget with a $1.5 trillion defense budget that they're asking for 2026. And this is a barren story. Let me read this to you and then we can go there, Rob. So eight big winners from Trump's historic $1.5 trillion defense request on time. I'm going to come to you, Rob. Is this, is that about this or no?

[Brandon]

Yes, it's Kevin Hassett.

[Pat]

All right, so on Friday, Trump unveiled the fiscal 2027 budget of 1/2 trillion dollars. The 1/2 trillion dollar number will be up 42% and it's a historic increase not since seen since the Korean War when the annual defense budget jumped from 14 billion in 1950 to 33 billion in 1951, almost a 48 billion in 1952. The Navy is projected to see its ship budget more than double 65.8 billion versus 27.2, wrote Vertical Research partner analyst Bob Stellard. Also seen a big jump in the Space Force. Its request from of 71.2 billion represents 77% year over year increase. That is relatively good news for shipbuilders General Dynamics and Huntington Ingalls Industries and for space startups including Rocket Lab, Firefly Aerospace and of course, privately held SpaceX. Huntington stock gains 2.8% on Monday. General Dynamics stock rose 0.7%, Rocket Lab stock went up 0.1 and Firefly shares went up 5.8%. The Defense Department is also asking for 85 F35 jets from Lockheed Martin, up from 47 in fiscal year 2026. The army gets an increase in the armored multipurpose vehicle, or ampv, made by Britain's bae. And you know, last but not least, both of those stocks, L3Harris Technologies on RTX have gained more than 65% over the last 12 months, leaving them trading for about 26 time estimated 2026 earnings. Tom, your thoughts on this?

[Tom]

So there's two things going on in here. One is forward and the other is replenish on the forward side. They're taking the things that have worked. The F35 is working. We've just seen it work. And so they're like, we need more of what works. And some of those F35s are going to find their way to Saudis. Some of them are going to find their way to Israel. There's a variety of places where we are going to have those and use them. And that's almost doubling the 47 from the previous. Then there's Replenish we've been every year, the defense budget. You know, you buy bombs, you buy missiles. You don't use them. You buy surface to air sam, surface to air missiles, you buy air to air combat. You know, all of the things that are out there. And now, guess what? We've been using them up. So there is a big, big. We got to, you know, we just had everybody over to grandma's house. We stayed there a week and we had Thanksgiving. And as we leave, we need to make a Costco trip because we got to refill grandma's pantry. Cause we've eaten everything in our pantry. So we gotta replenish all the bombs and stock and missiles and things that we've used up, number one. Number two, we're buying a bunch of stuff that works. And number three, we're discovering just how valuable space force is. And so we are radically increasing what's been spent on that. And lastly, war is really good for business if you're a defense contractor. The sad thing about war is they're the soulless, faceless defense contractors see it as a test bed. And they see it. They want war. They want border skirmishes. They want aircraft engagement with North Korea and China to just kind of test each other a little bit up there in the skies over the Sea of Japan. They want that. And this gives them an ability to test things.

[Brandon]

And.

[Tom]

And so this is the price tag. This is the price tag of forward armament. This is a price tag of adding space force. This is also the price tag of refilling the pantry because we just used up all of. All of, you know, all of our bombs.

[Pat]

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[Brandon]

Yeah, I mean, it seems like a big number. I mean, in.

[Pat]

Do you support it? Do you support it? Do you think this is a good thing we're doing to get tighter and get more fighters?

[Tom]

I don't know.

[Brandon]

I mean, I'm not privy to, you know, the crazy thing, to me, these numbers are so big. I mean, where does $1.5 trillion even go? I do. I like a lot of the aspects. I mean, here's one thing in terms of long term innovation. The US Military has actually been in, had an incredible multiplier effect on the US Economy in the long run. So out of all of the places where we spend a lot of money, the military is one of these things where, you know, whether it's the Internet or, you know, things like the, just the knock on effect of all of the different technologies that go into a lot of this. I mean, you look at people like Palmer Luckey and people who are, you know, incredible innovators. I mean, going to, you know, the whole space force thing, you know, people mocked that a few years ago, but now, you know, controlling space and, you know, who's got the most satellites, who's got the ability to see the rest of the world, that all of a sudden looks like the, arguably the most important strategic, you know, economic and military viewpoint of anything. So I don't know, there's a, there's definitely, there's a lot to like in here. I think the problem with these humongous numbers is you go back to things like, you know, these, you know, these audits of like the Pentagon where they're like, you know, whoopsies, we lost a few hundred billion dollars and we just don't know where it went. And it's like, how, how the hell does that happen?

[Pat]

Brandon?

[Rob]

Yeah, of all the things in the world that there are to piss me off, this is my probably number one because Slate, the biggest or second biggest line item in the defense budget, you know, after Medicare and Social Security. And it's an objective fact that 25% of the existing 800 billion gets lit on fire, right? It goes to nothing, just gets price gouged because we let these four defense contractors overcharge us. Because it went from 200 in the 90s after the Cold War to just four or five of them today. And when it comes to the defense contractors, they don't just want war, they need war. They would shrivel up and die without a war. Like, I'm of the belief that Since World War II, we haven't had a necessary war. We've had wars that they've lobbied for, that they've fought hard for to get into. You know, whether it's the Korean War, whether it's the Cold War, whether it's the war against terror, whether it's the NATO against Russia, when Russia wanted to be part of NATO, all of those were, weren't Necessary. They were necessary for the beast that was created During World War II, the Military Industrial complex. Now, when it comes to this, I would cut it down to 500 billion, not increase to 1.5 trillion. You know, make them get the most out of what they're using right now, because they're not even spending the full 800 billion of it. 300 billion of it's going to waste. So what, we're just going to make the number bigger so that the number that's wasted gets bigger? No, I'm not. I'm not a fan of lighting money on fire, especially when it's taxpayer money and we're running a deficit every year and we're already at 40 trillion. We're just at 35 trillion. Like, that's where affordability.

[Pat]

A lot of people, day to day, regular people would side with you and they would say, that makes sense. Why are we doing it? Right. But I think the better question to ask Brandon, to be honest with you, is the following. I was in the military and I would order parts for Humvees and I would go to my Sergeant Braxton if he's around. I haven't spoken to the guy for 20 some years. I love Sergeant Braxton. I would say, Sergeant Braxton, why is this lug nut? Why is this ball joint, whatever, for the Hummer, $2,800. This is really a $400 product. While it's the government, we always overpay. That doesn't make any sense to me. So this is why I was excited about Doge, because we were going to get to the bottom of this. If you're running a business of you hire a new CEO, first thing they're going to look at it and say, let me renegotiate all the contracts. Why are we spending so much money with this? I'll never forget one of the things we did is we had a guy that would keep buying memberships because he controlled the company credit card. You would remember this guy, he bought nine. We're like, how many reoccurring things are we paying for? 900 things. I said, what? Yeah. So this guy comes in and audits is like, we don't need to pay 900 different things of memberships that we had. So one by one by one, we don't need this. We don't need this. We need this. We need that. Okay, I think the bigger question here to ask is you have two case studies. You have Russia and Ukraine, us, Israel and Iran. And we both, all of us around the world, saw what became Very powerful tool, drones. So I want to know what we're doing to change the strategy of the future wars, whether it's going to be if we go back and keep buying weapons the way we bought for decades. Okay, fine. How much of it is going into the new warfare? How much of it is the defense against cyber warfare? Because people right now, you know, whenever, when you're healthy, guess what? You don't think about your health when you're healthy. How do you eat when you're healthy?

