Sam:
[0:00]
| Is it going? Is it going? Is it going? There we go. Almost. It's not the bestie. Yay. There's that. Okay. I hear beeping. Let's mute that. I might have muted it. Can I hear you still? Say something.
|
Ivan:
[0:23]
| Say something.
|
Sam:
[0:24]
| Okay, good. I didn't mute you by accident. I just muted the other stuff.
|
Ivan:
[0:29]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[0:32]
| Okay, shall we just, like, yes, go. Go, go. This thing is... and I had to... Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, May 31st, 2025. It's just after 2.30 UTC as we're starting to record. I am Sam Enter and Yvonne Bowes here. Hello, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[1:17]
| Hi. Hi. We sound so excited.
|
Sam:
[1:24]
| You've got, those of you just listening can't see, But Yvonne, once again, has the auto adjusting thing on his damn computer. So like, I know the thought behind this feature is good, but every time I've ever actually seen it in use, it's just like, it's like there's a drunk cameraman, you know, it's just, it's not like, you know, nicely following the person around. It's just like zooming in and out and wandering up and down.
|
Ivan:
[1:55]
| Well, but that's what keeps people's attention. You know, I don't know, which movie was it?
|
Sam:
[2:01]
| What's this feature called Center Stage? It's called Center Stage.
|
Ivan:
[2:05]
| What's the director's name? Paul Greengrass.
|
Sam:
[2:09]
| Greengrass goes all around, all around.
|
Ivan:
[2:11]
| Paul Greengrass is a movie director, and I remember that.
|
Sam:
[2:16]
| He did this, the Cinema Verite or whatever it is.
|
Ivan:
[2:19]
| Well, the thing is that he was a director in this movie called The Bourne Supremacy, okay, the Jason Bourne series. One of the things about his style of camera is that the camera is very shaky and moving all the time.
|
Sam:
[2:35]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[2:35]
| Okay. And it's just, it's not like, you know. It's not like the camera is like, is set somewhere. I see some people call it the shaky cam.
|
Sam:
[2:52]
| Yes, yes.
|
Ivan:
[2:55]
| And I'll tell you one thing. I took my wife to see this movie. The camera was moving so much that she actually got motion sick.
|
Sam:
[3:06]
| Beautiful. That's exactly what you want in a movie.
|
Ivan:
[3:07]
| And we had to actually leave the theater. We couldn't finish watching the movie at the theater. I had to later go and rent it at home to complete watching the movie.
|
Sam:
[3:17]
| Mm-hmm. Yes, that's exactly what you want.
|
Ivan:
[3:20]
| So we should call this like the Paul Greengrass movie technique.
|
Sam:
[3:24]
| Okay. Yes, let's do that.
|
Ivan:
[3:27]
| Some people have.
|
Sam:
[3:30]
| Anyway, as usual, we will start out with a couple of less serious topics probably and then do more serious stuff later in the show. And that's the plan. That is the entirety of the plan. Where do you want to start, Yvonne? You're going to finish reviewing the movie you just mentioned, or are you going to review the new movie you put on our list, or are you going to do something non-movie?
|
Ivan:
[3:54]
| Born Supremacy. I'll give it a, if I remember correctly, a thumbs up.
|
Sam:
[4:00]
| This was the first one in the series, right?
|
Ivan:
[4:02]
| It's the second one.
|
Sam:
[4:03]
| Second one.
|
Ivan:
[4:04]
| The first one was... What the hell was the first one? Ikea.
|
Sam:
[4:11]
| Born Identity.
|
Ivan:
[4:12]
| Born identity that's right.
|
Sam:
[4:14]
| Cheated with the wikipedia page of.
|
Ivan:
[4:17]
| Course yeah well yeah yeah born identity and that was the the they made like a you know how many movies i think they made four five something like that i only really watched like the first three one.
|
Sam:
[4:32]
| Two three four five.
|
Ivan:
[4:34]
| Yeah, they made five. The most recent one was in 2016. Yeah. I watched the first three. At some point, the star of the film, what's his name? Matt Damon. He said that the movie was going to start being called The Bourne Redundancy. I mean, that was his comment. And it did get a little bit repetitive, I will say. another thing is that the source books they weren't really that good they were okay all right okay lots of books were not that good i mean they weren't compared to say clancy novels they were they were nowhere nearly as good um and so you know but based on the material they had to start off from the boobies were not bad they were entertaining, So, you know, I mean, I watched them. I mean, they were entertaining. That's what I can say. They were entertaining. That's it. That's all I can say.
|
Sam:
[5:44]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[5:45]
| I'll give it on a five-star scale. I'll give the first one a four.
|
Sam:
[5:51]
| You're getting fancy and not just thumbs up, down, and sideways. You're getting fancy with the stars.
|
Ivan:
[5:55]
| Yeah, I'll go and I'll give four stars to the first one. and I'll give three and a half stars to the other two that I watch. That's my assessment. Now, I did go this weekend for the first time in, I mean, I don't remember having done this in the last 15 years. Or, wait.
|
Sam:
[6:19]
| Oh, did you go on premiere night, not just go? You went on like the premiere night?
|
Ivan:
[6:22]
| I didn't go on the premiere night, but I went on the premiere weekend.
|
Sam:
[6:26]
| Okay, okay.
|
Ivan:
[6:28]
| Close enough.
|
Sam:
[6:29]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[6:30]
| And I'm trying to remember the last time I did it, and I just realized that it was like, it was a James Bond movie. Let me figure out which one it was. It was Skyfall.
|
Sam:
[6:43]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[6:43]
| So that was right after Manu was born.
|
Sam:
[6:48]
| Sometime afterwards.
|
Ivan:
[6:50]
| So this is about, yeah, so that's only like the second time in 13 years. And I'm going to say that before that, shit, I think that the last premiere before that that I went... Premiere weekend. Well, I made the premiere night. Premiere night maybe like back in the 80s. Maybe. I don't think I was a big premiere night guy. I wasn't.
|
Sam:
[7:17]
| The premiere of the Star Trek movie we went to Toronto for?
|
Ivan:
[7:20]
| Okay, well, that counts. Yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[7:22]
| That was.
|
Ivan:
[7:23]
| Okay, so that's one. That's in the early 90s. It was the premiere night. It was the premiere night. Yeah, that was for sure. But, I mean, I just didn't do this. Okay? I just didn't go on those.
|
Sam:
[7:36]
| I mean, I don't think I ever routinely did that kind of thing. I did it, you know, we mentioned the Star Trek one, because, like, for whatever reason, I had been on a run and had done opening night of, like, all the Star Trek movies up to that point, and I continued for a couple after that. But the first few were sort of, I don't know. I don't know how I got into that pattern, but for nothing else, really, because for the most part, I don't like crowds. I don't like lots of people. So if it's going to be a popular movie, I'll be like, let's wait a couple of weeks at least. Like, even if I really want to see it.
|
Ivan:
[8:14]
| I think that after that one, maybe the only one I, other one I went that may have been a premiere weekend was Titanic.
|
Sam:
[8:23]
| Hmm. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[8:25]
| I think that may have been. And that was when I was living, when I was going to Purdue University in West Lafayette, because I know I went with friends of mine from Purdue. So, yeah, I think that may have been like the last one. So this weekend, I did go see the Mission Impossible Final Reckoning movie. And the reason I was very eager to watch it is because. This was supposed to be originally called Dead Reckoning Part 2 because they had a part one.
|
Sam:
[8:57]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[8:57]
| The possible Dead Reckoning. And I watched a part one. And I didn't go to the movies to watch it. As a matter of fact, I remember I watched it on my iPad in a hotel room in New York. And I remember explicitly, that's why I watched it.
|
Sam:
[9:10]
| But it was a part one and left you hanging for part two, right?
|
Ivan:
[9:13]
| It was a cliffhanger. Because it was a cliffhanger and the movie was really good. You see, when it came out, this came out at the same time as Oppenheimer and Barbie came out. And it didn't do as well as they expected. I mean, it did well, but it got overshadowed by those two movies. Okay?
|
Sam:
[9:35]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[9:35]
| During that summer. And so I didn't watch it like in the movies or whatever. I was just like, eh, I'll watch it. You know, and I had it on my, I was able to watch it on my iPad. And I was like, holy shit, this movie was good. And but it Ends in a cliffhanger and I was like Damn it I want to know what the Fuck happened from this damn movie I've been waiting for two fucking years To find out what the hell happened So I was like no honey we're all Going to go watch this okay Took Manu and, My wife to watch it I will Say and this has happened To me before, That it was good But I think my Two things happened one One is, I hate when I have this expectation of how good something can be, okay?
|
Sam:
[10:24]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[10:24]
| Because it's very difficult to meet it, okay?
|
Sam:
[10:27]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[10:28]
| Sometimes.
|
Sam:
[10:29]
| Yeah, I mean, if you come in with low expectations, sometimes you're pleasantly surprised. But if you come in with really high expectations, chances are you're going to be disappointed.
|
Ivan:
[10:37]
| Yeah, exactly. I wasn't disappointed, but I was like, well, it wasn't as good as I hoped it would be, but it was still quite good. But the thing is that the pacing was very different of this movie. Okay?
|
Sam:
[10:52]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[10:53]
| This movie was a lot slower paced than the first one.
|
Sam:
[10:56]
| Which isn't typical. Like, action movies are supposed to be fast paced, right? This is supposed to be an action movie.
|
Ivan:
[11:01]
| They are fast paced. This one was fast paced. But it was paced differently than the last one. Which was quite more frantic. Okay? The pace did pick up. The first hour, the movie is almost three hours long, okay?
|
Sam:
[11:20]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[11:21]
| To be clear, okay? So that's something about that. The movie was, I think, two hours and 40 plus minutes, okay? The first hour was a slow buildup. But then it got a lot more intense. If not going to give. I don't. This is a brand new movie. I don't want to talk about spoilers specifically. But the main theme about this movie. Which by the way. Was planned. Maybe not completely the whole screenplay was written. But what the arc was and everything was written. Gosh about five years ago. The premiere of this was delayed. But it was specifically about an AI that goes nuts. Okay?
|
Sam:
[12:14]
| Wait, wait. An AI goes nuts? That's never been part of any movie before. They're always so calmly behaved and mild-mannered and do exactly what you tell them to.
|
Ivan:
[12:24]
| And this AI goes very rogue if you see it in the trailers. There are certain things about nuclear war and other things that happen because of the AI or could happen or it's trying to happen. how the AI is generating massive amounts of misinformation and confusing everybody about what the facts are, how governments, in many cases, in order to secure themselves for many critical functions, basically went back to technology that was like 50, 60 years ago.
|
Sam:
[13:05]
| Yep.
