Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/27/25: Billionaire Says He Feels Soybean Pain, Rancher Unloads On Trump, Food Stamps To End, Candace Says Musk Is Not Human

Episode Date: October 27, 2025

Krystal and Emily discuss billionaire says he is feeling Soybean pain, rancher unloads on Trump Argentina scheme, food stamps to end, Candace says Musk and Thiel are not humans.   Mike Callicrate: https://www.mikecallicrate.com/    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Hello, America's sweetheart Johnny Knoxville here. I want to tell you about my new true crime podcast, Crimeless, Hillbilly Heist, from Smartless Media, campside media, and big money players. It's a wild tale about a gang of high-functioning nitwits who somehow pulled off America's third largest cash heist. Kind of like Robin Hood, except for the part where he's still,

from the rich and gifts to the poor. I'm not that generous. It's a damn near inspiring true story for anyone out there who's ever shot for the moon then just totally muffed up the landing. They stole $17 million that had not bought a ticket

to help him escape. So we're saying like, oh God, what do we do? What do we do? That was dumb. People do not follow my example. Listen to Crimless, Hillbilly Heist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Two rich young Americans move to the Costa Rican jungle to start over,

but one of them will end up dead and the other tried for murder three times. It starts with a dream, a nature reserve and a spectacular new home. But little by little, they lose it. They actually lose it. They sort of went nuts. Until one night, everything spins out of control. Listen to Hell in Heaven on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I live below a cult leader, and I fear I've angered her. Wait a minute, Sophia.

How do you know she's a cult leader? Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week on the OK Storytime podcast. So we'll find out soon. This person writes, my neighbor has been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals. And now my ceiling is collapsing. I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder. I think they might be part of a cult? Hold up. A real life cult?

And what is a dirt ritual? No clue, Dakota. Find out how it ends. Listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breaking

points.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breaking points.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. Welcome to Breaking Points. Emily, great to see you. It's great to be here. Happy Monday. Everyone, we have a big show. The New York City mayoral election is coming up, and we have some pictures, video from a giant rally that happened last night. Actually, on the, like, year anniversary of Trump's Madison Square Garden rally. Oh, I didn't know that.

I think today is the anniversary of the Madison Square Garden rally. And, of course, I don't have to think about what that means. I think Zorund did that on purpose. What the astrology of that means. Yeah, there's a bunch of news in the show. So we've got potential trade deal with China we're going to get to. We've got trade tensions with Canada over some Ronald Reagan ad. I have a lot of thoughts about that one.

We're tracking the government shutdown. troops on the verge of not getting paid, a weird anonymous donor who we just learned who they are, came in to pay like a small portion of it. Anyway, weird stuff going on there. Candice Owens apparently thinks Peter Thiel is not human. And Elon Musk and Sam Altman, I think, were the three that she named checked in particular. So that may weigh on your mind as you determine whether Brigitte McCrone is or is not a woman. Because Candice batting, I don't know, maybe 500 on some of these, on some of these diagnoses. Yeah, I guess I'm becoming more persuaded of Candace on a variety of things with this new

take, so anyway, a lot that's going on there. Binan CEO pardoned in a corrupt deal. The aforementioned Zoran Rally plus him being attacked aggressively by any number of corners from Democrats and Republicans for his Muslim faith. And Korean Jean-Pierre is out with a new book, and it is really something. And the Washington Post review of it, scathing. Did you read this whole thing? Oh, my gosh.

sort of want to read all. It's a little too long to just read the whole thing out. But whoever wrote this is not a person I was like really familiar with, she did a phenomenal job. Just taking apart, not just Crean Jean-Pierre, but this particular style of like self-congratulatory decorum liberalism. Yeah, the review is about so much more than KJP. It's about this era in our politics and reading the review and we'll get into this, of course, it's sort of like a window into the last decade. And you can kind of feel like this is an era that. that is over, like a chapter that's over. So it's actually a good block to do after the Zoron block maybe.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's a good point. Good point. That works well. So we've got a lot in the show. We're going to try to get to all of it, especially because Emily really wants to talk about the KJP piece. So we're going to try to keep these blocks from meandering too long.

You know what the ladies like to talk when we do the ladies show. Odds are low. And we'll have only ourselves to blame. Yes, indeed. All right. So let's go ahead and get to this potential Chinese trade deal. our negotiators have been talking to their negotiators. Scott Bassin is saying that it's looking good.

