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The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
David Rutherford Show: Venezuela, EU War Prep, AI Bubble & 2026 Recession Risk
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David Rutherford
Okay everybody, we are incredibly fortunate to have by far one of the most requested guests and regulars on the David Rutherford Show. David Rutherford Show. Excuse me. And that's Bryce. Welcome brother. Nice to see you.
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Bryce Gill
Yeah, man, Merry Christmas. And it's, it's great to wrap up the year with like an in studio version of the podcast with you. So I'm glad we could make this work.
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David Rutherford
Let's start out first and foremost with I think the most obvious which is Venezuela. Give us your understanding of Venezuela, Venezuelan economy and then more so how what role Venezuela plays with our economy and the impact it might have on a broader perspective.
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Bryce Gill
Yeah, absolutely. So Venezuela, I guess like let's hit the big bullet points. Okay. Venezuela used to be one of the richest countries in the world. You know, famously they went from a more market based economy towards. Hugo Chavez was elected, okay. And Hugo Chavez nationalized the oil industry. And so this is something that really upset like powerful American organizations, right. And basically put them on the, you know, they got blackballed by the US Government. Right. So it's been now can't remember when Hugo Chavez was exactly elected, but 98, 99. Yeah. So like a few decades now of basically being on the outs with the international community sanctioned by the United States. Basically us putting all the geopolitical pressure we can on them to, you know, give up their socialist government. Right. And now Hugo Chavez is gone, but Nicholas Maduro took over for him. Everybody's kind of seen him in the news now. He's sort of Hugo Chavez's successor. Right. And represents the same type of basically like Venezuelan nationalism mixed with socialism. Right. We're gonna, you know, they expropriated these assets, but they didn't steal, you know, assets from really rich Venezuelans. They stole assets from wealthy international corporations.
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David Rutherford
Right.
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Bryce Gill
And Nationalize them for Venezuela. So that's sort of the origins of our dislike of Venezuela. It all comes down to like the oil industry for the most part. And, you know, I think the United States also doesn't like the fact that there's a socialist government in our backyard. This is sort of a holdover from the Cold War, essentially. And so you've seen tensions ramp up with them. Obviously we're doing strikes on these drug boats, quote, unquote, drug boats. Nobody really, I mean, there probably are drugs on them, but I think the whole drug sort of angle to this is an excuse to do what we wanted to do anyway, which is put pressure on them and get Maduro to step down and instead put in, you know, essentially like a Western sock puppet sort of leader. Okay. And if anybody's really, I, I guess has been paying attention, okay, there's this lady that just got the Nobel Peace Prize, that was the, the opposition, quote, unquote, leader for Venezuela. The exact same thing happened in Trump's first term. There was a guy named Juan Guaido who was supposedly like the democratic person that the people of Venezuela really wanted. And we tried to install him kind of multiple times. It didn't really work out because the reality is as much as in the United States, we want to make this about like socialism versus capitalism. And again, I think a lot of this is a holdover from the Cold War and the Soviet Union and all this stuff. It's really more about nationalism for the Venezuelan people. And they probably don't really love Nicholas Maduro that much. Hugo Chavez was extremely popular. But when we tried to put in Juan Guaido, you know, there was a million person something march on the Capitol in protest of like this Western sort of attempt to install Juan Guaido in power. So it's not really about socialism as much as it is about nationalism. I think for the Venezuelan people and for the United States, we're talking about like wealthy, powerful corporations that are upset about their assets being expropriated. And I think for Donald Trump, like, there's a reasonable case to be made. Like, hey, if they're western companies in there helping with this infrastructure, I think they would be generating more oil. I think factually speaking, like a non socialist economy would probably be good for Venezuela. Right. But part of their problem too is just that we've been sanctioning them so hard and for so long. And at this point, I think you're seeing these strikes on these drug boats. Really what, what this is, is one we, we want to get rid of this government. We have for three decades. Okay? So nothing's really changed there. But you have Donald Trump who's like a, you know, like a media branding guy who's very good at attention. Right. I think these drug strikes are essentially what have one, put pressure on the Venezuelan government. Right. Seize the oil tanker as well. It's a big part of their economy. But two, it's really about sending a message to the rest of South America. Okay. Because what's really going on here, in my personal opinion is like Monroe Doctrine 2.0. Monroe Doctrine is about like the United States controlling its own hemisphere and keeping other world powers out. And I think what's happened is basically mostly China, but you know, Russia a little bit in Venezuela. You've seen these other geopolitical powers, you know, muscle in, give a lot of money for infrastructure, kind of sowing influence in South America. And the United States doesn't like that. So that's why I think the Venezuela conflict has ramped up again. You know, you've seen a similar thing with us, like supporting Colombia, for example. There's like a couple other examples down there. I think this is more about like the Monroe Doctrine than it is about drug boats or even really Venezuela in general. I'm trying to remember the name of that like, general that was down there that helped like South America break away from Spain. It'll come to me eventually. But famous general that helped basically liberate South America from like Spain and the other sort of like colonial powers. At the time, I believe he was Venezuelan. So part of this I, I really want to emphasize is like, I think for them it's about nationalism, it's about independence from like colonial powers. And that that message just resonates in South America if you talk to anybody from South America. So you've got the United States trying to exert influence, Monroe Doctrine, keep the Chinese out, and you've got sort of these Latin American countries wanting to maintain a little bit more independence and like decision making power.