[Rob]

Bad.

[Pat]

Whatever you want to eat. And then all of a sudden you have a heart attack. And then all of a sudden you have cancer. All of a sudden you go to the doctor and you're like, whoa. I remember one time I went to the doctor. Doctor's like, you may have. Because I couldn't speak for six months. I literally lost my voice. Tom will remember this. This was how long ago? 15 years ago, 10 years ago, something like that? 13 years ago. And I go to the same doctor that was Whitney Houston's doctor. For your throat. And they went and they said, there's something there and it could be cancerous. And I was going to a trip to Hawaii. Monday, they said, we do the surgery. They came and cut it. When they cut it, it was Thanksgiving. I couldn't speak to anybody on things. If you were at Thanksgiving at my house, I'm texting you.

[Brandon]

Wow.

[Pat]

So family. People were talking shit to me and I'm like, the only way I can respond back was in text.

[Tom]

Right.

[Pat]

So until you have experienced cyber warfare, you don't think about the importance of it until the system, the grid, is taken out and we don't have power and it's in the cold and a cold front comes and you're like, wait a minute. The power of a heater, you're not thinking about until the banking system is hit. Until you look up in the sky and say, how the hell are there 10,000 drones coming and you see things blowing up, you're not going to be thinking about the importance of this. So I don't know. I think there's a part of me that's like, let's stay tight. There's another part of me that's like, look, man, we got to make investments in future potential warfare to protect us against crazy players. Especially after we just killed the top 50 most powerful, highest ranking people in a country that they're not ceasing to exist and they're going to keep the power. And you want me not to protect the military? I don't know, and then I go to the other side of military industrial complex, so you see all these stocks that they're going up, you're like, hey, man, it's like a very good. They're like, hey, another war. No, keep it going. Keep the war going. We're making money. Keep it going. We need war. We need war. Yeah, I understand all the arguments, but I'm always going to lean more on insurance preventative measures long term than, you know, cheap being too cheap.

[Rob]

Today I'm with you and I'm totally open that, you know, like, for a long time I was with the mindset of, like, you know what? Fine. We spend as much as the remaining 10 mil. We spend as much as the next 10 militaries combined in the world. Okay, fine. We're the most safe country in the world. Fine. Sure. We get taxed a lot to pay for that. Fine. Okay. But when you tell me that we're running out of military equipment to go against a country that's much smaller than us, we better have every single measure that we have that we need in any possible situation. We don't have that. So how's that possible? For the last 20 years, we've been spending at that rate and we don't have everything we need.

[Pat]

Well, let me show.

[Rob]

Which shows it wasn't spent.

[Pat]

Well, no, you're. And let me show you something. Let me show you something that I think this is the tweet of the week. Rob, I'm going to send you these both and I want you to pull them up. Specifically pull up the other one that actually breaks down the numbers. Okay. You know, NASA, just recently, the Artemis 2 went into space. Okay. And one tweet that's going viral is this tweet by Gunter Eagleman. He's got some interesting tweets that he puts out. NASA Artemis 2, $4 billion. The California Bullet Train, $126 billion. NASA Artemis 2 started planning in 2017. The other one started in 96 passengers. Four passengers in California, zero. Miles traveled. 695,000 miles traveled. Miles traveled for the bullet train in California, zero. And by the way, you know what's crazy? As crazy as this is that people are making this comparison of how much it costs for NASA to do it versus the bullet train. Do you know what the numbers are? If you look at what Elon does when he's got his launches, We've done this before.

[Rob]

I think one of the other SpaceX.

[Pat]

Yeah. The Falcon 9 is $67 million per launch. The space shuttle for NASA is 450 to one and a half billion. The Falcon Heavy that Musk does, $97 million per launch. The one that they do is $4 billion. And as crazy as this sounds, guess who was in Newsom's backyard for a couple decades?

[Rob]

Musk.

[Pat]

Guess who he could have gone to and said, hey, Musk, can I talk to you? What's that? Hey, man, we're spending 120 some billion dollars on this. It's like, I got the money. How the hell do we do this? To make it cheaper instead of spend all the money that's not working. Can you help me out? No. Instead, what does he do during COVID doesn't allow Tesla people to do their thing. And he's like, screw you, I'm going to Austin. It's these types of things that the American people see and they see waste. And so I don't want to give you a single penny for something like this. I don't want to give you a single penny for this. So I get the argument. But if they do it right, it's

[Rob]

like they don't have an ownership mentality. They have like a pillaging mentality. You know, if everybody had a collective ownership mentality of America, then they wouldn't pillage the country. The way that I'm going to get

[Pat]

to this next story and call on, I'm going to come to you first. So be careful how you answer this question. There's a lot of pressure with the story, so I want you to be ready for it. Americans are increasingly saying they won't pay their taxes this year as a political protest. Okay, here's what could happen to them. According to Market Watch, everybody wants to know what Colin thinks. Hang tight, let me read it to you. Then I'm coming to you. Here we go. When Jovan Granado Gomez completed paperwork for his new job, he carried out an app, an act of protest, by checking off one box a 25 year old cook in Phoenix checked exempt on the tax form that tells his employer whether to withhold the money from his paycheck for federal income taxes. Checking exempt means his employer won't withhold any of his pay for federal taxes, allowing Granada Gomez to keep the money himself instead of paying the money to the Internal Revenue Service to fund government operations that he does not support. Those include the war in Iran, the Trump administration's immigration crackdown, and what he sees as too little funding for health care and education. At some point, the only way to get financial release to get start hearing out our pleas is if we stop paying them the money. He says this 25 year old people's reasons for wanting to opt out of paying taxes vary. The war in Iran, immigration arrest by ice, illegal immigration in the first place, the Epstein files, the military operation in Venezuela, waste, fraud, abuse and public assistance programs and so on. But they all point to fury that bridging the political spectrum. The failure to Pay penalty is 0.5% of unpaid tax and it builds to 25% the longer the sum goes unpaid. The failure to file the penalty is 5% also eventually building to 25%. And the IRS charges 7% interest on those penalties that compound daily. Should people pay their taxes or should they protest?