|
Ivan:
[13:05]
| Because they couldn't trust.
|
Sam:
[13:07]
| Pull out the typewriters.
|
Ivan:
[13:08]
| Pull out the typewriters. Pull out the printers. pull out the radios, pull out the analog shit, because we can't trust any of the digital shit.
|
Sam:
[13:16]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[13:17]
| Literally. In the movie. And that was a theme that actually had started already in the first movie. But it accelerated in the second movie. So, I don't... The, I do think that the story was well put together, timely. I'm going to go and because I will say debt reckoning part one gets five stars.
|
Sam:
[13:41]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[13:42]
| But this one, I'll give it four.
|
Sam:
[13:45]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[13:45]
| It's, it's not as good as the first one, but it's still not bad. It's still not bad. It's a really good movie. And there was a lot of, you see, there was a lot of care and attention to the detail How about how this movie was made? And that's the thing that I think about. It's just in every element about it. There's just a lot of thought put into it. And so I'm going to give it four stars. So I recommend that if you haven't seen it.
|
Sam:
[14:16]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[14:17]
| And if you haven't seen it, I think that it does work better right now that both are out. If you haven't seen, look, you got to watch part one, part two, back to back.
|
Sam:
[14:26]
| Now, do you have to watch the whole series?
|
Ivan:
[14:28]
| No, no, no. I mean, you can watch these two separately. Okay. I will say that.
|
Sam:
[14:36]
| Well— Would it be better if you started at the very beginning?
|
Ivan:
[14:39]
| Actually, yes, because one of the things that they did in this was pull a number of things and elements from things that happened in all the previous movies, including from the first movie, okay, in which a character from that movie that had not been seen, since that movie reappears.
|
Sam:
[15:01]
| And I just checked, this is the eighth Mission Impossible movie.
|
Ivan:
[15:05]
| Yes, it's the eighth Mission Impossible.
|
Sam:
[15:07]
| Now, you probably don't have to watch the old 1960s TV show, though, right?
|
Ivan:
[15:11]
| No, no, no. No, no, no. You don't have to do that. No, just a movie.
|
Sam:
[15:16]
| But would it help?
|
Ivan:
[15:17]
| I will say, nah, I don't think so. Nah, nah. I will tell you, look, this series of movies, What Tom Cruise did with it was... Very good. Very few of these series that go into that many movies sustain well-made movies. They start getting really bad and really stupid. Okay? They just lose completely everything. It's like Fast and the Furious. Fast and the Furious, I remember, started with a couple of guys tuning cars to stealing, racing. Then all of a sudden, they're saving the planet, and they're flying through space on the cars. You're like, wait, wait. How? What? Why are cars?
|
Ivan:
[15:58]
| What is this? What's going on? It's just stupid. Okay. It turns to just complete stupidity. I only know this, not because I only watched the first one, but I saw the trailers for the other ones and I'm like, what? The cars, what are they doing? And now they work for like the CIA. What? What are we doing?
|
Ivan:
[16:21]
| Chups stealing cars. What else? What do you do with this? Anyway. So this didn't go like off the reservation in that way. The movies were all well-made, great plots, well-thought-out things, some great actors that appeared in many of them because some didn't appear in all the movies. So you can watch through all of them. I will say that the first one, it has a very different style than the rest ones because the first one, Brian De Palma did that one. And his style of cinematography is very different from subsequent people that did it in later movies. You had John Woo. They had Chris McQuarrie. So, they're different in styles. But I'll tell you what. The style of the first one was really awesome. Okay? It's a really well-made movie. The second one was kind of, I'll go with the first one in five stars. Okay? I'll go with the second one with three. I think that was the weakest one. Okay, there. Three gets four and a half stars. That was really good. Okay. All right.
|
Sam:
[17:33]
| I'm impressed you can just keep them like separated in your head.
|
Ivan:
[17:36]
| Yeah, because I mean, I remember the first one was one where it was about, you know, this was related to a list of CIA agents that could be stolen. Okay. So that's the first one. The second one had to do with some virus that was stolen. The third one had to do something with, oh, my God. Oh, what's this actor that died? Hoffman? Seymour? Hoffman? I can't remember his name.
|
Sam:
[18:03]
| Seymour Hoffman?
|
Ivan:
[18:04]
| Oh, God. What's his name? Jeez. Now I gotta pull this up.
|
Sam:
[18:11]
| Of course.
|
Ivan:
[18:12]
| Seymour Hoffman, yes, that's right. Who was in the movie and did a great part as being the bad guy in that movie. I mean, he really played that so well. Okay? That movie gets five stars. Okay? That one was really good. Let's see. The fourth one was Ghost Protocol. And that one is also really good. Okay. That one had to do with nukes. Okay. Actually, quite almost all of them. There's nukes somewhere. Okay. All right.
|
Sam:
[18:42]
| Okay. You got to have your nukes.
|
Ivan:
[18:44]
| You got to have your nukes. MI5 was Rogue Nation, if I remember correctly. Let's see. Hang on. Hang on.
|
Sam:
[18:55]
| Hang on.
|
Ivan:
[18:56]
| Oh, God. Yeah, here it is, 2015. Yeah, Rogue Nation, that's right. And this one was about this underground agent spy network that nobody could track, okay, that he was after. And 6, which was, oh, God. That... Now you see?
|
Sam:
[19:25]
| Now you're all confused. I jinxed you by saying you can keep a part in your hat.
|
Ivan:
[19:30]
| No, I got Rogue Nation. Wait, six? I got... Wait, I had...
|
Sam:
[19:35]
| Just bring up the damn Wikipedia page.
|
Ivan:
[19:38]
| Well, come on. Now I'm like, Rogue Nation. All right, I'm going to go Rogue Nation. And after that one was Fallout. Fallout was the next one. Okay. And this one was also related to that syndicate. Okay. And there were nuclear weapons involved in this thing. listen, all of those get five stars, okay? I will tell you, I get five stars straight to seven.
|
Sam:
[20:02]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[20:02]
| And I wound up with four stars on eight. And I think it's just, there was just too much buildup into eight. It kind of like wound up, it kind of like lets you down a little bit, but it's not because it's bad.
|
Sam:
[20:14]
| Okay. So it's just an expectations game.
|
Ivan:
[20:18]
| It's an expectations game, yeah. I really think so. If I were to come in like, It would have been better. But anyway, I recommend that if you haven't seen them all, watch them all. And you can start by watching the last two. If you haven't watched the first one, just watch them back to back. It'll be a lot better. Listen, if you're watching the first one, you know the second one's out, you're not going to be able to wait. Oh, come on. Yeah, let me just wait until later. You're going to be like, where's the next movie? Give me the fucking next movie. You're going to want to do that. So that's it. I did a movie review.
|
Sam:
[20:53]
| I guess I'll jump to my movie.
|
Ivan:
[20:55]
| Okay, yes. Which is?
|
Sam:
[20:56]
| I did not see this movie on opening night.
|
Ivan:
[21:00]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[21:01]
| I think I'd seen bits and pieces of it over the decades, but this is actually the first time I've seen it all the way through from beginning to end. And by bits and pieces, I mean it was on TV. And back in the days where you flip channels, I would come across it, watch a few minutes, and then move on. I watched this back in August.
|
Ivan:
[21:26]
| Yeah?
|
Sam:
[21:27]
| Crocodile Dundee from 1986.
|
Ivan:
[21:29]
| Oh, my God. Going in a different direction.
|
Sam:
[21:33]
| I don't know. It sounds the same to me. Oh, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[21:37]
| Any nuclear weapons in this?
|
Sam:
[21:40]
| I don't think so.
|
Ivan:
[21:42]
| We're in a crocodile dundee nukes. I mean, do you expect that?
|
Sam:
[21:48]
| You do. I'm looking at the movie poster, and there is like a yellow circle behind him. Maybe it was an explosion.
|
Ivan:
[21:58]
| Ah. Okay. Maybe.
|
Sam:
[22:00]
| I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[22:01]
| Could be.
|
Sam:
[22:02]
| Anyway... This was one of those, like, 80s movies that was really big back then. I never saw it at the time, but, you know, there was a lot of buzz around it. People talked about it. So there was a little bit of buildup in my mind, the way you were saying about expectations.
|
Ivan:
[22:18]
| Mm-hmm.
|
Sam:
[22:19]
| I think, I mean, it's a comedy. I found it mildly funny. I was not, like, super impressed. I was not really laughing a lot. I'm giving it a thumb sideways. I think there's a lot that hasn't necessarily aged well.
|
Ivan:
[22:37]
| I think, yeah, I was thinking about that. Yeah. Oh, it's probably not one of those that really aged out well.
|
Sam:
[22:44]
| I mean, yeah. I mean, it wasn't horrible. And did I chuckle a few times? Probably. Did I cringe a few times? Yeah, probably that too. And I don't know. It just, it, like, my expectations were, like, everybody loved this damn movie in the 80s. It must be good. And I just sort of felt, eh, okay, that's what it was. And, you know, and I sort of was filling into blanks because, like I said, I'd never actually seen the whole thing from beginning to end. I think I'd seen, like, you know, some of the highlights that, like, people refer back to. Like, there are parts of it that, you know, made their way into, like, the overall consciousness of anybody who was alive at that time.
|
Ivan:
[23:34]
| Sure.
|
Sam:
[23:34]
| Like, him pulling the knife.
|
Ivan:
[23:36]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[23:36]
| You know, in New York and a few other bits. It was fine. That's the best I can say part. I mean, yeah, a lot of the jokes just didn't land for me. And I don't know whether they would have landed for me better back in 1986. And it's really just that it hasn't aged well, or it's just not my kind of humor. I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[24:04]
| Maybe you wouldn't have found them funny back then. That could be.
|
Sam:
[24:07]
| It might be. What did you—I presume you've seen this movie.
|
Ivan:
[24:12]
| I mean, I thought it was funny.
|
Sam:
[24:14]
| Probably not in a long time.
|
Ivan:
[24:15]
| Yeah, but I thought it was funny. I think there was a recent time where it was on TV, and I watched it. I'm pretty sure I have. in recent time. It's not as funny as it was back then. That was my take.
|
Sam:
[24:27]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[24:28]
| Yeah i'm with you i don't i think it's i don't think it's age well.
|
Sam:
[24:31]
| I mean it's just sort of it seemed very sort of wrote like they went through the scenes there were you know it's like they had one little thing happened then another little thing happened then another thing happened it was relatively predictable you know you kind of knew how it was going to end from the beginning you know, you knew there were going to be a bunch of random fish out of water scenes first with her in Australia, should I basic spoilers.
|
Ivan:
[25:07]
| On this one yes.