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David Rutherford
That makes sense. I, you know, two weeks ago I interviewed a gentleman by the name of George Pizzulo. He's a New York Times best selling author. He's written like 30 books. One of my favorite Gwok books called the Jawbreaker, which is the story of Gary Bernstein, a CIA paramilitary case officer who led the charge in the invasion of Afghanistan. He was on the the case or the trail of Bin Laden. There's this famous mexic standoff that took place, you know, as, as he and his Delta CIA ground Branch team were like an hour away from him. And then there was this like we want more money. And then he tried to get Tommy Franks to launch rangers to cut off the border. Anyways, George Paloozo teamed up with Gary Bernstein recently and another guy named Martin Rodill. And Martin is a Venezuelan American who's been working for the DEA for the last 20 years. And he's been running human sources for the CAR, the cartel industry and the DEA and all these different regions. Well after 2020 election they partnered up and conducted, they have their own consulting firm, asset recovery firm. And they did conducted a massive, massive investigation and discovered they believe that all of Dominion voting machines and smartmatic voting machines around the world are controlled by source code that originated from Chavez. These three American, Venezuelan American coders who actually started, I mean smartmatic started in Delray Beach, Florida and they live in Boca, some of them. And, and they like these guys believe that that's the reason why socialism swept over South America. Because if you look at all of the countries over that time since Chavez really where this went into place was when he was recalled in, in 2002 or three when it was, that's when they implemented the, the electronic voting machines. And then over the, that the, they believe over since that time over 72 different countries have been flipped with the, with the Dominion or smartmatic source code. You know, and that's internationally smartmatic is company and they have ties to Open Society Foundation. China did a 600 million dollar investment. Russia did like a 20 million dollar investment. And, and, and they, they also believe that they flipped over 10000 elections in the United States. And they believe that the first one they flipped was in Cook County, Illinois. When they flipped the primary between Obama and Clinton. They, they put him in and there's, they have human source testimonial that of a guy that was in that during there when Chavez bragged that I'm about ready to get the first black American president elected. I bring that up because you know, some people are saying that this is a derivative of that right that, that the Trump administration obviously fully believes or Trump himself fully believes and people within the administration fully believe that 2020 was completely stolen. I think the, I had another guy on named David Clements who's a former prosecutor in New Mexico and did an investigation for years and was a big part of the cyber team led by Mike Lindell to discover what happened. And he, he believes the same thing. Many people, there's thousands of people obviously I believe it January6 and that this is a Bigger part of the whole thing. You know, that being said, I agree with you. I think that's a bunch of it. But I also agree with you that it's this oil play. Because when you look at the organizations that really had a pivotal foothold in Venezuelan, you know, oil production, it was what Chevron and Exxon and all these, I think Shell was down there maybe, but it was all these big consortium, you know, international oil organizations that were kicked out and lost access to that. So I, I think it's one of the more complicated instances of geopolitics. Right. All these different facets. And obviously they do have the largest cartel, the cartel do solas, which is some people estimate is $2 trillion annually of international sales. They don't manufacture produce, but they've, they've recruited, you know, the FARC from Colombia to move the, the materials from Colombia or Bolivia or wherever into assemble and then ship out of. And then, you know, also I had a couple GWAC guys that I was listening to last night were saying that, you know, potentially what's also happened is our massive arms deals. So on those oil tankers, it's not just oil, it's, it's, you know, cocaine. It's arms deals. It's a lot.
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Bryce Gill
Caught with a lot of Russian arms.
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David Rutherford
Yeah.
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Bryce Gill
I believe this is maybe Trump's first term or maybe this is a Chavez thing. But yeah, there's a long standing relationship between them and Russia and that's.
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David Rutherford
Right.
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Bryce Gill
I almost look at Venezuela at least personally. Right. As like the Western hemisphere's version of like Iran.
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David Rutherford
Yeah.
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Bryce Gill
Okay.
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David Rutherford
Yeah.
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Bryce Gill
Because the exact same thing happened in Iran where you had like a nationalist leader. And I believe this is like the 70s or I guess this would have been the 60s that this happened. Nationalist leader comes to power, wants to expropriate the oil industry, at least keep a little bit more of the profits. And the infrastructure is all owned by like Great Britain in the United States at the time and you know, roughly like a pretty moderate guy actually. I think he just wanted to keep a little bit more for like, you know, Iran itself. Right, yeah. And what we did is we basically staged a coup and got rid of them. Right. And this led to the SHA being in power.
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David Rutherford
53.
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Bryce Gill
Yeah. Right. And then obviously this culminates in the Iranian revolution. Right. And it's been like a theocratic state ever since.
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David Rutherford
Right.
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Bryce Gill
And so I think it's a similar thing in Venezuela basically, where these western oil companies look at the same way Iran is. And by the way, it's the Same thing in Cuba with the casinos and the mobs, right?
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David Rutherford
That's right. So, Meyer Lansky.
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Bryce Gill
Yeah. You just have these very powerful interest groups that see their, you know, billions of dollars in assets get expropriated and can put a lot of pressure financially and diplomatically on getting the US Government to do something about it. So. And the Dominion voting machine, I had heard something about that with, like, Chavez being involved in all that. I haven't, like, seen all the evidence for that.
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David Rutherford
Great book. I. I highly recommend. It's called Stolen Elections by Ralph Pizzula.
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Bryce Gill
I. I've heard that he's a part of the whole thing, though.
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David Rutherford
Absolutely.
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Bryce Gill
You know, at the same time, like, Donald Trump was involved in regime change in Venezuela in his first term in office before any of this controversy around the 2020 election happened. Right. So I do think there's a long standing sort of conflict with them that comes down to Western assets basically being expropriated. And really, this is about, like, hey, if we're going to have this global economy with the United States at the center, like the imperial core.
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David Rutherford
Yep.
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Bryce Gill
Right. Our responsibility is to essentially police the world. Right. And maintain multinational corporate interests and their property rights. That's what holds everything kind of together. So that's why, like, Venezuela or Iran really sticks in people's craw, I think.
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David Rutherford
Can you give us a little bit of more? How big a role does South Central. Let's go South America. How big a role does South America play in terms of the US Economy, in terms of either exports or imports? You know, there's a big thing about South American beef. Right. Right now there's a feud with our farm, our cattle farmers and South American farmers. Obviously, there's a tremendous amount of produce that comes, whether it's bananas, avocados, whatever, you know, also I think, you know, other types. I mean, obviously there's NAFTA and all those agreements. How big of a role does to South America play for the US Economy.
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Bryce Gill
In like, dollar terms, like percentage of imports? Pretty small. Okay. Now, they do have, like, a big share of agricultural produce. Like, Peru has recently started importing a lot into the United States. Argentina, with the beef you mentioned, obviously, by the way, we just bailed out Argentina Central Bank. Right. One of the reasons why.
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David Rutherford
Can you explain that a little bit? Yeah, because that was. I was like, wait, what?
- [18:35]
Bryce Gill
Yeah, so argent. This again, this is a Monroe Doctrine.
- [18:39]
David Rutherford
Yeah.
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Bryce Gill
Right. So people hear about this, they're like, why are we spending money to bail out Argentina's central bank and the peso down There, you know, these soybean farmers aren't getting taken care of, but we're going to bail out Argentina. Again, it comes down to Monroe Doctrine. You can either have, you know, Javier Malay in there who's kind of a pro Western, or kind of like almost like a libertarian type ideological chainsaw guy with his chainsaw. He's very entertaining. Right. That's sort of turning the ship in Argentina after, I think it's been like 70, 80 years of like this big government nationalist policy. Okay, down there. And it's either him or it's going to be somebody that's less pro Western. Right? That's kind of the idea. So we're going to bail him out and keep him in office because he's an ally. A similar thing happened in Brazil, right? The Brazil, the tariffs on Brazil. Because of their political situation, we're in a tariff, Brazilian coffee. We did that because Jair Bolsonaro, who's like a pro kind of Trump, pro Western guy, basically got thrown in jail by the socialist former president Lula de Silva, who was also just in jail. Right. Brazil's crazy.
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David Rutherford
Yeah, Brazil's crazy.
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Bryce Gill
Right. But the way to understand a lot of this Latin American political stuff is it's the United States exerting Monroe Doctrine down.
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David Rutherford
Got it.