Trump is supposed to meet with she later this week. And so he was making the rounds of the Sunday shows. He got asked specifically about soybeans because this has been a huge sore spot. That's the words I'm looking for. Soar spot for American farmers, you know, major problem, the Argentina thing, ties into that as well. And so in any case, he gets asked about this and reveals something I was not aware of, which is he too is actually a soybean farmer? Let's take a listen. China has been boycotting American soybeans, and American farmers have really suffered. Do you see a real light at the end of the tunnel there? They may allow

soybeans again? Well, Martha, in case you don't know it, I'm actually a soybean farmer, so I have felt this pain, too. And there are a couple of things happening here. One, the Chinese have substantially dropped their purchases to almost zero. So they unfortunately have been using American farmers who are amongst President Trump's biggest supporters. I think he had more than 90% support. And then this was one of the biggest crops in 20 or 30 years, so it was a perfect storm.

But I think we have addressed the farmer's concerns, and I'm not going to get ahead of the president, but I believe when the announcement of the deal with China is made public that our soybean farmers will feel very good about what's going on. So never fear. American farmers, Treasury Secretary, billionaire, Scott Bessent is a bit of a soybean farmer himself and is feeling the pain here too. Is he worth a billionaire or is he like $500 million? I thought he was a billionaire, but maybe I'll double check. Exorbitantly wealthy. He's a near multi-hundred millionaire, potentially.

Right. And so actually what's kind of interesting about that clip is, first of all, this is why people should divest their financial interests so that you aren't, quote, feeling the pain because that obviously creates different interests that could be influencing the way you do policy. I'm actually not saying that's the case in Scott Besson's position here, although the Argentinian beef saga, which we're going to get into, seems like the Argentinian soybean situation had a little bit to do with. with maybe Scott Beston's interest, as Ryan and I covered, and we interviewed an Argentinian journalists about all of that. But the other thing is a lot of these, like, quote, soybean farmers are just exorbitantly, also exorbitantly wealthy big ag people. And so that's another important part of this. And I suspect we'll get to it with our guests as well. Yeah, that's a great point. Let's go ahead and put A2 up on the screen. Just we don't know a lot about this potential deal. I mean, it's not even been inked yet. But they're describing this as a positive framework, which has been agreed to prior to this Trump Xi summit. Some of the pieces,

obviously, that are being watched with close interest are the soybean piece, some sort of agreement with regard to fentanyl, the sentinel precursors that come from China. And then in addition, the rare earth export controls, which China had been, you know, threatening, which could just like completely tanker entire economy, which is just one giant bet on AI. So the rare earth mineral situation very critical. I think, you know, some of the leverage that was applied there from China is probably part of what is helping to potentially bring this deal together at this point. Yeah. And I mean, the importance of China to the soybean market can't possibly understate it. It's so crucial and significant. And so Trump is also in Japan today. He just,

he already touched on in Japan. And he'll be going to South Korea. He's already trying to meet with Kim Jong-un, which has nothing to do with soybeans, of course. But this entire swing is to shore up deals that since Liberation Day on, that was April 2nd, April 1st, April 2nd. They didn't want to do it in April Fool's Day. This is how many months, six months, and here's the tour, try to shore up. Some of these deals and get specifics down and make it work for Americans. Yeah, indeed. And at the same time, there's a new blowup with regard to Canada. I mean, this is just like typical Trumpian, the dumbest thing possible. The whole thing is extremely annoying to me. So Ontario launched this ad buy that featured snippets from a Ronald

Reagan speech where he's talking about how tariffs are bad, right? Reagan being, you know, the like neoliberal, you know, the trickle-down economics guy, whatever, not my economic cup of tea. And part of why me and Sager and I think you and Brian have been pissed off at the incredibly stupid way that Trump has gone about doing tariffs, because it is, created this reaction of just like, oh, the tariffs in general must be bad. And it's like, well, no, they're a tool that can be used with industrial policy that can be effective. But anyway, you get from Canada this Ronald Reagan speech ad where he's talking about tariffs and this apparently deeply upset President Trump. So let's take a listen first to the ad. When someone says,

let's impose tariffs on foreign imports, it looks like they're doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs. And sometimes for a short while it works, but only for a short time. But over the long run, such trade barriers hurt every American worker and consume. High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars.

