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This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Welcome back to a numbers game with Ryan Grusky. Happy Monday everybody. I hope you had all had a wonderful Easter weekend. I was meaning to wish that to everyone on Friday's episode, but like, I never look, look more than a day into the calendar where I'm like, oh wait, what am I doing tomorrow? So I totally, I, I didn't forget that Easter was Sunday, but I just forgot to wish you all happy Easter. So I hope you had a wonderful Easter. I. You hope, hope you guys, my Jewish listeners had a great Passover. You know that it was a good holiday season, Holy week season in my family. Everyone has to contribute a dish. That's how I, we always do it. And I make, as I said on this podcast before, I make a big Italian Sunday dinner every Sunday. People are constantly coming over. I'm cooking for 8, 9, 10, 15 people. I don't even know who half these people are sometimes. And I said, this year I'm done. I'm not doing it like I'm making something simple. You're not getting meatballs out of me. We're doing chocolate covered pretzels and strawberries inside, some cookies and like that's it. So that's why I contributed. It's much easier for me. That's not the point of this episode. I don't know why it's on a tangent for, but I have some good, some informative, I'm gonna say good, informative polling data, some interesting studies that came out that I want to go into really quickly and then even extra long. Ask me anything because I had a lot in the docket. So first of all, a new CNN poll came out. President Trump's approval rating has hit another all time low at 35% dis approval, 64% disapproval. Craziest part of the cross tab. That is very bad. But Trump is now Trump is underwater with white whites without a college degree. His base that every Republican needs. The numbers also with young voters is down to 20%. It's not going to get much better unless the economy gets roaring and prices come down. Word on the street from Washington. The scoop I am hearing from people in and around the White House is that Trump is mad at everybody right now. He's not sleeping very much and that is kind of why you're seeing him. Also use social media a lot more. You can kind of tell when Trump is really posting himself versus others because if another person is doing it, they may have like the cap locks or whatever, but if he's Doing it by himself personally. There's spelling errors and grammatical errors everywhere. That's usually a good telltale sign. So I could see that he's using that quite more often. Overall, proving on the issues on the economy, Trump's at a 31% approval rating. On inflation, 27% gas prices, 24% health care, 34% foreign affairs, 36%. Immigration, 41% election integrity, 43%. Ironically, the media loves to scream about immigration and voter ID laws. And those are the two most popular things in, you know, that he's campaigned on, that he's doing. They are seven and about and nine points better than he is doing personally. So I think I that very, very funny and fascinating that the things that, you know, Republican voters are, you know, wired up about that they actually want to happen. Photo, photo ID law, nationwide, election integrity and crackdown. Immigration is what Trump's, Trump's having the best numbers with. When asking if does Trump pay attention to the right priorities, 33% of voters say yes, 66% of voters say no. But then when they ask, do congressional Democrats have the right priorities? 25% say yes, 75% say no. There is this group in this poll that they looked at where they asked specifically, you know, which party do you like? And there's something called the double haters. People who hate both Republicans and Democrats and they swing very heavily one way or the other. That is why our elections are so volatile compared to, I would say even like 20, not maybe 20 years ago, but maybe 30 years ago. We have had change elections a lot. We had in 2006-2008-2010-2014, 2016, 2018, 20, 2024. I mean, I guess maybe 2000. I wouldn't say 2022, but 2024. We have had change elections almost every election for 20 years or eight. Yeah, this will be the 20th year. Part of the reason is because there is such a large population of double haters who don't like either party. Democrats in this election have a big advantage with the double haters. Guess what? They'll be double hating again. They'll be hitting, you know, the Democratic Party when they are in charge. It's just the, this constituency, 25% of the population is double haters. And right now There is a 31 point lead for the Democrats among the double hater population. It's a very large lead, but that's the lead overall. Who are you voting for? In the 2026 midterms, Democrats have a 6 point lead, 48 to 42%. They also lead among independents and other key constituencies. That's a good number for Democrats. It's not an amazing number, but it's a good number. The amazing number for Democrats is are you extremely motivated to vote? 67% of Democrats say they are extremely motivated to vote this far out. Only 50% of Republicans say the same. Republicans, if they can get motivated, will absolutely start chipping