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Bryce Gill
So there's all this kind of like chaotic, different stuff happening. And by itself, it seems like, why are we intervening in Argentina? It doesn't matter. It's about getting as many governments on our side versus, like, China as possible.
- [20:12]
David Rutherford
That's right.
- [20:13]
Bryce Gill
But to wrap back to your original question, I don't know the exact numbers off the top of my head, but all of South America, you're going to talk. It's going to be something like 15% of US imports at maximum. It's mostly commodity things like agriculture. What you're starting to see, though, is ever since the COVID pandemic and the fact that China controls certain elements of supply chains. Right. Rare earth elements have been a major issue recently, or lithium recently. We started to look in South America as an alternative source of supply for some of these key elements. Like Chile famously has, like, one of the biggest deposits of lithium in the world. Right. So I think you're starting to see more and more relationships get built down there. And again, I think the idea for the United States is we can't keep policing the entire world. We have to retrench a little bit here, you know, do a little bit of like a fighting retreat and gain our strength and like rebuild supply chains in a more resilient way. Everything can't come from China and the Far east anymore. And so Latin America is kind of a natural place to do that. And I think once we started looking down there again and paying attention, people realized, oh, hey, the Chinese are paying for all of the ports to be modernized in Peru. Like they're doing all this debt diplomacy stuff down there, which by the way, they learned from us. Right. People are very upset at China and I understand why. And again, I'm on America's side. Right.
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David Rutherford
Yeah.
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Bryce Gill
China is incredibly impressive because they basically have taken everything that the United States did to grow into a world superpower and they've just copied us.
- [21:49]
David Rutherford
That's right.
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Bryce Gill
Right. The tariffs, the industrial policy, the keeping out imports, the building up domestic industry. That's called the American system. Y we invented that in the United States. Right.
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David Rutherford
Debt diplomacy, you could argue the Brits and vanity.
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Bryce Gill
Yeah, right. Mercantilism or whatever.
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David Rutherford
Yeah.
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Bryce Gill
But you know, debt diplomacy. Right. Lending you a bunch of money so you can build a hydroelectric dam that we know is never going to work.
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David Rutherford
That's right.
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Bryce Gill
Right. But Westinghouse gets the contract and then the government owes, you know, us a bunch of money and then when they can't make the payments, which we knew they wouldn't be able to, we get to come in and influence the political situation. Right. So China's just doing the same thing we did.
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David Rutherford
Yeah.
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David Rutherford
And you can go big without the.
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David Rutherford
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- [25:26]
David Rutherford
It's interesting part of the story with Gary Bernstein. He after Afghanistan, he ended up becoming the station chief for Bolivia. And there was a moment after Obama got into office that basically they ramped down all these operations because a lot of these station chiefs he was suggesting that were like, hey, we've got a problem down here. Socialism is spreading rampantly. We've been so fixated on the Middle East. All of our assets, all of our focus, all of our all of our personnel, all of our collection, everything is focused on the Middle east and the gwat. We've negated this responsibility, thus allowing this massive flourish of National Socialism. I mean, I think in many tastes that's what it is, right? And now you have everybody going, oh wait, we've got a major problem. There's a lot of other things that are resulting out of not paying attention to it. And I had a buddy of mine that I knew at the agency who is one of the guys on the original China desk. When, you know about, I don't know, a few years ago, the agency was like, hey, we need to start a China desk. Like, we have to have a full blown.
- [26:46]
Bryce Gill
We didn't have that for some reason.
- [26:48]
David Rutherford
Yeah, for some reason.
- [26:49]
Bryce Gill
Civilization in world history. And the oldest geopolitical.
- [26:52]
David Rutherford
We blew off a China desk. Right. Well, I mean, the CTC, the Counterterrorism center, took over everything as of like 93. And he was in charge at a large part in terms of South America. And he was flying down, meeting with leaders regularly. And at one point, I remember we were, we were chatting, we were having lunch up in D.C. and, and he was like, you know what, Rut? He's like, there's only one pro democratic western supporting country down there, and that's Paraguay.
- [27:20]
Bryce Gill
Yeah.
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David Rutherford
And I'm like, that's not true. I'm like, Brazil. And he walked through Brazil and the, the movement towards Lula. Right. We walked through all the other organizations, you know, all the other countries. And I was just like, oh, my gosh. And I was like, well, what, what does that mean? And he goes, it means China grabs a strategic foothold in our, our hemisphere.
- [27:40]
Bryce Gill
Exactly.
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David Rutherford
And. And I think is finally now coming to fruition with all of these synergies, whether it's drug production or distribution, oil, natural minerals, whatever it might be. But it's really about that Monroe Doctrine. I'm glad you summarized that. All right, let's shift from south or central South America and let's move over to the European Union. I think one of the biggest things that I'm seeing that I talked about recently in one of the shows I did is there's this massive insistence that the EU dominates the. Or not dominates, but. But works itself into the peace talks between Ukraine and Russia. Yes, right. And. And basically destroyed all of the negotiations that were taking place. And in the same time, you've seen the European Union and NATO, led by Mark Root, really begin to talk about war footing and the escalation of war spending, the escalation of NATO budgets increasing more money. And then the other thing, and the one I wanted you to talk about in detail, you can talk about all of it, but the thing that really I found fascinating was that they are going to take Russian assets that they're sitting on and up into, including the Chelsea football team that was bought by some, you know, some oligarch, Russian oligarch, for $2.5 billion. They're taking that money and they're going to give it right to Zelensky to fund the effort, because I would imagine, I wish. And I kind of want you to lay this out. You know, is it because the European Union, the economies are all struggling. They don't have those types of defense reserv curves and. And then also has, you know, have. Do you know, of any time where, you know, hoarding, you know, civilians, if you will, their assets and using it to fund a war against their own people? I. I just think this is a ramp up in a way that could have profound negative impacts and ultimately lead to, I think, a conflict probably in. In Eastern Europe.
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Bryce Gill
Yeah. So it's really interesting to see, like, the Europeans here because typically. Right. Like, at least my whole life, it was always like the United States sort of dragging the Europeans kicking and screaming.
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David Rutherford
Yeah, yeah.
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Bryce Gill
Into different conflicts, and they'd always be really upset at us. And by the way, I think the European, like, normal people are still that way. And I, I think they look at their leaders now and they're like, what is going on?
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David Rutherford
Well, sentiment on the street is hilarious. I love the interviews on the street because you can't find a single young person in any of these countries, Germany, Switzerland, London, anywhere that are like, yeah, we'll, we'll go fight, for sure. We're up for it. That's.