Then the worst happens. Market shrink and collapse, businesses and industry shut down, and millions of people lose their jobs. Throughout the world, there's a growing realization that the weight of prosperity for all nations is rejecting protectionist legislation and promoting fair and free competition. America's jobs and growth are at stake. This was very upsetting to Trump. We can put A4 up on the screen. And we should say, too, by the way, I mean, what Reagan is articulating there was like the standard free trade orthodoxy that reigned in this town up until quite recently and,

you know, really starts to break under Trump. Biden moves in that direction as well. And then we've had, you know, Trump 2.0 where they've just done all kinds of wild things. But in any case, Trump on True Social says the Ronald Reagan Foundation has just announced that Canada has fraudulently used an advertisement, which is fake, featuring Ronald Reagan speaking negatively about tariffs. The ad was for $75 million. They only did this to interfere with the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court and other courts. tariffs are very important to the national security and economy of the USA based on their egregious behavior. All trade negotiations with Canada are hereby terminated.

Thank you for your attention to this matter present, DJT. And Emily, he went on from there to announce that they were going to levy an additional across the board 10% tariff on all Canadian goods. And he said he doesn't think he's going to be meeting with Mark Carney again anytime soon. Now, Reagan is such an interesting case study because Reagan was criticized relentlessly by the sort of high, neo-liberals at the time for putting tariffs, very protectionist tariffs on Japan. And so Reagan is the worst possible case study for the Doug Fords of the world. He's the, he's in charge of Ontario, the great Rob Ford's brother, to embrace because, again, like there's a lot of daylight between Trump's tariff policy and Reagan's tariff policy.

But the particular example of Canada actually is instructive because the rebalancing of the trade relationship with Canada is something that almost everyone, except for the most libertarian-minded person would tell you was completely necessary. And so for Canada to deploy Reagan in that way, it's just, it's like insulting on a million different levels, but it's especially stupid when you think about what the relationship with, what the U.S. trade relationship with Canada looked like. Like, what do they want? They want just like completely, they want what they were used to, like, what you were saying. Well, and Rob Ford is an interesting character, because he's a very kind of like Trumpian figure.

Doug Ford. Doug Ford. Sorry, Rob was the brother. They look exactly like that. They look similar character. I mean, Rob was wilder for sure. But Doug Ford is a, you know, Trumpian type of character. Very bombastic, very nationalist in his way.

And so it's also worth remembering, like, this wasn't, this actually wasn't Mark Carney. You know, this wasn't the whole of Canada. Right. This is this one problem. province that decided to spend this money. And by the way, again, the idea is this for this to play in American markets, which is what pissed Trump off. But then, you know, you have Trump using like the powers of a king to just like he's pissed off. So separate and apart from any economic pretext even. He's just like, I don't like your ad. So now the entire country is going to be tariff 10%,

which those costs, guess what? Guess who pays those consumers? And disproportionately working class consumers in the U.S. who will now bear the cost of Trump just being, like, annoyed over this stupid Ronald Reagan ad. Scott Bessent was, of course, asked about this on the Sunday shows as well and didn't have a lot of answers about, okay, well, what are we talking about? Is it 10% truly across the board? Are there going to be any exceptions, et cetera? Let's go ahead and take a listen to what he had to say. Why is the president setting trade policy based on a television ad he doesn't like? Well, Kristen, let's think about this. This is a kind of propaganda against U.S. citizens. You know, it's it's Psiops. Why, why would the government of Ontario, I'm told that they've spent,

they have spent, or were planning to spend up to $75 million on these ads to come across the U.S. border. So what was the purpose of that other than to sway public opinion? And, you know, it's some kind of propaganda that the premier of Ontario unilaterally launched. Will the 10% tariffs apply to all Canadian goods, Mr. Secretary? Kristen, I've been traveling since this unfortunate event happened. I know that the ads been taken down. So, you know, we'll have to see. Does the president know if the tariffs will apply to 10% tariffs will apply to all Canadian goods?

Has he made a determination about that? Well, I'm sure he knows, and I'm sure the Ambassador Greer knows. I'm sure he knows, but I don't really know. So can't answer your question there. That says it all. That says it all. I'm sure he knows. But I'm not sure that he is sure that he knows.