away at that Democratic leap. So not a great number for Trump or Republicans. But I have a better number though, for Republicans out of Virginia with the Washington Post Scholars Poll. Now, I mentioned to you briefly that the Democratic turnout in this Virginia referendum on congressional district has been picking up substantially. Democrats have been spending millions upon millions of dollars. Republicans, I don't even know what they're doing. They're not even trying. And the person who's really influenced a lot of people is President Obama. He's been getting involved in this referendum. Obama is such a hypocrite. He's all about the integrity of democracy. Meanwhile, Illinois is the, his, his state that he represented is the one of the most gerrymandered and he's trying to make Virginia the other most gerrymandered. It's just total hypocrisy. But it's been a very effective his advertising to get out the black vote so far. According to L2 data, this is a company that looks at, you know, potentially who's a Republican, who's a Democrat in states like Virginia that don't have explicit Republican versus Democrat registration. They say it's a D plus 16 turnout so far, Democrat plus 16 turnout. And they say overall, if you look at it according to State navigate, It's about a 60, 40 Democratic turnout this early on with just a few weeks to go. Now, if you look at the Scholars Poll, the Washington Post Scholars Poll, which is a probably the most accurate or most accredited pollster for Virginia, they say the race is actually a lot tighter. They say it's 52 to 47 in favor of yes, only five points. And in the margin of error, there's a chance that no wins. That's a very, I mean, that's a good pick me up. And if I was in Washington and sitting in one of the many packs with hundreds of millions of doll, it I, you know, say, hey, let's try to crack this open and start spending some money to save Virginia. Or maybe they're just hoping my part of me says they're just going to give up on the election and just try to fight it in the courts afterwards because the courts haven't decided yet. The court said we'll decide after the people vote. Which is just so dumb. It's so, so dumb. When they looked, when Washington Post scholars poll looked at the number, 46% of people who are voting for this amendment are voting to oppose Trump. It's obviously, you know, very much in the democr Democratic gene pool right now is just opposing Trump. Which makes me wonder how the Democrats are going to be in 2028 when Trump is on the ballot. Like how are they going to actually propel ideas if it doesn't mean just opposing Trump? 10% said that they are, that they are supporting the amendment to support Trump. I think that people need to do a lot more research on this amendment before voting on it. Eight percent of respondents say they think Republicans will win more seats if they vote for it. So either there is a disinformation, it looks like there's a disinformation campaign going on or something. There's no. It's crazy that 1 in 10 think that voting for this is to help the Republicans. That's the margin of error. So something has to happen, which is why Republicans should be spending money to inform the general public. This is written in a way to make people confused. The most infuriating part of this referendum, as I said, with the Democrats far outspending Republicans, is when asked should, when they asked voters should this, this maps be drawn to represent fairness in the state or to compete with other states, it was overwhelming. 57% said it should be fair for people within the state and they shouldn't count what other states are doing, 48% overall. So this entire process is unfair when looking purely in partisan lines. About 90% of Republicans are opposing this. 10% of Republicans are in favor of the redistrict plan. I have to think that those are the same people who are saying, oh, this will be good for Republicans. 54% of white voters to 44% are opposing this plan. Men are opposing it by seven point plan, a seven point margin. Rather, independents are supporting the referendum by 10 points. That's among all people, not likely voters. So it's probably much smaller. Asians and Hispanics support the referendum by 24 points. Democrats by a margin of 91 to 7 and blacks by a margin of 79 to 15. It's at these moments that I need to emphasize. If this plan happens by three or four points, it's in part because America accepted mass immigration and we change the demographics of Virginia. We have all these Latinos and Asians who have moved into Northern Virginia. And they are going to give Democrats the margin of victory to disenfranchise not only all Virginians, but the entire American public. So I, I need to kind of sprinkle in about immigration wherever I can. Okay, briefly, before we go into Ask me anything, let's talk about some of the job numbers that came out and the budget that the White House proposed. So the job numbers were released on Friday and maybe some already on vacation or getting ready for Easter, but there was 178,000 jobs created a month of February. That is booming compared to what estimates were supposed to be. 43. Unemployment is down to 4.3%. Unemployment for white workers