- [30:40]
Bryce Gill
That's exactly right. And, you know, I think basically, like, a couple things are going on. All right? One is that Europe isn't really a democracy in any sense of the word. Okay. When the European Union was created, it was the idea of, like, hey, let's get us all together in, like, this monetary union and we'll lower trade barriers and whatever. And over time, what you've seen is all of these different countries with distinct cultures have essentially ceded their sovereignty, okay. To Brussels, which is where the government has actually run out of. And there's, you know, like, six layers of bureaucracy between, like, the actual people and the actual, like, policymakers. And so you voting in Germany or, you know, Portugal or whatever, it doesn't matter. Unfortunately, it matters very little. And so I think what you're seeing is like, this. This elite European elite in Brussels who's completely disconnected from what the people on the ground think, dragging them all into war here. And I think the reason why is maybe it's like a couple things. Okay. One is, I think these people that are in Brussels that are, like, running the European Union are very fearful of Russia. Okay. From a historical perspective. And they see the United States pulling back, basically saying, hey, Europe, you're just as wealthy as the United States as a. As a whole. Why can't you fund your own defense? And nobody really has a good argument against that. Okay. And so they're sort of losing it over that. They're very concerned. And I think part of this is just posturing and making themselves look all puffed up.
- [32:23]
David Rutherford
Yeah, yeah.
- [32:23]
Bryce Gill
You know, it's kind of like what a weak person does.
- [32:26]
David Rutherford
England, when it's 100, what, 59, 000 active duty troops or 189,000, whatever it.
- [32:31]
Bryce Gill
Is, you know, there's been. The military in Europe is unfortunately a joke. Like, and by the way, that was on purpose. The whole point of NATO is to keep Europe down and away from Russia. Right. And kind of under our thumb. So I think they're sort of scrambling, realizing, oh, my God, you know, we're out here by ourselves and we've got nothing. And so part of it's just they're puffing themselves up and, you know, they want to keep Ukraine in as long as possible to keep Russia distracted and maybe.
- [32:59]
David Rutherford
And draining their.
- [33:00]
Bryce Gill
And drain.
- [33:01]
David Rutherford
Yeah. You know, which is ironic because, you know, yes, war drains commodity, but with 150 million people, right. And they have some type of reserve of another 2 million if they need it. You know, what they're gaining is, is hardened war experience on the modern battlefield. And that's the pivotal thing. Right? How. I mean, obviously, I think one of the funniest things about the whole thing was that throughout this entire conflict, you know, the European Union has been purchasing Russian oil, Right. Some ungodly amount of Russian oil. Two questions. One, did Europe moving into the European Union make it much more, much stronger economically as a. As a global power? And then what. What is transpiring you in terms of the individual countries and their economies right now as a potential result of all this?
- [34:04]
Bryce Gill
Yeah. Did it make Europe more powerful on, like, a global scale? I think in some ways it did, because, you know, you can sort of speak from Brussels as like, one unit. Okay. But at the same time, they've tied themselves all to this one currency. And essentially, like, it's great for Germany. Right. So Germany gets, like, a lower exchange rate because it's tied to Portugal and Spain, but it's really bad for, like, Portugal and Spain and Greece. Right. And so I think for the southern European states, this has been not. Probably not a good deal at all. Especially by the way, what they did to Greece during like the Greek bankruptcy.
- [34:44]
David Rutherford
Right.
- [34:45]
Bryce Gill
At the time I was sort of like, hey, these Greeks, like, they're not paying their bills, whatever else, right. I was very much like, hey, Greece, you know, should have to deal with their own problems. The more I researched into that, you know, Greece had a worse recession than like the Great Depression. And it's still not back to where it was pre banking crisis. They basically threw Greece to the wolves and like sold off its national assets. And listen, if you can't pay your loan, that's partially your fault. 100 at the scale of like a country though, that's part of the. It's partially the banker's fault as well. Right.
- [35:18]
David Rutherford
I think it's always the bankers.
- [35:19]
Bryce Gill
There should have been massive write downs.
- [35:21]
David Rutherford
That's right.
- [35:22]
Bryce Gill
They should have let Greece off the hook on that, but they essentially threw them to the wolves. And so I think it's been great for Germany. I think the EU has been a big win for Germany, maybe even for France. I think for the rest of the countries, probably not so much. And that's why you've seen, you know, so much, I guess, strife over like the loss of sovereignty to Brussels. Right. And this has mostly been centered around immigration. Yeah, it's the reason why Great Britain left the. I mean, they were only in the trade union, they kept the pound. But you know, you also see countries like Hungary, for example, Romania, Poland, these are essentially, you know, countries that want to maintain like an ethnic, you know, homogeny. Right. And they don't like the loss of sovereignty that they were having to Brussels. And the idea was basically, hey, let's just import a bunch of people in here because nobody's having kids from North Africa to work in the factories. And obviously this has turned out to be kind of a disaster. So I think generally speaking, if you're Germany and you want to sort of exert yourself on the world stage, or France, I think the EU is probably a positive for the rest of the European states. I, I think it's much more of a wash and probably leaning more towards the negative. I mean, you don't have a sovereign currency anymore. You've lost all your decision making to, to Brussels. You know, at the end of the day, like, how much power does Belgium have? The Belgian people? You don't matter. It's like.
- [36:50]
David Rutherford
Right.
- [36:52]
Bryce Gill
You know, in the United States we kind of are like the European Union in a way. Right. And you have this problem of like, people don't feel like they have a Lot of sovereignty.
- [37:00]
David Rutherford
Well, I heard a great analysis on it. Yes. Yesterday I heard someone say, well, you know, the United States is essentially its own empire.
- [37:10]
Bryce Gill
Right?
- [37:11]
David Rutherford
Right. We, we have all these different, you know, sex of people, all these different, this mass land area, all these different, you know, resources, capabilities, production. We're essentially our own empire contained here. And, and that's what the European Union was intending to do.
- [37:31]
Bryce Gill
Right.
- [37:32]
David Rutherford
However, they haven't been able to really leverage that collectivization because I think, you know, fundamentally, each one of these countries are so radically independent in their sovereignty that there's a, an automatic conflict of interest going on across each one of them.
- [37:51]
Bryce Gill
Yeah, there's so many distinct cultures in Europe, right. I mean, you get on a train and you ride for two hours and you're at a different place with a different language, with a different distinct culture that's 500, a thousand years old. And I think one of the reasons why the United States became an empire, right. Is we basically, as the country was formed, had like a monoculture of like, like Protestant sort of white Anglo Saxon, Christian people coming over here. You add in the Irish and they're Catholic, right. You add in like the Italians or whatever. But generally speaking, it was a very homogeneous culture. And then we were forging the fire of the Indian wars for like a hundred years. We fought the Indians and took this, this entire continent. And then as soon as that's over, it's like, hey, we beat Spain and the Spanish American War and like three weeks or something. Right. And I and San Juan Hill and all that. But we destroyed their navy in like two or three weeks.
- [38:45]
David Rutherford
Right, right.
