Trump's Address Dissected: Truths and Misleading Claims
The principal focus of this discourse revolves around the recent State of the Union address, during which the hosts, Barrett Gruber and Bill Frye, articulate their critical observations regarding the veracity of the statements made by President Trump. They expound upon the pervasive inaccuracies and misleading claims that characterized the address, emphasizing that many assertions lacked substantiation and were reminiscent of a campaign rally rather than a formal State of the Union. In particular, they scrutinize Trump's comments on economic conditions, environmental regulations, and the integrity of social welfare programs, asserting that the discourse often strayed from factual accuracy. The hosts also reflect on the broader political implications of these remarks, debating the effectiveness of the responses from both sides of the aisle. This episode serves as a thorough analysis of the intersection between political rhetoric and factual integrity in contemporary governance.
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Transcript
The All About Nothing podcast may have language and content that isn't appropriate for some.
Speaker A:Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker A:Welcome, nothingers, to another episode of the All About Nothing podcast.
Speaker A:This is episode number 245.
Speaker A:I am Barrett Gruber.
Speaker A:I'm joined by Mr.
Speaker A:Bill Frey, who graced me with his presence today.
Speaker B:We're here in person.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:For the first time ever.
Speaker B:It's a cool place.
Speaker A:Thanks.
Speaker B:Pretty cool.
Speaker A:I spend a lot of time in here.
Speaker A:Like an exceptional.
Speaker B:It does smell weird.
Speaker A:Well, I mean, there's.
Speaker A:There's stuff behind the camera up there that.
Speaker A:That might give off a little scent, but I thought I had it closed up pretty good.
Speaker A:I.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Sorry.
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Speaker A:This feels.
Speaker A:Oh, you know why?
Speaker A:Because it's separated.
Speaker A:That's odd.
Speaker A:My bad.
Speaker B:I was.
Speaker B:I met.
Speaker B:I was messing with it a little earlier.
Speaker A:No.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:But I don't think that's what did it.
Speaker A:I think it's.
Speaker A:I think it's because I cut it too close to the.
Speaker A:The edge of the plastic.
Speaker A:I think that's ultimately what did it.
Speaker B:Oh.
Speaker B:Oh, okay.
Speaker B:I see the word laminated.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker A:Yeah, I laminate stuff.
Speaker A:I'm weird.
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Speaker A:So this is going to be our episode where we discussed the State of the Union last night.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:How do you feel about the State of the Union?
Speaker A:So I had several messages from people asking me for my reaction before I actually got to finish it.
Speaker A:So I got maybe 45 minutes into it last night before I was like, it's my bedtime.
Speaker A:I can't continue to sit here and listen to nothing but that first 40 minutes.
Speaker A:And then this morning, I watched the last half at three times speed, which did it help?
Speaker A:So the content of it wasn't tolerable, but the speed at which it went was tolerable.
Speaker A:The applause only lasted, like, five seconds compared to the 15 or 20 seconds that it was going.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:Cause I watched the whole thing, and then I watched AOC talk a good while on her live stream about it, which was pretty interesting, too.
Speaker A:Yeah, she's good.
Speaker A:I really like her.
Speaker A:But ultimately, my reaction to the whole thing was there wasn't any truth to anything that I heard him say or very little.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And so basically, because there was no truth to much of it, there wasn't really any context to it for me, you know, so basically, it was just one of his campaign rallies for me, essentially.
Speaker B:I mean, it was literally a campaign rally.
Speaker B:And then he took the opportunity to have, of course, Democrats, most of them didn't say anything.
Speaker B:Al Green, of course.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Kicked out.
Speaker A:That was good.
Speaker B:That was wild.
Speaker B:I almost wish I had seen more of that, but I don't know how useful that would have been.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker A:Well, and we had a text chain going back and forth, which I laughed at some of the things that we were saying.
Speaker A:Well, okay, I laughed at some of the things I was saying, but I.
Speaker A:So in our text chain, we found out one Kimbler wasn't watching it.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:We then found out that Vollardobo also was not watching it.
Speaker A:He was watching the Born Again, the Daredevil.
Speaker B:Daredevil.
Speaker B:I did not know that that was either of their numbers.
Speaker B:I was thrown into the chat and I was like, there's two random people in here.
Speaker B:They're probably on the same page, but I don't know.
Speaker A:Yeah, no, it was.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So that was.
Speaker A:That was Kimler and Velardevo, which, you know, if I had my bell, I would ding it for them.
Speaker A:But obviously you can.
Speaker A:You can follow Bill on Black, White Blue in the south across all the podcasts.
Speaker A:And Matt Velardovo is.
Speaker A:I think it's this next weekend or the weekend.
Speaker A:He is running for York County Democratic Party Chair.
Speaker B:Really?
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:Yeah, so he is.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:So, you know, hopefully, good luck out of that.
Speaker A:And, you know, so this will.
Speaker A:This will air the same week of that vote.
Speaker A:So hoping that that turns out well for him.
Speaker A:What was one of the most shocking things that happened during the.
Speaker A:Aside from Al Green getting kicked out.
Speaker B:That was a pretty big one.
Speaker B:And also, I mean, it makes sense.
Speaker B:The Democrats all had their signs.
Speaker B:That was a big part of it.
Speaker B:Most shocking, I thought towards the end, there was a bit where Marco Rubio.
Speaker B:That was a crazy bit.
Speaker B:It was Very dictator esque.
Speaker A:Yeah, basically.
Speaker B:He basically was like, and if.
Speaker B:And if it messes up, like, if something screws up, we know exactly who to blame.
Speaker B:And just like pointed straight at him.
Speaker B:And I'm like, that is scary.
Speaker B:That is wild.
Speaker B:To me.
Speaker A:To me, Marco Rubio is probably one of the only.
Speaker A:Yeah, I heard that too.
Speaker B:Yeah, I heard like a.
Speaker B:I think it was like your phone or something, maybe.
Speaker A:Well, it's by there.
Speaker A:Oh, but yeah, I don't.
Speaker A:That was.
Speaker A:I don't know what.
Speaker A:That was one of the.
Speaker A:Yeah, one of the most shocking.
Speaker A:Well, okay, so that was definitely pretty.
Speaker A:It was on par for Trump because, you know, he'll take credit for it if it works out well, but he will not.
Speaker A:If it doesn't.
Speaker A:He will make sure that somebody's to blame.
Speaker A:And I think that Rubio is the most likely of all of his cabinet that would potentially dissent against him.
Speaker B:I would, I would argue RFK might to you.
Speaker A:Did you notice that when he, When RFK was walking in last night, he did not.
Speaker A:He didn't really greet anyone.
Speaker B:He seemed off.
Speaker B:Well, because I met RFK and I've talked with him before and everything he's saying now, even in his confirmation hearings, completely opposite what he told me.
Speaker B:And that's got to do something to a person walking in knowing that.
Speaker B:I mean, he just gave up almost everything he believed in to tag along with this administration.
Speaker B:And it's.
Speaker B:I mean, he was eating McDonald's on a plane with Trump.
Speaker B:Trump almost acting like, yeah, we're gonna let you do what you want, but honestly, like, you're just gonna have to listen to me.
Speaker B:You're.
Speaker B:You're gonna eat this burger on camera and you're just gonna be my minion, I guess.
Speaker B:I mean, that's where he's at.
Speaker A:He's basically his pet.
Speaker B:That's what it feels like, for sure.
Speaker A:How does being in Trump's cabinet as the Secretary of Health and Human Services benefit RFK in any way, shape or form?
Speaker B:Maybe.
Speaker B:The only thing I can think of is more recognition than he had before that.
Speaker B:The only thing.
Speaker B:Maybe, Maybe power, but you don't really get a whole lot of power.
Speaker A:No.
Speaker B:If Trump's your boss.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's.
Speaker A:It's an extremely limited grasp for any, Any of his.
Speaker A:Any of his cabinets.
Speaker A:I think that Hedgepeth is going to want Hedgepath.
Speaker B:Hegseth.
Speaker A:Hegseth.
Speaker A:Son of a bitch.
Speaker B:That was all that was also interesting also Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh were there.
Speaker B:Sorry, I just remember.
Speaker B:I just remember that, too.
Speaker A:It was the Worst of the podcasters.
Speaker A:We didn't get an.
Speaker B:Just.