|
Sam:
[25:09]
| Well I was just going to give the basic idea okay there's a reporter from New York that goes to Australia to investigate this crocodile Dundee guy who was had made some news from like doing some daring do adventure with a crocodile or whatever. She goes and meets him. They don't really get along at first. And then she follows him onto an adventure in the bush in Australia.
|
Ivan:
[25:38]
| Well, because he's going to show where he had to survive. He had survived out there for an extended period of time.
|
Sam:
[25:45]
| And so they have a little bit of an adventure out there. And then he follows her back to New York. And then he's the one. Like, you know, when they're in Australia, she's the one that's out of place. And then they go back to New York, and he's the one that's out of place. And, you know, all the things you would expect to happen, happen, essentially. You know? And I don't know. Maybe some of that is like, you know, I know that it was going to be like that because the movie has a reputation. And so, yeah, maybe it was more unique at the time. I don't know. But anyway, that's my thoughts on Crocodile Dundee. And I'm looking at this, though. I just scrolled down to the bottom of the Wikipedia page.
|
Ivan:
[26:36]
| Yeah?
|
Sam:
[26:37]
| My God, it was nominated for a bunch of fucking awards.
|
Ivan:
[26:41]
| Such as?
|
Sam:
[26:42]
| It was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards and BAFTAs.
|
Ivan:
[26:49]
| For real?
|
Sam:
[26:50]
| Yes. Best Actor for BAFTAs. Best Actor for Golden Globes. Best Supporting Actor for Golden Globes.
|
Ivan:
[26:58]
| Did it win any of those awards? It didn't win any of those awards.
|
Sam:
[27:02]
| Best Actor Golden Globe it won for Paul Hogan.
|
Ivan:
[27:06]
| I mean, I think they were just taken by the Australian guy. Because, I mean, it wasn't that good to win a FAFTA.
|
Sam:
[27:16]
| It also won a BMI award for Best Music.
|
Ivan:
[27:20]
| Music score was well made.
|
Sam:
[27:23]
| I don't even remember it.
|
Ivan:
[27:25]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[27:26]
| It's not like one of those memorable themes like Star Wars or Superman or whatever that, like...
|
Ivan:
[27:32]
| No, it's not that, but, I mean, it was, all I said is well... It was well made. I'm not, you know, I don't know, I'm not singing Crocodile on these songs. I'm not going exactly like Superman. no it's not that no.
|
Sam:
[27:52]
| It's got 89 on rock rotten tomatoes robert ebert gate roger ebert gave it two stars out of four and said all of the cliches are in the right places most of the gags pay off and there are moments of real amusement as the australian cowboy wanders around manhattan, The problem is that there's not one moment of chemistry between the two stars. The movie feels curiously machine made as if they had all of the right ingredients and simply forgot to add the animal magnetism.
|
Ivan:
[28:29]
| I'll say that that I mean, that seems, you know, more accurate.
|
Sam:
[28:33]
| I mean, that's kind of like what I was saying of sort of they go through the scenes and go through the motions and it's all predictable.
|
Ivan:
[28:39]
| You know, that's what I said a few minutes ago. I mean, there were some scenes that were funny, you know, there was like the guy, the chauffeur that took the antenna off his limo and used it as a boomerang and hit the crooks. That was funny, you know, stuff like that.
|
Sam:
[29:03]
| There are apparently two sequels. I can't imagine they get better.
|
Ivan:
[29:07]
| No, the sequels are terrible. god-awful I think I may have watched the, I don't think, I may have watched Crocodile Dundee 2, but I definitely did not watch 3. I have no idea what that is.
|
Sam:
[29:23]
| Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles in 2001.
|
Ivan:
[29:28]
| No, wow. Really? In LA? No idea.
|
Sam:
[29:32]
| In LA.
|
Ivan:
[29:32]
| Fuck. I had no clue.
|
Sam:
[29:35]
| Okay, I think we've had enough of this. Have we had enough of this?
|
Ivan:
[29:38]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[29:39]
| Okay. Time for a break and then we'll do some, you know.
|
Ivan:
[29:43]
| Oh, fuck.
|
Sam:
[29:44]
| Talk about the news the news very exciting news this week lots of stuff lots of lots of stuff i mean you know you could pick out something completely non-newsy it's completely up to you for the next topic you could talk about your toenail collection if.
|
Ivan:
[30:02]
| I had one that would maybe i would think about that i i don't have.
|
Sam:
[30:07]
| I used to have one it's i i don't know if i still have it Oh.
|
Ivan:
[30:12]
| Please. God. Okay, let's go to commercial. Just go to commercial. Go to commercial! What? No, that was bad.
|
Sam:
[30:57]
| Bye. There you go.
|
Ivan:
[31:02]
| Alright, we're back.
|
Sam:
[31:03]
| Bugs upon my face, almost as good as the toenails.
|
Ivan:
[31:07]
| Yeah. Great. Beautiful. So lovely to think about bugs on your face. I had some bugs on my face this afternoon.
|
Sam:
[31:17]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[31:17]
| Well, I was outside and there was, you know, bugs.
|
Sam:
[31:23]
| Okay. Are they like crawling?
|
Ivan:
[31:25]
| I also made this idiotic mistake where I withdrew. I was trying to withdraw $750 from my checking account and I wound up withdrawing $1,500 instead. And I'm really irritated by this. Fucking stupid.
|
Sam:
[31:41]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[31:42]
| Idiot. And I can't seem to figure out a way to put the money back.
|
Sam:
[31:46]
| You mistake the seven button for the one button?
|
Ivan:
[31:48]
| No, what happened is the first time I did the transaction.
|
Sam:
[31:51]
| I thought it didn't go...
|
Ivan:
[31:52]
| No, I thought that the transaction didn't go through. I thought the fucking transaction didn't go through. I didn't get a fucking confirmation. And then all of a sudden I do it again, and I realize, motherfucker! Assholes.
|
Sam:
[32:05]
| Yes. So what are we going to talk about?
|
Ivan:
[32:08]
| What are we going to fucking talk about? Let's see. I'm looking. Okay, so do I like any of these? I mean, there was stuff on. So let me tell you the ones that I, that I, I'll go first through the ones that I, I've seen that I know something has been going on. Okay. All right.
|
Sam:
[32:27]
| And then like the ones you choose not to talk about, I'll force you to talk about in the next segment.
|
Ivan:
[32:31]
| All right. We got the 2550 tariff thing going. The Trump, the Nippon steel thing. There's another tariff thing, more tariffs.
|
Sam:
[32:45]
| We got tariffs every week.
|
Ivan:
[32:47]
| But by Elon, we got the taco.
|
Sam:
[32:51]
| And we got the GLB.
|
Ivan:
[32:53]
| Yeah, exactly. It's all. Well, I guess.
|
Sam:
[32:56]
| I mean, it's true.
|
Ivan:
[32:58]
| I guess we'll talk about tariffs. tariffs so we're gonna there's a glp one conversation conversation we'd had a couple of conversations on on on on the curmudgeon corner slack related to this you know, i let's talk about the fucking tariffs i guess okay because all these things you know are all the tariffs so i so.
|
Sam:
[33:25]
| What happened this week there was a bunch of back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.
|
Ivan:
[33:29]
| I mean didn't it first start it was it it was it was this week right during the weekend that trump all of a sudden said that he's going to tariff apple 25 percent and the eu 50 percent right that that was at the beginning that was at the top of the week right well.
|
Sam:
[33:46]
| That was at the end of last week that was like last.
|
Ivan:
[33:49]
| Front all right so that was like you know no i think no that was like sunday it was over the weekend over.
|
Sam:
[33:56]
| The weekend he already retracted it. It happened soon enough on Friday that it affected some markets on Friday. But then he reversed it before the futures opened for Monday.
|
Ivan:
[34:10]
| He hasn't talked about the Apple tariffs again, by the way. Yeah, he hasn't said a word about that. So that was like his Apple tariffs, just like ridiculous.
|
Sam:
[34:21]
| And then he expanded it to all smartphones.
|
Ivan:
[34:23]
| All smartphones, yeah. But then we got a ruling from court that basically evaluated, it wasn't on all the tariffs, by the way. It was specific to the Liberation Day. Right.
|
Sam:
[34:42]
| Well, and more specifically, it was tariffs that he enacted specifically pursuant to the 1970s law with certain emergency powers. So it's not just it's not saying all tariffs are illegal and everything that Donald Trump has done.
|
Ivan:
[34:59]
| But that's the one that he has used to justify almost. Yeah, he has used that the most.
|
Sam:
[35:05]
| But like, for instance, the the auto manufacturing tariffs were not under this. He used a different authority for that. So there are a variety of authorities he's used, and this only applied to one authority under one particular law that he claimed to do a whole bunch of these. But as you said, it includes all the Liberation Day ones, which were a significant chunk of what was causing all the churn over the last month or so. Here's one thing that I will admit to. Like, I knew... theoretically and had noted that there were a bunch of lawsuits against all of these tariffs from all kinds of different sources. But I admit to being caught by surprise that one was already at the verdict stage. In my head, it was like, these things are making their way through the courts. Maybe we'll eventually hear something about it. I wasn't thinking that one of them, and in fact, the second one came out like 24 or 48 hours later from an entirely different lawsuit an entirely different judge with the same conclusion. So two of them came out this week, both of which agreed that Trump's tariffs were illegal. I was thinking that was further out. I hadn't realized they'd already done their arguments and we were just waiting for a judge to give a verdict.
|
Sam:
[36:28]
| And I don't know, I mean, maybe it's my fault for not paying attention enough, but it seems like it caught a lot of people by surprise. Not that it wouldn't happen eventually, but that it would happen now.
|
Ivan:
[36:40]
| I mean, I will admit that I expected this to happen, like, on a later timeline as well. Because I know, I mean, I had heard about these lawsuits. This one was the states, you know, many of the Democratic states had gotten together. They had plaintiffs also. I knew that they had had certain companies that were plaintiffs. A lot of smaller companies, a lot of smaller companies are getting hammered by this very terribly hammered and not paying attention, many people are just not paying attention to how bad they're getting hurt. But yeah, I mean, it came out, and I think it, The verdict was totally in line with anybody that had read the statutes and what Trump tried to do. And it was just, you know, just his entire justification to use that law, you know, the way it was written for this purpose was just preposterous.
|
Sam:
[37:40]
| Well, and it actually makes me wonder how, and this includes our own conversations. I mean, I think we noted that lawsuits existed, but I don't think the conversation has been dominated by, oh, don't worry about this because the courts will overturn it.
|
Ivan:
[37:59]
| Well, I had expected that before the courts would act, that Congress may have been forced to act. And Congress would have been forced to act because—.
