Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:00]
| Okay, here we go. Intro, go! Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Friday, February 14th, 2025. It's just after three UTC. I'm Sam Minter and Yvonne Boas here. Hello, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[0:37]
| Hello.
|
Sam:
[0:39]
| So as usual, I guess we're going to do a but first. And as I've promised, I am ready to resume media and talking about movies and TV and stuff. And then we'll do more serious topics later on, as time allows. Some from Yvonne, some from me. so you got any light and frothy stuff to start with or should i jump in i don't.
|
Ivan:
[1:03]
| Have time today so i i've got a 5 a.m flight i'm back in puerto rico again i don't i don't i don't know what what's what what what is you know i know i okay i guess the the only one tidbit now we'll mention this and I'll make sure I keep it super short like right now for one minute. I keep coming back to San Juan. There is one thing. This island's too fucking small. Because I keep going to places and I keep bumping into people I know from high school. I go around where I live.
|
Sam:
[1:39]
| I think one recent time like last year when you were in Puerto Rico you mentioned the same thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:44]
| This fucking island is way too damn small man. Look, I mean I go to like the gym in Boca and I bump into people i know but the reality is that me going to a restaurant there whatever blah blah blah bumping up people that doesn't happen okay it doesn't fucking happen okay and i went to i went to a restaurant last week for lunch and one of my high school classmates was there and came across from the other side hey how you doing and then you know and then um and then it's a very loud dog And then yesterday, I went to work out at – there's a local – I go to Orange Theory Fitness. There's one actually near the hotel. And I went there, and there's another high school classmate of mine there saying hi to me. I'm like, what the fuck is this? We're only 90 – listen, dude. We're only 90 people and about 100 people that went – my high school class. It's not like we're 3,000. It's like two in two straight weeks. Like, you know, two straight weeks here. It's fucking ridiculous. So, yeah, this fucking island is way too damn small is what I realized.
|
Sam:
[2:51]
| Very good. Okay. Good enough. I will do one. I may, I mean, going forward, need to do like two a week to catch up. But I'm only going to do one. I'm going to do one.
|
Ivan:
[3:03]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[3:05]
| And that is Mitchell and the Machines.
|
Ivan:
[3:08]
| I thought you were going to talk about Mitch McConnell for a second, but no. Okay.
|
Sam:
[3:12]
| No, not this time. Now, to be fair, I have talked about Mitchell versus the Machines. Let me get it right. But I have talked about it on the show once before. I watched it in 2022, and apparently, for whatever reason, it came up again, and I watched it again in 2024, in May. And I'm going to give this one a thumbs up. It is a, it was a movie that was here in the U S it was a Netflix movie. I don't know if they introduced it internationally and other places, but it was, uh, it was, it was a Netflix movie.
|
Ivan:
[3:50]
| I see 2021.
|
Sam:
[3:52]
| Yeah. And it's a cartoon. It's sort of a, it's a little bit of a comedy slash adventure slash whatever. Anyway, big thumbs up. I, I, I really enjoyed this movie. Like I watched it twice. I enjoyed it just as much the second time around.
|
Ivan:
[4:10]
| What was it about?
|
Sam:
[4:12]
| Okay, so basically...
|
Ivan:
[4:13]
| You know, just took the super short, short cliff notes.
|
Sam:
[4:17]
| The super high-level version of it. There is this guy who is clearly modeled on Steve Jobs and Apple. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[4:27]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[4:27]
| And he is introducing the newest version of the personal assistant. So the old one was like Siri and he's on a phone. The new one, the new one is like an actual robot.
|
Ivan:
[4:42]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[4:42]
| And so the thing is, surprise, surprise, the robots turn evil and try to take over the world.
|
Ivan:
[4:51]
| Such an original plot at this point.
|
Sam:
[4:56]
| And basically, this one family, you know, ends up being the family that ends up having to fight and deal with this invasion.
|
Ivan:
[5:06]
| Beat the robot.
|
Sam:
[5:07]
| Like, because for whatever reason, and you see it happen in the thing, they end up not captured by the robots. Whereas, like, the entire rest of the population of Earth was captured by the robots.
|
Ivan:
[5:19]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[5:20]
| And the thing is, it's funny. It's heartwarming in the right places because it's got like, you know, there's the thing about them going, going off, you know, fighting the robots and all that kind of stuff. But also there's a thing about the daughter's relationship with her dad and the, you know, and there's, you know, some family dynamic stuff going on because it's all, they're also having a road trip together and not getting along while they're having the road trip. And then there's a couple of robots that are comic relief type of things. Furbies make a cameo at one point.
|
Ivan:
[5:54]
| Oh, Furby! Furby! Yeah!
|
Sam:
[5:58]
| Anyway, I give it a thumbs up. I enjoyed the movie. Let's see. Reception, 53 million households watched it in the first 28 days. The Rotten Tomatoes score is 97%.
|
Ivan:
[6:13]
| Milds, pretty good. Okay.
|
Sam:
[6:15]
| That's pretty good. The site's critic consensus reads, eye-catching and energetic, the Mitchells versus the machines delivers a funny feel-good story that the whole family can enjoy. There you go. Anyway.
|
Ivan:
[6:33]
| Okay. There you go.
|
Sam:
[6:34]
| There's my media. So we can wrap up the but first really fast and get to the serious stuff so you can get the hell out of here.
|
Ivan:
[6:42]
| Go sleep.
|
Sam:
[6:43]
| Leave.
|
Ivan:
[6:43]
| Oh, come on. Yeah, we have to be up early.
|
Sam:
[6:46]
| Okay, well, this break will do. Here we go. I need to make more music. That's clearly my real career.
|
Ivan:
[7:36]
| Yes. That's my future. Yes.
|
Sam:
[7:41]
| That thing right there, it's amazing. It hasn't won a Grammy already.
|
Ivan:
[7:46]
| I know. I'm shocked.
|
Sam:
[7:48]
| Yeah, exactly.
|
Ivan:
[7:49]
| Shocked and appalled. Just like Susan.
|
Sam:
[7:51]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[7:52]
| Always shocked and appalled.
|
Sam:
[7:53]
| She's concerned.
|
Ivan:
[7:55]
| Concerned. She's always concerned. Very concerned. It's always very concerned.
|
Sam:
[7:59]
| Okay. So a lot has actually happened this week. including some stuff just in the last few hours. Where do you want to start, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[8:07]
| Which stuff are you talking about the last few hours? Which ones? The tariffs?
|
Sam:
[8:11]
| No, the last few hours is the Mayor Adams stuff with all the people resigning.
|
Ivan:
[8:15]
| Well, no, there was other tariff stuff that happened during those hours, too, if you didn't notice.
|
Sam:
[8:21]
| Oh, so why don't you start with tariffs, and then I can talk about Mayor Adams and some of the other stuff in the next thing.
|
Ivan:
[8:27]
| Well, the thing is that Trump went and announced this whole thing about, reciprocal tariffs, which Sam remembered that it wasn't a Clancy novel back in the 90s, but you remembered the wrong novel.
|
Sam:
[8:42]
| Yeah, I said some of all fears, because that's really the one I always go to whenever I mention a Clancy novel.
|
Ivan:
[8:49]
| It was the one after it was a debt of honor, not some of all fears, which that was the start of a conflict with Japan specifically was the reciprocal tariffs. And so he did the announcement, And then very shortly after, but they were starting immediately, then said that he postponed them. I don't know.
|
Sam:
[9:16]
| This is what he's done with every tariff so far. Every single one so far.
|
Ivan:
[9:20]
| Except the China ones.
|
Sam:
[9:22]
| True China did go into effect.
|
Ivan:
[9:24]
| Yeah, except the China one. But every single other one, it's been, I mean, he literally went, like, not, like, I mean, it's probably why you missed it, because it happened almost like, I'm like, I'm reading the announcement first about the tariffs and then I'm going to wait. Huh?
|
Sam:
[9:42]
| Well, I missed the immediate part because I saw an update earlier today. There's like some group is going to study it and blah, blah, blah, and come back with recommendations, blah, blah, blah.