[Brandon]

Yes, pay your taxes. I mean, aside from the fact that jail is no fun, I mean these are like the most punitive interest rates that you're ever going to see. I mean this makes the high credit card rates almost look, look friendly. So. I don't know, it's interesting thinking about all this in the context of everything else we've kind of been discussing because a lot of this seems like it's a, it's a situation where the government has gotten so big and so complex in so many ways that I think a lot of people look at the situation now and they're, you know, they're, they're protesting in, you know, kind of irrational ways, but in ways that are a response to basically like, can you unscramble this egg at this point? Because it's, you know, the, the California thing is interesting because I mean, I'm a California boy and I know front and center that the one of the big problems. I'm actually surprised they got even as far as they did with that because the regulations to actually put down even probably 10ft of railroad track in California is like a colossal effort because there's so many competing regulatory agencies involved in everything. There's so many different rules, different municipalities, localities, all these different agencies. So I mean, I got, I went through a two year process of getting a house permit when after we purchased our house, I had no idea what I was getting myself into in the state of California. I mean, it took me two years just to get the stamp of approval to start rebuilding a, and tear down a garage war in California in San Diego county, which, you know, San Diego is arguably part of the, you know, one of the more moderate places in all of California. And so, but the rules are crazy and the rules conflict with the different localities and the different environmental agencies. So. And you get into this situation where you start to realize that, holy cow, we've scrambled this egg and can you unscramble it at this point? And so, I don't know. Going back to Doge, you know, one thing I really liked that Trump did was the, you know, this thing where he was, for every regulation that was new, he would unwind to, you know, something like that, that, you know, you start to make the world less and less complex, because that's the other thing that's really frustrating about. I think what a lot of people experience in everyday life is that the world is getting really, really complex. It's getting more and more complex, harder to navigate in so many different ways. And then they confront the government where you're just doing, trying to do simple things like get a house permit to remodel a home, and you're like, you're making my life more difficult. You're not helping me. You're supposed to be on my side here, like, what's going on? I think that's the, the experience that a lot of people have that's frustrating and, and, you know, kind of boiling over into these views, like, hey, I'm just not even going to pay my taxes, even if it risks me going to jail.

[Pat]

Yeah, Brandon.

[Rob]

Yeah, it's, it's a sad thing. I think the most important thing in any society is a strong middle class, and that's greatly under threat right now because, you know, it's an objective fact that the average salary is a lower number than the average cost of living right now. And, you know, I think when that happens, people go into a desperate state. They get into an emotional state. They see things they disagree with in the media. You know, the government has let people down over the last hour. Now, what number you want to put on it? 50, 70 years, in a big way, really put the people in a tough position, and that's a scary thing for the government. That's why we're seeing socialist sentiment. That's why we're seeing these protests and emotional things. And, you know, people are impressionable. They go along with what they hear, and they probably don't understand the full situation. But, like, you know, the fact of the matter is, if you, you let your middle class get beat up enough, that's when bad things happen. That's when, like, civilizations go socialist and vote in socialist leaders. So, yeah, you should pay your taxes. We got swindled for sure with the whole taxes thing, but that's a different rabbit hole. But, I mean, yeah, the laws have pay taxes, so pay the taxes. But I think the bigger Issue is the government letting the people down. And we should be more worried about what's happening to the middle class because that's the biggest barrier against socialism.

[Pat]

Tom.

[Tom]

Well, Jovan Granado Gomez, you let the writer of the article put your full name in it. So sometimes privacy is a good thing. But I'll say one thing, you mean well. However, not sending government money has never stopped them from spending far more than they have and send us all a bill for it 10 years from now. That doesn't stop anything. And I think, you know, we all, we're not ready for the full outcome. The full outcome is if you take all the waste, fraud and abuse and the excess price of the defense contractor and billings, here's what happens. The economy gets cut by 33%. Here's why. Cuz all the people that are, you know, the waste, fraud and abuse, which pisses me off, all those people are buying things. Well, those things don't get bought in the economy anymore. If you take 25%, you know, you know, gouge burn out of the defense contractors. Well, guess what, what does that do? The P E ratio of all the defense indexes and stocks. So the stock market goes down, we have a more honest economy, but everything goes down, including prices. Maybe, yeah, maybe. But this has gone on for a long time. Going back to the 80s, people would pay books. Send me $4.99 and I'll give you this book, don't pay taxes. Just send in this letter and, and then I, I read all about it. You know, one of my friends was telling me about the book and I read about the book and I read about this and I said, do you know that this guy went to jail for writing the book? Did you know that? He actually did. He refused it. He like, you know, I'm not doing it, I'm not doing it. Okay, sir, put your hands behind your back. It's. No, seriously. He went to, he went to Danbury Minimum Security Prison. What are you doing here? I wrote a book about never paying your taxes. What happened? Well, the people that collect the taxes are really pissed off.

[Pat]

Well, I mean, this also happened post Vietnam war when people were protesting, wanted to pay taxes. It was in the Thousands, maybe like 10,000 when you read about it. But do you know who actually came up with the idea of tax withholding in your income when you get your check? You know who came up with that idea that proposed to the government you will never be able to get. If I tell you who it is, you're going to say there's no way in the world he came up with this idea.

[Rob]

Reagan?

[Pat]

Nope. Go before that. And he said, it's the biggest mistake I made in my career.

[Rob]

Politician or business guy?

[Pat]

Milton Friedman.

[Rob]

Oh, man. Huh?

[Pat]

Milton Friedman.

[Rob]

Wow.

[Pat]

Can you verify that, Rob? Milton Friedman is the guy that came up with the tax withholding. And then he says, why don't we do this? Let's just kind of do. Because people used to pay their tax Sunday taxes. Why don't we come up with this? Milton Friedman helped invent a modern income tax with a holding system in the early 40s. And he said it's the worst. At the end of his life, he was like, this is one of the worst ideas I came up with. So guess what? There is some logic behind it. Because they had a hard time going and collecting. And then it's like, why don't we just make it mandatory? And it's like, what a great idea, Milton. And then now you don't have a choice. And they just kind of take it out. So when you read the history, I made a video about US taxes many, many years ago because we went and, you know, started kind of looking into this. So I understand the argument, but sometimes even smart people come up with terrible ideas that become permanent ideas. And this is one of those ideas. Let's go to Jamie Dimon. Here's what Jamie Dimon just recently said and specifically about the market gas and about New York City. Jamie Dimon warns of business exodus from New York City as mamdani lefty polls push for higher taxes. Watch the comparison he makes on the employees in New York, on how much it's increased or decreased versus Texas. Go ahead, Rob.

[Brandon]

Why are you buying more real estate

[Tom]

in mob Donnie's Manhattan right now?

[Pat]

Good answers.

[Jamie Dimon]

Well, he wasn't. It wasn't the mayor when we start. We started building that building five years ago. And but here's, here's a lesson. And this lesson is true for companies, cities, states and countries. You got to compete. There's no divine right to success. Just read the history books. So our headcount in Manhattan when I got to JP Morgan was 35,000, and now it's 26,000. Our headcount in Texas is started 11,000. Now it's 33,000. That's what happens. And you know, Parv is the highest individual taxes, highest estate taxes, highest corporate taxes, anti business sentiment. You know, and that's what happens. And you know, you could be any ideologue you want, but that's the real world. And people vote with Their feet. And you can't get mad at them. You know, it's a free. If you believe in a free country, if someone wants to move to Florida, that's their right. And so, yeah, if they make too many mistakes, you know, the mayors, including Mayor Mondame, should worry about police, hospitals, subways, sanitation, storms, health care, schools. It's got nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans. And ideology distorts reality when it comes to something like that. So. But our building is great. We're still there. It's got some of the best people. But I think when I grew up as a kid in New York City, and you don't probably know this, there were 120 of the Fortune 500 were headquarters there in the 1970s, 6020 left, including Exxon, GE, IBM, United Car, Union Carbide. I mean, that's not what you want. And they're all going to Texas, you know, basically, or, or Nevada.