|
Sam:
[38:12]
| Because courts are typically really slow.
|
Ivan:
[38:14]
| Right. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[38:16]
| And this isn't.
|
Ivan:
[38:17]
| OK, but also, by the way, I didn't know there was a court specifically related to this, because I know that there are courts specific to, you know, like we've got we've got courts for we got immigration courts. We have tax courts. We have bankruptcy courts. OK, but I didn't realize that there was a court specifically related to this subject matter specifically. And they had the case like right there and they basically plowed through it and they issued a ruling and it was unanimous ruling. And by the way, if I remember correctly, the three judges on the panel that wrote the ruling, one was appointed by Trump. One was by Obama, and I think the other one by Bush.
|
Sam:
[39:02]
| Something like that. It was two Republicans and a Democrat, for sure.
|
Ivan:
[39:05]
| Right. And they're all worried out of us, you know, in their decision. But, you know, the one thing about it was that the order— Well, the one thing about it was that the order did not have immediate effect.
|
Sam:
[39:19]
| Right. It was like a week, week and a half hours or something.
|
Ivan:
[39:23]
| Ten days, if I remember correctly. It was ten days. They appealed it, and like right now they stayed it, but the reality is there's nothing to stay because the order still was not in effect. They asked for pleadings to review this by the 5th, if I remember correctly, and they gave the government time to respond by the 9th, if I remember correctly. So this is moving very fast on this review on this end as well in terms of the appeal. And so, and the stay was basically up until just for that short period of time until the review goes through, as far as I could tell. So, I mean, I, but the one thing is that what's happening with this administration, it's just that he doesn't care. And I don't mean care in terms of overriding the court. I'm not even talking about that. I'm talking about the fact that, Every day he wakes up and what he's trying to do is get more attention and more attention. And so he just, it's just saying shit, not because he wants to look, he wants to, he has a zero, I realize, Sam, he has no interest that the economy does well. None.
|
Sam:
[40:51]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[40:52]
| As far as I can tell, there is zero interest coming from him. to for the economy to do well in any way, as long as he gets rich.
|
Sam:
[41:01]
| Although he has backed off as sort of the taco thing. What's it stand for? Trump always chickens out.
|
Ivan:
[41:10]
| Right. Correct.
|
Sam:
[41:12]
| That, you know, every single time pushes come to shove and the markets have started getting really upset and queasy and going down.
|
Ivan:
[41:21]
| But the fact that he keeps, yes, but this is the problem. The fact that he keeps pounding and doing is creating damage every time, even if the markets are reacting in one way. There is damage and damage upon damage every time.
|
Sam:
[41:41]
| There was a new announcement today about new tariffs he wants to do even after this.
|
Ivan:
[41:47]
| Right. Right. It's like, you know, I'm going to do more tariffs and then these and whatever. whatever and i'm like look this week finally companies that were reporting earnings i've started to report significant significant losses due to these damn tariffs okay hewlett-packard was a big one my former employer that reported a their revenues that go down that's just the tariffs killed them. Okay?
|
Sam:
[42:22]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[42:23]
| Their stock went down 20%. Gap. shit you're importing clothes the fuck you think the fucking tariffs are crazy they also got hammered their their their their stock was down 20 today you sound.
|
Sam:
[42:38]
| Like you're acting like 20 is significant talk to me when it's 80.
|
Ivan:
[42:42]
| Ah okay well you know we'll be a few months at this rate I mean, it happens. I mean, these companies are getting killed by these. You know, the guys, I was reading through the plaintiffs that were on this case at the trade court. And some of these people were like, are basically that they're going to go out of business this year if they don't, if these tariffs aren't stopped. I mean, that's the bottom line. They will be out of business this year. That's how bad these are. These are job company killer type tariffs at this point.
|
Sam:
[43:25]
| And as you said, especially for small businesses, but like you rattled off, like Hewlett-Packard, The Gap, those aren't exactly small businesses.
|
Ivan:
[43:35]
| No.
|
Sam:
[43:35]
| And it's hard for them, too. And, you know, I was going to say, you know, you almost want to say, well, any import-dependent business. but the reality is almost every business is import dependent in one way or another.
|
Ivan:
[43:49]
| It's economy i mean people say import dependent look what literally everything is globalized we are in a globalized economy this country has had a globalized economy for many decades now and we just.
|
Ivan:
[44:07]
| Turning our back on the world the way that trump wants to do it it comes at a massive economic cost, massive economic cost i shared an article i've talked about i've talked about it here how this replicates a lot of the things that i that i had seen happen in south america.
|
Ivan:
[44:26]
| And there's somebody specifically had written an article about how you know and i believe i talked about Brazil, you know, which mirrored a lot of this, but there's somebody wrote about Argentina, which Argentina is a better example in the sense that after World War II, just like the United States, Argentina obviously was not scarred by the war, okay, because they were not in Europe, they didn't get bombed, okay, so Argentina's economy was extremely strong, and also Argentina's economy had the they even had higher per capita income than the united states at the time after world war ii okay i mean this is not we're not talking about a country that was poor they were extremely rich and argentina decided under perron to go into this well we're gonna cut we're you know what we're good now but we're gonna be better because we're gonna make everything here we're going to encircle the country with these massive tariffs and we're going to cut out all the imports and.
|
Ivan:
[45:39]
| Everything is going to be manufactured here. And what happened is, somebody said, is that Argentinians lived for decades with very expensive, shitty goods. That was the bottom line. All you got was expensive and shitty because it had to be made in Argentina. And if you import it, you had to pay 300% tariffs. So what you had was shit. You know, they had to pay more for TVs, for cars, for anything. OK, it was just it was just ridiculous. And it really decimated the earnings power of Argentina because they thought that they were so rich in the taxes, same bullshit as whatever. It also undermined the agro business. Kind of like what Trump. I mean, if you think about all the shit that we're talking about, the same shit that Trump is trying to do here. He's undermining the agricultural industries. He's undermining the core industry to make money all for shit that, you know, is low value added that we moved away from.
|
Sam:
[46:41]
| Right. And in most cases replaced it with something better.
|
Ivan:
[46:45]
| Right. For the most part. Now, again, with a lot of gaps. And a lot of gaps.
|
Sam:
[46:52]
| A lot of gaps. And as usual, like with these kinds of things, the specific people who might have lost their jobs when certain industries left might not have gotten equivalent or better jobs.
|
Ivan:
[47:05]
| No.
|
Sam:
[47:06]
| They might have been screwed. But the next generation coming up got something different.
|
Ivan:
[47:11]
| Right. And the thing is that, yeah, it did leave a whole bunch of gaps in the economy. But at the same time, this isn't fixing any of that. They're not doing any of that. So he's taking a fucking strategy that has been proven to fail. Okay. He brought it over here, but here, The damn thing, Sam, it's just, I don't think he cares. I don't think he cares at all. He doesn't give a fuck who's losing money. He doesn't give a fuck these bankers in businesses. He doesn't give a fuck about anything. You know what he cares about?
|
Sam:
[47:44]
| Himself.
|
Ivan:
[47:45]
| His plate.
|
Sam:
[47:47]
| Yes, his plate.
|
Ivan:
[47:48]
| Which, by the way, apparently we haven't really accepted.
|
Sam:
[47:51]
| Yeah, it was reported like last week that we did. And then it's like, well, maybe not quite really. and the UAE wants a statement that it wasn't really their idea. It wasn't, you know, that Trump came to them, not the other way around, and they want that in writing, please, thank you, et cetera. And the price to, like, make this thing into an actual usable Air Force One keeps going up, you know.
|
Ivan:
[48:26]
| Of course! Look, this whole thing with the plane is the stupidest thing ever as well, because we're going to repeat the same problem that we've got with the first two fucking 7478s. We're trying to convert Air Force One into first place. They should have, listen, the thing about that, they should have built one, a brand new one, from scratch. They should have built two brand new ones. Somebody got the dumb idea that hey, we got these two that were built for this Russian airline that they couldn't take delivery. Why don't we retrofit them? Well, for Air Force One, it's the worst idea ever because basically they have to take the whole fucking plane apart anyway and then put it together again.
|
Sam:
[49:07]
| Okay, getting back to tariffs for a second. The one thing I wanted to say, and this ties into what we talked about a couple of episodes ago in terms of, you know, when the worst case scenario doesn't happen. Like, let's say here that the courts have struck down to tariffs, and let's say it sticks. It goes all the way up to SCOTUS, and SCOTUS says, yeah, they're right. You don't have the authority to do this. And then let's further stipulate that Donald Trump backs down like he has been consistently here and doesn't try to fight SCOTUS on it. And so we end up without these crazy tariffs and none of the apocalyptic predictions that Democrats have been making about just how bad the economy would be because of these tariffs.
|
Ivan:
[49:56]
| Here is the problem. OK, here here's the problem.
|
Sam:
[49:59]
| People are like, you said all this would happen and it didn't.
|
Ivan:
[50:02]
| Listen, as many people have already noticed. Effects of all of this shit are already.
|
Sam:
[50:09]
| There's some already happening. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[50:11]
| It's not just some already happening. It's just that there's a lot that you can't undo at this point.
|
Sam:
[50:17]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[50:18]
| So you're going to have.
|
Sam:
[50:21]
| Like people are.
|
Ivan:
[50:23]
| Probably avoid the worst. Yes. But we are going to have significant negative effects over the next few months, including certain supply disruptions. of a number of items because of these at this point. Because one thing about trade, it's almost like, man, it's like an airline. Think about an airline, like it happened to Delta Airlines, you know, when they had this meltdown because of a crowd strike, okay? And you grounded the airline, right? Restarting the fucking airline wasn't like just, oh, we'll just, oh, oh, we'll just, oh, the schedule, we'll just flip the switch and we'll just go back to normal. No! So all the aircraft without a position, all the crews were out of position, everybody was out of position, all the flights were canceled, you had millions of stranded, you had hundreds of thousands, if not millions of stranded passengers, you can't just flip a switch. And it's the same thing with this, when all of a sudden, companies go, first, they ordered like crazy because it advanced in the tariffs. Then they ceased ordering, okay? And so you're going to get, all of a sudden, these significant negative effects from these spikes and crashes in supplies of certain things. And there's no easy way to fix them. You know, the ships stop coming.
|
Sam:
[51:51]
| All I'm saying is that there will be people that don't pay all that much attention who sort of did get the message that people were saying that everything was going to be, you know, an apocalyptic hellspace, hellscape.
|
Ivan:
[52:06]
| I'll tell you what, people that shop on Temu, they're already, I already heard, you know, they know, they know it, okay? That's millions of people, okay? They're going in there, they're saying, holy shit, what? It's how much now?