|
Ivan:
[9:52]
| So look, this was...
|
Sam:
[9:54]
| I mean, I know a few days ago he said it was going to start today.
|
Ivan:
[9:58]
| 1910 UTC.
|
Sam:
[10:00]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[10:01]
| Trump moved... Bloomberg News, breaking news. trump moved to impose reciprocal tariffs on u.s training partners with no clear doubt there okay yeah because then he said with no clear date when it would take effect because originally said immediate and so that's why it actually happened so quickly then bloomberg was able to combine it into the one breaking news thing because others said oh trump announced let me see it's got to be let me see in in in in in cnbc they because they went and i saw hey tariffs tariffs tariffs are coming okay trump signed sweeping reciprocal tariff plan says more coming that was seven hours ago okay okay and then so that one that i wrote from Bloomberg was a little bit later. Oh, yeah, we don't know the date. So, people said that the stock market went up today because they were like, yeah, whatever. He's just going to say every week there's fucking tariffs to somebody. I'm like, whatever. Who cares? And then he's going to back off most of them. And so, who the fuck cares?
|
Sam:
[11:19]
| Well, yeah, and this, like, at least in theory, the notion is for each one of these individual countries, they'll give some sort of concession and it'll result in the backing off or there'll be the holes and exceptions.
|
Ivan:
[11:32]
| There'll be some victory, yeah. Well, I mean, I'm sure that, you know, also we had the aluminum and steel tariffs that he announced.
|
Sam:
[11:39]
| Right, right. Those were like a day.
|
Ivan:
[11:40]
| Which those were also a couple of days ago. I'm going to guess that he's going to back them off pretty quick. Coke Cola today. You know, we know he loves Diet Coke. And I don't know if you've noticed that for the most part, he drinks it out of a can. And I don't know if you've noticed that.
|
Sam:
[11:54]
| I have not noticed, but okay.
|
Ivan:
[11:57]
| But usually he is drinking it out of a can. Coke said today that if they do put those aluminum tariffs in, that they may have to reduce making almost any of their products in aluminum and have to use plastic in the U.S.
|
Sam:
[12:13]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[12:14]
| So if he gets a hold of that, well, that will put a hole already in the aluminum tariffs right away.
|
Sam:
[12:23]
| Just Donald Trump's consumption of Diet Coke.
|
Ivan:
[12:26]
| Yes. oh you don't think i'm being you don't think i'm being rational i'm not analyzing this rationally of course he's like if they tell him hey boss yeah he said they can't make the diet coke anymore because of your aluminum tears i'll cancel him it.
|
Sam:
[12:45]
| Wouldn't be surprising.
|
Ivan:
[12:46]
| I mean And I mean, I fully expect that's going to be the case.
|
Sam:
[12:55]
| Look, I mean, the things to remember here are all of these are performative and all of them are transactional and nothing is well thought out either.
|
Ivan:
[13:07]
| No, no, no.
|
Sam:
[13:08]
| Yeah. And this applies not just to the tariffs, but practically anything else he's been doing so far, because the whole theory of operations is, hey, nobody can stop me. I can do whatever the fuck I want. So I'm just going to like order what I want and then figure it out later. and so sometimes that means things are getting stopped by the courts sometimes that means things are having unintended consequences beyond what he wanted.
|
Ivan:
[13:36]
| Sometimes it means that here's another one that he said today well here's another one that he said today that led to a massive drop in defense stocks real quickly this was today this is all fucking today this fucking i hate this goddamn administration, today this was at 3.53pm this was like after the fucking tarot thing the Fed stocks dropped after Trump says pentabon, Pentagon spending. Yes, Pentagon spending.
|
Sam:
[14:09]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[14:10]
| Halved. Okay?
|
Sam:
[14:12]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[14:12]
| And then a couple of hours later, he's telling the Europeans, hey, you need to buy more American weapons. And then right afterwards, he tells Modi, hey, can I tell you some F-35s? That was this afternoon.
|
Sam:
[14:31]
| I don't even know what to say. Like, look.
|
Ivan:
[14:34]
| What the heck did he talk to? Was that today, too?
|
Sam:
[14:37]
| I think so. Wasn't it this morning?
|
Ivan:
[14:42]
| What the heck did this goddamn illustration?
|
Sam:
[14:46]
| For those of you on audio only, Yvonne is, like, holding his head in his hands. And, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[14:55]
| That was all today!
|
Sam:
[14:57]
| Yes. That is all today. Like, he... And here's the thing. And this, this, this comes back to several themes we've had before. Like we've talked about, look at what they do, not what they say. And we've, we've talked about, you know, I don't know, like I have a note here. One of the things I wanted to talk about process versus results versus appearance. Like, because on the one hand, he's saying all of these really alarming things, but only some of them actually end up translating into actions. Now, the ones that do translate into actions are almost universally bad. But even when it's just him talking like you're it's the president of the fucking United States.
|
Ivan:
[15:47]
| Exactly.
|
Sam:
[15:48]
| You know, when he says something, people can't just ignore it. They have. Yeah. So. So, yes, he says something about, you know, cutting the Pentagon spending in half and the stock market goes crazy.
|
Ivan:
[16:00]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[16:01]
| You know, and, and, and, and meanwhile, people are also having to take seriously, okay, if you actually did cut it in half, what would that look like? What would happen? Like, what, what would that mean to our defense posture and all of this kind of stuff? And, So you have to pay some attention to what he says, even if it doesn't, like, happen. But you also have to, like, sort of calm down, wait a little bit, see what does happen. Because, like you said, announce tariffs and then unannounce them five minutes later.
|
Ivan:
[16:38]
| Did you see what Elon's kid said? I sent the video. I don't think that was doctored.
|
Sam:
[16:45]
| No, he said several things. One of them was sort of like, you're, you're not the real president. You have to get out of here.
|
Ivan:
[16:51]
| Uh, one of the things he said.
|
Sam:
[16:53]
| Yes, yes, he did. He, I think he also said something about you have to shut up now as well. At one point it was something similar. I might not be word for word. Um, you know, and, and people are like, of course he's just imitating his dad. what his dad says.
|
Ivan:
[17:18]
| Right? It has to be. I didn't come up with that shit. He's like, what, four?
|
Sam:
[17:23]
| Something like that four.
|
Ivan:
[17:25]
| I'm sure you're his dad.
|
Sam:
[17:26]
| Named Axe, of course. His name is Axe.
|
Ivan:
[17:29]
| Fuck, I swear to God. You know, that kid, when he turns into a teenager, will fucking hate his father. I mean, I can put money right now down and guarantee that one right now.
|
Sam:
[17:42]
| Like the rest of Elon's kids.
|
Ivan:
[17:44]
| Like the rest of his kids. I mean, not exactly. I'm not exactly.
|
Sam:
[17:48]
| What's he got now, like 15 or something?
|
Ivan:
[17:50]
| Oh, who knows? I don't know.
|
Sam:
[17:52]
| You know, because Elon's also, of course, said that, you know, it's part of his mission to sort of impregnate as many women as possible with as many kids as possible. You know, you know, you have to preserve his magnificent genes.
|
Ivan:
[18:06]
| Well, speaking of of this whole thing with with with how, you know, what he says versus what actually happened on that.
|
Sam:
[18:15]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[18:15]
| Right. You know, we've heard all the noise around what he's done, you know, with Elon in terms of job cuts and stuff. Right. OK, so we've heard a lot of that. And there was the New York Times had an actual like little tracker that they put on how much he's actually done so far. And, you know, we're talking really at this point. Really a handful of employees. Okay. And the thing is that the big thing was USAID. Where he did take that agency. You know, it's been, all their work has been stopped.
|
Sam:
[18:53]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[18:54]
| And there was a financial impact to a lot of farmers. Because they were, there was a big buyer of U.S. farm products. Billions of dollars of it. And so he completely screwed, Elon, a whole bunch of farmers that are now, of course, that they voted for Trump and now are pissed off.