[Tom]

Guess what Jamie just summed up. Why is it when everybody says it, when we talk about it, everybody talks about it? Yeah, all these people talk about it. Oh, that's Fox Business. Don't listen to them. Oh, that's a conservative podcast. Don't listen to them. Oh, you know, you know, Patrick Bethevens made his money. He doesn't really care about anybody now. That's all bs and they can pick on all that. But then when Jamie Dimon, very eloquently, in the space of 2 minutes and 10 seconds, lays it all out, suddenly the Wall Street Journal and all the liberals, it's like headlines. Well, you know what? He's absolutely right. And you can't compete. And this is something that Pat has said, your ideas, nobody is buying your ideas. You're trying to sell something nobody is buying. And there's Jamie saying, you gotta compete. So how many voices do you need to talk about this? This is so clear to me. And it shocks me, Pat. It's like, is there one liberal leader? And the answer is, I don't think they care. I honestly don't think they care because they think they're going to get at the federal level. They're going to be able to do everything they want at the federal level. And I don't think they worry as much about the state level. Otherwise AOC would be in Mamdani's office saying, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. People in my people in my district, their jobs or things like this. Instead, she blames it all on the macro. They always go for the macro, Pat. They head for the macro. And they don't really care about the micro. And what Jamie is talking about is you got to be competitive on the micro. Unless Mandami doesn't really care about New York. It's about a much bigger plan calling.

[Brandon]

Yeah, I mean, this one drives me crazy. I grew up in Virginia and right outside of D.C. and over the course of my parents still live there and I go back there a lot. And over the course of the last 25 years, every time I fly into Dulles Airport, you drive down the Dulles corridor. And what is it now, that corridor? It used to be empty. There was nothing out there between Tyson's Corner and where I live in Alexandria. Nothing. And now it is. It's the Fortune 500. And what did Virginia do 20 years ago? They made it very specific that they wanted to become one of the most business friendly states in the country. They made a huge effort to do this and they achieved it. And so it drives me crazy when I see states like New York and where I live now, California, where they think that they can sort of just assume that people aren't gonna leave. And they make it so unfriendly for businesses hostile to some people, seemingly, that, you know, you're pushing businesses out of there. To me, it just, it's crazy. I was laughing because when I landed here, I saw rain for the first time in six weeks. So living in San Diego, I mean, it hadn't rained in March. You know, Fort Lauderdale is amazing. And San Diego is arguably one of the only places in the country where the weather is better. And so having lived in San Diego for the last 20 years, I always think to myself, you've got rich people here, you've got young, smart people going to the universities. And so why wouldn't you make this town the most business friendly town in the whole world and just, you know, try to just bring everybody into this sort of a town because it's the sort of place where everybody wants to live like people. People would love to live in places like Fort Lauderdale, Miami and San Diego. And the difference between Fort Lauderdale and San Diego is that San Diego has become impossible to afford anything, in large part because there's not enough businesses there because they've made it so unfriendly for businesses to form there that you don't end up. You don't end up having the jobs, you don't end up having the innovation and the multiplier effect that comes from being business friendly. So it's, it's very frustrating. It's this one Seems like sort of a no brainer to me that, you know, the whole country was built on, you know, really the, the, the might of capitalism and the, you know, the innovative beauty of like our, you know,

[Pat]

and by the creativity, San Diego is honestly one of the best kept secrets. It was one of the best kept secrets. You got so many things to go through. Teams, sports, Del Mar, you know, racetrack, the water. You're, you're in a very good spot.

[Tom]

Best weather in America.

[Pat]

Best weather in America. Yeah. No question about sports stink.

[Brandon]

For the record.

[Pat]

Well, you know, you're an hour and a half away.

[Tom]

The Chargers now, and they're now.

[Pat]

Yeah, but there's a reason though why that's happening.

[Rob]

I mean, one of the saddest things ever is wasted potential. I mean there's, it's not an accident. Those places are what they were. I mean, you know, New York's geographically gifted. It's set up in a way where it enabled all that growth. It has, you know, the deep water ports, the, the access to waterways and you know, just like feeds people and has the Grand Central Station, all the airports. So I mean, I don't know if it's resting on their laurels of, of past greatness or if it's a deliberate effort to drive out the, the right type of people and bring in another type of people. Because if you were trying to do everything in your power to make a city undesirable, you know, you would kind of run it the way the California and New York have been run. So I, I think that's a fascinating question. Is there a deliberate effort to drive certain people out of there or is it just, you know, the government wanting more money to spend and taken like the fast way instead of the maybe delayed gratification way because it could generate more taxes in different ways than direct income taxes like sales taxes or property taxes. So I don't know, I don't know if they're trying to drive people out or if they're just assuming that people won't actually leave.

[Pat]

I mean, Detroit used to be the city in America. You think they drove it out because they wanted to move them to other states and turn them liberal? Do you think they were absolutely dumb with their policies, with that mayor who was a corrupt mayor multiple times and made it harder and harder and harder and eventually like, listen, we're out of here. This is not the place to be living. So I think a part of it is stupidity on the fact that they think people will stay because it's so good. Like it's the. It's the why the Mighty Fall. Rob, can you pull up the five points of why the Mighty Fall? We talked about it yesterday as well with Jiang. Jim Collins is known for his book Good to Great. But one of my the book I like more than Good to Great is why the Mighty Fall. And he makes five points on this. Hubris born of success. Okay? Leaders believe their success is deserving, guaranteed, and they become arrogant and they ignore the hard work that created it. Undisciplined pursuit of more denial of risk and peril. Grasping for salvation, capitulation to irrelevance or death. People think, it'll never happen to me, and it's too late. And you're sitting there saying, what happened to Kmart? What happened to Blockbuster? Oh, it'll never happen to us. It'll never happen to us.

[Rob]

Gone.

[Pat]

You realize Disney's been around since 1923. It's $180 billion company. Netflix has been around since 1997. They're a $400 billion behemoth. Disney owns everything you can think about on the media space. Star Wars, Marvel, all this stuff. Netflix like, no, we're just gonna keep building our company. It's what we're gonna be doing. And they're destroying them, by the way. Let me continue with this Jamie Dimon thing. Tom, have you given this to Rob? Does Rob have this or no?

[Tom]

No.

[Pat]

Can you send it to Rob as well so Rob can show it? Do you have it in image format or no?

[Tom]

Yeah, let me.

[Pat]

Okay, so while I'm reading this, you send it to him. So Jamie says the five risks that he's worried about in 2026. Number one, he says inflation. Number two says intensifying competition, meaning they're facing a growing set of non traditional rivals. And payments and digital banking. A whole new set of competitors is emerging based on blockchain. That's number two. Number three, Americans lost of trust in the U.S. government. Number four is artificial intelligence, AI. And last but not least is weak allies. Europe is entering a decisive decade and it is unable to act, he said. He cited internal trade barriers and expensive social welfare programs, but praised military spending boosts is what he's talking about. So now let's talk about AI when it comes down to AI. This chart Shamat shared that Tom handed to me, if you want to go a little bit closer, it says the negative perception around AI is now worse than ice. So the Pope has got the biggest plus minus. Shout out to Umberto. Plus 34. Stephen Colbert is plus 10. Rubio is minus 7 Sanctuary Cities. Minus 10.