Speaker A:So, you know, I would have probably gone.
Speaker A:I would have.
Speaker B:I would have definitely gone, actually.
Speaker A:I definitely would have gone.
Speaker A:I would have.
Speaker A:I.
Speaker A:And look, I may talk a lot of shit about Elon Musk because, you know, he's not really worth anything to me.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:But I just shook hands with Elon Musk and be like, you know, regardless of the fact that I think he's a moron, he's clearly got some fairly decent business skills because, you know, he.
Speaker A:He bought PayPal and then he sold it for a profit.
Speaker A:He bought into Tesla and somehow worked his way up to being the.
Speaker A:Named the founder, despite the fact that he never founded it.
Speaker A:He wanted.
Speaker A:He wants to send rockets to the.
Speaker A:To Mars.
Speaker A:So he invested in SpaceX and worked his way up to the top of.
Speaker A:Not worked his way up, bought his way up to the top of it.
Speaker A:He's, you know, so Neuralink.
Speaker A:He.
Speaker A:He didn't come up with that.
Speaker A:He just, He.
Speaker A:He bought his way into it.
Speaker A:Now he's at the top of it.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And he bought a cabinet position.
Speaker B:That's $270 million pseudo cabinet position.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Because I think that at some point there will be enough of these court cases where I think the likelihood is the Supreme Court's going to have to rule just like they did today and basically say, no, you can't do.
Speaker A:Do these things.
Speaker A:Congress gave this.
Speaker A:Congress allocated this money for this.
Speaker A:Therefore, that's where it goes.
Speaker A:The President cannot just unilaterally decide that it's not going to go there anymore.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And two of the executive orders he signed are just executive orders.
Speaker B:I mean, not all of them can mean anything other than changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and McKinley.
Speaker A:Mount Denali became Mount McKinley again.
Speaker A:But if you read up on your history, Mount McKinley's pretty shit person.
Speaker A:Like in the end.
Speaker A:Yeah, Yeah.
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker A:I wanted to read some of the things that actually Trump said during the State of the Union, because some of them were either completely unfactual or very misleading.
Speaker A:Very misleading.
Speaker B:Or just.
Speaker A:There was no.
Speaker A:There's no evidence to support what it is he's saying.
Speaker A:So the first one Trump said, we found hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud.
Speaker A:I guess speaking about Doge, which is not.
Speaker A:It's possible that they might have, but they haven't provided any proof.
Speaker B:Yeah, one.
Speaker B:One thing that interests me, I actually don't know at all, but I heard him bring up that Arabic Sesame Street Yeah, I swear I remember watching three or four years ago that there was like an Arabic Sesame Street.
Speaker B:I could be crossing things because I'm not sure exactly what he was referring to, but there is like an Arabic Sesame street where there's like kids who are trying to start a revolution somewhere.
Speaker B:That was wild.
Speaker B:If that's what he was referring to.
Speaker B:I don't know if it was.
Speaker A:It's entirely possible that USAID could have been funding something like that as far as a technology for broadcast communication, that sort of thing.
Speaker A:I could absolutely see that that would be possible, that USAID could have been funding something like that.
Speaker A:But I don't, you know, but in that situation, you're not talking about hundreds of billions of dollars.
Speaker A:You may be talking about 15 million, like less than a percent of what potential, what USAID had access to.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:So I just, you know, a lot of it comes down to.
Speaker A:It's just misleading.
Speaker A:So this is, this lacks evidence.
Speaker A:President Trump called the, called that the Department of Government Efficiency had identified hundreds of billions of dollars in fraud in the federal government.
Speaker A:But even Elon Musk's government overhaul team does not support to have found that much of the specific savings.
Speaker A:They basically have not said they've found hundreds of billions of dollars.
Speaker A:Yeah, they have maybe found, I think at one point they may have found less than $20 billion, but that's through terminated grants, contracts and leases.
Speaker A:Which Supreme Court's going to wind up ruling on that.
Speaker A:Yeah, the likelihood is that money is going to still wind up going where it's supposed to go.
Speaker A:So, you know, that's one.
Speaker A:During the speech, he also said, as you know, which is always a tell, we inherited from the last administration an economic catastrophe and an inflation nightmare.
Speaker B:Yeah, that one was a pretty strong lie.
Speaker B:The economy was.
Speaker B:The economy itself was strong.
Speaker B:Inflation is going up, still going up.
Speaker B:And it's basically impossible to bring inflation down to make prices lower and lower.
Speaker B:It can only be that you can buy the value of the stuff, which is why wages, I mean.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Should economists say wages should be increased to make that happen?
Speaker A:Yeah, we haven't.
Speaker A:We haven't.
Speaker A:Our federal government has not done the workers, the lower income workers to middle income workers has not done any, any favors to them by not increasing the minimum wage.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Also hear about that last night?
Speaker A:No, we didn't hear about that at all.
Speaker A:We didn't hear.
Speaker A:He did not mention Social Security last night, which is a little frightening.
Speaker B:Did he not?
Speaker A:He didn't.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:He didn't say we were going to keep our Hands off of Social Security.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Well, the thing, the thing I worry about with Social Security is that a lot of people on his team especially, I mean, just mainly the Trump administration has been almost starting.
Speaker B:I can see how they're starting to shape how they think Social Security should look to people to make them scared of it.
Speaker B:So that they bankrupt it.
Speaker B:Bankrupt it faster.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So that they're just done with it and they want to privatize it.
Speaker B:That's what it looks to me like it's moving towards.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:And one of the.
Speaker A:Having worked in Medicare and knowing pretty well the ins and outs of Medicare, both from a customer service aspect, from a provider services aspect, working with doctor's offices to properly bill for the services they provide, and then even up to the technical aspect of the actual code behind how Medicare operates, its billing systems, it is easily one of the most efficient.
Speaker A:It's probably one of the most efficient departments in the federal government.
Speaker A:It operates most years.
Speaker A:It operates with less than a 1% overhead cost.
Speaker A:Where the insurance that we have from private insurance, mined through Blue Cross Blue Shield in Massachusetts operates at a 64 to 67% overhead cost.
Speaker A:So, yeah, only 30, potentially 33% of every dollar that I pay in as a premium is going towards health care, where the other 64 to 67% is going towards paying for things like board members salaries and bonuses and marketing and things like that or legal.
Speaker A:Legal services, you know, where ultimately that's a.
Speaker A:There's a complete disconnect there because insurance is for profit and I don't think anyone should profit off of healthcare.
Speaker A:Should we pay our doctors well?
Speaker A:Yeah, I think that they've earned the right to be paid well, but I don't see that as a profit.
Speaker A:That's an expense of healthcare.
Speaker A:Nurses should be paid well.
Speaker A:You know, everyone in the healthcare industry except for the insurance companies, because insurance should be a pool.
Speaker A:We pay in, it pays out.
Speaker A:That's it.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:There shouldn't be a middleman.
Speaker B:No, you pay and you should be able.
Speaker B:There should be complete and total transparency and the people who are providing said labor to help you and your family and friends or whoever.
Speaker B:Americans in general should be paid well.
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean, that's it.
Speaker A:So behind the camera, we have video of the State of the Union.
Speaker A:I'm always disturbed watching Donald Trump go through and shake hands with people.
Speaker A:It always makes me feel a little weird.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Him walking down.
Speaker B:It was interesting to see how some of the Democrats responded and like, with, with all the.
Speaker B:Of course, they had the signs, they had the they just kind of stood next to him and smiled and didn't shake his hand or anything.
Speaker A:I don't think any, I don't think anyone was outright rude to him.
Speaker A:I mean, you know, it's, it's normal.
Speaker B:You could say maybe Al Green.
Speaker B:Yeah, but that was also.
Speaker B:He immediately.
Speaker B:What.
Speaker B:Al Green was upset.
Speaker B:Said about the mandate.
Speaker A:Yeah, he said he had a mandate.
Speaker A:And here's the thing that you.
Speaker A:300 what?
Speaker A:He had 312 electoral votes.
Speaker B:That was the first part, was he immediately was just going in.
Speaker B:I couldn't be mistaken.
Speaker B:I don't know if.
Speaker B:Did Biden do that as when he won, but he just bragged at the very first ten minutes of it.
Speaker B:No, I, I wouldn't think he would.
Speaker B:I just.