|
Sam:
[19:20]
| We mentioned that last week. Part of it was the USAID, but apparently there are other grants to farmers that were also paused. So they're basically getting screwed left and right.
|
Ivan:
[19:29]
| No, no, no. They were buying those farm products to give away the vote.
|
Sam:
[19:34]
| No, I'm saying, yeah, yes, the USAID thing that you were mentioning, but also other grants to farmers were also paused. So they're getting screwed left and right, you know?
|
Ivan:
[19:45]
| Yeah, so the farmers are like, you know, but all of a sudden, as we have been mentioning, this is, the only people that seem to be MAGA that are complaining about stuff is when, now that they're actually, because they're not hurting the other people they expected to get hurt, because they're getting hurt, okay? Right. That's the only reason. That's the only reason. But the number of employees right now that has been impacted has been relatively small at this at this stage. I know that they're asking for, you know, you know, the all these people to be cut. The one group of employees that seems to be really getting hammered like right away is anybody that, you know, I don't even know. I've never been at a company that puts employees on probation for more than 30 days. Well, I didn't realize that the federal government like does that for, you know, for so many employees that for such. I saw that some provisions in federal government can last up to two years.
|
Sam:
[20:44]
| Oh, OK. Yeah, because I was reading that and I was thinking, OK, that's just the 60 days or something.
|
Ivan:
[20:50]
| No, it was like probations that could be one to two years.
|
Sam:
[20:54]
| That's crazy.
|
Ivan:
[20:55]
| It is a crazy amount of time. You know, yeah, I mean, I've never heard of probations that were that long. So so a lot of those people have been getting, you know, getting, you know, just just yeah, just fireball, which is just, you know, the whole thing about a lot of this. It's just There's just so There's just so, There's no thought to it. And, you know, it goes into, like, what Elon already did at Twitter, where he got rid of a whole bunch of people and then had to go call him. Hey, can you come back? We can't run this shit without you. You know?
|
Sam:
[21:40]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[21:41]
| Kind of a thing. So there's no method to the madness in any of this. And like you mentioned, they talk about the deficit, talk about the deficit, and that's why they're cutting the employees. The current annual deficit is about to be two trillion dollars. You fired all the employees in the federal government. You could fire them all, all, all. My estimate is that maybe you could save 100 to 200 billion dollars total. That's it. That's firing them all. all of them the employee head count and the federal government is is like not even i mean it's like it's you know the the budget the budget is like four trillion dollars if i remember correctly right right now five trillion no more like five six trillion dollars 200 billion dollars is nothing it's nothing out of that budget it's just nothing so they are going it's the entire performative thing because this goes and does shock and awe. This shows that we are in charge. We are going in and we're marching in and we're doing this. But really in terms of addressing the deficit, it's a complete joke. And it's a total joke, especially with the tax cuts they're talking about trying to do on the other end because, I mean, all of that will be eaten up with one of those tax cuts like that. Okay? Okay.
|
Sam:
[23:10]
| So, so that's what I was going to say. Like lately, like, yes, in the past, there has been a lot of talk about deficits recently. Like when you hear Elon talk or whatever, it's all about like waste and inefficiency and fraud. That's what he keeps saying. Like, and saying that this, this or that is like, we shouldn't be spending money on that. We shouldn't be spending money on this. Of course, ignoring the fact that in almost all cases we're spending money because there was a law passed that said we should but yeah but you know basically fraud efficiency blah blah blah blah blah but that that's clearly not what they're actually doing and like you said like it's not about deficit either if anything it's about trying to pay for his tax cuts that he wants to do but now but.
|
Ivan:
[24:00]
| Even that isn't enough here here's a problem and i and i pulled this information today to try to understand why we are where we are related to the deficit in taxes. And look, since 2015.
|
Ivan:
[24:14]
| The last 10 years, our U.S. GDP has grown about somewhere over 50 odd percent. Okay. So the economy has had huge growth over the last 10 years. The problem is tax receipts have barely gone up less than 10 percent. And that does not compute. That is not sustainable. You can't be in an economy that is growing that added $10 trillion, okay, to the economy over that time period and only collect an extra few hundred billion in extra taxes. There's just no way. It shouldn't be that way. And that's a big thing with all these damn tax cuts that have come in with the Trump administration and, you know, in his administration at first that went and like took revenues down 2020 you know the the pandemic also caused an expansion of the deficit, and the reality is that tax receipts did not start growing again until biden came into office again okay because there were some tax increases there were some loophole schools there were because he went and he put people in the irs so they would go after collecting taxes from people, These guys, what they want, they want to move IRS agents to go do immigration shit. Like, they don't even know what the fuck they're doing.
|
Ivan:
[25:38]
| And so, that's going to dent receipts. You can't run a fucking business where you don't get money. I mean, you need to collect money. It's not just about spending money. Of course, Elon's doing that with Twitter. I mean, right now, we basically, you know, fucking like drove revenue down 90%. And also, he's doing a great job with Tesla right now because in January, globally, electric car sales were soared and his sales plummeted. Great job, Elon. You're doing great. I really am looking forward to the next quarter's fucking financial results from Tesla. Because unless there's a head fake somewhere in those numbers, it's going to be a monumental disaster for the company. Why? Because he's fucking around with a whole bunch of goddamn Nazi teenagers going around, pulling reports, ordering people to do shit, and none of them have any clue about what the fuck they're telling them to do.
|
Sam:
[26:39]
| Well, look, the key important part to remember on what the Trumpies are trying to do to the government is that, of course, they're not looking to make it more efficient. Of course, they're not looking to make it work better. Of course, fundamentally, what they want is to break it. They're anti-government. They want to break it. It's not about money. It's not about deficits. It's not about any of that stuff. It's about breaking it, with the possible exception of any parts of government that they can directly use for their personal benefit.
|
Ivan:
[27:21]
| The thing is that those things and those goals will wind up hurting a lot of people. And I mean, it's going to happen.
|
Sam:
[27:32]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[27:33]
| It's going to happen. It's not kind of like it's going to happen.
|
Sam:
[27:37]
| It's already happening.
|
Ivan:
[27:39]
| Like, small scale stuff. Look, what I'm talking, I'm talking about recession, financial crisis, kind of fucking horse shit again. I mean, that's the kind of level shit I'm talking about.
|
Sam:
[27:52]
| I mean, there, if you ramp up the firing of government employees, you got to remember the government's a significant employer in this country. You're going to have.
|
Ivan:
[28:04]
| It's going to create a recession.
|
Sam:
[28:06]
| You're you're gonna drive up unemployment you're gonna cause people to not spend money other folks are gonna panic like you said it's all psychological and this stuff builds on itself and yeah you're you're gonna cause a recession and it's like you know you you and when these folks came in things were actually in pretty good shape it's like they're purposely cracking it yes yes i mean the tariffs too for that matter yeah you know if any of them ever actually get put on and stay on of course it's inflationary.
|
Ivan:
[28:41]
| Yes, loud kaboom.
|
Sam:
[28:47]
| Yes there was a loud kaboom on my side okay i don't know who knows they happen here I don't know. Can't tell you why.
|
Ivan:
[28:56]
| Okay, as long as you're not worried. Okay.
|
Sam:
[28:59]
| I am not worried at the moment. No bullet has come through the window.
|
Ivan:
[29:03]
| No, that did not sound like a bullet. I've heard bullets. That sounded more like an explosion.
|
Sam:
[29:08]
| There are explosions here all the time. I don't know what to tell you. Okay, all right. Unlike last time you heard an explosion while we were recording, we determined the Seahawks had just won a game. I don't think that's the case right now.
|
Ivan:
[29:21]
| No, that's not. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's true. Yes. Yeah, there's no. Okay. All right. Anyway, you know, I had shared this polling data about how people reacted, have been reacting to this. You go did this, did this survey of they were doing the, you know, is the country on a good track, bad track bullshit thing? OK, right. Pretty interesting inflections that happened over the last.
|
Sam:
[29:53]
| Which, by the way, I've always disliked that particular. metric.