- [38:46]
Bryce Gill
And then after that, it's like we go to World War I. You've got basically an entire army of like cowboys that have spent a generation or two generations in like the hardest conditions in the world fighting Indians. It's like we show up in Europe and nobody can.
- [39:03]
David Rutherford
Even the devil dog story.
- [39:05]
Bryce Gill
That's right.
- [39:06]
David Rutherford
That's one of my favorite stories from World War I was, you know, when, when the, the Marines hit, what was it? Bell. Bellwood. Bellwood. Right. And just the ferocity with which they just again, they were fighting a starving.
- [39:21]
Bryce Gill
But the Germans were like, what is going on? Who are these?
- [39:24]
David Rutherford
The French, the English were like, oh my God.
- [39:26]
Bryce Gill
You know, it's literally was cowboys showing up. I mean, that's like the reality. And so I think one of the problems that Europe is having right now with all this, like, we have all this, these different cultures and how do we keep them all together, right? And like A unified thing, and they've never been able to make it work. Right. You're not seeing, like, the United States have this happen in the reverse way, where we just had so much immigration from so many different cultures so quickly, without any of it being, like, digested by the system or any of it being, you know, sort of, like, assimilated. And we don't really have, like, a unified, like, I don't know, like, cultural identity here anymore that the United States is now starting to break apart from the inside. Right. Like, the cracks are forming because now you have all these distinct cultures.
- [40:11]
David Rutherford
Yeah.
- [40:11]
Bryce Gill
And so it's hard to keep that all together without, like, a national identity. That's consistent.
- [40:15]
David Rutherford
I agree. Yeah. All right, let's do kind of this loop down. We've been seeing a tremendous amount of investment, we'll call it, to what degree that's going to emerge or. Or actually translate into jobs and. And profits for America from the Middle East. Right. From, you know, Qatar, from all those Middle Eastern countries. They're putting tremendous. I just saw, you know, a few. About a month ago, there was a huge economic symposium down in Miami, and all these Middle Eastern countries were wanting to come in and dedicate. I mean, they're buying up real estate. You know, they're making these huge investments. What's your impression of why they're doing this? And then how is it going to impact the American economy? And then. And then, you know, once we get through that, we'll come in, we'll finish with America's economy.
- [41:11]
Bryce Gill
Yeah. So I think it's. It's twofold. Okay. And on one hand, you have basically the United States over the past, let's say, 20 years or so, going from being a net importer of energy and not producing a lot of oil and natural gas, and I'll be in the biggest producer of oil and natural gas in the world because of hydraulic fracturing.
- [41:26]
David Rutherford
Right.
- [41:27]
Bryce Gill
So essentially what that did is it broke, like, the OPEC oil monopoly and made us, like, a new swing producer in the world. And so I think in the Middle east, these people look at that situation and say, hey, we can't just be dependent on, like, oil revenue alone for the foreseeable future. Right. We need to have more links to, like, the United States, more links to this, like, the. The imperial core than we have in the past. And so they're trying to diversify into entertainment, into technology, into AI and all kinds of defense. Right. Get on our side in, like, the Middle east more, you know, unify with Israel if you're Saudi Arabia, right? Get them kind of on your side versus Iran. So that's part of it is just like the oil monopoly kind of got broken and they're scrambling to maintain relevance and sort of diversify their investment portfolio. The other side of it, and this is really more of a broad point, okay, is it's about trade deficits. Because when you have a trade deficit, so the United States, I think our trade deficit annually is like a trillion dollars, okay? We buy a trillion dollars more from other countries than they buy from us. When that happens, like if you read a textbook from like the 1980s or the 1990s about it, it'll say like, hey, trade deficits are good because you know, we get stuff they worked hard to make and you know, we just give them dollars that we printed, right? So it's a huge win for us. Right. But that's not true. That, that's always been kind of a, a misleading sort of half truth, okay? Because we don't give them dollars, we give them ownership of national assets. That's what a trade deficit is, Right? The dollars go abroad, right? They don't just sit there, they don't just stand with their hundred dollar bills, right. They take the dollars and they use them to buy assets in the United States. Right? So that could be the S P500, that could be farmland next to a military base. That could be members of Congress. Right. Or lobbying firms in Washington D.C. or.
- [43:28]
David Rutherford
You know, it could be institutions, Universities.
- [43:30]
Bryce Gill
Right, Institutions, universities. Or that could be single family homes in America. BlackRock is a big, you know, player in that space. Or it could be, you know, hey, we're going to build a factory in the US Right? So when you hear about like foreign direct investment, that's what, that's another argument is like, hey, a trillion dollars go abroad, but they just come back as foreign direct investment.
- [43:51]
David Rutherford
Yeah.
- [43:51]
Bryce Gill
Again, it's a half truth because most of what foreign direct investment is or traditionally has been over the past 30 years is just I take my dollars and I buy an asset from you. So all that happens is like paper changes hands and the asset goes up in value. So the same real estate still exists, it's just worth more.
- [44:10]
David Rutherford
Got it?
- [44:11]
Bryce Gill
Now what's starting to happen is the foreign direct investment is actual like physical capex, like production capacity happening in the United States. So I think it's a good thing. I mean, listen, if Saudi Arabia owns a semiconductor factory or like a pharmaceutical facility or something, I have no issue with that at all, honestly, as long as it's domestic because in a bad situation that gives us a lot of leverage in this country for sure and keeps people on our side. If Saudi Arabia owns a pharmaceutical facility in Doha or in, you know, in Riyadh or whatever and they just import pharmaceuticals into the United States, that's not as good for us, right? So I think having the plant and equipment domestic is a is a positive thing.
- [44:57]
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David Rutherford
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- [48:08]
David Rutherford
Good. Good. And we, we, I mean, I think the two prior times, the first show that one of everybody's favorites was obviously the tariff launch back in the day, everybody's freaking out. And then the second one was just the, the impact of re industrialization. And so as we're seeing this, I think a lot of people are like, all right, Trump is really, he's spouting, he's patting himself on the back, taking his victory lap at the end of the year with how strong the US Economy is and how much he's kicked ass and how he's shifted the consensus of the world to want to reinvest in America in a big way. But yet we also still hear, you know, the horror stories of, of your generation and their inability to buy homes and you know, and the whole thing, I mean, it's just a repetitive cycle. And I, and as many, I think, correct pundits have evaluated, this is the reason for a Mandani getting elected. This is the reason for a Democratic mayor getting elected in Miami beach for the first time in 39 years. What's your assessment of, of currently where we're at in the economy? Is Trump's economic plan working? And then what's the truth about, you know, regular folks trying to to eke out a living here?
- [49:35]
Bryce Gill
Yeah. So listen, I will give Donald Trump credit. Unreassuring to a certain extent. Okay. I think he did popularize this issue in his first term in office. Then what really made this take off is not Donald Trump. It Was Covid. Okay. Because Covid changed the status quo around free trade and globalization in Washington, D.C. didn't matter who you voted for, you couldn't buy toilet paper and baby formula. So everybody got on board. And I think what's really Trump's biggest legacy, to me at least, is that he's completely shifted the Overton window around globalization. Now, if you look at, like, the Democratic Party, yeah, they basically agree with him.