You know, like, he's probably like, oh, maybe, you know, but he probably didn't really think it through. He was just like, yeah, 10% I'm pissed off. And like, that's as much as the, that's as much of the thinking as goes into I mean, the billions of dollars that are on the line with these whims is truly, I mean, use the word king, but like, that's why tariffs are supposed to go through Congress for the most part, or they were originally supposed to go through Congress for the most part, because there's just, I mean, your entire, this is planning of the economy, and obviously there's more to the

economy than tariffs, but in a lot of cases, some of the downstream stuff that we talk about, taxes and the like, actually are coming, like, the tariffs are the first part of this. It's like, how much business can you do in the United States? what kind of business can you do at what cost in the United States. So other stuff when it comes to economic planning, in many cases, a downstream of tariffs. And so you have the executive on a whim. The ad is the best example of this because we know that it's happened before.

Like even with Doug Ford, there's been back and forth with Trump and sort of these capricious tariffs. But that's Trump's point is that, and I think for the first month, like post-April 2nd, whatever it was, this uncertainty that Trump was using as his leverage, kind of made sense because people were like, whoa, we have no idea what's coming. They were forced to the table, but the longer the uncertainty goes on, people don't have to necessarily come to the table because they say, it's not a good bet. I'm betting on what I don't know. And Trump never made it clear what he's actually looking for in particular

from these other countries. So, yeah, it's either one side of the spectrum or the other. Like, Canada either wants their fantasy of Reagan era free trade or they want they want some certainty from Trump as to what he's looking for on that. Yeah, good luck with that. That's why you end up betting on the other one. He doesn't have that, yeah. Right, which is where people end up betting in the other direction because you don't have the certainty.

Yeah. Well, Besson and his hedge fund buddies should be happy with the results in Argentina last night. Yes, a few tracks. Big win. Malaya's party secured, I think, 40% of the vote. Pretty easy win. And so, and I mean, basically what happened here is Malay's party suffered some losses in local elections. And it looked like the public was turning against, you know, I hesitate to call it libertarian at this point when you're getting bailouts from all kinds of, including our own country around the world.

But, you know, it was looking like the Argentinian public was turning on this project. And then the Trump administration comes in and says basically like, okay, we're going to bail you out. But if you don't vote the way that we want you to, we're going to screw you over. I mean, there's an overt threat that was made. And it appears that the public responded to that. So, Malay's party performed well. Obviously, this ties into the soybean market is one piece. And the other piece of this that we've been covering as well is the cattle ranching industry,

the beef industry. Beef prices in this country have been extremely high and rising. You would think that cattle ranchers who have been struggling and screwed in a lot of ways that we've also been covering over the years, you would think that would be a good thing, you know, for them, maybe they're getting more on their end, but because of monopoly and consolidation, that has really not come together for cattle ranchers here in the U.S. Then Trump came in and said that to depress the prices to further screw the ranchers here, he's going to buy beef from Argentina. So to talk about all of these things, we actually have

a rancher who also is a journalist who covers the industry extensively. Mike Hallecrate is going to join us now. In the new podcast, Hell in Heaven, two young Americans move to the Costa Rican jungle to start over, but one will end up dead, the other tried for murder. Not once. People went wild. Not twice. Stoned.

But three times. John and Anne Bender are rich and attractive, and they're devoted to each other. They create a nature. reserve and build a spectacular circular home high on the top of a hill. But little by little, their dream starts to crumble, and our couple retreat from reality. They lose it. They actually lose it. They sort of went nuts. Until one night, everything spins out of control. Listen to Hell in Heaven on the I-Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. I live below a cult leader, and I fear I've angered her. Well, wait a minute, Sophia. How'd you know she's a cult leader? Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week on the OK Storytime podcast, so you'll find out soon. This person writes, My neighbor's been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals, and now my ceiling is collapsing. I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder.

I think they may be part of a cult. Hold up, Sophia, a real-life cult? And what is a dirt ritual? No clue, but according to this person, contractors are tearing down the patio to find out what's going on with their ceiling, and her neighbors are not happy. Well, she needs to report them ASAP. She did, and now they've been confronting her in really creepy ways all the time. So do we find out if this person survives their neighborhood cult or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

shaping the world's economies and financial markets can be hard to spot. Even though they are such a powerful player in finance, you wouldn't really know that you are interacting with them. And even harder to understand. Donald Trump's trade war, 2.0, is only accelerating the process of de-dollarization, which in a way is jargon for people turning away from the dollar. That is where the big take from Bloomberg podcast comes in, to connect the dots. How unusual is a deal like this? Every weekday afternoon, we dive deep into one big global business story.