|
Ivan:
[29:57]
| It's a terrible metric.
|
Sam:
[29:58]
| Because you can be unhappy with the right track, wrong track because you think they're not doing enough of something or they're doing too much of something and either way you think it's wrong track. Go ahead.
|
Ivan:
[30:14]
| The interesting thing was just because I also always find a question also it's kind of like it's not, I don't think it's the right question the way it's posed.
|
Sam:
[30:26]
| OK, but it's useful because this this particular question has been tracked for decades and decades and decades.
|
Ivan:
[30:33]
| But regardless, the one thing that was more important that I that I found with this was the trends that were in it. OK, because it did it did have, you know, it did have things that were done by by age group and other things and so forth. And it had what happened, say, since the election. okay and what's happened at the inaugural and post the election okay very interesting things that i saw in there about this like one thing was the reaction by a lot of people after the election okay how wrong track like uh good you know on the right track surged by quite a lot okay according the day before the election it was like uh let's see it was like somewhere in the uh 54.
|
Ivan:
[31:24]
| It was like you know let me see 21st of january 2021 54.5 to 30.5 i'm looking at on my phone because i don't another place to look at it where i can look at more in detail but you look at right after the election it dipped like like it went down to like it was like at 48 or 42 so it was Whereas before, there was a 40-point gap to it. It closed to a 7-point gap right after the election. So that was a big shift in sentiment. Now, the one thing that I found interesting was how the move really was different by age group.
|
Ivan:
[32:06]
| The biggest mover in the age groups that I saw was under 30 years old. The under 30 years old, okay, before the election, now I finally was able to narrow it here. Right before the election, they were at 54.6 wrong track, 35.2 right track. The day after the election, it flipped 54% right track, 32% wrong track, right after the election. Okay?
|
Sam:
[32:39]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[32:40]
| Now, but, but, since, you know, stuff has been happening, and especially you can see that after the inauguration, it started just flipping again. I mean, in the weeks just post the inauguration, it's like the wrong track is now it took like a dull it was like it seems like, according to this, like sometime in 30th by by December, by the 23rd of December, about about then late December, wrong track was back ahead on the young group. I guess, like, 40 days later, they realize, oh, fuck, okay, after the election, this was really bad that we voted for this clown, okay? So it was back to 47-38. Right now, it's at 49-36. So basically, the right track went down from the election day. From 54, they went green right track, to 36, two months later. I mean, it's a 20-point drop. But that under 30 group is nuts. It's all I can say about this right now. This fucking group is fucked up. Because if you look at the older groups, here's the one thing. The 65 group did have a change.
|
Ivan:
[33:58]
| It was post-election more than anything. It was actually post-inauguration. Where it was 67, wrong track, and it's dropped now to 55. Okay? It's still they think it's mostly wrong track But only went from 67 to 55 After he got he got voted 45 to 64 45.
|
Ivan:
[34:21]
| We were at 68% wrong track before the inauguration. Now it's like 50-40 still, you know, wrong track, you know, but, but, you know, yeah, it's like for some reason that group, you know, now 30 to 44. Here's the interesting thing. They went, they were.
|
Sam:
[34:40]
| There's an interesting thing. Go ahead.
|
Ivan:
[34:42]
| There's a very interesting thing about this one. They were right before inauguration. they had been wrong track 60 percent right track 30 right after the inauguration they went they were half of that 50 50 44 44 they tied it now two weeks later wrong track surged to get the 58 percent to 33 they're back in the other way okay so it's like that those that young group under 40 The volatility of how they are seeing this, Is ridiculously wide I guess what it looks like is that Oh my god, we're changing the government We're getting rid of the old guy Biden Yeah, yeah, yeah, Trump's gonna come in and fix it Yeah, yeah, yeah, then like a little bit later, Holy shit, what the fuck were we talking about? Oh my god, this is terrible Okay, so now they're going back the other way Only in a span of like three months.
|
Sam:
[35:40]
| Yeah i i think i think there are a few things there i mean one is the younger you are the less you've seen and this is a truism but like there's been less back and forth that is within your experience more of that massive.
|
Ivan:
[35:57]
| Insight so the younger you are the less you've seen really.
|
Sam:
[35:59]
| Okay thank you thanks sam okay yeah we're.
|
Ivan:
[36:04]
| Really giving the people you know the.
|
Sam:
[36:05]
| The point is, if it's the first new president since you've really been paying attention, for instance, then like, oh, everything's going to change, new president, blah, blah, blah. Once you've been through four or five presidents. You're like, okay, it's a new president until proven otherwise. We assume things are going to basically be the same with a few little changes here and there. And then of course you get Donald Trump blowing everything fucking up, but you know where, and so I think that's part of it. And I think part of it is like what we've talked about before, just in terms of attention economy and people are paying attention at all or knowing what, or understanding what they're seeing or the import of it you know you have all.
|
Ivan:
[36:50]
| Believing trump in his word like for example yes i mean like i don't know i guess in the last the chinese pay.
|
Sam:
[36:56]
| The tariffs right.
|
Ivan:
[36:57]
| The chinese pay the tariffs he was gonna he's gonna eliminate inflation on day one or a day what i don't know 20 something how's inflation doing sam should.
|
Sam:
[37:08]
| We do an egg price check.
|
Ivan:
[37:09]
| Yeah should we do an egg price check as a matter of fact i heard that eggs are at a record high right now so he he was not able They've.
|
Sam:
[37:18]
| Been in record highs for like at least a week, maybe two now. I thought I saw someone say that like the average price nationwide was like double what it was a few weeks ago.
|
Ivan:
[37:28]
| Correct. So so so he didn't just lower egg prices. And oh, by the way, how is that Palestinian? How is that that plan? So because many people turned on Biden because he didn't have the right plan to stop Israel and what they were doing in Gaza. How is that new plan coming, Sam?
|
Sam:
[37:51]
| Um, we're going to bulldoze the whole place and make all the condos. Oh, by, by the way, based on like I had said last week, like if Donald Trump really was at all sincere on this, he'd invite all the Palestinians to the U S he specifically set was asked that question. It was like, no, no, it's too far away. They, they need to go somewhere closer. Like it's, you know, they, it wouldn't know. So yeah, no, he doesn't want any of them here.
|
Ivan:
[38:21]
| Oh my god you didn't want him here oh you know poor thing you know so yeah so I mean you know I don't know, he's doing what he said he was I mean he's doing what he said he was gonna do many people didn't believe him now all of a sudden people are realizing oh he is really gonna eat our faces like he said he was oh I mean shit I thought he was just kidding.
|
Sam:
[38:51]
| Yeah it's all bluster well and look some of it is bluster that's the thing you like what.
|
Ivan:
[38:57]
| No some of it is bluster but a lot of it is really hurting well and frankly even.
|
Sam:
[39:03]
| The thing even the things that are bluster like if he could do it he would.
|
Ivan:
[39:09]
| Oh yeah like.
|
Sam:
[39:11]
| Like you know like you could.
|
Ivan:
[39:12]
| Like the citizen like a birthright citizenship thing like.
|
Sam:
[39:16]
| Birthright citizenship like canada the 51st state Like Greenland, like you can give all these reasons why these things might not happen, but you like more than one person has now said like Trudeau on Canada was like, was caught on an off mic moment this week, basically telling people, oh yeah, Donald's completely serious about the 51st state thing.
|
Ivan:
[39:37]
| Well, that they should be, you know, that he said that they should be rightfully concerned about it. Absolutely. Yes. No, absolutely. They shouldn't just, like, ignore the threat. Yes.
|
Sam:
[39:49]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[39:50]
| Absolutely. So, I derailed you at one point. You wanted to talk about Eric Adams.
|
Sam:
[39:56]
| Well, I said you could do this stuff for this segment, and we can take a break, and we'll come back and talk about that other stuff. And I was just about to say, let's take that break.