stood at 3.6%. For Asians 3.7%, Latinos 4.8% and black workers 7.1%. All down pretty significantly. Big job creator was of course healthcare 76,000 health care jobs, construction 26,000 construction jobs, transportation and warehouse 21,000 and manufacturing, thank God, 15,000 new manufacturing jobs. Wages continue to rise. In March, the average hourly earnings for all employees rose by 9 cents or 0.2% to $37 and 38 cents. Over the year, average earnings have increased by 3.5%, beating inflation. In March, average hourly earnings of private sector production and non supervisor employees edged 5 cents or 0.2% to $32 and 7 cents. The average work week also inched down to 34.2 hours per week from 34.3. Labor force this is interesting. Labor force participation dropped by nearly 400,000. But is it because people are dropping out of the workforce because they can't get a job or because of illegal immigrants being deported or maybe or self deporting or just leaving the workforce. The Dallas Fed put out a report just a few days before this number came out. I was saving it for this number saying that that according to the Dallas Federal Reserve, 548000 illegal alien workers left the United States in 2025. So could the 400000 be all illegal alien workers? Highly doubt it. But at that rate and the number was picking up month by month in 2025, they probably had a substantial amount of that number decreasing. Another good point from the jobs aspect is that 335,000 of the jobs created during the month of February were full time jobs. Part time jobs decreased actually by 188,000. That is fantastic. People are working full time. We're still down overall year to year with blue collar jobs and TEC jobs. But this was a great number that the White House very badly needed. America Needed it. We need more good economic numbers to make people feel better, get the stock market up, get people back to work, get wages going. Last point I want to make about the jobs number. And this is so annoying. I don't know why this is the way this is, but they do these revisions two months out, which, like, then why am I even getting excited for, for these numbers if we're going to see a whole new number in two months? But for January, the numbers were revised from 126,000 jobs created in January to 160. That is good. And then from February, they were Revised down from 90,000 jobs being lost to 133,000 jobs being lost. That is bad. Okay, that's the jobs number overall, very good for the White House. We need a lot more good economic data like that. So hopefully we're turning a corner. The White House put out a new budget. This budget is likely not going to become law. It's a blueprint especially for Democrats and Republicans to get together and start arguing over things, especially as such a tight House of Representatives. But the budget that the White House put forward to is honestly pathetic. I talked to someone at OMB the other day when talking about this because a Bloomberg piece came out and it said that we were going to cut entitlements, which turned out not to be true. The whole Bloomberg use was fake news. And in a tough election cycle, I don't think we were going to cut entitlements. However, it does expand the deficit, which. Does anyone know how much money we're spending? So it slashes discretionary spending by 73 billion dollars and then increases military spending by 445 billion. So let me put it this way. We're going to borrow money for places like China or print it. I know we don't really print it, but we put it on the, on the spreadsheet, which will decrease purchasing power for American Americans dollars, which will hurt people, young people, old people, people in fixed incomes and all, you know, to, to increase military spending. Part of it's to increase critical munitions, which is very, very important, something that we needed because we're in a hole, especially after Iran. But we're expanding the deficit. And I don't understand, like why, why don't we. If we're going to cut by 73 billion, why don't we only increase by 73 billion? Or why don't we look to cut 400 billion to increase by 400 billion? Like the deficit is a huge national security issue. Are we just going to pretend like the numbers aren't real and that, you know, that America's purchasing power isn't real and that the credit rating isn't like this is. This is nuts. And also, of course, in this, in this budget, throughout the entire part, lower part of it was the idea of spending more tax dollars on AI research because we're going to spend taxpayer money on AI research that will displace their jobs one day, all because we're going to combat China. That's the big, you know, talking point to combat China. One of my friends put it this way, if we're so concerned about combating China on AI, why are we still selling chips to China? Why aren't we forbading companies that work with us to work with China? And I was like, that's actually a really, really great point. It's all fake and gay. Everything that the data companies and tech companies are putting out, as far as narratives go. Okay, up next is Ask Me Anything. Now it's time for the Ask Me Anything segment. If you want to be part of the Ask Me Anything segment, you