Speaker A:No, President Trump is the only one that's ever done that.
Speaker A:Like, I've never, I've never, I've looked at some speeches from, you know, like, Andrew Jackson, who was a bragger.
Speaker A:Abraham Lincoln, State of a Union.
Speaker A:You know, he only really got one.
Speaker A:Maybe.
Speaker A:I guess he had one or two.
Speaker A:But, like, you know, you don't see Thomas Jefferson.
Speaker A:Yeah, he gloated, but not like that.
Speaker A:It wasn't over.
Speaker A:Like, look at this enormous victory I had.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And you can't really look at Donald Trump's victory if, if, if you have any level of intelligence at all, even, you know, if, if I were, if I were to ask my daughters and be like, hey, how big of a difference between 75 million and 73 million?
Speaker A:What's the difference there?
Speaker A:2 million.
Speaker A:Okay, well, Trump won by like 2 million in the popular vote.
Speaker A:Granted, I'll give it to him.
Speaker A:He won.
Speaker A: million votes in: Speaker A:True, it was, you know, that.
Speaker A:And granted it was the electoral difference was closer with Biden and Trump.
Speaker A:But, you know, I don't, to me, I just, I don't think you can look at the Electoral college numbers and say how large of a victory something was.
Speaker A:Unless it was like Reagan in 84.
Speaker B:Yeah, that was a ball.
Speaker B:That was a sweet one.
Speaker B:State went blue.
Speaker B:Yeah, that was it.
Speaker B:What was it?
Speaker B:Minnesota?
Speaker A:Something like.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, I think it was Minnesota or something like that.
Speaker B:One of the, one of the northern states up there.
Speaker B:I can't remember.
Speaker A:You know, so it's like, you know, and so, so again, I can't, I can't look at the electoral difference and say that was a huge win or that was a huge loss.
Speaker A:I mean, because Biden's was closer.
Speaker A:Clinton's Was closer.
Speaker A:I mean, they were.
Speaker A:You know, that was a.
Speaker A:That was a closer electoral.
Speaker A:Voter lost when.
Speaker B:Sure.
Speaker B:But even then, I mean, that was.
Speaker B:It was unnecessary to talk about a State of the Union.
Speaker B:It was really just a joint session.
Speaker B:It wasn't even the State of the Union we hit.
Speaker B:We were, what, how many days in, like, 30 we.
Speaker A:So I guess, I don't know.
Speaker A:Little.
Speaker A:Little under 40 something or a little over 50 something.
Speaker B:It's not even the actual State of the Union address yet.
Speaker B:It's like we're already.
Speaker B:We're like six weeks in, and it has been I.
Speaker B:Wild every day.
Speaker B:Literally every day.
Speaker A:I had given Kimmeler a list of the.
Speaker A:I had created a top 10.
Speaker A:Like David Letterman's old top 10 bit.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And ultimately he never.
Speaker A:He didn't open with the State of Our Union is.
Speaker A:And that, you know, he just came in and said, the golden age of America is whatever is now, or something like that.
Speaker B:Well, he just said, America is back.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Oh, that's right.
Speaker B:He was just like, america is back.
Speaker B:And I'm like, I know.
Speaker B:Matt Walsh loved that.
Speaker B:I know it so much.
Speaker B:I'm just like, God, I can't.
Speaker A:I can't even.
Speaker A:I didn't take.
Speaker A:I couldn't take any of it seriously last night.
Speaker A:That was one of the big takeaways.
Speaker A:I couldn't look at almost any of what was being said as being serious.
Speaker A:Especially I.
Speaker A:I cannot.
Speaker A:One of the things that I'm most shocked by is the fact that in the speech, he actually called out Democrats for not appreciating him or that there's nothing that he could do that would even make them smile.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And it's like, yeah, there's stuff that can be done, but it was in the speech.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Like, he was reading off the teleprompter for that.
Speaker A:They had to write into the speech, I'm going to scorn the Democrats for not applauding.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And he looked at the Republicans essentially the entire time, and anytime there was something negative like the evil, he would just use his hand to refer to all of them.
Speaker B:And I was.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:I think it's weird also that in the House, for the person that's looking out over the seats, that the Republicans are on the left and the Democrats are on the right as far as their view.
Speaker A:But for Democrats and Republicans, when they enter, it's.
Speaker A:They go to the left or they go to the right.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So I was hoping that was gonna confuse him.
Speaker A:Trump came off speech a couple times.
Speaker A:More than a couple times.
Speaker A:More like 10 or 12 times during the entire thing.
Speaker A:And I kept hoping it was just gonna.
Speaker A:It was gonna unravel much more than it did, but somehow.
Speaker A:And he must have popped a bunch of those Adderall Tic Tacs, because he.
Speaker A:He.
Speaker A:He held himself pretty close to the.
Speaker A:To the teleprompters.
Speaker B:Yeah, no, he was going the whole time.
Speaker B:It was, it was.
Speaker B:It was.
Speaker B:It was very interesting.
Speaker B:And that was one of the longest ones we've had.
Speaker A:It was.
Speaker A:It was the record.
Speaker A:It was the longest.
Speaker A:It was the longest.
Speaker A:It was, what, 97 minutes or 98 minutes, something like that?
Speaker A:Like, close to 100 minutes, you know, but if you take out all of the 32nd, like, standing ovations, you'd be able to work that back down in the interruptions.
Speaker A:How happy do you think Mike Johnson was to be able to bang that gavel just as hard?
Speaker B:Oh, he was really.
Speaker B:He was going hard back there.
Speaker B:It was wild.
Speaker A:As hard as his little Keebler elves could hit it.
Speaker A:He's a.
Speaker A:He is.
Speaker A:He is our Joe Wilson.
Speaker A:Well, I'm sorry.
Speaker A:Joe Wilson is our Keebler elf.
Speaker A:Mike Johnson is Louisiana's Keebler elf.
Speaker A:That's.
Speaker B:God.
Speaker A:I'll go.
Speaker A:I'll get put in the gulag for that.
Speaker A:I would live the rest of my days in their political prison for calling Mike Johnson a Keebler elf.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:How long do you think you could hold a.
Speaker B:Hold a.
Speaker B:I feel like I could.
Speaker B:I would go so hard.
Speaker B:I would probably try to go longer.
Speaker B:Like.
Speaker B:Like what?
Speaker B:Bernie Sanders filibuster was like eight hours or something.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And who.
Speaker A:Who is Strom Thurman filibustered for what?
Speaker B:Segregation?
Speaker B:I think.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Two.
Speaker A:Two or three days or something like that.
Speaker B:Was it really?
Speaker A:I think.
Speaker A:I think it was.
Speaker A:It was.
Speaker A:It was a pretty long.
Speaker A:It was a pretty long filibuster.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:It may not have been two days, but it was.
Speaker A:It was pretty close to being as long as you could potentially go.
Speaker A:And he was.
Speaker A:He was pretty well into his 70s, I think, when they.
Speaker A:70s or 80s, when he did that, maybe 80s, I would try.
Speaker A:That was back before the days that his aide had to hold his arm up for votes and whatnot.
Speaker A:Another thing Trump said, as you know, we inherited.
Speaker A:Oh, did I already say that?
Speaker B:You did say that one.
Speaker A:Yeah, I did say that one.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:Another thing Trump said.
Speaker A:We will take in trillions and trillions of dollars and create jobs like we have never seen before.
Speaker A:He's referring to his tariffs, I guess so.
Speaker B:And what he did 25% tariffs on China and Canada.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Sweep.
Speaker A:Sweep across the thing.
Speaker B:And then they retaliated.
Speaker B:And then also, if I'm not mistaken, he announced retaliation tariffs on those tariffs for April 2 because he didn't want to be April 1.
Speaker B:Because when people think he was joking.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And what's.
Speaker A:What's ironic about all of that is that he did do so.
Speaker A:So it was.
Speaker A:It was Monday that the tariffs.
Speaker A:Or no, it was Monday.
Speaker A:They announced that the tariffs would go into effect on the second.
Speaker A:Or no, on the whatever.
Speaker A:Tuesday, the day of the State of the Union.
Speaker A:And immediately Canada, Mexico, and China all retaliated.
Speaker A:Today they announced that he's backing out of the American tariffs.
Speaker B:Oh, I was probably working.
Speaker B:I've not seen that yet.
Speaker B:When did this happen?