|
Ivan:
[40:06]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[40:06]
| And, you know, we'll come back. I'll start with Eric Adams and maybe a couple other little things. We'll see back after this. Okay, before I get to Eric Adams, I'm just noticing one piece of unconfirmed breaking news.
|
Ivan:
[41:21]
| Oh, God, now what?
|
Sam:
[41:23]
| Well, it's just weird, and maybe it's not even real. I haven't—usually I would wait until see confirmation from somewhere else. But what the hell, we're recording. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio's plane, which was on the way to Germany for the Munich Security Conference, has turned around for unknown reasons. Yeah, well, we should be happy.
|
Ivan:
[41:44]
| It's just a problem.
|
Sam:
[41:45]
| Could be anything. Mechanical issue.
|
Ivan:
[41:47]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[41:48]
| Somebody threw up on the plane and they need to clean the rug. You know.
|
Ivan:
[41:52]
| Your shit is bad. I mean, who knows?
|
Sam:
[41:57]
| Probably nothing, but just still weird. Like, usually for these, like, diplomatic flights, they're fairly, you know, it's notable when anything happens, you know?
|
Ivan:
[42:07]
| Okay. Well.
|
Sam:
[42:08]
| Okay. Anyway, Eric Adams, mayor of New York, indicted for a variety of corruption-related stuff. I think he was doing some work for the government of Turkey. He was taking, you know, all kinds of stuff. Basically, guy's shady as fuck, okay?
|
Ivan:
[42:27]
| Yes. And, you know, the— That much is certain.
|
Sam:
[42:30]
| Yeah. I mean, and, like, New York elected him anyway because he was anti-crime, whatever, whatever, but, like— I mean.
|
Ivan:
[42:38]
| There were some questions about him, but he wasn't.
|
Sam:
[42:41]
| There were already questions.
|
Ivan:
[42:42]
| No, no, no. There were questions. There's no doubt a question.
|
Sam:
[42:46]
| But no answer.
|
Ivan:
[42:48]
| But it wasn't like there were like some clear smoking guns. He was a cop. He's whatever. There were some questions about some of this stuff. But, you know, they didn't seem to be. They didn't seem to reach the level of like, OK, we need to be really, you know. Well, he still voted me, basically. That's what I see.
|
Sam:
[43:12]
| So anyway, he was indicted by the Justice Department, and the court things were still going on. But basically, he looks really guilty. Yes. I know he has not yet been convicted by a jury of his peers.
|
Ivan:
[43:26]
| But look, there's been a lot of investigations around him by a lot of the local media that uncovered quite a lot of shady things. and he was associated with quite a lot of shady people. And it pretty much seems that, yeah, based on what we have seen, yeah, he looks pretty good.
|
Sam:
[43:45]
| Yes. So now here's the thing. Starting... even before the inauguration, but accelerating after the inauguration, there was talk about how Adams was trying to negotiate with Trump to get the charges dropped. And a few days ago, Trump did indeed announce that they were dropping the charges. And very specifically, they were going to, and by the way, the way it works, you have to request the Judd. You have to make a request to the judge to dismiss the case. So it's not, you know, they can't do it unilaterally. The judge has to agree. But they were making a request specifically to dismiss without prejudice, which means that they could bring back charges.
|
Ivan:
[44:40]
| By the way, update is a crack in the windshield. And there will be a point.
|
Sam:
[44:44]
| Ah, OK. There you go. Answer given. So presumably they're going to land and switch planes and then he's going to go.
|
Ivan:
[44:51]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[44:52]
| No one dead?
|
Ivan:
[44:54]
| No.
|
Sam:
[44:55]
| No. Oh, well. No, that sounded wrong. Not, oh, well, like sad, you know, too bad at that, you know. Anyway. All the best to Mr. Rubio and his staff and other people on the plane. Okay.
|
Sam:
[45:10]
| Adams, so they said, we're going to do it without prejudice. And so people started pointing out, look, what this means is essentially that the Trump administration has leverage. Like there's this stuff going on all over the country where they're trying to pressure states and cities to cooperate with the immigration stuff, you know, to help kick people out. And now they've basically got something that says, hey, Eric Adams, you do what the administration wants. These charges never come back. But if, on the other hand, you don't do what we want, guess what? We're going to charge you again. And in the memo announcing that they were going to do these pardons, it even explicitly said that one of the reasons is that the mayor could not properly execute on his duties while he was under indictment and had to go to trial and this was politically motivated. Oh, and we will reassess whether or not to put these charges after the next mayoral election in New York.
|
Sam:
[46:20]
| So, but, so it was almost explicit, right? And, but then today we're, we're basically getting one of these Saturday night massacre situations. Of course it's Thursday night, but the, because central department of justice told the, you know, the, the New York AG to drop the case.
|
Ivan:
[46:47]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[46:47]
| And she wouldn't.
|
Ivan:
[46:49]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[46:50]
| She issued a long memo.
|
Ivan:
[46:52]
| And by the way, this is a Trump-appointed AG.
|
Sam:
[46:54]
| Yeah, this is an acting AG that's only been on a job a few weeks because she was appointed by Trump to be acting during this time period. And she refused, basically saying that there's no basis in law to drop this and I'm not going to cooperate. And then there's this footnote that she added. She just threw this in a footnote. Did you read the footnote, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[47:18]
| I did not get to read the footnote. What did the footnote say?
|
Sam:
[47:22]
| Footnote on her message that said, by the way, I'm not going to do this. And if you have a problem with that, I will submit my resignation. Footnote. I attended a meeting on January 31st, 2025 with Mr. Bove, Adams' counsel, and members of my office. Adams' attorney repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the department's enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed. Mr. Bove admonished a member of my team who took notes during that meeting and directed the collection of those notes at the meeting's conclusions. So, basically, in her letter saying no, she provided witness testimony of the fact that they were making this. Well, at least that the quid pro quo was offered.
|
Ivan:
[48:15]
| Offered.
|
Sam:
[48:16]
| And then add that to the text of the memo itself.
|
Ivan:
[48:21]
| And then dismiss it without prejudice, which means, yeah, we're, yeah.
|
Sam:
[48:26]
| And so, she refused. Apparently, a couple other members of her staff also refused and also resigned when asked to do this. Then the request was sent back to Maine Justice, and I guess three more people at Maine Justice also resigned over this. Last I heard, which was like an hour and a half ago, we were up to six Department of Justice attorneys refusing to do this. and as of now the paperwork has not actually been filed to request the dismissal of charges which makes you after all of this also wonder even if they get a lawyer i mean i'm sure they'll eventually fire enough people they'll get the judge.
|
Ivan:
[49:07]
| Will dismiss it because the one thing is the judge may go and just say fuck you know this is not being dismissed which.
|
Sam:
[49:13]
| They can do and they can also appoint somebody else to be the prosecutor correct yes like that that has happened in a couple of cases before where the government has it's very unusual from what i understand and i think yeah but this.
|
Ivan:
[49:26]
| Is this but this but this is a kind of situation that.
|
Sam:
[49:29]
| Basically and i'm not i'm not sure yeah i'm not sure i've heard of it happening in criminal charges i know i've had it's happened in civil cases i've.
|
Ivan:
[49:37]
| Heard it in criminal charges.
|
Sam:
[49:38]
| Okay yeah, So, so yeah, I I'm thinking like the judge is going to be like, screw you. I read all this stuff, you know, because, because even the memo from Pam Bondi or whatever, saying that they were going to do this specifically said, this is not because of the law or the facts. This is because of this other stuff. And, and so like, so I don't know what, what's interesting here is that this is one of the first cases where we're seeing this level of resistance to the Trump orders from Trumpies. Like you said, this was a Trump nominee. She apparently has the acting New York AG, whatever her title was, was apparently full of conservative credentials. She clerked for Scalia. She's on the Federalist Society. She's like, blah, blah, blah. All of the things you could see. And she's still like, no, no.
|
Ivan:
[50:45]
| But look, man, I mean, it's one of those things where Trump is not surrounding himself with conservatives.
|
Sam:
[50:55]
| No.