know me, ryan@NumbersGamePodcast.com that's ryan@Numbersploralnumbersgamepodcast.com we're doing extra long one because I have so many emails I've not gotten to yet. And I want to get to everyone. So the first question comes from Glenn from the great state of Texas. He says, my wife, home school, all three of our kids through high school, with the last one graduating in 2018. Congratulations to your kid. I would love to hear you run down the numbers on homeschool movement, whether it impacts birth rate, religious revival, political participation, or voting predisposition, maybe even how much an increase and decrease in red and blue states since the advent of COVID Well, it has increased nationwide substantially. The homeschool population overall from 2016 to 2024 went from 2.3 million to 3.4 million. According to the National Home Education Research Institute, 6.2% of kids nationwide are homeschooled. To put that into perspective, only 1.7 million kids go to Catholic school and 3.8 million are charter. So, you know, homeschooling is not equal to charter schools, but it's getting very, very close. The state with the most homeschooled students is North Carolina. Red states do educate, have more homeschooling than blue states do, but it's not exclusive. So North Carolina is 10 of all kids are homeschooled, about 10, depending on the numbers. Because homeschool, I mean, North Carolina, by The way has one of the worst education systems in terms of busing goes and what school assignments are. It's a disaster. That's neither here nor there. That's a different episode. But after North, North Carolina, we have South Dakota, Arkansas, Maine, Mississippi and Georgia being the leading states. So mostly red states, a purpl state in Georgia and a blue state in Maine. Most parents, actually, you mentioned religious revival. I found this interesting. Most parents do not cite religion as a main reason for homeschooling. They cite safety, which is so interesting because I always talk to teachers about what's the biggest concern for them and safety is brought up number one. And number two, and it's not necessarily safety from outside the school, like not a gunman coming inside the school. That's not usually what they're talking about. They're oftentimes talking about violent students and not being able to discipline or reprimand them and is a constant conversation I've had with teachers because what they do a lot of times with these students is they, they just, they don't move them out of the school. They'll kind of just keep rotating them until they act violent towards a teacher. Most, I mean, they do it mostly to other students, but to teachers as well. As far as birth rate go, there's no official number on fertility rate. It's not like a point I could look at to. According to one study that I read, 48% of homeschool kids have three or more children in their family, which means it's larger than the national average. But I couldn't find like an exact number and I did, I did look quite a bit. But they kind of only break it down to you have one child, two children or three or more. So about half of three or more, which is higher than the national average. As far as partisanship goes. I couldn't find anything on the 2024 election. There hasn't been a deep dive on that. But on 2020, 58% of homeschool parents voted for Donald Trump, 62% voted for him in 2016 and 60% voted for Mitt Rom in 2012. There's a greater diversity, both ethnic and religious in the homeschool community than people think. It's not just evangelical Christians anymore. There's a lot of minorities who homeschool now. There's a lot of non religious people who homeschool now. So I mean, it's not, I think sometimes what people think it's going to be. Next question comes from Holly. She says, by the way, thank you for that question on the homeschooling, Holly writes to me. Ryan, I really enjoy your talk on foreign politics. I hate to say it, but it gives me small degree of comfort to hear just dysfunction in other countries. A lot of them are way more dysfunctional than America. They, you know, you wouldn't get that from the news, but they are like the US is not alone. Speaking of dysfunction, what's up with France and their investigations? Are they a bunch of hapless inspector Clusos bumping into each other with magnifying glasses? I looked for updates on last year's lube heist, but the most recent articles I found didn't make the investigation look too brilliant. They also made me wonder, whatever happened the Notre Dame fire investigation, does the lack of suspect mean that where a protected class for the left? And maybe it really wasn't an accident. Thank you. Yeah, Holly, I wasn't so inch. I love crime stories. I wasn't so interested in the Louvre story after like the first day. I mean it was in, it was, it was jaw droppingly embarrassing for the French the fact that they were able to steal, you know, $100 million of priceless jewels. I guess it's not price. It was $100 million, but $100 million of historic jewels. Yeah. In broad daylight with a camera on them. And they never got the jewels back. They did arrest four people, but they never got the jewels back. I don't think they'll ever get the jewels