[Brandon]

J.D.

[Pat]

vance. Minus 11. AOC minus 11 Republican Party. Minus 14. Kamala Harris. Minus 17. Newsom. Minus 18. ICE minus 18. Look at AI. Minus 20 Democratic Party. Minus 22 Iran. Minus 53. This is from NBC News. Go a little bit lower and it's leading to electricity prices rising. And they're blaming AI. Look at the numbers of what it was like 2014, steady. 2016 steady. 2018 steady. 2020, steady. Look at 2021. Skyrocketing prices of electricity. And that's not even showing what happened in 25 or 26. If you want to go even a little bit lower. Rob, look, local opposition is growing and there are voting down data centers. Okay. From 2023, five to two. Okay. And. And five is protested, two cancelled. This is us data centers protested and canceled. About 40% of data centers now face sustained local opposition are eventually being canceled. 15 to 6, 63, 25, 140. Tom, what are your thoughts on this? Specifically what Jamie Dimon said and the

[Tom]

frustration with AI well, guess what Jamie Dimon is talking about. You have to compete to win. And so if you're going to win, you have to control the narrative. And this shows that Americans are fed up with the increase in the energy prices and they're pointing it out to our data centers. And data centers run AI. So AI gets this negative feeling because one, they think it's taking jobs, two, they think it's the reason they have to build more data centers. Data centers are increasing my electricity costs. My electricity costs are killing me. Especially if you don't live in San Diego. You live in some place you have to run electricity all year, like Minnesota, you know, in places where, you know, you gotta. You gotta run all of your heating equipment and AC in Dallas. And so people get upset and that's what's going on now. You gotta win. You know, the other side of this is at the beginning of 26, Trump did the voluntary ratepayer pledge, I think it was called, where that the data centers would voluntarily agree that they would partner with local electrical utilities and they would absorb or be part of building efficient. There it is. 2026 Rate Player Protection pledge. I was right. So Jamie Dimon says you gotta compete. Trump gave people an opportunity. This was voluntary. It says you build your data center and then say, look, by the way, to avoid local electricity spikes, I'm going to be putting in permits for micro nukes, sixth generation, fifth generation things, so I can power the data center. And any excess power, I'll put out to the grid. And so, you know, you do it that way, you have it. But this is. They've lost the narrative. And Jamie Dimon's right, you have to compete to get people to stay. And AI and the electric industry have lost the narrative. And now 40% of their attempt to start projects are being defeated by people. And what we need, you know, what Trump could do this summer. Let's take this from a voluntary rate player pledge, which was a good thing that he put forward in March, to let's make it have teeth, let's make it real, let's make it that we could legislate that says, hey, if Pat and Tom want to open a paint company and we're going to make an innovative new paint, we would have to get permits and permission from the EPA for whatever it is we're making. Well, because they say, we don't want you guys, whatever is in your paint getting into groundwater, getting this, that and the other. We don't care who you are, we're going to regulate what you're doing because it's a chemical. Well, if you go from voluntary ratepayer pledge to something that was, you know, firm now to build the data center, it becomes a very simple matter. Hey, we're building the data center here, but don't worry about electrical costs because I'm going to get a permit for, you know, micro nuke, or I'm going to participate with the lower, you know, ECOT in Texas or whatever it is, and I'm going to participate with them and I'm going to get the electricity, you know, resources built that we need. And so the price of your electricity is not going to go up. What people forget is AI is only one part of the problem is that the increase in demand for electricity has been coming for seven years in America because of EVs. It used to be at night we would give our power a break because at night all we powered was maybe air conditioning in hotter climates and everything else was turned off. Well, now there are so many EVs like in California, that at night the grid doesn't get arrest because your EV is in your garage or in the parking space at your apartment plugged in. And so, you know, people think of EVs as green. They are up to a point, until you follow that extension cord all the way back to the power plant and say, what's it burning to make the, you know, like in West Virginia, is an EV technically worse because it's all coal Power plants.

[Pat]

Colin?

[Brandon]

Yeah, the AI one's Tough, because I think the other thing that a lot of consumers look at is they're worried they're all going to lose their jobs from AI in the long run. So I think there's a, you know, again, going back to the. You've lost the narrative so far. You know, the labor market's interesting because the. So far, what we've seen from companies is, is we've seen a slowdown in hiring, but we have not seen anything along the lines of, like, mass firings from AI. And so, you know, the, the narrative around the labor market in AI has been very scary, and I don't think that it's necessarily been accurate. Is that coming? God, I don't know. I have no idea how the whole AI thing is going to play out. I think, I think AI gets really interesting when actually when the robotics catches up with the actual software. That's when potentially, you know, when you see a, when you see a robot navigating a construction site, you know, actually nailing, you know, doing some framing and stuff, that's when you wake up and probably say, oh, we're all, we're all really screwed now. But until then, you know, the impact has not materialized here. So, yeah, they've lost the narrative. I'm. I don't know. I think the AI war is a war that you just, you can't lose this one technologically. And so my view is that, God, going back to the government spending, if the government should be investing in anything, it should be this space. It should be the energy grid. It should be, you know, getting out of the way of, you know, a lot of the, the innovation that's going on in this space, allowing the innovation in things like fusion and fission and alternative energies to really flourish and, and grow in a way where you allow the competitive forces to, to ultimately dictate a winner here. And so, I don't know, I kind of see both sides of the arguments here, and I understand why households are increasingly concerned. But I also think that this is something that you can't just, you can't just look at it and be negative about, because in the long run, I really think AI has the potential to have an enormously, enormously positive impact in just a huge multiplier effect on the, on the US Economy in the long run.

[Pat]

Brandon?

[Rob]

Yeah, so, I mean, isn't it amazing that the government spent $200 billion on EV initiatives and they didn't think to beef up the amount of energy that the country produces? But, I mean, that's a typical thing we Know, they haven't done a lot of nukes, but I think it's a

[Pat]

good thing about nuclear power. Yeah. When you're saying.

[Rob]

Right, yeah, it could be misleading, but no, I think a good amount of worry is healthy. I mean, Jamie, Jamie Dimon's not actually worried. I think he's just worried about number two, the banking one, which I think would be awesome if he got some competition because the bank has been a cartel that's blocked everybody out for too long of a time. So that would be a nice one. But the average person, I think the average person should be worried because a lot of jobs will go away and a lot of skills will become irrelevant. But I mean, I think you should be worried. I'm like, I convince myself every day that I don't hit a certain number in terms of income or revenue, that I'm going to be eviscerated by the circumstances of the world. So I think you should operate under that belief if you're not exactly where you want to be. Like he says it like worry is a bad thing.