|
Ivan:
[50:55]
| He is surrounding himself with criminals. If you're a criminal, you're a friend. I mean, he went and he pardoned Blagojevic, okay?
|
Sam:
[51:06]
| Yes. who he commuted previously four years ago.
|
Ivan:
[51:09]
| And now he fully pardoned, okay?
|
Sam:
[51:11]
| Yep.
|
Ivan:
[51:12]
| You know, now he wants to pardon Adams. He pardoned all the J6ers. He pardoned a whole bunch of other fucking criminals. I mean, it's people that were out and out fucking criminals. And just because, hey, if you're a criminal, you're with me. We're in a crime family.
|
Sam:
[51:33]
| Yes. I mean, there's so many moves here that are directly related to enabling corruption.
|
Ivan:
[51:42]
| Jesus Christ, talk about, you want to talk about, and I was talking about this week, a move to enable corruption. It's this whole thing where they ordered the DOJ to not investigate violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
|
Sam:
[52:00]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[52:01]
| Which is basically the act that makes it that people that work at multinational companies doing business in other countries cannot go and bribe foreign government officials. You cannot. And if you do so, you will be prosecuted in the United States. I had a boss of mine that was prosecuted and jailed for FCPA violations. Okay.
|
Sam:
[52:26]
| All right. And by the way, this is not like a new law that came up under Biden or something. This has been a long time.
|
Ivan:
[52:31]
| It was from the 70s.
|
Sam:
[52:33]
| Okay?
|
Ivan:
[52:34]
| Many people I know have been investigated and gone to jail for this, okay? Companies have been investigated. But here is the thing about this. The fact that they order to not prosecute doesn't mean the law is gone.
|
Sam:
[52:51]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[52:52]
| So what does that make? So what creates is a situation where, If you are a company that is friends with this administration, you can go to try to earn business in another country. You can feel probably free to provide any of the bribes that you want to earn that business. And you will not be prosecuted. Hell, you'll probably be pardoned, even if you just in case, just to cover your tracks. OK, and if you're a competitor of them and try to offer the same money, you might wind up being the one being prosecuted because you're going against it because you're going against the guy that wants that they want to win the business.
|
Sam:
[53:33]
| Right. Because it can be completely selective.
|
Ivan:
[53:36]
| Exactly. So this is this is an it just creates an insane situation. I mean, all I know is that anybody, look, I know that I'm not, I, listen, if I'm an employee of a company that is under, you know, that does this, I mean, I would be, look, I don't care that they're not being prosecuted. And I can't, we can't be involved in this, but the reality is that there will be companies that will completely disregard this because they have gone to Mar-a-Lago many times and wine and dine them and whatever, and they feel confident that, you know, they're not going to be prosecuted. And so, therefore, they will go all out, basically pay off anybody they got to get the business, and their competitors can't do anything about it. This is the kind of Robert Barron capitalism that we haven't had in this country for really more for 100 years at that level.
|
Sam:
[54:35]
| And by the way, the one thing you mentioned, the Farah law or whatever, is only one of like half a dozen examples of them eliminating groups that do enforcement of these things. Or telling them not to. Or openly saying, well, this is how we're going to do it. I mean, the stupid Adams thing that we started this conversation. Right. How this is like as blatant a corruption is okay with us. As long as you do what we want, what we want you to message as you possibly can do.
|
Ivan:
[55:10]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[55:11]
| You know? And so I expect more like, you know, it's just blatant and open. And this is something that has been part of Donald's modus operandi for years and years and years. He refined it some during his first presidency, but he'd been doing it even before, is that if you do the crime out in the open, then just people are like, oh, well, he did that, I guess. I guess it must be okay. Like, if it was wrong, he'd be hiding it. But instead, it is completely about like, hey, no, yes, I'm doing quid pro quos. That's just how you do business. That's how it should be. That's how it should be. You know, if you want something from me, you give me something, you know?
|
Ivan:
[56:09]
| By the way, apparently this news at 6 o'clock Eastern had come out on inflation, just a newsflash. Wholesale prices also in January rose by a, way higher number than expected so.
|
Sam:
[56:26]
| Okay so moving away from uh corruption for a minute or to a different kind of corruption uh we we we mentioned musk's kid in the oval office but let's talk about that whole thing for a little bit because i was i was actually listening to like last week's show and i said something about how yeah musk was doing xyz and he was tweeting and stuff but he wasn't as much like you know on tv and stuff and then like right after we put out that show he goes and like has this media thing in the oval office donald trump like basically introduces him and says like okay elon's gonna talk now and then donald trump just sits there while elon talks for like 90 minutes or something wasn't that long maybe not quite but it was a long time it was like at least more than half an hour i think it was like 45 minutes or something i i'm making shit up i'm pulling numbers out of my ass so it was long let's just say that it was a long time i there were there were uh people like covering on the news going like is he still talking he's still talking i guess he's still talking i didn't watch.
|
Ivan:
[57:43]
| It but but.
|
Sam:
[57:44]
| Well obviously i didn't watch it either. But, you know, from the highlights, I mean, he's doing the same kind of bullshit Trump does. And Elon does it too. He's known for it. Like making stuff up, telling, I mean, he was called on one of the things that came out of his effort that had spread all over the right-wing media ecosystem, including Donald Trump saying it himself, was this whole thing about one of the things USAID doing being spending $50 million for condoms to Gaza.
|
Ivan:
[58:18]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[58:19]
| Turns out there were condoms, But it was going to a different Gaza. There's a Gaza province in Mozambique.
|
Ivan:
[58:32]
| Oh.
|
Sam:
[58:32]
| Okay. Now, I think the 50 million number was wrong, too, because it was condoms to a larger area. Yeah, because that's how. And, like, Elon, when asked about this, there were a couple things he said. One was, well, you know, I'm going to make mistakes. I'll correct them when I find them. But, you know, I'll make mistakes occasionally. That's okay. But I don't understand why we're buying condoms for anybody. And of course, it's part of the anti-AIDS program. It's part of the program to reduce the spread of AIDS.
|
Sam:
[59:07]
| And of course, nobody in this, not that they would care anyway that it was about reducing the spread of AIDS, but there's not even looking at things deeply enough to know that. They've got the wrong physical location. They've got the wrong number. They understand, oh, condoms were bought. They don't understand why. They didn't even bother to look into it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
|
Sam:
[59:33]
| And you could make an argument that says, okay, maybe we shouldn't be buying condoms as part of an anti-AIDS effort in Southern Africa. You could make that argument. I would probably disagree with you and say it's actually a good use of money. but you could make that argument in a, in a honest way. They're not even close to that. They're just like, they don't know. They're just, they're just like, Oh, look at this number. This is funny. And this doesn't make sense. And so we'll, we'll, we'll make a stink about it without even looking into it. But the thing is with, you know, not Elon took over the Oval Office for that time period. Donald Trump was just sitting there twiddling his freaking thumbs. Musk was pontificating. Musk, as I think Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC pointed out, he also sort of exerted his influence by the fact that he dressed down. He was not in a suit. He did sort of the billionaire casual sort of thing. He brought his kid in and brought his kid in in a way where he just let his kid run around and say stuff and tell the president he wasn't really the president. All of these are sort of power dominance moves. I'm going to come in there without a suit, I'm going to come in there without a kid, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:55]
| With a kid.
|
Sam:
[1:00:56]
| With a kid. With, you know, yes. With a kid who's not being, like, politely behaved, by the way. Like, there are appropriate places to bring kids to the White House. I mean, you know, there's all kinds of pictures of all presidents going back, as long as there were photographs, of kids in the White House doing stuff with the president.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:17]
| You know, I'm sure Elon knows this. Donald Trump doesn't really like kids.
|
Sam:
[1:01:21]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:22]
| Either.
|
Sam:
[1:01:22]
| Yes. The only thing he could have done worse than bringing a kid would be to bring a dog.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:27]
| Right. He doesn't like dogs either. So, you know, bringing an eagle, like, you know, that eagle that he had that picture of that scared the shit out of him at his office, you know, Trump Tower.