Speaker A:This afternoon.
Speaker A:They pulled them back.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:All right.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker B:All right.
Speaker A:There's a little diagram going around where it says, Trump says he's gonna do this.
Speaker A:He does it, things go to hell.
Speaker A:He doesn't admit that he made a mistake, but he pulls it back in, basically recognizing that he had the power to pull it back or whatever.
Speaker A:And it's just a loop.
Speaker A:It's do dumb shit.
Speaker A:Dumb shit happens.
Speaker A:Take back dumb shit and then do dump shit again.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker B:I did.
Speaker B:I did not see that.
Speaker B:I was literally.
Speaker B:I was working earlier.
Speaker B:Yeah, that was it.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So the.
Speaker A:This lacks any evidence.
Speaker A:The substantial tariffs from that Mr.
Speaker A:Trump is imposing on foreign products will raise revenue for the government.
Speaker A:But total US imports last year were about 3.3 trillion, meaning that tariffs would have to be increased incredibly high to generate the trillions of dollars.
Speaker A:Like, we're talking like the hundred to 200% in tariffs on.
Speaker A:Tariffs on imports coming into the country.
Speaker A:But again, tariffs are.
Speaker A:We pay for the cost of those tariffs.
Speaker A:If they've made it all the way over here from China, the people that have ordered it, that product is going to be re.
Speaker A:Then sold to the American public.
Speaker A:That product's already been paid for.
Speaker A:China company has gotten its money.
Speaker A:The company here has to pay the tariff in order to get that tariff into the United States through customs in order to pay for it.
Speaker A:So this lacks evidence.
Speaker A:Substantial tariffs that he's talking about just.
Speaker A:It won't raise that much money.
Speaker A:So tariffs are not a source of income.
Speaker A:They just aren't.
Speaker B:Not for us at least.
Speaker A:No, not for the smaller companies.
Speaker A:I mean, smaller countries, sure.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:You could absolutely apply tariffs to necessities.
Speaker A:Like if a country doesn't produce its own oil, like if it doesn't have the ability to drill and refine its own oil, and they have a tariff on a company that wants to bring oil into their country for resale, then.
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker A:There could be a tariff applied to it because it's just not a resource they have.
Speaker A:Or you're applying tariffs on products that are from outside the country where they are manufactured for less, and you apply a tariff on it so that American companies that are producing that same product can remain competitive.
Speaker A: But since: Speaker A:No, I guess we kind of abandoned the tariffs back in the nineteen teens, like, as a source of actual income, because then we came up with income taxes.
Speaker B:Yeah, true.
Speaker B:I mean.
Speaker B:Yeah, that was for sure.
Speaker B:I mean, that was.
Speaker B:Was that not around the time with the irs?
Speaker B:Like, that was the whole deal.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Or close to it.
Speaker A:But, you know, the.
Speaker A:I think it was Woodrow Wilson back in the early 30s, maybe 20s, late 20s, that he tried to impose tariffs as a source of income.
Speaker A:But what happened was we had the Great Depression, and there was no way that tariffs were ever going to eat away at the debt and.
Speaker A:Or the deficit that was created from the Great Depression.
Speaker A:So income tax was.
Speaker A:Was something that had to be applied, you know, and we should pay for the services we have, but it's just a fact.
Speaker A:We have to pay for it.
Speaker A:I don't want to pay more, and I'd like to see it be used.
Speaker A:Efficiency.
Speaker A:That's why I support the idea of a Department of Government efficiency that goes in and does audits.
Speaker B:And Democrats should be open to that idea, but this is just not the way.
Speaker B:This is not the way a lot of people think it should happen.
Speaker A:I think, admittedly, most Democrats are in favor of efficiency of some sort of audit program applied within constraints of Congress so that it can run audits on departments in the United States.
Speaker A:And I've said it over and over.
Speaker A:One of the.
Speaker A:One of the departments that absolutely needs to be audited is the Department of Defense.
Speaker B:Oh, for sure.
Speaker B:Well, even.
Speaker B:I mean, even Trump didn't recently, he said that he would do something where he would work to cut like, 8% of the military budget over.
Speaker A:Yeah, it was gonna be like, 8:30.
Speaker A:Yeah, it was gonna be like 8%, 8% this year.
Speaker A:And then.
Speaker A:Yeah, it was like.
Speaker B:I didn't want to be on mute the whole time.
Speaker A:It's easy to bump.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's like 8% this year and then like 6% next year and then 7% the year after that or something like that.
Speaker B:Like, not a bad.
Speaker B:Not a bad move.
Speaker B:I think that's something that's needed to be done for a long time.
Speaker A:I don't disagree.
Speaker A:I mean, I certainly recognize that we absolutely have to have a military from the potential threat from other countries, whatnot, but we have to have a military that's technologically advanced, that we have a military that has the ammunitions necessary to potentially defend us in a war.
Speaker A:But at the same time, I don't think we need to have all of these military companies that are benefiting so much.
Speaker B:Oh, for sure.
Speaker A:That to me, I think, like, do they go with the lowest bidder?
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker A:There's not an audit.
Speaker A:We don't know how those bids are selected.
Speaker A:You know.
Speaker B:Yeah, and we should.
Speaker B:I would.
Speaker B:Again, a big part of this, though, is like NATO's role.
Speaker B:How.
Speaker B:How are we.
Speaker B:We're supposed to.
Speaker B:I mean, in my mind, America is supposed to lead NATO.
Speaker B:And what's going to happen with that?
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:Based on what he said, I have no idea.
Speaker B:Everything's up in the air and he's.
Speaker A:Not, he's not the best communicator.
Speaker A:His third grade reading level, I think makes it difficult when he's regurgitated, when he's basically vomiting those speeches at us, that I think that it makes it really difficult to understand what direction he's going to choose to go in.
Speaker A:Because in the end, I think, you know, at the most arcane level, some of the things that Donald Trump says I agree with in a sense of, yes, we need to have audits.
Speaker A:Yes, we should have some sort of congressional or executive department that has the audit authority, not the decision making authority, but at least the authority to do an audit of those departments.
Speaker A:And so it's a good idea, but it's not a new idea.
Speaker A:I mean, this is something that's been proposed year after, you know, presidency after presidency after presidency.
Speaker A:They've all said, this is, if we're gonna audit something, let's audit the Department of Defense.
Speaker A:The Pentagon needs an audit.
Speaker A:Should we audit the Department of education?
Speaker A:Yeah, 100%.
Speaker A:I think that it would be really good idea to find out, you know, is that money being spread or is education funding being spread across the country in a way that brings equality to how education happens?
Speaker A:Sure.
Speaker B:One of the bigger issues I see with it is just the fact that again, almost like with Social Security, there's so much fear mongering with any public service that the public pays into, whether it be the Department of Education, Social Security.
Speaker B:He didn't bring up Medicare once.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And that's.
Speaker B:I think that's a ticking time bomb for Republicans based on a lot of stuff that I've seen.
Speaker B:That is an issue that they have not talked a lot about.
Speaker B:But any public service.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:I mean, anything.
Speaker B:They didn't talk about health care.
Speaker B:They didn't talk about any of that kind of stuff.
Speaker A:Did you.
Speaker A:Did you see that?
Speaker A:Oh, I just lost.
Speaker A:I just lost the thought.
Speaker A:Well, it'll come back to me.
Speaker A:Yeah, I'm just dumbfounded.
Speaker A:I think.
Speaker A:Oh, no, that's what it was.
Speaker A:All of these Republicans going and doing their town halls, meeting with their constituents.
Speaker A:So McCormick out of Georgia had a pretty rough one.
Speaker A:A lot of Republicans had some pretty rough town halls.
Speaker A:Some Democrats have had some pretty tough town halls, too.
Speaker A:But I think what I was the most shocked by was the fact that Speaker Johnson issued a statement, either through email or some sort of communication, basically telling every Republican, stop going to town halls.
Speaker A:Cancel your town halls.
Speaker A:You can do them virtually, because virtually can be controlled, but you have to stop doing them.
Speaker A:And I'm always a little hesitant about how the Republican Party sort of handles those sorts of situations, because if.
Speaker A:If Speaker Johnson's coming out and saying, stop getting in the room with these people.
Speaker A:These are, you know, because he tried to use this.
Speaker A:These are professional protesters and whatnot.