|
Sam:
[52:21]
| Yeah, when you see the tariff line item that's more than the cost of the product.
|
Ivan:
[52:26]
| Right. They're seeing that right now. Like I mentioned this week, I bought coffee, okay, this week. I buy it, and it typically had been $13 a bag. It's now $19 a bag. I mean, I had some serious sticker shock from this fucking coffee. I'm like, holy fuck. 13 to 19 bucks A bag It's a big jump And I fully expect A lot of items to start all of a sudden Reflecting those kind of price jumps, Hyundai said recently they're raising prices on all their cars across the board.
|
Sam:
[53:04]
| Several car manufacturers have said that, haven't they?
|
Ivan:
[53:07]
| Yes. Ford said the same thing. And now the thing is that what they said is, oh, we could hold them like now for a little bit, but effective in a couple of months. They're all going up. They're all going up. And this doesn't impact the car tariffs.
|
Sam:
[53:22]
| Right. No, this does not. Car tariffs are still on.
|
Ivan:
[53:25]
| Yeah. So. So, I mean.
|
Sam:
[53:28]
| I mean, even like the context we were talking about this before was when, you know, the China tariffs were reduced from 150 back to 50 or whatever the hell it was.
|
Ivan:
[53:40]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[53:40]
| I forget where it is now. And again, we've talked repeatedly. The problem is just because you know what the story is today doesn't mean you know what the story is next week.
|
Ivan:
[53:52]
| Exactly. I mean, look at this shit with like today we're all of a sudden, well, steel, we're going to 50. and aluminum. And one of the things about the steel and aluminum stories, even though, oh, well, we only import 13% of the steel. One of the things is that many times the alloys, the things that they're importing are very specialized that you can't really replace with domestic production.
|
Sam:
[54:15]
| Right, okay.
|
Ivan:
[54:16]
| And so therefore, there are certain things that are just going to have to, you know, are going to get hammered, okay, because of this. But Sam, my whole thing is this. this fucker doesn't care he really doesn't care one bit to him this whole 30 50 70 it's just a game it's like a fucking i swear to god he's running this tariff game show when he.
|
Sam:
[54:47]
| When when he was confronted with the whole taco thing you know he's like this is how you negotiate of course you high ball them and then you come back down and that's that's how negotiations work you know of course i start out with something ridiculous that's how the game works.
|
Ivan:
[55:03]
| It's just preposterous but but but here's the thing sam none of his reasonable numbers are are are all those all of those are ridiculous too, on any of these. I just, and like I said, he doesn't give a damn. It's just a game. It's just a fucking game.
|
Sam:
[55:28]
| Well, because he wants that, well, there are a few different things here. First of all, he wants that win. And as we've talked about over and over and over again, it doesn't have to be a real win. He just has to be able to claim the win.
|
Ivan:
[55:41]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[55:42]
| You know, it can be like, oh, we're going to negotiate with the EU and the EU can come back to him and offer something that's actually already the case. You know, like several countries have essentially done this already, where they just say, hey, how about this? Where the thing that they're offering happens to be the status quo, but they're offering it again and pretending it's a concession and Donald Trump can claim victory. Or you make some minor little tweaks here and there that don't really matter, but it's enough that he can say he won. That's what he wants out of it. He wants to be able to claim that win.
|
Ivan:
[56:22]
| But I think also he wants to show he's the boss.
|
Sam:
[56:27]
| Yeah, he is doing it. Well, I should say he wants to claim the win, but he also wants to make it seem like the other guy lost. Because, again, to him, there is no scenario where everybody wins.
|
Ivan:
[56:40]
| Yep, exactly.
|
Sam:
[56:41]
| He has to show his dominance over the other. And so what he wants to see is the other country come like bowing and scraping and saying, OK, Mr. Trump, here you go. You got it. Now they can bring something that he already has, but he wants that sort of ritual humiliation. I think that's part of it. He wants the other side to come and genuflect and say, yes, sir, Mr. Trump, whatever you want.
|
Ivan:
[57:12]
| That means that basically that, There is no good outcome from this other than all these things get struck down, basically. That's pretty much it. There's just no other outcome that's really a winner.
|
Sam:
[57:31]
| Well, and people have been worried ever since he was confronted with this taco thing, which apparently was going around on Wall Street. People were calling it the taco trade, which the basic idea is Donald Trump announces something the markets tank and then a few days later he's always going to back off and the markets will go back up so your taco trade is to wait just a little bit after the announcement that makes everything go down buy in again and wait for the inevitable Trump capitulation and then make money off the backside that's, but you know So people are worried that now that this has been sort of slapped it directly in his face, you know, a reporter directly asked him about it and he seemed upset. Is he now not going to do that next time just to show these people?
|
Ivan:
[58:23]
| Right that's the one thing that i i really worried about that that question being posed now he's going to be like look you see i'm going to show how i am a man and i don't chicken out after my stupid thing i'm like oh god and.
|
Sam:
[58:40]
| So the stu the next stupid thing maybe maybe it's the steel and aluminum thing i don't know but maybe it sticks because he's not going back off because he's not a chicken.
|
Ivan:
[58:50]
| Not a chicken.
|
Sam:
[58:53]
| Suddenly I'm thinking back to the future, too.
|
Ivan:
[58:56]
| Oh, God, that's right. Chicken.
|
Sam:
[58:59]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[59:00]
| Got him into trouble.
|
Sam:
[59:02]
| Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, they're calling it the taco trade for a reason because it's consistently worked for the last few months.
|
Ivan:
[59:13]
| Yeah. For the last few months.
|
Sam:
[59:14]
| And that also, like, ties to me saying, like, when the worst case doesn't happen, the people who are the doomsayers about the worst case end up kind of looking stupid because the people who just assume from the beginning that, yeah, none of this will stick. One way or another, whether it's Trump backing off or the courts or Congress eventually, one way or another, it's not going to stick. and so you know you you guys are hyperventilating about nothing.
|
Ivan:
[59:44]
| Well i mean i, listen i i right now the damage is inevitable so we we are going to get a significant amount of damage over all of this over the next six months so i don't i don't think we're skating, in a scenario where we're not going to see it because we're already i mean we're already seeing the companies announce these fucking like when you see HB and all of these announce this, when you see the automakers announce the price increases, you're seeing all of this when I just fucking saw that my goddamn coffee cost that much more. Let me tell you something. This shit is coming. And it's coming quick.
|
Sam:
[1:00:22]
| Right. Okay, any more tariff talk?
|
Ivan:
[1:00:26]
| No.
|
Sam:
[1:00:27]
| Let's take another break. This time, it's this one here.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:33]
| This one here.
|
Sam:
[1:01:23]
| There it is. It's over.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:26]
| It is. It is.
|
Sam:
[1:01:27]
| It was. It shall be something. Something.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:31]
| Just sweet.
|
Sam:
[1:01:34]
| Yeah. That.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:35]
| Something like that.
|
Sam:
[1:01:36]
| Something. Something. Anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:39]
| What are you picking, Sam?
|
Sam:
[1:01:40]
| Elon. I'm picking Elon.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:42]
| Oh, God. Elon. What about that asshole?
|
Sam:
[1:01:48]
| Well, let's start with the basics. Hey, how many trillions of dollars has he saved the U.S. government in his time before he's leaving?
|
Ivan:
[1:01:58]
| Ah, let me check. Hold on. Zero.
|
Sam:
[1:02:02]
| Zero. Now, come on. They claim some savings. They claim some savings.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:08]
| Damn, this year, zero. He has not saved us any fucking money. As a matter of fact, I can argue he's cost us money.
|
Sam:
[1:02:15]
| I think the fact that he's cost us money is actually fairly plain. Now, he's done lots of damage in the process.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:25]
| Which is what I'm saying, that he's cost us money. Because the reality is that even if any of those who could say, hey, we saved, you know, we didn't spend this billion here. That billion cost us a whole bunch of money that we didn't spend.
|
Sam:
[1:02:38]
| Because there's other costs on the backside for dealing with the fact that you didn't spend that billion. exactly um you know and and look most of what he even claimed like there were fact checkers going through and figuring out that like he was claiming contracts that were canceled that actually already expired for instance yep correct he there were things that were claimed where there was just a typo and there was an extra zero on the fucking number you know uh i mean i like.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:12]
| That especially if it's directed towards my bank account.
|
Sam:
[1:03:15]
| Yeah, but there were all kinds of things. Now, they certainly canceled some things. I mean, and again, there's real damage that's been done. There have been agencies that have been crippled and are unable to do their work. The International Aid Agency is, for all intents and purposes, actually is gone, despite whatever lawsuits that are going through the process that say, no, he didn't actually have that authority. There are all kinds of things that have been stopped. However... When you total it all up, I mean, we pointed, I don't have the current graph in front of me, but as of a couple weeks ago, you know, there was, there's apparently a place you can go on the federal government website that actually gives a daily total of how much the government has actually spent this year. And if you compare it to last year, we are up from last year.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:12]
| Exactly. So wait, like I said, we saved no money.
|
Sam:
[1:04:15]
| We have saved no money whatsoever. Now you could say, okay, but then you could say, well, are we saving money in the future have we shut down streams of payments that aren't going to continue in the future the answer to that is also no no because if you look at the the well the big beautiful bill still has to go through the senate and stuff it it also does some other cuts but it puts back some things that elon had gotten rid of and it has the huge tax cut that's going to, like, destroy the deficit further, you know. And to be fair, Elon never claimed to be going after the deficit. He was claimed to go after spending. But he hasn't even succeeded in spending.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:59]
| Well, I mean, he was going after the deficit by cutting spending. That was his thought. And actually, he came out today. Basically, he has been blasting the big, beautiful bill because it precisely increases the deficit. So he's not happy with that. himself. But the reality is that Elon didn't help any.
|
Sam:
[1:05:20]
| No, no. I mean, the whole exercise, and he admitted himself, he ran into roadblocks left and right. I mean, one of the roadblocks, by the way, is what he was doing was illegal.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:33]
| That's a little bit of a problem.
|
Sam:
[1:05:35]
| You know, and so the court started saying so. I mean, fundamentally, the bottom line is Congress determines what this country spends money on.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:46]
| Spends, right.
|
Sam:
[1:05:47]
| The president and the executive branch is responsible for executing that spending and making it actually happen. But Congress makes the determination of what to spend or what not to spend. So you can't just shut off things that Congress has authorized. The way to shut it off is to get Congress to pass a new law, a new budget, or whatever that doesn't include the thing you don't want. You can't just not spend the money. Let me just say one thing. This is going through the courts because there was a Nixon-era theory that you could just not spend the money. But ever since then, courts have said, well, yes, you do. We'll see if this court overrules it when it gets up to SCOTUS.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:29]
| There is another thing that is very important to mention. You talked about USAID specifically in terms of costs. The reality is that our ability to do business in a number of places got significantly damaged by our destruction of what was the number one tool for software. power that we had in the world in many different countries to make sure that we got better access to a number of things that the u.s needed in certain different countries and this idiot completely dismantled it and destroyed it okay.