[Pat]

Yeah. No, listen, I. It's important to pay attention to it. Mark Cuban said something about AI as well yesterday. I think he tweeted this couple days ago. American billionaire Mark Cuban warns startup CEOs you are in deep if it doesn't make sense for you to ask your AI models questions about. And here's what it is. Every entrepreneur that knows how to use AI is trying to find out ways to build AI native companies that completely displace incumbents. 40 incumbents. It is the innovators AI dilemma. If the startups get traction and they can't buy them, the CEOs will face multiple huge dilemmas. Number one, do they fear? Do they tear down their companies and reinvent them as native AI? Rob, if you can lift it up a little bit, how do they explain it to public shareholders? Number two, you will know AI is having a huge impact on public companies when there are two types of lawsuits. Shareholders that sue company for tearing down the company and crushing the stock price, or number two, shareholders that sue the company for not tearing down the company and crushing the stock price lose. Lose. I think most CEOs don't come close to understanding AI in enough detail to even begin to consider these decisions. Hint. Asking your AI models the best paths from where you are now to being an AI native version that can achieve the same economics has to be one of your initial steps. If asking your models questions doesn't make sense to you, you are in deep shit.

[Tom]

Tom well, if you go back to the top of the tweet, I think I know what he's talking about. Yep, it's the Innovator's AI Dilemma. The Innovator's Dilemma was a book written by Clayton Christensen. What Clayton Christensen said was that the innovators dilemma is that a well managed company can run headlong into a disruptive technology, the Internet, whatever it is, E Commerce, and that those things initially, maybe if you run to it as an innovator, Pat, like you're a CEO and you're an innovator and you say hey, we have to be doing something on this and initially maybe it doesn't go so well. Then you go ah, you know, maybe it's not what it's cracked. Maybe E Commerce not what it's cracked up to be. Security wasn't there. Some of our people complained that wasn't a human, you know, the orders, we couldn't track them as well. Ah, this E commerce isn't what it's cracked up to be. And then you kind of dismiss it. That's a dilemma. Then you come back later and go wait a minute, I just got my butt kicked by companies that made E commerce work. And it's a whole different channel of distribution for them now. Well, I think what Mark Cuban is talking about is Clayton Christensen and he's talking about that if you think right now, cause you tried to use it and it didn't result in massive cost savings, you are facing and you should be asking yourself about tearing down and going back. And I think that's what he's talking about and I think he's making a really good point that if you think you don't see enough benefit now, if you're not asking yourself about tearing it down and back then you could be out in the cold when some company does.

[Pat]

Colin.

[Brandon]

Yeah, I mean God, if you're running especially a big company, you, you cannot afford to turn your back on this technology. I mean here's the thing, I think that I've called AI a really disruptive disaggregator. And what I mean by that is that AI is decentralizing the economy in a way that we are probably never going to experience. Because what it's doing is it's empowering your average person to actually do the work of a relatively large corporation. Now you can have a small team of people who if they're adept at using AI, they can operate like a really big team. I mean I'll use my business as a great example where last Year I was planning to hire multiple CFPs and probably a tech person. And all of a sudden I start getting really adept at AI and I start realizing, holy cow, I can write software. The, the, you know, if I have a financial planning question now, Maybe I know 80% of the right things to actually tackle, but that last 20% made my answer wrong. I know the answer to that last 20% now where maybe I'm not a CFP, but I'm as dangerous as a CFP now because I know I'm experienced enough to operate like a CFP and I know the right questions to ask to get me to that hundred percent and I can prompt an AI to get me to the right place and give a client the right answer. And so I'm suddenly able to operate as a multi person financial planning team where you look at, you know, especially entities like gosh, law firms or big consulting firms. I think that it's interesting that Mark points out shareholders, I don't think the owners are the people who are at risk here. The owners are the people who this is all going to be accretive to in the long run. They're going to be the beneficiaries of this because the profits ultimately will flow to them.

[Pat]

It's the workers.

[Brandon]

The, you know, you think of the structure of something like a law firm where you've got, you know, say 50 partners and you know, 200 associates there. What does a law firm want to do? A law firm wants those associates just bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill. The problem is now you've got incumbents that can come in that are, let's say a five person law firm with five partners and a 20 person associate team. That law firm all of a sudden has the capability to be as efficient as the big law firm. And what's going to happen there? It's competition. That big firm can no longer charge the huge rates that they wanted to. Their associates can't just keep billing at 250 bucks an hour. And all of a sudden the smaller firm has pricing power. What's going to happen? Prices come down, competition wins. The big firms have to get disaggregated because the small firms are more competitive.

[Pat]

Is CFP still what it was back in the days? Like I know you used to be a Merrill before you had half a billion dollars of money under management. Back in the days when you were Merrill, it was a big deal when you were a cfp. I just remember the guy as a certified financial planner. Oh my God. You put on your. When I was At Morgan Stanley Dean, where I'm like, that guy's a certified financial planner. I wish I could become one. Does it still carry a big, you

[Brandon]

know, I, it'll be interesting to see how that materializes. I, I mean, I would argue that it's in the, especially in the scope of AI. It's probably one of the more valuable certifications you can have because something like a, like a cfa, actually, all the guys that work at investment banks, their jobs have, you know, maybe not become, you know, replaceable with AI, but that's a, that's a workload that I can do very, very well. The interesting thing about being a CFP is that being a CFP is still, it's a sort of person business. You're working in a very personalized, you know, human to human interaction that I actually think industries like that potentially, you know, if you deal with people, you shake people's hands every day, that's something that's going to become more valuable in the AI world because that's something that people are going to demand more of. They're going to want more of the face to face in a world where they get.

[Pat]

I agree. I think team humans, long term AI is going to go like this and then they're going to come back and say, who still has influence over people? Those are the people we need to go and find. Brandon.

[Rob]

Well, a massive opportunity here for anybody who's worried about losing a job if you become masterful at knowing how to use and implement AI. Like I just sent up a report, on average 90, 95% companies who are trying to use AI to do something for their business find no ROI on it, so. Meaning they don't know how to use or implement it. So there's a huge gap right now in like wanting to use AI for a business and not knowing what to do with it once you implement it. So, you know, that's, I think that's a huge blue ocean for a lot of people if they know what to do with AI but don't know what to do with a job or career or future.

[Pat]

Let me go to the next one. You're talking about some people that are worried about their jobs in the future. Lowe's is investing $250 million to train plumbers, carpenters and electricians. As its CEO says skilled trades are critical to the future. So the CEO is a, is a stand up guy, total stud of a guy. Let me get to this real quick so I can read the story to you. So for decades, young people were told to go to college with white white collar jobs. And like coding cast as the future. But as AI disrupts that career path, skills trades are emerging as a more resilient route to stable, well paying jobs. And Lowe's is betting heavily on the future. The home improvement John Exclusive told Fortune that its foundation has been investing $250 million over the next decade to help 250,000 skilled trade workers in a field like plumbing, carpentry, and electrical work. We're a company that believes strongly in the future of AI. But in a world where administrative and analytical occupations are going to be increasingly dominated with the acceleration of AI, we think the skilled trade initiative is going to be even more important here in the near future, Ellison told Fortune magazine. AI, he noted, has clear limits. It can write code, draft emails, analyze spreadsheets, but it cannot show up to fix what's broken or build a physical infrastructure such as data centers that powers the future digital economy. As powerful as I will become, I cannot climb a ladder to change the battery in your smoke detector. And Ellison said, it can't change your furnace filter. It can clean your dryer vent, it can't repair a hole on your roof. And the man's got a point. Marvin Ellison, if you want to pull it up, Rob. Marvin Ellison, the CEO of Lowe's, right here. Great family guy, came from a very good family. His mom and dad, incredible family. His brother, both very successful. He's been there for quite some time. I believe he's been there for eight years now as a CEO. Tom, your thoughts on the strategy with what Lowe's is doing?