Speaker A:There's some pretty old professional protesters, if that's the case, because I've seen video footage of some of the.
Speaker A:Some of the people that are.
Speaker A:That are making.
Speaker A:Asking the questions.
Speaker A:They're.
Speaker A:They're in their 60s, they're in their 70s, you know, late 50s.
Speaker A:These are not professional protesters.
Speaker A:George Soros is not paying for protesters to go.
Speaker A:Has he done it in the past?
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker A:Maybe.
Speaker A:But I don't believe that that's the case unless I sign up on some sort of website for George Soros where, you know, he's saying, if you sign up for this website, I'll pay for your travel to come.
Speaker A:Fine.
Speaker A:But I'm.
Speaker A:Then, you know, it's not like when Don Jr.
Speaker A:Went to Greenland and they were literally handing out cash and hats.
Speaker B:With Charlie Kirk.
Speaker A:Yeah, with Charlie Kirk.
Speaker A:To basically get people on camera with him.
Speaker A:And then immediately after it's done, they're all admitting on their Tiktoks and their Facebooks and whatever that it was all a setup that they paid them to do it, you know?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker A:It's kind of like the number of people that were.
Speaker A:They paid to bring to the Trump rallies over the summer before the election, and then they stranded them at one event.
Speaker A:They completely stranded the entire.
Speaker A:Almost the entire crowd.
Speaker A:They had six buses running back and forth from a parking lot to the venue.
Speaker A:And at some point, they just decided, we're not paying the bill.
Speaker A:So the bus company said, well, we're not picking anybody up.
Speaker A:And it was done.
Speaker A:People had to walk something, like, in some cases, like, six miles back to the parking lot.
Speaker A:It's insane.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Insane.
Speaker A:And I think.
Speaker A:And I think it was, like, hot.
Speaker A:I think it was, like.
Speaker A:It was.
Speaker A:Maybe it was too cold.
Speaker A:I think it was hot.
Speaker A:I think it was.
Speaker A:I think it was just.
Speaker A:It was a very hot evening.
Speaker A:Trump also said last night, and this is a quote, we ended all of Biden's environmental restrictions that were making our country far less safe and totally unaffordable.
Speaker A:And importantly, we ended the last administration's insane electric vehicle mandate, saving our autoworkers and companies from economic disruption, destruction.
Speaker A:This was deemed completely false.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I don't know what he was so.
Speaker B:Because sometimes he says stuff where, like, there's a little hint of truth, and then we'll move on to the next subject where everything is.
Speaker B:He doesn't use numbers.
Speaker B:He just goes, it's a huge amount.
Speaker B:You wouldn't believe how many.
Speaker B:All these people.
Speaker B:They.
Speaker B:I'm like, I don't.
Speaker B:It's something so broad.
Speaker B:You don't know.
Speaker B:And he does it well.
Speaker B:I mean, he did it well enough to be president.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So, yeah.
Speaker A:While Mr.
Speaker A:Trump has issued executive orders aimed at rolling back some of Biden's administrative climate regulations, the Trump administration has not initiated those legal proceedings to do so.
Speaker A:That can take years to complete.
Speaker A:So for now, all those regulations remain on the books.
Speaker A:Additionally, there is no electric vehicle mandate, though the Biden administration did enact a set of regulations that would, in effect, compel automakers to sell more electric vehicles.
Speaker A:Those rules also remain intact for the moment.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:It's just, you know, I will say there's something to how Democrats have handled the automotive industry, where I.
Speaker B:I mean, I've heard people who have worked for them feel thrown under the bus because of the electric vehicles.
Speaker B:They're afraid it's going to take their jobs.
Speaker B:Democrats shouldn't ignore that.
Speaker B:I would say they should definitely.
Speaker B:They should definitely try to make.
Speaker B:Make sure that people know that to manufacture vehicles, that they can do it with electric vehicles, same way you can do gas vehicles.
Speaker B:They need to.
Speaker B:They need to embrace that, but instead, they have ignored it.
Speaker B:That's the only.
Speaker B:That's the only thing.
Speaker A:I don't.
Speaker A:I don't disagree.
Speaker A:I Think.
Speaker A:And, and look, I, I am.
Speaker A:I am all in favor of the development of electric vehicles.
Speaker A:I, for me, I just don't think we're here yet.
Speaker A:We're at that point yet.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And you can manufacture them here.
Speaker B:You just can't.
Speaker B:I mean, it's going to have to be imports.
Speaker B:You can't get every resource from the.
Speaker B:And he talked about that, too.
Speaker B:He wants to extract resources from here.
Speaker B:But you can't do that.
Speaker B:To do what we need to do, you have to work with the rest of the world, or else we're going to be how the Soviet Union functioned and failed.
Speaker B:I mean, you just can't do that.
Speaker A:Well, and we don't have the lithium mines for that.
Speaker A:The United States, we don't have the lift.
Speaker A:Now, I would prefer we move away from lithium and go ahead and move over sodium, if you've never looked that up.
Speaker A:Look, look, look up.
Speaker A:Sodium batteries.
Speaker A:I think that there is a lot of available infrastructure or available technology that we may not have yet developed yet.
Speaker A:But sodium batteries, I think are the way to go because it doesn't damage the earth the way.
Speaker A:Because most of our planet's sodium.
Speaker A:I mean, you know, that's one of the.
Speaker A:Number one.
Speaker A:That's one of the highest elements on the planet.
Speaker A:I mean, our oceans are basically water, hydrogen, you know, oxygen and sodium.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:So, yeah, let's see.
Speaker A:Trump said, I've stopped all government censorship and backed free speech in America.
Speaker B:But he kicked Al Green out.
Speaker A:Yeah, he kicked out Al Green, which.
Speaker B:I mean, to be fair.
Speaker B:Yeah, it was, it was a disturbance, but we, We've had free speech the whole time.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:There is a.
Speaker A:I'm afraid that we won't have free speech.
Speaker A:The whole Trump presidency.
Speaker B:The.
Speaker B:I mean, if anything, he's the one that did go through and try to pick out words he deemed D, E, I.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Out of stuff.
Speaker B:I mean, people I know who are working for the government right now have had to go back and review that.
Speaker B:They, that they made sure they didn't even use the word they in certain emails.
Speaker B:I don't, I don't understand.
Speaker B:Like, that's free speech.
Speaker B:I guess it's only free speech if we can say it, and we don't want you to say anything against it.
Speaker B:That's not free speech.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So this is misleading.
Speaker A:Mr.
Speaker A:Trump signed an executive order purporting to protect free speech, but he has taken a number of the other actions that arguably curtail speech.
Speaker A:The White House has barred the Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One.
Speaker A:For declining to use the term Gulf of America.
Speaker A:He threatened this week to pull federal funding from schools that allow illegal protests, a move condemned by the American Civil Liberties Union as an infringement on the First Amendment.
Speaker A:And civil rights groups have sued over his efforts to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which they say chill speech.
Speaker A:Also, I know, especially in my own Facebook comments and things like that, that there are a lot of people out there that are still in this mindset that dei, diversity, equity, and inclusion has something to do with the hiring process.
Speaker A:It doesn't.
Speaker A:The United States did have the aa.
Speaker A:What is the.
Speaker A:Oh, gosh, Affirmative action.
Speaker A:Yes, we did have.
Speaker A:And in a lot of cases do still have affirmative action when it comes to the hiring process.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker B:And also, I don't know if that's even necessarily a bad thing.
Speaker B:No, like, I've heard reasonable arguments for and against it.
Speaker B:I mean, it.
Speaker B:It's worse to.
Speaker B:Clearly, in a country where people are discriminated against, and honestly, it comes down to.
Speaker B:If you're in a conversation with someone, is there discrimination in this country that if you're talking to someone that says no, they're gonna hate affirmative action?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Someone that says yes will be on the side of it.
Speaker A:Yeah, I just.
Speaker A:I.
Speaker A:The number one group that was affected that or that benefited the most from affirmative action, it wasn't even black people as a whole, but it was women.
Speaker A:Women in the United States benefit from affirmative action more than any other minority group.
Speaker A:And women aren't even the minority.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker A:But because in the workplace for such a long time, there were very, very few women in the work field, whatever fields, regardless of talents and things like that, there just weren't as many women that worked outside the home.