- [50:12]
David Rutherford
They've given it up.
- [50:13]
Bryce Gill
They've just given. They've completely seated that issue, and they totally agree with him. Them. So I think he deserves a lot of credit on that front. Okay. As of this second term, listen, I'm, I'm in support of. Of certain tariffs. Personally. I think he's been way too ad hoc and chaotic about this whole thing. You can't just slap tariffs on, pull them off. You know, putting a tariff on Canada because of a TV commercial. That's the reason why they're in the Supreme Court. It's getting challenged. Right. So I think tariffs need to be targeted. I think they need to be consistent, and there needs to be like, a, you know, a vision behind them. Right. And so I think tariffs are going to be around for a long time. I think that this big increase in tariffs that Trump basically did during Liberation Day, most of them are going to remain in place. They're going to bring a lot of revenue into the treasury going forward consistently. And so I think he shifted the Overton window, and I think there are positives to tariffs. Okay. Now that all being said, I think he's managed this all very poorly. Right. As I mentioned, it's been very chaotic. The revenue from tariffs, okay. They have no plan for this revenue. And we're talking about $300 billion a year. Right. They should earmark every single dollar that comes into the treasury from tariffs for, like, infrastructure modernization and other types of, like, industrial policy investments. So I'm gonna invest in intel and take an equity stake. I'm gonna invest in this rare earth element mining company and take an equity stake. That should just be tariff money going into this.
- [51:37]
David Rutherford
You think the government should take an active stake in these companies?
- [51:40]
Bryce Gill
I think they're going to. And I think there's nothing. They did this with the automakers during 2008, 2009.
- [51:47]
David Rutherford
Oh, that's right.
- [51:48]
Bryce Gill
And I think that the situation is relatively dire. And so, listen, if they're going to invest and make money off of these investments, I think that's a, a fine thing for the taxpayer, and they should just use the tariff revenue. For all of this.
- [52:02]
David Rutherford
Why, why do you say dire?
- [52:04]
Bryce Gill
It's dire because there's certain key elements of supply chains we have no control over. Rare earth elements are like the most recent one.
- [52:11]
David Rutherford
Yeah. I've got a some friends that are part of an organization that tries to coordinate agreements within the US government, private companies, mining companies and foreign countries to put them together to be able to, for the US to exploit those rare earths to bring some of the 93% that China dominates the world in over back to US for a national security perspective.
- [52:41]
Bryce Gill
Yeah. So I think that's a dire situation that needs to be rectified. And like I'm, I'm generally speaking like a libertarian person. Okay. But I think the reality is that Covid exposed a huge problem in the United States. And the problem is that 30 years of globalization, especially post collapse of the Soviet Union, there is basically no justification for unilaterally low tariff barriers. I think we gave away the farm to other countries because it benefited, you know, 1% of people in the country and we sold out the middle class. And you know, there's this really interesting paradox when it comes to economic freedom. Okay. And the paradox is that when you have a lot of economic freedom internationally, it leads to less economic freedom domestically and vice versa. Right. So United States, starting as a country, lots of economic freedom domestically, internationally, high tariff barriers keep England out. Like this is our continent, Stay away. We did not have a libertarian economic policy internationally at all. And it led to the most free, prosperous nation in the world because it created a very strong, fast growing like middle class. And to have like a democracy that thrives, you need broad representation, you need people that are paying attention, that are invested. If you have a bunch of people that don't own assets, and we'll get into that shortly, you know, they have no stake in the future and they just become demoralized and don't want to participate. And so you need a kind of a broad middle class to generate like a consistent self renewing republic. And I think the way you do that is, you know, internationally economic freedom is not the priority. Domestically, economic freedom is the priority. And you have what we have, which is globalization, in my opinion, created this huge stratification and wealth. All, you know, 1% of people have all the money. Well, when they have all the money, they're going to use it to lobby the government. The only people they really have any kind of like cultural affinity with are elites from other countries because they're just traveling to Europe or they're traveling all over the world, they're not like, in their hometown at all. And so it creates this, like, supra, like, national class of people that are sort of like, untethered and that really only have like, affinity for each other. And I think it's a huge problem. And it's led to us importing a lot of, like, Chinese style, like, you know, censorship into the United States. How do we keep these, you know, these pros, these peasants from rebelling, you know, when the idea should be, hey, how do we make our own country people feel appreciated and part of like a greater collective that maybe I'm, I'm leading here. Right. There's no noblesso bleach with the ruling class in the America or really anywhere else anymore. So there's a paradox of freedom. And I think we should go away from international economic freedom towards national economic freedom and focus on, you know, the domestic people in America. I think that's like the ideal way to do things. But. Okay, all that being said, we'll talk about asset holders in a second. The United States economy. Okay? Donald Trump is bragging about the US Economy and like, listen, on the surface, like, the economy is doing fine. I think, like the jobs numbers we've gotten now after the government has reopened shows labor market's adding 70,000 jobs a month. That's slower than last year, but it's really slower because we cracked down on illegal immigration heavily.
- [56:07]
David Rutherford
Right.
- [56:08]
Bryce Gill
We've laid off 300,000 government employees in the United States. That's a policy choice. So it decreases jobs. Right. Or job growth on net. But it's a policy choice. And that's what Donald Trump got elected on. And I personally agree with it. Yeah, I think the federal government was bloated. And then you've got like, AI is having a marginal effect, I think as well. Right? So, hey, job markets slowed down, but consumer spending remains strong. And at the same time, you have this massive capex boom, right? All the investment in plant equipment happening in the United States, which I do think Donald Trump deserves some credit for. And so the combination of those two things means GDP is growing either way. Okay, I think the most interesting question here, and one that you've alluded to, is why is consumer spending remains so strong? Because the labor market, as I mentioned, is slowing down. I think there's basically no argument against that. I think the economy is going to continue to grow probably next year. I'll tell you maybe a reason why that could change, but consumer spending is going to hold up. And the reason why is. And this gets to the asset owner problem we have in the United States. My whole career, I was always told to watch people 30 to 54 years old. Okay. Because they're the biggest producer and consumer demographic. They're working, they're starting families, they're buying houses, they're buying cars, they're buying appliances. Right. They're the engine of the US Economy because they produce a lot, but they also consume a lot. And, you know, they have kids and they spur the economy forward. Right. What's happened recently in the United States? And I guess it started really 10 years ago, but as of 2022, 30 to 54 year olds are not the biggest consumer demographic in the United States anymore. Today, the biggest consumer demographic in the United states is people 65 years or older. It's retired people.
- [57:56]
David Rutherford
Wow.