The biggest story of the reaction of the oil market to the conflict in the Middle East is one of what has not happened. Katie, you told me that ETFs are your favorite thing. They are. Explain that. Why is that the case? And unpack what it means for you. Our breakfast foods are consistent consumer staples, and so they sort of become outsized indicators of inflation. Listen to the big take from Bloomberg News every weekday after. on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Joining us now to talk about the president's decision to purchase beef from Argentina is Mike Callicrate. He is himself a rancher. He's a journalist. He's a family farm advocate, and he is also founder of Ranch Foods Direct. Great to have you, Mike. Oh, thanks for having me, Crystal. Yeah, of course. So let's go and put a tear sheet up on the screen.

This is some of your writing about this deal. you say Colorado Springs ranchers, that would be you, says importing Argentinian beef could hurt U.S. ranchers. I'd actually like you, though, to back up a little bit from this present moment and give us a bit of a lay of the land of the cattle ranching industry and also, you know, beef prices have gone up a lot. Certainly American consumers are very concerned about that. Have ranchers been benefiting from that price increase? What is kind of the state of the industry right now. No, ranchers have not benefited from consumer price increases. There's a disconnect between consumer prices and what ranchers receive for cattle. And it's a middleman problem, a monopoly problem,

essentially a cartel sort of partnership between the biggest meatpackers who now control 85 percent, the big four control 85 percent of the slaughter market in partnership with big retailers who control a very similar share of the retail market. And I'm talking about Walmart, Kroger, Amazon, Whole Foods, Safeway Albertsons. And so the rancher has really been shut out of his fair share of the consumer dollar, really going back clear to the late 70s, when the book, Vicious Circles, The Mafia in the Marketplace, detailed how the big meat packers were cooperating rather than competing.

and stealing really the producer's share of the consumer dollar. So we've lost half our ranchers during this period of time when this cartel has been really depressing the price for livestock at the same time as they're raising prices for consumers. And we've liquidated 10 million cows. So now we've come to a very, very critical time when we just don't have enough livestock to feed our own people. And it's been made up for, it's been a gradual progression,

but it's been made up for with imports. So we're importing up to 20% of the meat that we eat today. And it's from wherever the cartel can find it, the cheapest to import into this country. And it's a sad state when producers everywhere. It doesn't matter whether you're in the United States or whether you're in Argentina. You're being paid below your cost of production because of this abusive market power that lies in the hands of these very powerful multinational. national corporations. And President Trump is obviously concerned about just bringing down the price

of beef overall. Could you speak a bit to what's happened in the last, I don't know, year, a couple years, just recent history that's behind this price spike that consumers are experiencing now? Is it still deeply connected to those overall trends, concentration? Are there micro factors that have influenced it just in recent history? What's going on now? Well, right now. Now, because of the real serious lack of cattle here in the United States and the fact that we've shut down the the import of feeder cattle out of Mexico along with additional tariffs on Brazilian beef it's it's inflated that that cost to the retailer and and the retailer is absolutely not willing to give up any of their unfair margins that they've that they've been able to achieve because of their abusive market power and and so retailers are charging all they can. They're always going to test with the consumers willing to pay. And so the problem is from that point back, the producer isn't getting his fair share, nor is the worker, the worker in the meat system, whether it's a slaughterhouse worker or a processing worker, they're not getting their

fair share either. And so what we've seen is with this reduction in imports, is retailers saying, And, oh, this is a great time to raise prices. But the thing you need to look at as far as the price of beef to the consumer, it's about the same, it takes about the same amount of minutes within an hour to eat, to buy a pound of ground beef as it did, you know, 20 years ago. And so are beef prices really too high? Probably not. Probably not.