|
Sam:
[1:01:39]
| So here's the thing, Yvonne. What do you think is going on with this dynamic? Because we talked even before Inauguration Day about how eventually this Donald Elon thing is going to break.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:50]
| I think that right now he sees them as useful because the reality is so much.
|
Sam:
[1:01:58]
| Donald thinks Elon is useful or the other way around.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:00]
| Donald thinks that Elon is useful because who's taking the heat for most of this right now for all the doge stuff for all the government like stuff for. And by the way, stuff that that shit is popular with his base. They owe, you know, all these lazy federal federal employees. You know, we need to get rid of these bastards. too many of them, you know?
|
Sam:
[1:02:22]
| Yeah, it's one of those things, and this goes back to the, I'll talk a little bit more about this in a second, but it all comes down to process versus results versus appearance kind of stuff. Right. You know, because the thing that his base loves is the, yeah, we hate government, kill government, kill the waste, like eliminate. Oh, let's get rid of the Department of Education. What good could that possibly be? Let's get rid of USAID. What good could it possibly be? which is entirely separate from a couple of weeks later, the farmers figure out no one's buying their crops anymore.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:54]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:02:55]
| You know, because the dots are not connected.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:59]
| They're not connecting the dots. Right. They're not connecting dots until they get screwed.
|
Sam:
[1:03:03]
| So, so let me talk about this process versus results versus appearance thing for a second. And I know we've, we've touched on things like this before, but specifically what got me this week is like, look, there, Donald Trump is losing more court cases every day. While we've been sitting here, I saw a news alert about some judge saying that the foreign aid stuff had to resume. They had been frozen. But he's losing more cases every day. And a lot of this is because he is trying to just...
|
Sam:
[1:03:41]
| Bull in a China shop kind of thing. Just do stuff. Don't worry about the process. That'll all work out later. But I realize this goes with the tariffs and how he won against Colombia and Mexico and Canada the other week with tariffs, even though he didn't actually get anything, is that the perception among, what did we call them, low information voters, is just that there's action. and he's doing stuff and he won in the end, like the details never get through. Whereas the process stuff, like, you know, there, and I think this was a fundamental problem with the Democrats during the election season, when they, when they pivoted to, he's a danger to democracy. And even now, when, when you hear people complain, like, well, Elon doesn't actually have the authority to do that is that a lot of people just hear, so wait, you're just complaining about the way he did it? Like, you agree that we should get rid of waste and corruption, right? You're just complaining that Elon's doing it wrong? Who cares that Donald Trump is doing it wrong, that Elon is doing it wrong? What matters is he's doing stuff and he's going to fix the problem. Now, whether or not he actually fixes the problem is a separate issue. But I think fundamentally, like a lot of people.
|
Sam:
[1:05:08]
| Like if you start talking about, well, he's just not following the right process, they completely tune that out. And I think the whole democracy thing was that it's like, that's just the process. What about what you're trying to, what he's trying to do, What are the results? And, and, you know, and I think one of Trump's master strokes of realization, besides realizing how many people were racist and sexist, was figuring out that, like, it's, it's all about it. It's all about no one cares about process, the number of people who really and truly care about process to the point where they will depend, defend the process vigorously, even if it results in something they don't like. is very small. Most people view process only instrumentally. We like the process because it helps us get what we want. And if it doesn't help us get what we want, then we don't like the process. And the process is a problem, and we should figure out how to get around it. So the number of people who sort of on a principled level care about having a good process is vanishingly small. And meanwhile, what gets through the media ecosystem, especially like when you add in, you know, sort of the motivated media ecosystem is just action are.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:33]
| They doing something are they doing something yeah and that's and what's our first impression.
|
Sam:
[1:06:38]
| So like if he if his first impression is like oh he was really tough on them he put on the sanctions the fact that like less than.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:46]
| 24 hours later he undid it.
|
Sam:
[1:06:48]
| All and without getting any real.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:50]
| Concessions and he claims the win anyway i'm seeing a whole bunch of people like posting about getting laid off support fire getting fired for cause okay uh you know terminations like at the federal government i was looking at somebody to post something about being at the usda and four out of five people in the area got fired for cause listen uh for cause you know termination like that the federal government isn't just something that happens in one day there's a there is a process documentation not all of this shit whatever all of these things if you take them to even the shittiest labor lawyer okay all right they will go to court they will win this case okay it's not even it's a slam dunk of a win but like you said he is going to put them through that he's going to put them through that he's going to make them go to court he's going to make them get their money and and it'll probably wind of costing a federal government a ton more money instead of like them having to do something like with the law, working with Congress.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:53]
| Figuring out how to cut employees. Somebody was talking about that Bill Clinton together with Newt Greenwich back in the 90s. They actually cut like a few hundred thousand federal employees. Okay. You know, they did it, but they agreed to it. There was a process. How are we going to do this? Blah, blah, blah. But that's not what we have right now. This is not thought out, planned, whatever. This is just, you know, we'll fire them now, we'll deal with the consequences later, sue us.
|
Sam:
[1:08:21]
| Right. Yeah. And also news alerts while we've been recording. I saw some with some additional, like, another thousand people at the VA were cut, apparently, today. Got their notices. I don't know if it was for cause or what excuse they used this time. You know, but, you know, it's just boom, boom, boom. There's more of this. And like you said, small, tiny numbers compared to the overall federal workforce, even more so according to the deficit.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:48]
| Yeah, the VA, which we know has been historically an area that has been super overfunded because veterans have been getting such great care from the federal government that definitely that's a place where they need to cut.
|
Sam:
[1:09:04]
| Exactly.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:04]
| And I mean, if there's a group of people have gotten fucked in this country, it's veterans.
|
Sam:
[1:09:12]
| Mm hmm. Yeah. Okay. One, one more thing and then let's wrap it up so you can go to sleep. I just wanted to mention that we did have, how do you say his name? Hogarth. Hogarth. The secretary of defense guy.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:28]
| Hagseth. Is it Hagseth?
|
Sam:
[1:09:31]
| Yeah, Hagseth.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:31]
| Whatever the fuck his name is. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:09:32]
| Whatever. Anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:34]
| Hogarth? I don't know.
|
Sam:
[1:09:35]
| Uh-uh. Wow. I had an H. I was good enough.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:39]
| You didn't start with an H. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:09:42]
| Anyway, he apparently, he was in Europe talking about the Ukraine situation and about Europe more generally. The key elements he said is he explicitly, this had been implied for a long time, but he very explicitly said that, you know, going back to pre-2014 borders for Ukraine is not going to happen. He explicitly said Ukraine being in NATO is not going to happen. and he he basically laid all that out and look we've been we've been talking that's probably true, even without that even without him saying that but he's basically kick-starting the negotiations with russia that they're going to force ukraine into by saying right off the bat you know those those things aren't even on the table you know which is a dumb.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:35]
| Negotiating stance to start from But by the way, they're doing this without Ukraine being at the fucking table.
|
Sam:
[1:10:41]
| Exactly. Ukraine is not even at the table. They are negotiating. The Trump administration.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:46]
| Which is another fucking. I mean, and I'm like, okay.
|
Sam:
[1:10:49]
| They're doing the same thing they did like in Israel about the Palestinians where like in the first administration when they did the Abraham Accords or whatever, didn't even ask the Palestinians. Didn't talk to them at all. You know, we're going to make a deal about you without you. And that's what they're doing so far with Ukraine too. Apparently, he's going to talk to Zelensky tomorrow or something. But, you know, but they're starting out this process clearly with the mode of, look, Russia and the U.S. are going to carve this up how they want and then just tell the Ukrainians that they have to deal with it. The other thing that he said at that same conversation was he went further than that and said, Europe is going to have to get used to the idea that their primary defense does not come from the U.S.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:42]
| Listen, he is basically trying to put a stake in the heart of NATO.
|
Sam:
[1:11:46]
| Yep.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:47]
| So he said that, you know, there are going to be in NATO, but at the same time, I'm like, I mean, is NATO going to survive this administration?