back. Maybe they should really turn it to like some private investigators or some private sleuth. Treasure hunters. I find treasure hunters fascinating as a group of people, like that's what I would like. I told someone the other day though I was insane. But if I was retired and I wasn't working anymore, that's what I would do for a hobby. Be a professional treasure hunter. Because I find those people so interesting. I wouldn't play like a canaster or something. I would try to be a treasure hunter. I'm sure that is nuts. I promise you I'm a bit more sane than I sound sometimes. As far as the Notre Dame fires go, I don't think it was a conspiracy. Look, I've traveled a bit around the world. I've been all over this country. Something that is not unique about any given place is there are a lot of lazy, stupid and careless people. And you should never look when the answer is so obvious that idiots are in charge. Don't look for conspiracy because it's not there. Sometimes it's just because people are idiots. And they're careless. And I think that's what happened unfortunately with Notre Dame. And thankfully they were able to get a lot of the important artifacts out of the cathedral while it was burning. So. Okay, next up comes from my question from my friend Peter Fomo. Peter, I hope I pronounced your last name correctly. He writes, one thing that makes me nervous about JD Is that he was against Trump in the past. My earliest recollection was him being with Mona Sharon and Jay Norden Linger on a podcast in 2013. He did not strike me as populist, despite his background. I never thought he was a convincing account of his epiphany since, you know him, what made him change his mind on Trump and immigration? So on Trump. I mean, he was changing his mind on Trump in 2019. It was just private and he wasn't saying it publicly, but he's shown me emails that he sent to friends and family members saying he was for Trump. I think it was because Trump was president. And I think part of it is, well, he said this story publicly that he, the more that he was around business people, especially one dinner in specific, I forget who it was, but he was around a bunch of businessmen and they were very much putting down American workers and talking about the need for foreigners as a way to kind of fix their bottom line. And, and I guess JD Kind of just had enough. And I think that. And he said this, you know, in the past, that he, that once the veil was down, once he was in the club, he realized the people in the club with him were not, you know, not one of his people. And you have to think for a second about what JD Gave up to be a Trump supporter and to be a Republican like he is now. I mean, yes, he's the vice president, he's certainly. And was a senator for a year and a half. And he's had a very quick rise that was not guaranteed in 2021, 2022, when he came out for Trump, he was a literary celebrity, a real literary celebrity, which is very rare nowadays because no one reads. Not like they used to anyway. He was a self made multimillionaire. He was on Stephen Colbert and all these talk shows and invited to these fancy conferences with like, like, you know, everyone you want to rub elbows with. And he gave it all up. And from somebody who started at nothing, to give up some things you made for yourself is a big deal. You know, I made my company by myself. I made everything I have by myself. I mean, I've gotten some fa, Some lucky breaks, but I was not an apple baby. And I wasn't given anything by anybody. And hand on a golden platter, in fact, very much, much the opposite of that. And I had to fight for it and to give it up on principle. That would be very difficult. And a lot of people, a lot of people in politics do not give it up. They only make, you know, moves that they think that they can get more access and more favorability. But when JD Made those decisions, there was no Senate seat up in 2022. We were talking about him running in 2024 against Sherrod Brown. So there was no lane. He did this before there was a lane. And. And ended up being right. Okay, C. Next is more. Ask me anything. I'll be right back. Okay. This question comes from Mark. He says, I'm a big fan of your work, including your great newsletter. Thank you, Mark. Mark, I hope you were okay with me not having a newsletter for Easter. I'm just burnt out and I needed a. A holiday break. But thank you for reading the national popular newsletter. I try to write more to it. I still need to find. I need to get a personal assistant, a professional assistant, someone who could work on a lot of things with me because that's, that is a. A part of the. The. What I would like to build out is a newsletter some more you write. If I run for office in the future, I would like you to advise me. Okay. Mark, he says, goes. I'm a Utah resident. I've been involved with the state Republican Party here. Utah is a unique state politically. Is there a legitimate path for a national populist type of candidate to win in Utah and what might that look like? So, yeah, Utah's a very Republican state, but it's obviously the LDS community, the Latter Day Saints community is very prominent in Utah. They are not a populous. I would say this, Mark, you