But is the income to the normal family that's trying to buy beef too low? absolutely. When you're working two and three jobs to pay your mortgage, to pay for your technology, to pay for food, of course, it's going to hit you hard. But right now at Ranch Foods Direct, we've got $6 a pound ground beef. That is 30 some cents below the national average, plus it's local and it's really good. But the industry has sold America on the fact that you've got to get big to be efficient and have economies of scale. All of that was proven false during COVID when we had empty shelves all across America. While our company, the local regional company in Colorado Springs that has a supply chain that goes to St. Francis, Kansas, on the Colorado border,

we never ran out, but we have a local regional model that I think has got to get replicated if we're going to actually feed ourselves going forward. We have to address the abusive market power, the monopoly power of big food. And I know this maybe doesn't matter much when you're talking about AI and you're talking about Venezuelan regime changes and you're talking about all of this crazy stuff in the news, but this is food. This is what we put on our plates every day to nourish our families. And it's not just beef.

It's everything that we eat is under the power of a handful of global corporations. Yeah, it's such a great point. I would love for you to dig into. You mentioned that the industry has liquidated 10 million cows and that that lack of supply is part of why we're seeing these skyrocketing prices now. What led to that liquidation? What was the math of the business logic that led to that outcome? Decades of being paid below the cost of production is what led to that liquidation. I've been at this. about 50 years. And I just remember my in-laws at the dinner table with my sons, reminding them, don't do what we've done. Do not be ranchers. Do not raise cattle. It is not a great lifestyle. You can't get paid enough to pay the mortgage and live a reasonable quality of life. They're, you know, farmers and ranchers, their basic net income is coming from off-farm income. And so the big food companies have reduced the prices paid to producers because they have the power to do so.

And so we have then, in the last few decades, ranching has not been an attractive business. And so we've not replaced the cows as they've gotten older with heifers. And the bankers are clamoring for note payments and mortgage reductions. And we just simply haven't maintained our cow herd because there has not been. a fair, open, and competitive marketplace. And so Trump is saying it's not, we don't totally understand what he's going to do with Argentina yet, but he said, you know, not a lot of beef, you know, it's, it's, you know,

it's not going to be a ton, but based on all of that, based on what we know so far, what influence would a modest amount of imports from Argentina, a modest amount of beef imports from Argentina have on the industry as you see it? Well, right now I don't know that, it would have a lot if you really had a supply and demand market, which we have not had for probably since the 80s. We haven't had that. But the thing is, the announcement of it lets those cattle futures, you know, the Chicago Merck just totally crater the price on the futures market,

which then reduces those prices for calves and feeder cattle and live cattle to the rancher right now. But I don't think Trump understands just how much disconnect there is between retail prices and ranch gate prices. You know, a rancher is in the business of turning grass into cattle, and they hope for a competitive market that will give them a fair share of that consumer dollar. Back in 1970, when I first started, the rancher got about 70%. The producer of livestock got about 70% of the consumer dollar. That dropped to as low as 27% during COVID. to now it's around 54 to 55%. So we still are not getting our fair share of what consumers spend. And that is, again, a result of the market power of the middlemen.

Mike, I wonder if you could talk a little bit of politics here with us. You had in the Biden administration with Lena Khan, you had a real renewed interest in antitrust. I remember there was some at least rhetorical emphasis on, hey, we got to break up some of these. meat packers and, you know, the cartels that you're talking about. But none of that seems to have really been rewarded, certainly by rural America and, you know, your business competitors in the industry overwhelmingly went for Trump. So, you know, how do you think about the way that Democrats have over years, you know, completely lost this constituents? You used to have a John Tester or someone like that. It was, you know, very sort of like populist antitrust, who was able to win in these

States. And I just don't think that it's possible anymore. How do you think about that? Well, I am, I'm really disappointed that that no one politically Democrat or Republican has delivered on antitrust law enforcement. And I think the last election would have had a far different outcome if they would not have kept Lena Kahn with the Federal Trade Commission in the closet. I mean, she was working to improve competitive markets and fairness all the way around consumer welfare and corporate power and all of that. And we just didn't even know about it. Kamala Harris didn't even mentioned it.

So we've never had support. In fact, going back to the Obama years when they had the concentration hearings across the country, we thought full well with all of that proof and all of that information about the abusive market power of big meat packers, that there would be some relief. And Lena Kahn wrote the article, Obama's Game of Chicken, it was in the Atlantic. It was amazing piece of writing. And then eventually she made her way into the chair of the Federal Trade Commission and was doing absolutely the best work we've seen in 100 years. Trump comes in and fires her.