|
Sam:
[1:07:14]
| Well and so by the way for for usaid and all these others it's not like elon was alone he was also they had cooperation from the various cabinet at people responsible for those areas. So it's not like...
|
Ivan:
[1:07:27]
| Listen, bullshit. Listen, bullshit. He was the author of the execution.
|
Sam:
[1:07:31]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:31]
| If you had left those other people to their own devices...
|
Sam:
[1:07:34]
| They probably wouldn't have done the same thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:36]
| Exactly. Okay? They just cheered them on because they want it, because they love this shit. But if they were doing it, they probably wouldn't have. And so, you know, aside from that, estimates also show that I saw at least 400,000 people have probably died because of this shit that he did.
|
Sam:
[1:08:00]
| Well, Rubio denied that just a few days ago.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:02]
| Fuck that fucking slimy scumbag liar.
|
Sam:
[1:08:09]
| I mean, and people ask, well, what do you mean? Well, I mean, some of these were aid programs specifically to feed people who were starving or to provide AIDS treatment for people who had that or prevention. Of course, no one cares about prevention. Yeah, but- Well, and this, you know, what we're talking about on USAID applies across the board to all kinds of different areas. I think for USAID at one point, I saw an estimate that for, well, I'm going to pull this out of my ass. So I'm not going to say it, but for, I'm not going to say a specific number, but for a bunch of these programs, whether it's USAID or preventive stuff done by like the health service or CDC, or for that matter, IRS agents doing enforcement for every dollar you spend on any one of these things, you are saving multiple times that amount through the preventive efforts you're doing where the costs of not doing it are higher than the cost of doing it. Because in the IRS example, it's simple. When you pay a dollar for an IRS agent, they're bringing in four, five, seven, I don't know what the number is.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:30]
| An IRA agent, like you were saying, is a terrorist. But that's a different thing. Okay, we're not bringing back the Irish Republican Army again, no.
|
Sam:
[1:09:41]
| I was talking about the retirement accounting fund.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:43]
| Oh, so we've got retirement account agents now.
|
Sam:
[1:09:46]
| Too? Yes, exactly.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:48]
| Interesting.
|
Sam:
[1:09:49]
| No, no, no, the IRS. But, you know, they bring in money. Their job is to make sure we bring in money.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:55]
| Their job is to make sure we get paid.
|
Sam:
[1:09:57]
| And they weigh more than pay for themselves. So you get rid of that, you lose money. And similarly, like, you know, for all of these other stuff, if you spend money on preventive health care, you save a shit ton on treating illnesses later. There's a delay, but there is. And the USAID stuff is similar. Like the lost opportunities by getting rid of this soft power internationally. personally, first of all, all the dead people and sick people and, you know, direct effects like that. But also, like you said, it's influence. You know, of course, the Chinese were already eating our lunch in a lot of these countries in terms of, like, making sure that they were growing their soft power. But of course, we're leaving a vacuum. People are going to come in Well.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:51]
| I mean, let's be clear. We had, before Trump came in, we had a, quite a significant global presence of soft power around the world and influence. Okay. I mean, our former president, Biden, was far more respected globally, every survey would show you, than she or Putin or any of these folks. And that carries a lot of weight. Okay. It also carries a lot of weight when, you know, even though we may have not been as aggressive as the Chinese government has gone out and spend money in different places to carry influence, it's certainly not an insignificant amount when we're spending $40 billion directly from the government, okay, around the world. It's not. And also, you got to remember that a lot of the soft power from America comes from not directly from the government, but from the multinational fucking companies that are deployed around the fucking world as well. And the reality is that them doing business around the world gets significantly negatively impacted by these kind of actions because they won't receive an American company with as much, you know, open arms or whatever when we went and we starved your children.
|
Sam:
[1:12:17]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:18]
| You know, so it's just the dumbest fucking shit. Elon Musk at the government was a disaster. He didn't do shit. All he did was cause chaos. He added nothing, okay? Now, I'm sure that a lot of MAGA diehards love this, but the reality is that a lot of hyperbole, not basically what was delivered was nothing in reality of any value whatsoever. It was all harm. And by the way, as an added bonus, he tarnished his companies in a value destruction that is unimaginable. And I've never seen a fucking CEO do something this grotesque to the companies that he leads. Maybe Mark Zuckerberg was trying to do an imitation of that. But even he, after his, like, bro, like, revelation, he hasn't been talking about it as much.
|
Sam:
[1:13:22]
| Yeah, we haven't heard as much from him lately, have we?
|
Ivan:
[1:13:25]
| Not at all.
|
Sam:
[1:13:25]
| He's sort of gotten quiet in the last few months. No. And, of course, we have two more Elon-related things. One, at his final press conference with Donald Trump, he had a black eye. He says his five-year-old ex gave it to him. He was roughhousing.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:47]
| I'm more inclined, as I haven't had a five-year-old, I'm more inclined to believe that he's pissed off this many women that one of them punched him. Because he's, look.
|
Sam:
[1:13:58]
| The two rumors.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:00]
| Full disclosure, the reason I'm saying this, look, I have been punched by an angry woman. okay all right of.
|
Sam:
[1:14:07]
| Course you're out.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:08]
| I mean yes okay and and and you know unfortunately it's happened more than once it's not because i it's not because i did anything violent towards them i'm sure.
|
Sam:
[1:14:20]
| You deserved it every time.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:21]
| Sure but look i mean and i didn't i have not done any elon level kind of shit the shit that he's done with his so-called you know i don't even know what the hell to call them are they his partners is that whatever where he's birthed all these kids all over the place and then you see some of them and then you see some of them where where they are like on twitter you know i fucking refuse to call an ex fuck you elon okay i won't do so on on your fucking social media bullshit site where they're going, hey, where's my money, bitch? I haven't gotten paid. And, you know, what about the baby? I mean, when you're seeing that, believe me, I expect one of them, the moment that he sees him and he says something like that, to fucking just cold cock him. I wouldn't be cheering if I saw the video.
|
Sam:
[1:15:19]
| Right. So I've heard two rumors about who it is who punched him at this point. Now, I'm going to put this right out there. Complete, unverified rumors.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:32]
| This is all pure speculation.
|
Sam:
[1:15:33]
| Repeating shit from the internet that is probably completely and totally made up you know but but on the other hand you know i will say like at the same time you know you say okay it's completely made up but you know the probably the high point of the kamala harris campaign was when that random guy on the internet put out the meme about jd vance fucking the couch so that's right you know, So anyway, no, rumor number one. Actually, I heard this second, but I have less info on this one. So it was Scott Besant, the secretary of the treasury, who punched him.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:13]
| Now, now, you don't think so? Nah. I was thinking, what's the number two?
|
Sam:
[1:16:20]
| Number two is Miller.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:23]
| Ah, well, I was going to go with that one first.
|
Sam:
[1:16:25]
| With Stephen Miller, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:16:27]
| Well, because he's banging his, well, It's looking like he's banging his wife.
|
Sam:
[1:16:31]
| Well, so, yes. And this is where the rumor comes in for this, is that, let me get out the whole thread here so I can just quote it properly. I put this on the general, on the curmudgeon score slack. Blah, blah, blah. Rewind, rewind. Here we go. you know, I should have these things prepared.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:01]
| Yeah, if we were a good show, we would be doing this.
|
Sam:
[1:17:06]
| There we go. Okay. That's annoying. Okay, there. I found it. Okay. And I have to log in. Okay, finally. The first place I saw this was on Blue Sky from an account named Gwen Snyder is Uncivil. But apparently This rumor has been going on Blue Sky It's been going on Axe It's been going on Threads All over social media And apparently the DC rumor buzz mill Is that what you call him a buzz mill? Anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:41]
| Sounds good. Sounds right.
|
Sam:
[1:17:43]
| Okay. She says, oh, I am not shitposting, folks. Stephen Miller, his wife, and Elon. And Stephen Miller is the complete racist, anti-immigration, like, I mean.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:57]
| Do you see it?
|
Sam:
[1:17:58]
| What's his official position in the Trump administration? Doesn't even matter. Anyway, he's doing an immigration bad stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:05]
| Official evil guy.
|
Sam:
[1:18:06]
| There you go. Stephen Miller, his wife, and Elon are widely rumored to be in a thruple. Now Miller's wife is leaving the Trump team to be with Musk, and literally, per the New York Times, Stephen is angrily subtweeting Musk. Yes, he is.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:25]
| These are all accurate things, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:18:26]
| They actually put it in the paper of record that he was mad. The same article that reported the Threpple rumor also reported that the Millers had gotten close to Musk in order to run him like an asset, with Katie Miller joining Dodge to keep a closer eye on Elon.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:46]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:18:47]
| And Stephen went around D.C. saying he was running Musk using his wife as Elon's handler.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:56]
| He's such an idiot.
|
Sam:
[1:18:57]
| So anyway, Musk is publicly dragging Trump on tariffs and his big, beautiful bill while withholding a cool $100 million in pledged political slush fund donations. Oh, and he's tantruming out of D.C. and Miller's wife has decided to leave the Trump administration and go with him.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:18]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:19:19]
| All of this would be factual. All of that is fact. We don't know for sure about the thruple, but her going to work for Dodge and then leaving town with Elon is true and verified. All of this would be funny in and of itself, but the published DC rumor mill also has Stephen and Katie Miller in a torrid polycule situation together. So now it very much looks like Stephen tried to use his wife to honeypot Musk into compliance, but managed to lose his wife to Musk instead. And Stephen appears to be attempting to post through it by subtweeting Musk on Musk's own platform.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:02]
| Aw, poor Steve. Are we going to shed a tear for Steve?
|
Sam:
[1:20:07]
| No, not in the slightest. Apparently, there was a Wired article talking about the Thrupple thing, and there was the New York Times talking about the subtweeting and blah, blah, blah.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:18]
| This whole thing, for some reason, jogged my memory.
|
Sam:
[1:20:22]
| So, of course, they think that Miller may have punched Musk. Go ahead.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:28]
| This whole thing, what it reminded me, it jogged my memory about an old article, and I shared this on our Slack from Vanity Fair, that profiled how Steve Miller and what's her fucking name?
|
Sam:
[1:20:43]
| Katie Miller? His wife?
|
Ivan:
[1:20:45]
| Whatever her fucking name is. Yeah, main name, Walton, that I was reading over here.