should definitely be dotting your eyes and crossing your T's. You cannot be crass or rude. They do not. They. Politeness means a lot to a manners mean a lot to Utah and Mormons. And that has to be something you take into account. How you present yourself is very, very important. You cannot be like Donald Trump and you have to think about that early. And how you present yourself means a lot to them. Showing up for the job that you want means a lot to them. As far as populace go definitely on economic populism, there's a path forward because they are very skeptical of tech stuff. They are very. For family stuff, there's a lot of things you could do on the worker side and on the tech side and on the pro family side that is very populist. On the immigration stuff it's a little more dicey. They have pretty favorable towards immigration. They have this, I guess more religious belief that they can kind of convert anybody and Mormons are really big about conversion and spending time abroad. I would say this really focus on when it comes to immigration. The enforcement aspects don't go hard. Don't imagine that Utah is Alabama or, or you know, another state or Arizona. It's Utah. So just go with that thing and work a lot on economic populism. I think you have a path forward and also present yourself that is, that is a way that people would want an elected official to look like and sound like and start early before you run, make it well known. And also Utah is great when it comes to civic engagement. I would start engaging with civic organizations. It sounds like you are but other civic organizations as early as possible and get your name well known in a, in a way that's people can trust you. Okay, next question comes from Bobby from Tennessee. Bobby writes I've listened to all your shows Bobby. I appreciate you. I was actually I was not born in Tennessee. I was born in New York but we moved to Tennessee when I was like week old. My dad was in the Marines and we were stationed in Memphis and I spent the first six of my life in Memphis, Tennessee except for that week in New York, but the rest of my life has been in Tennessee. You write by the way, telling people from like Knoxville area that you were lived in in Memphis is like no bigger insult. My experience of talking people from like Knoxville in eastern Tennessee, but I love eastern Tennessee. Anyway you write my favorite favorite my theory has been why Democrats are so driven to support illegal immigration in addition to illegals voting. The revelation that means that legals are counted in congressional districting while was enlightened and maddening. They can they claim compassion for people as their reason but the selfish Democrat plan is to retain power through mass illegal immigration. It should be exposed. Why don't Republicans talk about it more? I wish. I wish I knew why Republicans don't talk about things more than they do. I. I would be a lot smarter and wealthier a person if I did. If I could figure out human psychology in a more concise manner. I. I don't know. They do talk about a little bit. Maybe it's because they believe it's just too complicated of an issue for people to care about. I don't know. And the truth is yes, it's illegal immigration, which is unforgivable because there should be no illegal immigrants in this country. But also it is legal immigration. Just remember that it's both, it's both illegal and illegal. And, and Trump's efforts for mass deportation is going to change the fabric of our country in the next decade. It's not for right now. Now. I mean, it's a little bit for right now, but it's immensely changing. California could easily lose six to eight congressional districts. New York could lose three. Illinois could lose two or three. Those states alone is 13. As long as you retain Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona, you win the presidency for the entire next decade. And congressional districts and the House. It's so important. What mass deportations is so, so important. Despite all the negative news coverage that you may be reading about mass deportations. Keep the faith. It is so important. Okay, next question. I'm sorry I don't have a more concise answer for you. I, I don't know. I don't know why they don't talk about it more. I wish they did, but I don't. Next question comes from Luanne. You write I'm a Midwest baby boomer. I love parts of the Midwest, by the way. Some of, I mean, the Midwest is unique as all can be and try to keep up politics, even though lately it's hard because there's so much going on. That is absolutely the truth. Anyway, we keep hearing about how trillions in debt. I, I guess my question is if we don't control the debt, what eventually happens? I remember Brian Gumbel used to have a running clock on his show about the debt. It was supposed to be a big deal back then and now it's much worse. I'd be interested in your thoughts. Yeah. So the amount of money we spent paying back the debt is 14% of the budget and it's 20% of all tax dollars. One in five tax dollars goes to the debt. The CBO estimates it'll go to 20% of spending by 2036, maybe higher before then. It's a problem. And like eventually it's going to eat. It's. We spend