- [57:56]
Bryce Gill
Okay. And that's never happened before in the United States, and I don't think ever before in world history. Right. It's like you retire, you kind of step back a little bit. You're on a fixed income or you have to, you know, your savings that you have to deal with. So you have to be a little bit more prudent. Right. Today the baby boomers have, you know, massively benefited from the asset boom that's happened during globalization. Houses have gone way up in value, tax advantage, savings accounts, brokerage accounts, all these different things. They're in charge of the government.
- [58:33]
David Rutherford
Right.
- [58:34]
Bryce Gill
Okay. And so they have a lot of money to spend.
- [58:36]
David Rutherford
How much? How much? How many, how many total assets are their net worth? Does the boomer 65 and over attribute for the economy, for the markets? How big is that?
- [58:48]
Bryce Gill
I mean, they're 22% of consumer spending as of, I think is 2022. So, okay, I'm guessing it's higher today because it's been on an upward Trend line for 12 years or something. So maybe a quarter of consumer spending is baby boomers that are retired. Okay, That's a lot in 2012. So it's not that long ago. Right? Yeah, they're the lowest consumer demographic. And before that, they were always the lowest consumer demographic in the United States.
- [59:14]
David Rutherford
So is that a numbers thing? Because there's just more boomers, there's more of that. Gen X is smaller. Millennials are kind of small. And then it blows up with Gen Z. Right.
- [59:24]
Bryce Gill
It's that. But it's also, you know, the fact that the United States economic policy has been toward to benefit asset owners.
- [59:33]
David Rutherford
Got it.
- [59:34]
Bryce Gill
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Again, I think before that, you can have this globalization argument that like, it's a geopolitical thing. We need to do it.
- [59:40]
David Rutherford
Yeah.
- [59:41]
Bryce Gill
That it just went away after the Soviet Union collapsed. And so after that it was just a cash grab by asset owners. In my opinion, that was bad for the country on net. And the beneficiaries of that are asset owners. I own a lot of assets. Right. It's good for my brokerage account. But we're getting to the point now that like the entire economy, the consumer spending is like the top 10% are 55% of consumer spending, top 10% of income earners, and then retired people are 25% or something. Right?
- [60:10]
David Rutherford
Yeah.
- [60:11]
Bryce Gill
Now there's overlap there. It's not 75% of consumer spending, but if you're a normal person, a working person, you know, you're getting a much smaller piece of the pie.
- [60:20]
David Rutherford
Yeah.
- [60:21]
Bryce Gill
And so, yeah, people are upset because they can't afford to buy houses or like live a middle class, normal life because all those assets have gotten very expensive. There's like a saying that globalization made all the stuff that we want cheap and all the stuff that we need expensive.
- [60:35]
David Rutherford
Right, Right.
- [60:36]
Bryce Gill
You can buy all the cheap junk on Amazon that you want, but a house is going to be completely unaffordable. Right. And again, that's the trade deficit. Dollars go abroad instead of getting paid to a domestic employee, you know, they get paid to a Chinese manufacturing firm as the line worker in the factory getting a dollar in his paycheck. No, management's keeping the dollars. It's going to the Chinese Communist Party, it's going to the finance sector. Who at billionaires over there. Then they reinvested in assets in the United States.
- [61:04]
David Rutherford
Right.
- [61:05]
Bryce Gill
So it's made wealth inequality worse. It's made assets on way too expensive in the United States. And the entire economy is basically asset owners are running everything now.
- [61:17]
David Rutherford
Right.
- [61:18]
Bryce Gill
AI probably makes that worse, honestly. And so I think you're going to see a massive backlash continue to happen. You know, it's being shown up as like, mom, Donnie in New York or whatever. Socialism is becoming more popular because people that did everything right and got the right degree and took out a bunch of student loan debt or whatever, can't afford a house, can't afford to get married, can't get afford to have kids. And they see this as very inequitable. And listen, the baby boomers saved money and they did what they were kind of told to do. And so I'm not blaming them specifically, but it's nice that, hey, asset owners are a huge chunk of consumer spending because the job market Slows down. People spend money still. Right. It makes the economy a little bit more or, like, less cyclical and makes it more stable. Right. But the problem is, hey, if you have all the money and you're retired and somebody who's, you know, is trying to start out and buy a house or have kids, doesn't have any money till they're 40 years old. Right. Well, by the time you're 40, you can't really have any kids.
- [62:21]
David Rutherford
That's right.
- [62:22]
Bryce Gill
That's the problem here.
- [62:23]
David Rutherford
Yeah.
- [62:23]
Bryce Gill
I think that's a real issue. If, if there was no biological clock around reproduction in humans, which there just is scientifically, okay, this would be less of an issue. But the problem is it's taking away people's future essentially because they can't afford to do it in, like, that window where reproduction is viable.
- [62:40]
David Rutherford
25 to 35. Right.
- [62:41]
Bryce Gill
Exactly.
- [62:42]
David Rutherford
All right.
- [62:42]
Bryce Gill
All right.
- [62:43]
David Rutherford
That's an incredible assessment. Thank you. All right, last question as well. It's two part one, moving into 26. Do you feel the economy is going to be steady? Is it going to be. It's going to. We're going to have some volatility. If so, where might it originate? And then your last little thing. What can people younger, in your opinion, really focus on in terms of developing those assets? Developing, you know, a way to increase wealth and prepare and plan for the future.
- [63:22]
Bryce Gill
Yeah. So I think next year, okay, you've got, again, top heavy asset owner consumer base. That's not going to really change. So they're going to keep spending money no matter what. They don't care how the job market or the economy really is. Right. As long as the assets are worth a lot of money. Money, they're going to spend money. Also, baby, once you're retired, it's like you're going to die eventually. So you might. You don't want to take it with you. That's kind of the idea. Right. I'm not trying to broad brush the baby boomers, but that's kind of the idea of that generation.
- [63:50]
David Rutherford
Okay, well. That those assets are going to transfer, too, to a certain degree. Right.
- [63:54]
Bryce Gill
Maybe. Yeah. If they don't spend it all, there's like a whole movement to like, hey, don't take anything with you. Right.
- [63:59]
David Rutherford
Yeah.
- [64:00]
Bryce Gill
Yeah. Buffett's not leaving money to his kids. Like, that's kind of a. A more public, I guess, display of what's consistent in that generation.
- [64:08]
David Rutherford
Yeah.
- [64:08]
Bryce Gill
Just like I had to do it myself, so you should, too.
- [64:10]
David Rutherford
Yeah.