|
Sam:
[1:20:51]
| Are the D. Walton's?
|
Ivan:
[1:20:52]
| No, Walton Man.
|
Sam:
[1:20:54]
| Oh, okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:55]
| Walton Man. And it jogged my memory and I pulled back that article from, I looked it up and I just saw this and they profiled how, you know, how they grew up and how Steve Miller was groomed by this guy called Larry Elder, which was a psychopath right-wing black guy who basically said that blacks were, it was their fault, everything that happened to them, slavery and racism and whatever.
|
Sam:
[1:21:18]
| Oh, nice, nice.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:18]
| Yeah, this is a, it's a great, you know, he was basically just groomed by psychopathic lunatics, okay, right-wingers. And that, but that she... Hers was different in the sense that they talked about her when she was at University of Florida. She actually went to school in high school, like with my nephews, okay?
|
Sam:
[1:21:43]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:44]
| She lives in Western Florida, okay? So, I mean, so I know this community, this community, you know, pretty, I mean, they, hell, our representative for that area is Debbie Washerman Schultz, okay? That one overwhelm would be like by 70 percent. That's what you know, that that gives you an idea of what the what the town is. OK. And she was just this odd right wing evil thing in the middle of this. OK. But the thing about her that they said is as a college when she went to University of Florida as a college classmate for University of Florida puts it. The only thing she loves or values in this world is power. Anyone she attaches to in her life is simply a pawn to feed her addiction to it. So look at this now. She got a road. Steve there has met the richest guy in the world. We'll talk about what she thinks is power. Guess where she's going. Steve is fucking done. Fuck. Listen, Steve is toast. He's out. He cannot compete with this. Anyway, Sherry before.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:04]
| So this is why he's in a range of subtweeting because she has been this craven. She was in high school and college and the rest of her life. So this is the next big step up. I mean, what the fuck? What bigger step can you take? So there you have it. I think that this...
|
Sam:
[1:23:27]
| Move on to a throuple with Elon and Donald?
|
Ivan:
[1:23:30]
| Oh, my God. Disgusting. Jesus fucking Christ. but i think listen she is a conniving planning person i think she's looking at this in in uh in uh in the long longer term picture where look she thinks hey donald's old right you know this presidency is probably going to be over in three and a half years where do i have more staying power in power? Musk or here? I think she's gabbling. It's Musk. That's what I think the thread in her head is. That's why she jumped. She left the White House, Sam. She left the White House where she had... Listen, Steve Miller is one of the advisors that Trump listens to the most and decided that this was a better bet. Let's help.
|
Sam:
[1:24:32]
| He's not going to throw her out like trash in a couple months anyway. Maybe once she has a baby or two for her.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:38]
| You know, she'll set her up. Exactly. But then she'll set her up as an executive at some one of these companies. Wasn't he banging some executive at Neuralink?
|
Sam:
[1:24:48]
| Something like that.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:50]
| Exactly. So she'll, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:24:51]
| I think one at SpaceX too.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:53]
| Exactly. So, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:24:56]
| Some of these get artificially inseminated instead of, you know, naturally.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:01]
| No, no, no, no, I know. But, you know, but still, I think, you know, it'll just, you know, insert her somewhere in there.
|
Sam:
[1:25:08]
| Yeah. Like, especially if she ends up with one or more of his children, she'll be sat. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:16]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:25:17]
| As much as she, well, he's trying to, wiggle out of that one with the influencer, right? Something like that.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:24]
| Yeah, he's been trying desperately to do that for some reason.
|
Sam:
[1:25:28]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:28]
| I guess.
|
Sam:
[1:25:29]
| Okay, the other Elon thing. New York Times did a big article on his drug use. A number of people have pointed out that we've actually known about his drug use for years. Apparently, the same reporter who did the article in the New York Times about this had done a similar article about Elon Musk and his drug use a couple years back. So what's new in this story is apparently, oh, he's still doing it. Hey, and apparently he was in content and apparently it's worse than it was maybe a little bit, but, but it was already bad a couple of years ago. So this is not new news, but I guess it takes a reminder. Cause I mean, I, I've forgotten sometimes that this guy is like constantly high on top of everything else, you know?
|
Ivan:
[1:26:17]
| Yeah. Um, it's so crazy.
|
Sam:
[1:26:20]
| But yeah, apparently he's struggling. Let's see. Mr. Musk has described some of his mental health issues in interviews and on social media. I'm quoting from the New York Times article, which was, on the campaign trail, Elon Musk.
|
Sam:
[1:26:36]
| Elon Musk juggled drugs and family drama by Kristen Grind and Megan Tuhi. And so, yeah, Mr. Musk has described some of his mental health issues in interviews and on social media, saying in one post that he has felt great highs, terrible lows, and unrelenting stress. He has denounced traditional therapy and antidepressants, because of course he has. He plays video games for hours on end. He struggles with binge eating and takes weight loss medication. and he posts day and night on his social media platform x he has a history of recreational drug use the wall street journal reported last year some board members at tesla have worried about his use of drugs including ambien in an interview in march 2024 don lemon pressed him on his drug use. He said he only took a small amount of ketamine, about once every two weeks. If you've used too much ketamine, you can't get work done, and I have a lot of work. The Times found he has actually developed a far more serious habit. He's been using ketamine often, sometimes daily, mixing it with other drugs. The line between medical use and recreation was blurry. He also took ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms at private gatherings. He's done interviews before where he talked about pot, which of course is legal in some places anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:28:04]
| The Food and Drug Administration has formally approved the use of ketamine only as an anesthetic in medical procedures. Doctors with a special license may prescribe it for psychiatric disorders, but it has warned about its risks, including, as an example, the death of Matthew Perry from Friends, the drug has psychedelic properties, blah, blah, blah, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And this article also talks about the messy consequence of his efforts to produce more babies. Married and divorced three times, fathered six children in his first marriage, two with Ms. Boucher, blah, blah, blah. Then there was a surrogate with their third child and had fathered twins with an executive at Neuralink, like you said. Because this is all, he's sounding an alarm about declining birth rates leading to the end of civilization. So he wants to single-handedly like father as many children as humanly possible. As part of the pro-natalist movement. He wants all kinds of people to be having lots of babies, by the way. Although I suspect if you quizzed him about it, it's not just anybody. It's certain people he approves of that should be having those babies.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:26]
| No, wait. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Are you seriously? Wow. I can't believe that.
|
Sam:
[1:29:37]
| Yes. And anyway, he's got apparently multiple custody battles, lawsuits about surrogacies, you know, more. He has said he's willing to give his sperm to anyone who wants a child. You want in on that action, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[1:29:57]
| No, thank you. I'm good. Thanks. i'm perfectly fine perfectly fine don't need to participate.
|
Sam:
[1:30:07]
| Yeah anyway elon musk's a giant mess of a human being you know on so many different levels.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:17]
| I guess the one good news silver lining from all of this is that he's doing quite a lot of things to shorten his life Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:30:26]
| He's doing things to shorten his life. He's doing things to reduce his net worth. He's still the richest person in the world for the moment, but he's working on it, I guess. He's trying not to be. And I don't know it. I mean, at this point, it's clear, isn't it, that he's a liability to every single business he runs. Like it's not, you know, helping any of them. He had this reputation as being like this, this tech genius and all these companies he started that were wonderfully successful. And I'm not sure he ever deserved that, but he had the reputation for a while.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:03]
| I have been a long time Elon skeptic.
|
Sam:
[1:31:06]
| Yes. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:07]
| This is not a new thing. I was one that for at least eight years back, I had been saying that this guy is a fucking con artist. Okay. I've said this for a long time. I always got pissed that people didn't catch up to this. You know, I mean, I still remember, aside from the slipshod quality of his cars, The first time that I saw that, that I realized how big a scam artist he was.
|
Sam:
[1:31:40]
| Speaking of sub-shot quality, just to mention, he blew up another rocket this week, too.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:43]
| And he blew up another rocket. Was this thing that he did, that he had, he turned refundable deposits from people that had been put down for Model 3s, okay, and, turned them into down payments. And so he took their money so it was non-refundable, which was one of the scammiest fucking things I've ever seen anybody do. And he did it because if he didn't do that, Tesla would have gone bankrupt before they actually launched a Model 3. And the only way that he could, you know, get out of that was to basically steal people's money. And so that one was an oh shit moment, okay? Because even he admitted that If they didn't build that car at that moment, they didn't start selling them, they would have gone bankrupt. But without all that money, they definitely would have gone bankrupt.
|
Sam:
[1:32:34]
| Right. And if I remember right at the time you were talking about it and they just barely missed it by the skin of their teeth.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:43]
| By the skin of their teeth.
|
Sam:
[1:32:44]
| They were on the verge of running out of money when they came out of the other side.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:49]
| When they came out of the other side, yeah. And if they hadn't taken that deposit money, which there were 200,000 deposits, okay, and it was a couple of thousand dollars per person, it was a huge amount of cash. So, but that was, it's just that kind of scammy thing. And by then, everybody already knew he was enabling an entire army of trolls online to attack anybody that said anything negative about Tesla. And this had been well known to anybody that had talked about Tesla that had been covering the company that he would he had this entire just just bunch of psychophants that would go out and attack these people relentlessly. He has not changed. OK, he has been an evil asshole for a long time and a crook.
|
Sam:
[1:33:42]
| So he fit in perfectly with Donald and this group.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:46]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:33:47]
| So, so, so Yvonne, the guy who pardons everybody.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:51]
| What? Well, I think, well, a couple, why is he leaving? A couple of things. Number one is the other people around Trump are being, have been able to push him out because Besant basically told him to go fuck himself. i i had heard that trump was actually impressed that rubio rubio flipped out at him in private over the whole usa id thing okay and other cuts he wanted to do and basically told him to go f off and that apparently trump was impressed that rubio actually told musk to go off yeah Yeah. And, you know, I think that what he found is that Trump likes that chaos. Right. And he wasn't just going to let him be able to roll all over everybody.
|
Sam:
[1:34:45]
| I think there are a couple other things, too. One, the fig leaf that's been put out there is that they were end of the time period allowed for the special government employee classification. Now, I think that's convenient. I figure if they if he really that's convenient.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:03]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:35:03]
| If they really wanted him to stay and Donald Trump really want if he wanted to stay and Donald Trump wanted him to stay, they would figure out a way. So it's convenient that this categorization they had him in legally was about to expire next week or something. So convenient timing on that. In addition to what you said about other cabinet members sort of having enough and pushing him out, there's also Musk himself, I think, was really frustrated that he, as we talked about at the beginning of this segment, he wasn't actually getting the shit done he wanted to get done. And Donald Trump was pushing for legislation that effectively nullified anything he didn't do anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:47]
| Correct.