more service in the debt now than we spent on Medicare, Medicaid or the military. Only Social Security is a bigger line item spend right now than, than servicing the debt. And you know what my big fear is is that we get declined. Our credit rating goes down, which New York City is going to experience that very, very soon, which makes it harder for us to borrow. It makes interest rates much higher. We could fall Into a recession. It means crumble. International markets could crumble. We have high, higher borrowing costs, mass inflation, really painful austerity measures instead of really thoughtful and practical ones, and lower overall growth rates. I think that there's a serious thing and you know what big part of it, Republicans are to blame. George Bush really screwed the pooch. George W. Bush. Bush really, really screwed the proo. I'm not saying I don't love his tax cuts. I'm not saying that taxes aren't, you know, can, can't be a great thing. But they should have been doing it in a way that. And the Iraq war and the Afghanistan occupation and all. Everything. There was a. There was an article I was reading from back in 2001 and it said that our estimation was that we were going to pay off the entire debt in 2000, rather 20, 1999. We were going to pay off the entire debt by 2014. Like what could have been had George Bush not been insane. His Social Security reforms were smart, but most of it was just an utter disaster. He did give us Alito too, so it wasn't all bad. But man, George W. Bush really, really hurt generations of Americans with how he did spending, which is why I'm so mad at this president right now for the budget plan, which should be more thoughtful when it comes to spending because it is serious and if it's only going to get worse, we should try to figure out a way to do it in an intelligent manner before it has to be done in a painful manner, which is what I'm afraid of. Okay, last question for the show comes from Elliot. Elliot writes, why would Mullins. Mullen is the senator turned Secretary of Homeland Security. Why would Mullen leave a secure Senate job for at most and they have the last 2.5 years. It doesn't make sense at all. Is there some 3D chest here that I'm missing or is this short sighted in this? You know, Mullen's not my favorite senator, although we got a lot of attention actually. It was really funny. Whenever you could talk to a senator privately. They will, if you're friendly with them as I am a few of them, they'll just start complaining about how much media attention other senators get. And quite a few complained about Mullen and that he got on the media so much of the time. But Mullen wasn't really a breakout star and there was nothing not. I don't think that he was long for the Senate to begin with. I just don't think that he had the constitution of being A senator that, you know, had a massive bill that fundamentally changed the government or the way it worked. I don't know if he didn't like it. I don't want to say that, but I don't think that he had the temperament of maybe like a John McCain or a Ted Kennedy or a Chuck Grassley or a Bernie Sanders or something like that, you know, who did a massive reform that took a long time because it takes longer to build seniority. And now as the head of dhs, he'll be able to be a leading member of the Trump administration. If he stays up for the full two and a half times, two and a half years, he becomes a criminally prominent American. And I think he either goes to the private sector, makes a bucket of money giving advice out and doing consulting. It's not the hardest work in the world. Or he runs for either governor or president. I'm not saying he's going to, but there's the opportunity. There's. Elaine, you're a nationwide known figure. You're much more prominent being a secretary than you're being a senator. And those, the conversations we're having with Rubio right now about could he run for president, obviously he was a senator, too. But once Rubio started excelling as his job at Secretary of State's, when we're having the conversation, maybe, maybe Mullen builds up the integrity of ice, does a great job to pour illegal immigrants and he's a conversation starter, you know, I don't know. Know, maybe. Certainly it's not out of the realm of possibility. And I think that that's the elevation you look for. And yeah, I mean, but listen, taking a job as a secretary for Trump is a risky gamble. Ask Pam Bondi, ask Christy Gnome. You may not be lasting all that long. I mean, he does have a tendency to fire some people, so we'll see. I don't know. I think that's why Mullen did. I think it's for higher aspirations than he has now. I never met him, I've never spoken to him, him, so I can't say one or the one way or the other, but that's what I would venture to guess if I had to guess. Okay, thank you guys for listening this episode. If you like this podcast, please like and subscribe on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, wherever you get this podcast and give me a five star review if you get a chance to, especially like on YouTube. I'm trying to grow those numbers. So thank you guys. I'll see you all Wednesday. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.