Speaker A:And that really changed within the last 70, 60, 70 years.
Speaker A:And because of that, we have a fairly.
Speaker A:There's always been a good 20, 25 to 30% difference in how much women are paid for the same work that men are doing.
Speaker A:There weren't as many women that were potential CEOs.
Speaker A:And now we do have more women that are CEOs.
Speaker A:We do have more women that are outside of the home, in the workplace.
Speaker A:And in a lot of cases, they are making, I want to say the same pay, but probably not, but at least less of a difference in some cases.
Speaker A:Not in all cases.
Speaker B:Today's numbers at the.
Speaker B:I don't know the numbers on here, but yeah, it's better.
Speaker B:But could be better.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:But why would.
Speaker A:Why would.
Speaker A:Why is it so threatening to have a program like affirmative action that is designed to benefit I mean, in the end, I think that it benefits everyone if you set.
Speaker A:No one's going to hire someone just because they're black or just because they're female.
Speaker A:It's not going to happen.
Speaker A:A company is always going to hire the most talented person or the person that has the best experience.
Speaker A:They're always going to hire them unless it's a money situation.
Speaker A:If they're limited in the budget, then, yeah, they potentially will hire someone who is similar in experience and talent if they can hire them for less.
Speaker A:That's just how companies handle that.
Speaker A:But this idea that companies are forced to hire because of diversity, equity and equality.
Speaker A:So my company, I literally had a conversation with one of the HR managers.
Speaker A:I said, how does DEI play a role in hiring for my company?
Speaker A:It doesn't.
Speaker A:We don't use DEI to hire.
Speaker A:DEI is part of what is the employee experience for the company.
Speaker A:So my company, the company I work for, has employee resource groups that for the month of February did several black history programs where they brought in number of speakers that we would get to listen to and ask questions of.
Speaker A:For March, they're doing a bunch of presentations on women in history and women in the workplace.
Speaker A:Women, you know, that's part of it.
Speaker A:But also diversity, equity and inclusion also handles things like making sure that the bathrooms are accessible for someone who is potentially either in a wheelchair or they are on crutches or something like that, which could be anybody at any point.
Speaker A:You know, you fall down at home and you have to have your foot in a boot for a week.
Speaker A:You want it to be a little easier to be able to go to a bathroom.
Speaker A:So the companies have inclusion processes and procedures that handle that sort of thing.
Speaker A:And that's what it's about.
Speaker A:So anyway, I'm constantly dumbfounded by the fact that anyone could potentially just ask their employer, how do you, how does DEI affect the employee experience where you work?
Speaker A:They'll give you the answer.
Speaker A:And nine times out of 10, DEI has nothing to do with the actual hiring process.
Speaker A:It's crazy.
Speaker A:Let's see.
Speaker A:Trump said last night, we suffered the worst inflation in 48 years, but perhaps even in the history of our country as president, I'm fighting every day to reverse this damage and make America affordable again.
Speaker B:Again, just goes back to the tariffs.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:President Trump said that on his first day in office, he would lower inflation, he would lower the price of eggs, he would make America affordable again on day one.
Speaker B:Yeah, didn't.
Speaker B:Didn't happen, unfortunately.
Speaker B:I wish that had happened.
Speaker B:Yeah, that would have been amazing.
Speaker A:So economists warn that some of his policies may actually do the opposite.
Speaker A:The fear.
Speaker A:That fear centers in large part around the tariffs Mr.
Speaker A:Trump has decided to impose on the United States biggest trading partners.
Speaker A:On Tuesday, he put in place a steep set of tariffs on Mexico and Canada, having already raised new penalties on China.
Speaker A:Tariffs of this aggressive nature are expected to not only raise prices for US Consumers, but, but also hurt growth.
Speaker A:So we're going to see.
Speaker A:This is the.
Speaker A: less in the first quarter in: Speaker A:But because we've been sitting somewhere around 3% or 3.4% or something like that, and the expectation was it was going to be at one.
Speaker A:Well, it came out yesterday and it was around minus three or minus four.
Speaker A:So we went well under that line, which means the United States isn't making as much money.
Speaker A:That's exactly what that means.
Speaker B:And again, we don't even have a whole lot of data yet because it's like one month really.
Speaker B:They're still looking back at some of the previous month's stats.
Speaker B:We really only have one month to work with, maybe two, you could argue at this very moment.
Speaker A:Well, and these are the quarterly releases.
Speaker A:Like this is the information that comes out every quarter.
Speaker A:So from January 21st until the first day of March, our GDP dropped and it dropped significantly when the tariffs went into effect yesterday we saw, so Monday the stock market was down, I think it lost 600 some odd points on the Dow Jones and then on Tuesday it was like another 550 or something like that.
Speaker A: mp put out apparently back in: Speaker B:And that's what has happened.
Speaker A:Your play, Mr.
Speaker A:Trump.
Speaker A:So he also said last night Joe Biden especially let the price of eggs get out of control and we're working hard to get it back down.
Speaker A:Yeah, very misleading.
Speaker B:Misleading.
Speaker B:Avian flu definitely caused a large portion of that.
Speaker B:Still happening?
Speaker B:Yeah, still happening.
Speaker B:Hasn't gotten into control.
Speaker A:Well, and the reason it hasn't gotten out of control was because we killed off tens of millions of, I mean, the federal government took care of, of eliminating tens of millions of chickens that were in the vicinity of chickens that had, you know, birds that had tested positive for it, which if they're in the vicinity and the vicinity is close.
Speaker B:Yeah, it can stretch like far off.
Speaker B:Wasn't it like if one Chicken had it.
Speaker B:And within like a mile.
Speaker A:I thought it was like six miles.
Speaker A:Yeah, I thought it was like a six mile radius.
Speaker B:Five or something.
Speaker B:It was something like that.
Speaker B:It was so close.
Speaker B:That's wild to me.
Speaker A:Yeah, that close.
Speaker A:And basically what you're looking at is a sphere of infection, and then if you have another one near the edge or outside of that, then you have another sphere of infection and basically it just, it just spreads around.
Speaker A:So hence they had to burn off, you know.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Tens of millions of chickens.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:No, yeah.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:Because the prices did soar during Biden's administration, but that's because of the bird flu, H5N1, which has been decimating poultry flocks in the United States, which of course, supply and demand.
Speaker A:If you don't have, if you don't have the supply and the demand is there, price goes up.
Speaker A:That's, you know, economics.
Speaker A:He said also, our goal is to get toxins out of the environment, poisons out of our food supply, and keep our children healthy and strong.
Speaker A:Very misleading.
Speaker A:So far.
Speaker A:The Trump administration is doing the exact opposite of getting toxins out of the environment by loosening or potentially loosening regulations handled by the epa.
Speaker A:And I'll just say this.
Speaker A:If you're watching this in West Virginia and you get your water out of a creek or you get your water from a well, the Trump administration is actively working to make sure that you get sick, that you get cancer, you get sick from some sort of a disease from drinking the, basically the sludge water from mining that's up creek from you.
Speaker A:That's.
Speaker A:I'm not, I'm not saying that they're doing it on purpose to poison you, but that's going to be the effect is that we are going to have more people with cancers from drinking toxic water.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Also, I mean, we pulled out the WHO organization and the Paris Climate Agreement.
Speaker A:Oh, yeah.
Speaker B:Several other things that.
Speaker A:Well, and see, that's one of the craziest things about the World Health Organization is we have to give them a year's notice that we're pulling out.
Speaker A:So we're technically still in the World Health Organization for a full year.
Speaker A:And you can't just yank yourself.
Speaker A:It's like the Paris Accord.
Speaker A:I think one of the things that really in line with this, he said that he pulled us back out of the Paris Accord.
Speaker A:He said it was because it was costing us hundreds of billions of dollars.
Speaker A:I need proof.
Speaker A:Like, the Paris Accord is not actually costing the United States almost anything.
Speaker A:It's basically a way of enacting small changes to potentially not raise the temperature.
Speaker A:What like 1 degree Celsius or 3 degrees Celsius?
Speaker A:Something like that?
Speaker B:Two, actually, I think it's two.
Speaker A:But that's the whole thing is it's an agreement by all of the countries to try and bring about policies that will not.
Speaker A:That will benefit the environment has nothing to do.
Speaker A:And you can create green sector jobs for that.
Speaker A:If that means.