|
Sam:
[1:11:56]
| I mean, Trump has said repeatedly he wants to leave NATO. He thinks it's a useless organization. And his current thing is he's trying to push them to go from a target of 3% of GDP spending on defense to 5% now.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:12]
| Where we're not even at that!
|
Sam:
[1:12:14]
| Where we're not even with that. And of course he keeps, maybe he's slightly better. He keeps saying that it's the amount they have to pay, the dues they have to pay. Or that's not how it works.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:24]
| That is complete horse shit. I mean, we're not even at that. We're like at 3.3% ourselves.
|
Sam:
[1:12:32]
| But wait, Ivan. He's going to cut it in half.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:36]
| Right, so he wants to take us down to 1.5!
|
Sam:
[1:12:40]
| Well, if we're not defending Europe anymore, why do we need that?
|
Ivan:
[1:12:43]
| I guess.
|
Sam:
[1:12:44]
| I mean, and look, there are a lot of reasons that, you know, look, maybe it would have been smart for Europe to be doing more of their own defense for a long time, maybe. But at the same time, like the whole thing with all of this is like, There's no sense of the history of it at all or the reasons that was in place in the first place.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:08]
| No.
|
Sam:
[1:13:08]
| You know, all of this was set up post-World War II, not just to defend against the Soviet Union.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:17]
| But against everybody else.
|
Sam:
[1:13:19]
| I remember to say Soviet Union instead of Russia because we were talking about the past there. But no, but also to tame Europe itself. Yeah. You know, Europe had— From all the fucking wars! At two major world wars in the 20th century, and if you go back to the 19th or 18th century, there were wars all the time.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:39]
| There were wars all the time.
|
Sam:
[1:13:40]
| And the time period from World War II until the invasion of Ukraine by Russia was the longest period of peace in that continent in centuries ever, probably.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:57]
| Ever. I'm sure.
|
Sam:
[1:13:58]
| Maybe Roman Empire times. I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:01]
| Maybe, maybe. There was that Pax Romana.
|
Sam:
[1:14:05]
| Pax Romana. Yeah. So there were reasons for this. The same thing we were talking about, USAID being sort of the soft diplomacy stuff. The existence of NATO and all of the arrangements there that we had and, you know, help to stabilize the continent. And, you know, if we're saying, if we essentially end up saying, okay, we're done with NATO, we're out of here, you guys are on your own. It's just inviting. I mean, I don't know if Putin would be crazy enough to go after the Baltics or to invade more countries. Certainly, he's going to lick his wounds for a while after Ukraine, because that, like, in the end, that has not worked out great for him. But if we end up saying, okay, you can keep part of Ukraine and we're clearly retreating from Europe, is it going to embolden him for whatever the next thing is? I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:08]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:15:09]
| You know? And if the end result of this is Europe itself militarizing further, which is already happening, is that good? You know? I don't think so. Anyway. I think that's it, Yvonne. I mean, it's short, but it's late for you. We should let you go. Unless you have something else that we missed that you want to make sure we hit.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:36]
| No, no, but I do have my one thing. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:15:40]
| The Slack. Oh, okay. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:42]
| Okay. Well, you know, we're all concerned about our investments. And I think I mentioned recently that I was buying gold. Okay. Because of my concerns, which I did do that. One thing that came in the news. global funds turned to Pakistan as an 84% stock rally set to an extent. Some of the world's top money managers are once again favoring Pakistani stocks after market returns last year were among the best globally. So, Sam?
|
Sam:
[1:16:11]
| Put it all in Pakistan.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:13]
| All our money.
|
Sam:
[1:16:15]
| All our money. But I already put it all in Trump coin.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:21]
| Well, I saw here somewhere. I have bad news for you. uh if i read over here correctly i can't remember what the losses were but they were talking about over here i mean 80 percent losses and like people that invested in the trump coin so i'm sorry it's.
|
Sam:
[1:16:41]
| Okay i'm gonna shift it all over to the hawk to a coin and make it all back.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:45]
| That way go up right now it's already plunged like 90 nobody knows where hawk to what is do you realize that after I thought she resurfaced a couple of days ago. Did she?
|
Sam:
[1:16:57]
| I thought so, but I could be wrong.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:00]
| Maybe? I don't know. But she basically took the money and just disappeared. And you know what? She really got a whole bunch of crypto bros for all money. And so I'm like, I hear what I hear is here something in the news was that Hawk Tua's girl boyfriend wants money back after MeanCoin Fallout that's the one story I'm seeing, so I see that that her ex-boyfriend apparently, there was something in the news about it but not that she appeared it's that her ex-boyfriend Hawk Tua girl's boyfriend wants money backed after MeanCoin Fallout That's the news story I found right now when I Googled her. Not that she reappeared. It's that also apparently probably someone of these. Oh, no, no, there it is six days ago. Off to a girl, Hayley Winsch breaks her two-month silence and addresses her cryptocurrency scandal. There she is.
|
Sam:
[1:18:04]
| There?
|
Ivan:
[1:18:04]
| Yeah, there you go. So, yes. I think she apologized.
|
Sam:
[1:18:09]
| I mean, basically her excuse, which I completely buy, is that, like, She didn't know what she was doing. She was manipulated into it by all these crypto folks around her trying to do this.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:22]
| I totally, I 100% believe.
|
Sam:
[1:18:26]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:26]
| I 100% believe.
|
Sam:
[1:18:28]
| And meanwhile, like if you get that moment of fame from your viral moment, absolutely cash in in every fucking way you can.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:36]
| Yeah. And just, you know, whatever. I mean, you know, look, I'm pretty sure she didn't know anything about Quaint. they put it here to her. She got some money and then these people screwed everybody and she's like, well, what the fuck? I didn't even do this. I didn't even understand what the fuck was going on.
|
Sam:
[1:18:51]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:52]
| I believe that.
|
Sam:
[1:18:53]
| Anyway, that was the thing you usually do after I tell people to go to the website. I'll tell people to go to the website now. curmudgeons-corner.com There you can find all the ways to contact us. You can find our archives and our transcripts. We have not made the curmudgeons coin.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:11]
| You know, we should make one. I mean, what the hell? Why not?
|
Sam:
[1:19:14]
| I know. And then we have to orchestrate the rug pull correctly. I mean, that's, you know, that's what these are for, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:19:21]
| But you're not supposed to be saying that up front.
|
Sam:
[1:19:25]
| Oh, oh, but if we say it up front and just tell everybody right up front, then it's not fraud, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:19:32]
| Well, that is true. Yes. I mean, the reality is that we're telling you that we're doing it. so basically we're adopting the trump like strategy hey i'm.
|
Sam:
[1:19:40]
| Telling you.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:41]
| That i'm gonna fuck you over so oh there you go so why are you surprised.
|
Sam:
[1:19:45]
| Exactly so anyway you can find all that stuff there you can also find a link to our patreon where you can give us money for us to invest in trump coin and hawk to a girl coin and uh you know that that's that's what we'll do yeah So give us more Patreon money.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:05]
| No, no, no. Pakistan. What are you talking about?
|
Sam:
[1:20:08]
| Oh, yes, Pakistan.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:10]
| What are you talking about? I'm going to have you in Pakistan.
|
Sam:
[1:20:15]
| Can we invest in Pakistani stocks denominated in Trump coins?
|
Ivan:
[1:20:21]
| You know what? I'd have to research that one. I'm not sure.
|
Sam:
[1:20:25]
| Oh, well. Okay. I think we're done here.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:30]
| I'm done. At this point, if I am able to fall asleep right away, I'll have a beautiful four and a half hours of sleep.
|
Sam:
[1:20:37]
| Beautiful. Okay. We're letting you go. Thanks, everybody, for joining us. Stay safe. Have a great week. We will talk to you next time. Goodbye. Let us know if you like shows this length. Maybe we should do this more often. Anyway, bye! Bye. Okay, that be it. I'm hitting stop. Go to sleep, Yvonne.
| |
|