So that is just how unbelievably ignorant the current administration is about the real needs of consumers and producers around our food system. in particular, although Lena Kahn looked at a lot of other things, but she's the one that blocked the Kroger Safeway merger, Safeway Albertson's merger, that was absolutely required. And prior to that, we blocked the Cisco U.S. Foods merger. But the problem we're seeing now is these companies that try to merge get to know each other and whether it's approved or not, they still cooperate and work together to maximize their profits. I mean, how is it? that Cisco earns or makes a hundred percent return on equity. REOE right now, if you look it up on Google, Cisco's right out 100 percent return on equity. That's not a competitive market.

And that comes at the expense of producers and consumers and all the workers that are in between. And your case actually is that that goes straight to those beef prices, that if you have, it's essentially like the greedflation argument that the Biden administration made a half-harded attempt to sell to the public, that when you have consolidation, you're able to just ratchet up, the retailers themselves are able to just ratchet up the prices. Is that, am I getting that right based on what you were explaining? 100%. That is exactly, exactly right. You give them the ability to extract wealth, and they will do it to the maximum amount allowable that they're able to. That they're able to. And, you know, that's all goes back to the corporate responsibility of providing

maximum returns to shareholders. But it's honestly maximum returns to executive level pay. Yeah. Mike, last question to you, you know, what would your pitch be to Americans who are listening to this or like, well, that's all well and good, but like prices are too high. And if it's going to help to import beef from Argentina or wherever, why don't we just, why don't we just go for that? because my pocketbook is hurting right now. What would you tell Americans about why they should care? Well, I tell Americans they should care because importing Argentine beef is not going to lower your prices. It might lower the prices to ranchers, which guarantees that the herd won't be rebuilt and won't be feeding us in the future.

But it will not lower prices, not with the cartel, the monopoly power of the middlemen. And think about it a minute from the Argentine perspective. I mean, their economy is not doing great. their consumers are not doing great. So we go down there, and we're going to take meat off the plates of Argentine consumers, raise their prices, only to use it as a lever to lower prices to ranchers and not lower prices to American consumers. And the other point that no one is making is when Argentina gets favorable trade conditions

with the United States, the highest and best consuming market in the world, how many animals transship cross those borders into Argentina that then are able to go into the United States at the best prices on the globe. Mike Hallecray. And only the middleman making the money. So the Argentine producers under the same pressure. Same big companies, JBS, Marfrig,

you know, the biggest companies in the world are transacting the deal. And they'll be subject to the same nightmare you've been living here. Mike, thank you so much for helping us understand. Tell people where they can find you, where they can buy your products, all of that good stuff. Well, if you go to Mikecalcrate.com, you'll see what we're up to. And I've got a blog there. But as far as the Ranch Foods Direct model, which I would hope others might replicate around the country to connect producers more closely to consumers, go to Ranch FoodsDirect.com, and you'll be able

to see what we do there. Just put in my order yesterday. Oh, thank you so much. I love it. Mike, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Great to have you. Okay.

All right. In the new podcast, Hell in Heaven, two young Americans moved to the Costa Rican jungle to start over. But one will end up dead, the other tried for murder. Not once. People went wild. Not twice. Stoned. But three times.

John and Anne Bender are rich and attractive, and they're devoted to each other. They create a nature reserve. and build a spectacular, circular home high on the top of a hill. But little by little, their dream starts to crumble. And our couple retreat from reality. They lose it. They actually lose it. They sort of went nuts.

Until one night, everything spins out of control. Listen to Hell in Heaven on the I-Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I live below a cult leader, and I fear I've angered her. Well, wait a minute, Sophia. How'd you know she's a cult leader? Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week on the OK Storytime podcast, so you'll find out soon.

This person writes, My neighbor's been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals, and now my ceiling is collapsing. I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder. I think they may be part of a cult. Hold up, Sophia, a real-life cult? And what is a dirt ritual? No clue, but according to this person, contractors are tearing down the patio to find out what's going on with their ceiling, and her neighbors are not happy.

Well, she needs to report them ASAP. She did, and now they've been confronting her in really creepy ways all the time. So do we find out if this person survives their neighborhood cult or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The force is shaping the world's economies and financial markets can be hard to spot. Even though they are such a powerful player in finance, you wouldn't really know that you are interacting with them. And even harder to understand. Donald Trump's trade war, 2.0, is only accelerating the process of de-dollarization, which in a way is jargon for people turning away from the dollar.