- [64:10]
Bryce Gill
Okay, so consumer spending is going to probably continue to increase at the same DMV of massive foreign direct investment capex happening. So the two of those things mean GDP goes up. Yep. Right. So I think the economy probably grows next year. What could change that is the AI bubble pops. Okay. I think that's by far the biggest risk here because listen, it's. Seven companies have driven everything for years. It's a very powerful story. I understand that. I know. I look at AI in my, my life and I see most of it as like it's kind of a parlor trick. Right. It's interesting that chat GBT can summarize things, but like it's not really revolutionizing production in the United States at all. No, we don't really see it in productivity statistics at all. MIT did a study. 95% of businesses that buy AI tools see no return on investment. Investment.
- [65:00]
David Rutherford
Wow.
- [65:00]
Bryce Gill
So that's mit, you know, so maybe that changes. Right. But I think a lot of this is just theoretical right now. And I think Silicon Valley loves AI because the one area that it's automated very effectively is computer programming. That's right, it's programming.
- [65:20]
David Rutherford
Yeah.
- [65:20]
Bryce Gill
Right. It's coding. So does that really translate into other sectors of the economy very well so far? Not really. So I'm worried that, hey, something causes the music to stop. These stocks fall, okay, if they fall, they're going to fall in tandem. It's going to cause a big correction in the stock market if that happens. One those asset owners that are doing all the consumer spending, they look at their brokerage account, it's down a lot. They might pull back. They might not take that second vacation to Europe this year.
- [65:47]
David Rutherford
Right.
- [65:48]
Bryce Gill
Okay, I guess that. Does that really impact consumer spending in the U.S. probably not, but, but you get what I'm saying.
- [65:53]
David Rutherford
Flights and flights, whatever.
- [65:57]
Bryce Gill
Number two is all that AI data center construction that we've all heard so much about this year, all those companies probably pull back on CapEx and AI data centers as well. Right. The factory construction is going to keep happening anyway. It's four times as much as data centers. So I think there's, there's some tailwind still, but capex slows down in that situation. And so you have a one, two punch of like less consumer spending and less CapEx that could cause a recession. So it's AI and its impact on the economy and the story sort of falling apart that makes me the most worried.
- [66:27]
David Rutherford
Got it.
- [66:28]
Bryce Gill
As, as far as like what could a young person do? Yeah, to get ahead, man, I think like spend as little time in like the digital world as possible. I don't. That's like, my gut tells me, like, that's the. You waste so much time in the digital world. I'm just as guilty of it as everybody. I travel for work, I'm in the airport, I'm stuck on my phone. But I hate. But also.
- [66:53]
David Rutherford
And also, you know, it. It benefits your profession as well, too. It gives you a greater assessment of. Of all things.
- [67:01]
Bryce Gill
I'd like to say that, Dave, but I don't think it's really true. I think that maybe 30 minutes of my day on social media, maybe that's beneficial, but it's really, you know, if I want to know about something, I read a book. Book.
- [67:14]
David Rutherford
Right. Right.
- [67:15]
Bryce Gill
Read more books, go outside, have hobbies, interact with real people. Anytime you spend in the digital world is probably a complete waste. 90% of the time you're on your phone is a waste of time, easily. These companies don't care about you. Everything that's free is not actually free. You're. You're being sold as the product or you're being sold commercials. Like.
- [67:37]
David Rutherford
Right.
- [67:37]
Bryce Gill
Instagram is a giant commercial. So I think just, if you can interact less with digital spaces, and that takes a lot of discipline, it's very difficult to do.
- [67:48]
David Rutherford
Create more bonds with people.
- [67:49]
Bryce Gill
More bonds with people. Just literally build a skill in the real world. Whatever. This stuff doesn't seem like it matters, but the older I get, like, the more I realize, like, I was so lucky to be raised in the 90s when the Internet didn't exist and I was like Huckleberry Finn in the woods for eight hours a day, and so awesome. I know how to make eye contact with people and. And I just hate the Internet. Honestly, the more powerful it gets, the more I. I hate it and resent it.
- [68:14]
David Rutherford
Yeah.
- [68:15]
Bryce Gill
And I think the less time you can spend in digital spaces, like, you know, other than watching the Dave podcast.
- [68:21]
David Rutherford
Right. No, man. If. If people turn it off and go outside.
- [68:26]
Bryce Gill
No, go outside, touch grass. Like, I know that's sort of a stereotype, but put your time into something else. Build a skill. And like, this stuff. It doesn't seem like it matters matters, but it compounds over time.
- [68:36]
David Rutherford
Yeah.
- [68:37]
Bryce Gill
Like, me and you connected over firearms, right?
- [68:39]
David Rutherford
Yep.
- [68:40]
Bryce Gill
I didn't get raised with firearms. I was just interested in them. And I put a lot of time into, like, investigating and buying them and playing around with them and, like, learning to shoot. And most of that time was by myself. I didn't have anybody else to do it. I never put it on Instagram, but. Oh, it creates a Connection with somebody. Right. That's how the world works. So less time in digital spaces. Anybody that tells you it's about staying in touch with people or it's all bull, it's all lie. It's justifying addiction to digital technology. This stuff is not helpful at all for the most part.
- [69:12]
David Rutherford
Awesome. All right, last one is what Santa bringing Bryce in terms of firearms for Christmas, Santa's.
- [69:18]
Bryce Gill
What is Santa bringing to Rice for firearms? You know what? I don't think I'm going to have any other guns. Well, that's not true. So two of my buddies just bought some land in Texas.
- [69:29]
David Rutherford
Nice.
- [69:30]
Bryce Gill
So as a gift, I bought them like a lever action rifle. So it's not really for me. I guess I purchased it and I'm gonna receive it, but then I'm just gonna pass it right along so they can, you know, play out their cowboy fantasies out there. Right.
- [69:44]
David Rutherford
Are they gonna build a range for you, bud?
- [69:46]
Bryce Gill
I, I might have to do that myself. But that's, that's like the big firearm news is I think there's sort of like a, a new retro thing happening in the firearm.
- [69:55]
David Rutherford
Absolutely right.
- [69:56]
Bryce Gill
You're seeing revolvers make a huge comeback up. You're seeing like lever action rifles have been blowing up for a while and a lot of it's like Gen Z. It's like younger people. It's like the return to tradition thing with Gen Z. My generation is a call of duty. It's like I want every gun in Call of Duty that I played growing up them. It's like I want to collect old Smith and Wesson revolvers and stuff like that. Old Colts. Yeah. Blued steel.
- [70:20]
David Rutherford
Right.
- [70:21]
Bryce Gill
So I think that's going to be a huge trend going forward. All these used old guns are going to go up in value and they're pretty fun to shoot. Right. Even though they're obsolete.
- [70:28]
David Rutherford
Awesome. Bryce Gill, man. God bless you. Merry Christmas and thank you so, so much for being such a awesome part of the David Rutherford Show.
- [70:37]
Bryce Gill
Yeah, man. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year.
- [70:39]
David Rutherford
Happy New Year.
- [70:40]
Bryce Gill
Yep.
- [70:41]
David Rutherford
Awesome.
- [70:51]
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