Speaker A:I know he hates windmills.
Speaker A:I mean, I know he hates, hates windmills.
Speaker B:They kill the birds.
Speaker A:They kill the birds and they give people cancer.
Speaker A:From the sound, the woo woo.
Speaker A:I'm still dumbfounded by that.
Speaker A:That is such an old man thing to say.
Speaker A:Like your elderly grandparents and grand.
Speaker A:You know, your grandmother says that at Thanksgiving.
Speaker A:That's what that is.
Speaker A:That is what that is such a weird thing.
Speaker A:Let's see.
Speaker A:He said last night, 1.3 million people from ages 150 to 159 and over 130,000 people, according to Social Security database, are over the age of 160 years old.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:There was an article released by the Washington Post I think the day after he said that.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Earlier.
Speaker B:And it immediately just debunked everything.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:There and there people are just like, well, there's no cap.
Speaker B:All right, there is a cap.
Speaker B:It is 115.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's the cap.
Speaker B:Once it, once it caps that, you're out of the system.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:It.
Speaker B:I don't even know what to say.
Speaker B:That's honestly pure conspiracy.
Speaker B:There's.
Speaker A:Here's the problem.
Speaker A:A lot of people that are over the age of 100, even, even some people that are over the age of 95, they were born somewhere where a birth certificate wasn't readily available to be filled out at their birth.
Speaker A:Therefore, when census records came out, parents may not really know what year their child was born.
Speaker A:So they left that blank.
Speaker A:And in that situation, the Social Security information attached to that particular potential child was, did not contain a birth date.
Speaker A:So the federal government automatically applied a, a standard birth date to be recognized by everyone that would ever look at that database.
Speaker A:It's called the common working file, the Social Security, Medicare, where they both work off out of what's called a common working file.
Speaker A:And that common working file basically has all of the information that's attached to our Social Security security numbers.
Speaker A:I used to work in the.
Speaker A:I used to work.
Speaker A:I had secret level clearance to access that common working file when I worked in Medicare.
Speaker A:And it is.
Speaker A: f you saw a birth date in the: Speaker A:So that birthday, it's just an automatic default date.
Speaker A:No one looking at that information looks at that and goes, that dude's 160 years old.
Speaker A:Why?
Speaker A:First of all, they're not getting checks.
Speaker A:One, they're not alive.
Speaker A:They're not getting checks.
Speaker A:115 is the cutoff.
Speaker A:Also, if you make more than $170,000 a year, once you hit that $170,000 in your.
Speaker A:In your pay, you stop paying Social Security tax.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:They talk about wanting to fix Social Security so that it will last for everyone.
Speaker A:Raise that move.
Speaker A:Go ahead and move that up to 500,000 or something like that.
Speaker B:Sure.
Speaker B:Also the removing the tax on Social Security.
Speaker A:Sure.
Speaker B:Negotiable.
Speaker B:They're like, there's stuff in there where it's like.
Speaker B:I can see the idea.
Speaker B:I get the tax on tip things.
Speaker B:It's just encouraging thing, I think.
Speaker B:I think that's more of a step towards encouraging stuff like not increasing the minimum wage.
Speaker B:Right, sure.
Speaker B:It's like, well, we're gonna do no tax on tips, so we're keep tipping.
Speaker B:We're gonna really buy into the tip culture.
Speaker B:And it's like, what are you.
Speaker B:What are we doing?
Speaker B:We're having people like, if I'm paying for a meal, is it really up to me to decide?
Speaker B:I don't know if this.
Speaker B:I didn't really care for this person's service.
Speaker B:So they're not going to be able to eat tonight because they're being paid sub minimum wage.
Speaker B:I'm not going to tip them.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And it's up to me.
Speaker B:I think that's a bad.
Speaker B:That's just bad all around.
Speaker A:I do too.
Speaker A:There's actually a restaurant here in Colombia.
Speaker A:It's a pizza place that's over off of Main street that doesn't allow for tips.
Speaker A:You don't pay tips because the employees get a cut of the sales from that night.
Speaker A:That's how they do it.
Speaker A:And the pizza's outstanding.
Speaker A:And if I could remember what it's.
Speaker B:Called, I was about to say, what is it?
Speaker B:I wanna know.
Speaker A:I'll have to pull it up after.
Speaker A:Cause my phone is.
Speaker B:Oh yeah, I keep forgetting this isn't an actual camera.
Speaker B:It's your phone.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:That's crazy.
Speaker B:That's.
Speaker A:Cause the iPhone 15 ding has promotion recording.
Speaker A:And it's just, you know, I'm gonna be completely honest.
Speaker A:I don't know what promotion means.
Speaker A:It takes decent pictures.
Speaker A:I say decent Samsung, I think makes.
Speaker A:Takes better pictures.
Speaker A:Let's see.
Speaker A:So, yeah, Social Security database, the whole DOGE thing and Social Security, completely asinine.
Speaker A:The whole argument is just absolutely stupid.
Speaker A:There aren't people at 160 years old that someone is defrauding the government and they're getting Social Security checks.
Speaker A:It's not happening.
Speaker A:It's absolutely not happening.
Speaker A:The last one that I thought was pretty outrageous.
Speaker A:Countless other nations charge us tremendously.
Speaker A:High terror, higher tariffs than we charge them.
Speaker A:It's extremely exaggerated.
Speaker B:Yeah, I don't, I don't know.
Speaker B:I didn't know those numbers offhand.
Speaker B:Again, he was so broad.
Speaker B:I don't.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So the United States does have lower average tariffs rated than most countries globally.
Speaker A:But the rates are fairly similar to those of other wealthy nations.
Speaker A:America's average tariff rate for all products is about 3% compared to if 4% for Canada, CHAMP, Japan and the United Kingdom.
Speaker A:The European Union's average tariff rate is about 5% and it's 2%.
Speaker A:In Australia, according to the World Trade Organization data, China's average tariff rate for all products is 8% while India's is 17%.
Speaker A:Tariffs for various products vary widely depending on the country on which industries that governments has chosen to try to protect.
Speaker A:And again, that's the thing.
Speaker A:Most countries use tariffs to try and protect the industry of their country.
Speaker A:I did have one left.
Speaker A:I forgot.
Speaker B:All right, one more.
Speaker A:Yeah, one more.
Speaker A:I think it's been, it's been 59 minutes actually.
Speaker A:I have two left.
Speaker A:Which one do I want to go with?
Speaker A:Trump said today's interest rates took a beautiful drop.
Speaker A:But beautiful.
Speaker A:Oh, okay.
Speaker A:That's the one I want to do.
Speaker B:That's the one.
Speaker B:I mean, you could read, you could skim over both real quick.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's true today.
Speaker A:This is.
Speaker A:He said this last night.
Speaker A:Today, interest rates took a beautiful drop.
Speaker A:Big, beautiful drop.
Speaker A:It's about time.
Speaker A:There's no context for that.
Speaker A:Yeah, I don't know what didn't provide any context.
Speaker A:The US Government borrowing costs have fallen sharply in recent weeks.
Speaker A:On Tuesday, the yield on the benchmark 10 year note, which is the interest rate that investors are demanding to buy that bond, took another big step down.
Speaker A:It fell to its lowest level since October before reversing course later in the day.
Speaker A:Tariffs.
Speaker A:But the reason for the drop is perhaps not one that Trump should celebrate.
Speaker A:The decline has come as investors have begun become spooked about the outlook for the economy because most economists now are starting to predict that by the fall we will see a recession that is very Likely coming.
Speaker A:And then the last one was I withdrew the corrupt.
Speaker A:We were.
Speaker A:We withdrew from the corruption.
Speaker A:World Health Organization.
Speaker B:Oh, yeah.
Speaker B:And we talk.
Speaker A:Yeah, the World Health Organization is not corrupt.
Speaker A:Like every dime that they get from every country in the, in the world that, that that provides money to the World Health Organization is used to prevent the next pandemic.
Speaker B:Yeah, they've.
Speaker B:I mean, they've just recently, I think it was a year.
Speaker B:It's probably been a year.
Speaker B:But like, what made Ebola's.
Speaker B:Ebola vaccines.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So it's like.
Speaker B:Yeah, they're working on stuff.
Speaker B:It was weird, but now it's not.
Speaker B:At least for.
Speaker B:Well, three years.
Speaker B:Yeah, roughly.