|
Sam:
[1:35:47]
| So I think he was frustrated with those policy differences and sort of deciding, like, this, this ain't working. Like I'm trying to do this and they're trying to work the other way. And then finally the fact that, you know, his other companies are having issues and have been damaged further by what he's doing here. I think he admitted himself in one or two interviews that his political involvement has actually harmed Tesla. no shit really now it might have helped SpaceX like I think one of the things that he did accomplish while he was in government is through his influence like a whole bunch of investigations and regulatory efforts that were going on by for Tesla for SpaceX for X for all of these things are just gone like he got those cancelled Like, the investigations are done. Any prospect of regulation is done. He's sort of guaranteed SpaceX the contracts it had already plus more.
|
Sam:
[1:36:59]
| He had, like, part of these trade negotiations in exchange for tariff relief for African countries were— For Starlink. Were for Starlink. Bring in Starlink and then we'll think about it. So like he did a whole bunch and you know, that.
|
Sam:
[1:37:20]
| Was to the benefit of his companies while he was in government. And now he can go back to his companies and try to capitalize on that. Now, I think that's balanced by the damage he did himself. So I don't know if he's going to dig out of that hole or not. But, you know, numerous, he was getting pressure to come back and pay attention to his companies as well. Although, frankly, if I was those companies, I'd be like, is there a way we can get rid of them? Can we get rid of him entirely?
|
Ivan:
[1:37:52]
| I think that one of the problems that Tesla itself has is that Tesla is a meme stock related to him at this point. That's all this is. It's the biggest meme stock out there. And if you fire him, then your stock is going to collapse.
|
Sam:
[1:38:10]
| You don't think that there's actually a scenario where Tesla could dump the baggage of Elon and actually do better as a car company without him?
|
Ivan:
[1:38:22]
| Well, the problem is they may do better as a car company. The problem is it's impossible.
|
Sam:
[1:38:26]
| The stock price would still go down.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:28]
| Exactly, because the thing is that there is no... I mean, Toyota is the most profitable car company out there, okay? And Toyota, which out-profits, out-sells, out-everything, you know, Tesla is worth, like maybe a third of what they are worth. I mean, so there is no scenario that I can see where they can get to those numbers.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:00]
| That's the problem. There's just no, you know, yeah, market cap for Toyota is $300 billion. So, yeah, these numbers. And Tesla is right under a trillion dollars, if I remember, right around there. There is no, you know, Toyota, you know, what do they sell? They have revenues of, I mean, the numbers are, let's see. They had like a couple of hundred billion in revenues. They've got operating income. Yeah, three, you know, you know, 380, you know, net income of it's in the end. Oh, shit. yeah like 60 billion dollars in operating in net income tesla has nowhere near that they're not even close so there's no way for you to you know yes improve tesla operations by whatever so you get to like uh you know 20 billion dollars in net profits 30 billion okay great and still doesn't get your stock all the way up there and.
|
Sam:
[1:40:10]
| Of course nobody wants a scenario where you make it a healthy company at a reasonable valuation because you have to go down to get there.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:16]
| You have to go down. You have to go down like 70%. That's your problem. So they're all stuck holding this fucking thing. And this guy, the moment that Elon either dies, Or he is fired. The stock price will plunge by 70, 80%. It's pretty much that simple.
|
Sam:
[1:40:36]
| Okay. So we have established that you don't want a vial of Elon's sperm. You apparently don't want a Tesla either.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:47]
| This is the most disgusting fucking hot. Just put an image of me getting fucking viled with fucking Elon's sperm. Oh, God. No, no, I don't. By the way, let me be clear about this. Hey, what a vial of anybody's fucking sperm delivered to me, including my own. Hey, you should look to my house and I'm like, hey, I got something for you. What? Look, here's a vial of sperm. I'm like, fuck off.
|
Sam:
[1:41:19]
| It could be the bonus when you get a new Cybertruck. Free with every Cybertruck.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:26]
| Listen, now don't tell that to Elon because he may like this fucking idea, okay? Where all of a sudden you get like one of these like funnel things or some whatever to hear. So you can, you know, you get like a prepared syringe. You can shoot yourself up with my sperm along with a cyber truck.
|
Sam:
[1:41:44]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:45]
| Great. I guess we should go to Tesla marketing department. We should join the Tesla marketing department. We're coming up with these great ideas and promotions.
|
Sam:
[1:41:53]
| I i'm i'm sure that would work out well and boost the sales immensely i i don't know what you're talking about ivan who doesn't want that who.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:03]
| Doesn't want a vial of sperm with their new car, People are going to be lining up around the block, even though they got rid of the local store here. But, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:42:14]
| I think we have just taken a nosedive into the gutter and we should end the show.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:19]
| Yes, we have basically already hit. You know, we have we have you know, we have figured out how to lower the bar and get there. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:42:27]
| Yeah, absolutely. OK, thank you for joining us on yet another Curmudgeons Corner. You guys know where to go. Curmudgeons-corner.com. unless someone unbeknownst to us has bought Curmudgeon's Corner without the hyphen for us. There you can find, what can you find there, Yvonne? Oh, links to all the ways to contact us, transcripts, archive of old shows, all the fun stuff, links to our YouTube. I still haven't linked to the TikTok. I'm still like, I keep forgetting to like post the TikToks from the previous episode until I'm about to post the new episode. but you know there are clips on tiktok the last one's actually got some views, so yeah i don't know there you go the the the last ones at this moment as i'm speaking are the ones where we had uh uh todd on as a guest uh those got some decent views and some comments and stuff but you know i haven't posted last week's yet i don't know i will eventually and once from this show anyway all that kind of stuff and a link to our patreon so you can give us money, Please, money, not sperm.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:35]
| Please, please. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:43:40]
| And yeah, at various levels, we'll mention you on the show. We'll send you a postcard. We'll send you a mug. And at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask, we will invite you to the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack, where Yvonne and I and others are chatting throughout the week, sharing links, all kinds of stuff. Yvonne, what is a highlight from this week of the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack that we talked about online on the Slack but have not mentioned at all on the show?
|
Ivan:
[1:44:06]
| I got two.
|
Sam:
[1:44:08]
| Two?
|
Ivan:
[1:44:08]
| First one is Tesla is hiring humans to control its self-driving robo-taxis.
|
Sam:
[1:44:16]
| Of course. How else would you do it?
|
Ivan:
[1:44:18]
| Yes. So that one was an interesting one that came out. But better. a follow-up on our series of people selling stupid shit that we sell that we post on on random a couple of years ago i shared one that was about a reality star who made two hundred thousand dollars for serving her farts in mason jars okay and now is pivoting to nfts we found out according to nfts dad.
|
Sam:
[1:44:44]
| Isn't this old.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:45]
| I don't i yes the article.
|
Sam:
[1:44:47]
| Is from 2022 when she.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:49]
| Was yeah But she put it to NFTs. Yeah, so apparently, I guess NFTs are out. We shouldn't try an NFT. I guess a Carmine's Corner NFT.
|
Sam:
[1:44:57]
| I think we've missed that boat.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:58]
| I think we've missed that boat. Okay, well, we've missed a lot of these boats. Okay, all right. You know, we missed the white noise boat.
|
Sam:
[1:45:04]
| We've missed an entire flotilla.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:06]
| I mean, yes, exactly. I mean, that's very certain. So I came upon the fact that Sydney Sweeney is selling soap made with drops of her own bath water. When your fans start asking for your bath water, you can either ignore it or turn it into a bar of Dr. Squatch soap, Sweet Me said in a release. I mean, Sam, what the fuck are we doing? We are so stupid. I mean, these people are getting rich doing this shit. They're selling white noise. They're selling their farts. They're selling NFTs. And I got this woman making, probably going to make millions, selling soup made out of her own fucking bathwater. This is 2025.
|
Sam:
[1:46:00]
| Yes. See, the problem you and I have are when we occasionally, like, a thought will come into our minds, and then we're like.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:08]
| Oh, come on, that's just too stupid.
|
Sam:
[1:46:10]
| That's stupid. Well, there's no reason to do that. That's just idiotic. Now, a lot of stupid thoughts come into my mind. I just need to remove the filter.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:20]
| They're stupid.
|
Sam:
[1:46:22]
| Yeah. And just do the stupid thing. Just double, triple down.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:24]
| We're just like, we're just, you know, we're power through it.
|
Sam:
[1:46:27]
| Exactly.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:28]
| We're going to make it work.
|
Sam:
[1:46:30]
| Exactly. Because, you know, somebody wants everything. Now, some of these things, like just random person selling soap made out of my bathwater. It is powered by the fact this person has some level of celebrity. Yes, correct.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:44]
| Yes, true. True. Like, I mean, the fart lady was not that famous. And look, the guy's selling white noise.
|
Sam:
[1:46:52]
| Yeah, that's just white noise.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:56]
| It's not famous white noise. It's white noise.
|
Sam:
[1:47:00]
| I think that market's saturated now there are all kinds of you know all kinds of colors of noise and they're all different guys.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:07]
| Yeah they're all.
|
Sam:
[1:47:08]
| These kind of like video on.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:10]
| A loop-de-doop with different things.
|
Sam:
[1:47:13]
| I've fired places snowy villages.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:16]
| Whatever you know.
|
Sam:
[1:47:18]
| You can find on youtube whatever i have had my thoughts on on a particular type of that kind of video to make but i've been And in my thought process, of course, I'm like, I have to automate it. I have to, like, figure out a way to automate that experience. Whereas I should just, like, do it manually once, put it on a loop, and be done.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:38]
| Okay. You know, we've got that Curmudgeon's Corner commercial. Okay. All right. Where, you know, you guys just go, look, I don't know what the hell. Look, all we got to do is just put it on a loop.
|
Sam:
[1:47:50]
| Loop that sucker. Put it on YouTube.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:52]
| Let's not overthink this. Just loop it. Do it. go come on just corner slack live it's that thing just looping and that's it it's all we got let's start off with that see what happens yeah all of a sudden we go back and we see there's like a hundred thousand people streaming this, also you get your check from google you're like wait what thank you mr google yes mr google yes that's the name it's like John Google it must.
|
Sam:
[1:48:27]
| Be John Google.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:28]
| John Google okay well that's nice anyway yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:48:32]
| Okay we are done okay everybody have a great week we'll talk to you next time goodbye.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:39]
| Bye Thank you.
|
Sam:
[1:49:10]
| Thank you. Okay, later, Yvonne. Have a good weekend. And I'll be there, whatever you're doing.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:17]
| Whatever we're doing.
|