[Tom]

Well, first of all, I think Marvin Ellison's getting it right. Remember, in 2024, Lowe's is one of the companies that start stepped up and said, we're rolling back on this DEI stuff. And they had two parallel groups, if I'm remembering the article correctly. And one was a DEI group and one was the regular HR group. And he said, we're rolling this back and let's just put HR back into one group. And so he did that, and he got a lot of thumbs up for that from what I think is the right side of life. And so now he's come back and he's making a point here. And I think the point that he's making is that, look, people are gonna need an electrician. An electrician's gonna buy stuff at Lowe's to come do a job at your house if we wanna sell more stuff. And Americans are gonna need another. They build a room under their house, they're gonna need electrician to come, they're gonna need this, that and the other or whatever it is they're doing. We want them to buy all the stuff from Lowe's, but there is an influencer in the middle called the electrician who's actually gonna be buying it. Cause you and me aren't gonna say, hey, buy this many conduit, this many light switch, this many there. No, we're going to say put a ceiling fan in the top of my second bedroom, put a switch on the wall. Right. Well, what he's saying, Pat, is that people need to be trained to do that. And so this creates jobs for Americans, this creates opportunity for young people. And what it does, it now makes a connection with Lowe's. Lowe's is where you come not only to buy the ceiling fan and all the other stuff you need, but the person that's going to install it. Lowe's and Home Depot for a long time have had contractors you could say, hey, who's is pushing this even more and doubling down on it. And I think it's a great program.

[Brandon]

Yeah, I agree. I mean it's, it is interesting to me. I, I worry a little bit. I, I have a four and a six year old daughter, so I think about the future a lot and what I want them to do. What, what would I want them to study and train for? And, and I, there is a part of me that worries is, is this narrative similar to the, the learn to code narrative? Because I, I can see a world in the future where, you know, robots aren't going to be able to do plumbing, they're not going to be able to crawl into AC vents. But a lot of these jobs, I, I worry robots are going to be very, very good at these jobs.

[Pat]

A lot of these jobs, including plumbing and, and not, not plumbing, not.

[Brandon]

I mean, things that require like that's one of the things that robotics is actually very bad at is, you know, a robot can't crawl under a sink and actually, you know, feel the water pressure. So things like that are very, very hard to, to, to actually build out. But can a robot, will a robot in 20 years be able to frame an entire house? I would be shocked if it can't. So things like that. There's a lot of construction jobs, there's a lot of manual labor jobs that I actually think robotics is going to be able to, to destroy. So I don't know, my daughters aren't going to be construction workers anyway. But for me, I still, if, if I'm guiding my daughter into an industry. I want my daughter to probably be the architect on a construction site. I don't want her to be the plumber or, you know, some other job. And that still is, it brings in the whole college debate. I actually think college is going to get more valuable in the future because I think that, that learning, learning first of all to be, to, to be creative and having. Navigating lots of different types of, of subject matter and skills. But more importantly, I think college is probably going to become more valuable in the future because you got to learn how to be a person in college. That's really the primary benefit of college, in my opinion, is that you go there to learn how to be a young adult, to be responsible, to start building some of the skills that will actually make you valuable in the workforce. And so, you know, to me, learning how to be a person, learning how to actually interact with other people is going to be one of the most valuable skills in a world where we're increasingly just staring at our phones and not interacting with each other.

[Rob]

Yeah, when it comes to the trades, there's going to be an imminent massive shortage with it. And while the robots might replace these people, if that does happen, they will be the last ones to replace them. It's going to be the white collar jobs before it's the blue collar job. I think there is a resurgence of people entering these things. I mean, even, even at sls, like we were giving out the badges for different industries so people could network with that. And the first one to run out, we kept running out the contractor badges and having to go get more. So there's a huge amount of people that are flooding that industry and I think that's like, kind of a matter of like national stability. Like if, if you suddenly have like, you don't have enough plumbers for society, like they're, they're showing like once these boomers retire, there's going to be like one plumber for every. There was some crazy number. Like there's like one plumber for like every 30 people or versus every 15 people once these, this group retires. So I think it's a good thing that people are flooding into that. I think it's gonna be the last one that gets replaced by the robots.

[Pat]

But eventually it will probably.

[Rob]

I mean, I've been surprised by the things the robots have been able to do. Robots is just, they're cutting hair and stuff now.

[Pat]

I didn't expect that quality is going to get better. All right, let me, let me get to this last story here and we'll wrap up. No mediocre worker is safe. The bar for keeping your job just went up. This is a Business Insider story. With hiring budget constraints, some companies are finding a different way to bring in talent, replacing workers with better ones. There's just no appetite for mediocrity anymore, said said Brent or Suga, founder of the supply chain and logistics recruiting firm Pinnacle Growth Advisors. Over the past year, he's seen many of his clients quietly replace employees rather than grow headcount. Everyone was looking at what they have and being like I want the best of the best. Or Suga said, while upgrading isn't new. Or Suga said that 2025 was the biggest year he's seen in the trend in more than two decades. In the recruiting world, he calls it bullseye hiring. It's like every seat matters, so I've got to hit a bullseye and get the right person in the right seat. Hiring has slowed in the US recently due to economic uncertainty, cutting costs and I adoption. In February, the hiring rate fell to 3.1%, a modern low match only by pandemic and early recovery from the Great Recession. Last year, roughly 11% of CEOs were replaced across 1500 of the largest public companies, according to the analysis by Executive Recruiting from Spencer Stewart. That's the highest turnover rate since 2010, when the US was emerging from the Great Recession.

[Tom]

Tom, you know, it's very interesting is we've gone through so many waves in just six years, haven't we? We go through this wave during COVID where people walk across the street for more money, come back to try to hold you hostage and say, well, I'm going to permanently work from home and I'm going to do this, that and other even in 2000 and early 23 when we were allowed to go back outside without a mask. So yesterday, and I'm not going to say who, but you know what I'm talking about Pat. Yesterday bet David consulting I was working with a client and I have a privilege to be working on that account. And one of the things we talked about, they were talking about a four person department and do we need to hire more people? And one of the things we processed well, first make sure the four you have are performing at the right level. And they had one star and then the other three. There was a difference in performance. So the first thing they said instead of hiring, you know what they said Pat, let's replace the low one so that the three that are performing at a nice optimal level. What we need are performing. And then the star will create a partnership with one of the others, see if they could bring it up. So they want to take the same four people and see if they can get more productivity out of it. This was sales and they see it as let's replace one. That's what the article is saying. A mediocre person on that four person sales squad is going to be replaced. And then they're gonna think about growth forward. And by the way, they looked at it and they talked about burnout, they cared about the people. They didn't want the four people to be like, pushed way hard and burn them out. They just want nominal performance. And so this is a case study we just saw yesterday of a real company saying, hey, you know what? Economy could be tough. Before I hire another, let's make sure the ones I have are all performing really well.