Speaker A:It's maybe it's hard to wrap my head around just how dumb some of these things are said and how with at least 40% of our population, he completely gets away with it.
Speaker A:Like, last night was a campaign rally.
Speaker A:The State of the Union was an.
Speaker A:It was just a campaign rally.
Speaker A:I just.
Speaker A:To wrap it up, I will say what I really would have liked because there's no point in the Democrats sitting there.
Speaker A:I would have preferred that all of the Democrats gotten up and walked out of the chamber.
Speaker B:I thought about that for a second.
Speaker B:But I don't.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:I don't know if it would have been the most efficient thing because then it would have looked like maybe it could have looked like they lost harder.
Speaker B:Maybe it would have looked weak.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker A:For Democrats, I think that if it had been done in unity, it would have looked strong, but.
Speaker A:Cause like Ocasio Cortez, she sat out.
Speaker A:You had Senator Murphy of Connecticut, he sat out.
Speaker A:I don't think he was there.
Speaker A:Al Green was kicked out.
Speaker A:We had a couple Democrats, I think they got up, took their jackets off, turned around and did they walk out when they showed resist?
Speaker A:I think they did.
Speaker B:I saw that.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:I don't know if those were.
Speaker B:Were those just Democrats?
Speaker B:Yeah, I couldn't catch it.
Speaker B:I saw they did that, but.
Speaker A:Yeah, but ultimately in the end, I think that would have been that to me, you know, everyone, you know, obviously your own opinions, but I think that it would have sent a message to the country to say that it would have sent it.
Speaker B:I just.
Speaker B:I just don't know.
Speaker B:Because it would have sent a message.
Speaker B:I don't know how they would have taken it, though.
Speaker B:That's a trickier one for me.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:I don't know if.
Speaker B:I don't know what call that would be.
Speaker B:If I Had to make it well.
Speaker B:And because I would have, like, if I were representative, I probably would have gone and been there.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of someone who was there.
Speaker A:I don't know well.
Speaker A:So I want to see Democrats not supporting anything unless it's good for the country, same as Republicans.
Speaker A:I don't want to see any Republicans supporting anything that's not good for the country, like not good for the people of the country.
Speaker A:And I, I don't know that either party is really sending that message because the Republicans are wrong about what they think is going to benefit the people of this country, or at least what it is they're trying to sell to us.
Speaker A:And the Democrats don't really seem to yet have a cohesive message that is going to actually resonate.
Speaker B:I feel like they do have a message that they could grab for, but that's the part, that's the dirty part of the Democratic Party that I think is many of them are bought and paid for.
Speaker B:Many of them own corporate stocks, Many of them have been lobbied to hell.
Speaker B:I mean, that's the dirty part of the Democratic Party.
Speaker B:Many of them are elitists and they've been bought and paid for.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And there's a message to grab and it is for the people, the workers, the middle class, lower class people of this country.
Speaker B:Have they grabbed at that?
Speaker B:No.
Speaker B:Maybe three or four Democrats I can think of.
Speaker A:Well, we're entering.
Speaker A:We are still within Donald Trump's first hundred days.
Speaker A:Day 75.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:As crazy as you can potentially make it.
Speaker A:What do you think?
Speaker A:Day 75 looks like?
Speaker B:He's probably gonna rename some stuff.
Speaker B:Wouldn't be surprised if Greenland becomes red, white and Blueland.
Speaker B:I could see it happening.
Speaker A:So, okay, he only has to get Google and Apple to change their maps, right?
Speaker B:Yeah, that's it.
Speaker B:That's literally it.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:He could rename China something.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:He could rename Russia something.
Speaker B:He might even rename Ukraine something.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:Ukraine, I don't know.
Speaker B:I really.
Speaker B:I mean, he froze all the stuff.
Speaker B:Zelensky wants to talk more.
Speaker B:There was that whole debacle.
Speaker B:I don't.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:I can only hope with him or any president that it's not World War Three.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:I think it's scary.
Speaker A:I think the first six months of his presidency are really going to determine the path of democracy in the United States.
Speaker A:It definitely seems as though he is trying to work his way towards a democracy free America that he, you know, he's being a little subtle with the whole, you know, I should be the president for a third term.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Some people are always joking.
Speaker B:I don't mean, number one, I don't think a president, a sitting president, should joke about that.
Speaker B:Even if he was, you know, so far, even our checks and balances, which are seem to be pretty far right, have kept him in check.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:To an extent.
Speaker B:I will.
Speaker B:We still have democracy may maybe everything's literally everything's up in the after November.
Speaker B:Everything has been up in the air.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I think that is one of the things, however, that we are going to, I think we're going to continue to see Republicans here and there, the ones that, the ones that were never, always Trumpers.
Speaker A:I think we're going to continue to see some of them start to dissent a little bit from the Trump.
Speaker A:I mean, the House can't pass the bill.
Speaker A:Bill the budget.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Then you have the spending cap or the, Was it the debt ceiling?
Speaker A:The debt ceiling.
Speaker B:I personally think that we should get rid of it entirely.
Speaker B:I'm on that side of it.
Speaker A:I don't disagree.
Speaker A:Only because all it does is basically create a situation where the United States will potentially say, we're going to continue to take on debt.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:We're just not going to ever pay for it.
Speaker A:We're not, we're not going to be responsible for it.
Speaker A:And that lowers our credit.
Speaker B:Also, they get TV time for it.
Speaker B:That is a big part of it.
Speaker B:It's literally a carnival.
Speaker B:Every time I see a.
Speaker B:Democrats are like, oh, we have this thing.
Speaker B:Republicans, we just.
Speaker B:This thing, it's like, you want to put all the Americans on edge.
Speaker B:It's every single time.
Speaker B:It's like a whole month, we don't know what's going to happen.
Speaker B:I was.
Speaker B:Well, I raised it.
Speaker A:I will, I will say this, that one of the things I think that would be, that would be like, less affected when it comes to a potential government shutdown is the fact that a lot of our national parks are already shut down.
Speaker B:That.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And you know, because that's one of the things they always thought they go to first is they're like, you won't be able to go to the national park.
Speaker A:Well, guess what?
Speaker A:Mondays, Fridays and Sundays, there are a lot of national parks that are closed.
Speaker A:Some national parks are only open Tuesday to Friday.
Speaker A:Now, like, that's, that's where we're at right now.
Speaker A:Because, because they have fired park rangers, which is crazy.
Speaker B:It's just crazy.
Speaker B:I don't know why you would go after park rangers, but.
Speaker A:Yeah, hey, look, I think it was.
Speaker A:I think it was somebody that was filming at Yellowstone that was talking about.
Speaker A:He said, he said, I'm the only park ranger on duty.
Speaker A:Or it may not have been Yellowstone, but he said I'm the only park ranger on duty.
Speaker A:We're about a month and a half away from fire season.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And it takes about 20 park rangers to spot fires in the, in a, In a park this size.
Speaker A:And he said that there's only one of us now that, you know, if they.
Speaker A:And I come back to.
Speaker A:He doesn't want to import lumber from Canada anymore.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:If we're going to.
Speaker A:If his plan is to basically exploit all of the lumber in the United States that potentially available, that is going to be met with a lot of lawsuits because some of that.
Speaker A:Those federal lumber lands are.
Speaker A:Are unavailable because they have been deeded out to.
Speaker A:Or they were.
Speaker A:They were private.
Speaker A:They were deeded to the United States federal government and then they've been deeded back to those private individuals.
Speaker A:So it's not available to farm on.
Speaker A:Plus, you know, I think, I think our sections of farming, they go.
Speaker A:I think it's like every 60 years that you're allowed to actually farm lumber off of them because it, because they gotta let, they gotta let them grow back up.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker A:Look, it's, we're, we're.
Speaker A:It's, it's.
Speaker A:It's the dumbest timeline.
Speaker A:We're in the dumbest timeline.
Speaker A:But I guess we're gonna wrap it up because otherwise Bill and I will just sit here and talk and you all will probably.
Speaker B:So we could do the Bernie Sandy, Bernie Sanders filibuster.
Speaker A:We could do it for about eight hours.
Speaker A:On that bombshell, I think we're going to wrap it up.
Speaker A:That was episode number 245.
Speaker A:Thank you both for being here.
Speaker B:Yeah, thanks for having me.
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