[Brandon]

Yep. Yeah, I mean, there's just, there's no excuse for being stupid anymore. I mean, we've all got a super intelligence in our pocket now. I laugh when I see people post really, really silly things on Twitter now because I think to myself, I say, you could have fact checked this in 10 seconds. Instead you're getting dunked on by 10,000 people because you didn't take, you know, 10 seconds to just fact check it on GPT or Grok or any of the other dozens of these. So I think people, people are losing patience with the bad takes. Just the inability to do rudimentary basic research in basic job functions.

[Pat]

Brandon.

[Rob]

Yeah, I mean, there's nothing bad I don't think about being paranoid about. You should always be paranoid about the notion of losing your job and falling into the abyss and being replaced by AI and not being able to find another one. Like, what's, what's the downside of thinking that way? Like, and you know, you said you can control, like, how smart you are.

[Tom]

Now.

[Rob]

There's no excuse for being stupid. Maybe it's genetics, but there's no excuse for no effort. That's the thing. Like, if somebody genuinely just doesn't put effort forward. Like, you could control how much effort you put forward every day. And like, it makes you slightly less mediocre if you're given everything you have every day. So, I mean, that's the thing. It's like, it was a great job market in 2021. There's these little spurts when the employee has the upper hand because there's a lot of job offerings and postings. But then, you know, it does swing back to where the employer has the upper hand. And you know, you get these unexpected market crashes, you get unexpected technology. So yeah, I'm, I would definitely be never forward.

[Brandon]

Everyone can't be super smart. No, but everybody can try. Yeah, everybody can put in a maximum effort. And that's the thing that I think is frustrating when you start to see, you know, deficient work, is that it's just like you just, you're not even trying here. Obviously.

[Pat]

This is the worst time to be lazy. This is the worst time to not be a student. This is the worst time to be casual. This is the worst time to be addicted to Netflix and video games and all of that that's not paying your bills because you will be destroyed. It's the worst time to be casual. Worst time. Nasty times are coming for you. Nasty. You think this is a bad season? Nasty times are coming to those that are casual. Nasty times are coming to those that are sitting around not reading a book, not learning a new skill set, not choosing to recreate themselves. Absolutely nasty. Now let me give the flip side. If you're somebody that's confident, that's going to go out there and work on your leaks and work on certain areas that you have and you're going to go and say, I'm going to learn two or three skill sets, you're about to have the greatest season of your Life. The next three, five, 10, 15 years. Because the disparity of getting exposed for being casual, it's always exposed it, but it's never been that big of a disparity. It's about to be like this where everyone's going to know you sat around and did nothing with all the stuff that was available to you. Yes. What a waste of 10 years. What a waste of 5 years. It negatively impacted your kids lives versus what a great strategic move you made. You went and read books, you went and attended business events, you went in, found ways to learn a new skill set. And because of that, your kids are impacted by your grandkids are impacted by your spouse, your family, yourself. Your older future version of you is going to be impacted by it. And it's amazing how quickly you see results if you work on it. Like, you know, one of my kids plays soccer and I watch him when he plays. Okay. He's the youngest on every team because he's on the back end. So he's the youngest. You know how the age gap is. August, September, he falls on the other side.

[Tom]

So he was the last birthday youngest in his class.

[Pat]

So now they're changing it this year for him, which he's going to be the oldest for the first time because they're changing the sport, age, stuff in.

[Tom]

In.

[Pat]

In Florida, which is going to benefit him. But he's always the smallest guy on the team, always. So I see his speed, very fast shot, strong. He's got a strong foot, you know, tough, strong. All of that footwork. Okay, not there yet. So we started obsessing over footwork. And, you know, Jennifer and I were talking. It's like, look, you gotta learn spacing so you can be open. And I said, no, no, this is not how life works, babe. She says, what do you mean? I said, let me tell you. Let me tell you why players are open and why players are not. She said, why? I said, when I played basketball, I was a horrible shooter. Do you know what I never did? What? Never make eye contact with the point guard. Why? Because if you make eye contact with the point guard, what's the point guard gonna do? Pass him. Give you the ball. Now rebounding. Guess what? I was the best guy that could rebound, and I would pass it to you. But don't give me the ball to shoot the ball. The moment I got a little bit better in shooting, guess what would happen. You're asking for the ball. I said, if Dylan trusts footwork more, he's gonna be asking and demanding for the ball. And I'm telling this to Dylan, and he's like sitting there saying, maybe that makes sense. I said, when you're not good with footwork, you don't want to lose the ball. Cause you're afraid I'm gonna lose the ball if it comes to me. You're telling that to yourself. All of a sudden, the obsession on footwork, we've taken it to a whole different level with him. He went to a tryout a couple days ago, one of the best teams over here. You know how many goals he scored in the game? Everybody scored one. The other second best guy scored two. He scored five goals. And you know why? It was all because of footwork. So for all of us that are watching this, you know, that's an example for my son. But what is it for you? Is it communication? Guy sent me a manect yesterday, saying I had an embarrassing PR moment. I was interviewed by somebody. It was so embarrassing that I don't ever want to experience something like this again because it negatively impacted my life and my business. Guess what? That guy needs to learn what happened.

[Tom]

No, I'm not. I'm like. I'm grimacing.

[Pat]

Oh, yeah, it's horrible. And I'm like, well, guess what? That's something you can learn on how to do. It could be sales, it could be negotiation. It could be AI, it could be Tom spending all the time in cloud. It could be your own investment. Some of you guys maybe didn't make a lot of money last 12 months, 18 months. You're like, dude, I don't know a lot about money. Well, guess what? Go order this book and learn. Go order this book. Your Perfect Portfolio by Colin Rowe. Go order this book and get better. He has a 10 philosophy on how to get better with your. If you're not better with money management today, the information is out there. It's not like you don't have access to it. The information is out there. Rob, let's put the link below for people to go out there and order that. But I think this is the worst time to be lazy, casual, sitting on the sidelines, not recreating yourself. And it's the greatest time for people that are willing to get in the mix. Anyways, having said that, Colin, thank you for coming out. This was great hearing your perspective. You sound very fair, reasonable, and you're willing to entertain opinions from all sides, gang. Everybody that's out there that's watching this, we're doing it again. When? Rob, I think we got. Oh, tomorrow we got Sheriff Grady Judd. Am I saying it correctly in the right order?

[Brandon]

Yes, sir.

[Pat]

One of my favorite guys in the world. Last time we had him, one of the clips got 29 million views. The stuff we talked about yesterday, he's a fan favorite here. Love the guy. Right afterwards we had a 20, 30 minute conversation together and we've been texting all week together. Phenomenal guy that goes alive tomorrow and then we'll have home team again on Friday. God bless everybody. Take care. Bye bye, bye, bye.