That is where the big take from Bloomberg podcast comes in to connect the dots. How unusual is a deal like this? Unprecedented. Every weekday afternoon, we dive deep into one big global business story. The biggest story of the reaction of the oil market to the conflict in the Middle East is one of what has not happened. Katie, you told me that ETFs are your favorite thing. They are. Explain that. Why is that the case?

And unpack what it means for you. Our breakfast foods are consistent consumer staples, and so they sort of become outsized indicators of inflation. Listen to the big take from Bloomberg News every weekday afternoon on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We learned not long ago that a mysterious private donor was jumping in to bail out the government during the shutdown so that some U.S. troops could continue to get paid as Congress continues to take no action, tries to take action, but hasn't taken any action, to have any action to have. least make sure that the troops are paid during the shutdown. Here is a little bit of a back-and-forth between Donald Trump and a reporter about who might have stepped in with this $130 million donation straight to the government. We can roll the clip. To find somebody to pay for our troops during the shutdown? He's a great gentleman. He's a great patriot. He's obviously a very substantial

man, and he contributed $130 million toward the military in order to make up any difference. So he wanted to see the military get paid. So did I. And he's a wonderful man, and he doesn't want publicity. He doesn't, you know, he'd prefer, I think, that his name not be mentioned, which is pretty unusual in the world they come from, and he's a big supporter of mine. Is it an American citizen? It is, yeah. Great American citizen. We now know who that donor is. We can put B2 up on the screen. Timothy Mellon of the Mellon family.

You actually may remember his name from the 2024 election cycle when he just was giving all kind, pumping money into the Trump campaign, essentially. You made a $50 million donation to a Trump super PAC. 50 million dollars. Yeah, so he's one of Trump's largest donors. Incredible. He's somewhat of a recluse. He lives in Wyoming.

He's a big supporter of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and in his group, the Children's Health Defense Fund, I think, is the name of it. And so according to two people familiar with the matter, according to the New York Times, these are the New York Times sources, two people familiar with the matter, it was Timothy Mellon, who came in and ended up giving $130 million. Let's roll this clip of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on whether or not the troops were getting paid. We were able to pay the military employees from excess funds at the Pentagon. the middle of this month, I think we'll be able to pay them beginning of November.

But by November 15th, our troops and service members who are willing to risk their lives aren't going to be able to get paid. Why didn't it embarrass them? Yes, what an embarrassment? That's right. It is. And so now you have Timothy Mellon jumping in, which Crystal is actually kind of interesting because Republicans have used, I mean, it's interesting in a lot of ways, but Republicans

have used particularly the troops, just as Democrats did during previous government shutdowns. to say, quote, what an embarrassment? Like, get to the table, give us the votes. Republicans are typically the ones in the position of withholding votes on a CR to fund the government. Now, it's Democrats, and Republicans thought this was their leverage. So it's actually kind of interesting that you have someone, in a way, taking away the leverage that a Republican donor is undercutting their argument

that Democrats need to get to the table to negotiate, so the troops can get paid. Obviously, there's questions over whether the $130 million is enough to really. make a difference. Apparently, that would be like $100 to each service member. That's what the time is calculated. As one of the weird this is, it's weird and troubling and it's worth thinking about the principle of it, even though it's not nearly sufficient to even come close to actually paying the entire military. What, now we've got like random private oligarchs funding the military? Is this really the direction we want to go in at a time

when Trump is increasingly using the military as like his own personal force against whatever people in cities and causes that he doesn't particularly like. So the principle of it is disturbing, potentially illegal, by the way, you know, unclear, completely legally, but potentially illegal. So it's like, what is this guy doing when you're not even coming close to solving the problem? I don't know. It's, to me, the whole thing is very strange and troubling in, you know, a way that often Trump, Trump regime actions are.

Well, let's put this before on the screen. You can see already for federal workers, there are some lines outside of food pantries. So this is furloughed federal workers in Maryland. This is Landover, Maryland, which is just outside the Beltway here, in the Beltway area here. And so I saw some restaurants around town when I was walking around D.C. last night who had, you know, 50% off for federal workers. You know, this thing is really starting to bite. it's people are really starting to feel the pain you know paychecks are starting to be missed um obviously workers are furloughed you're going to have even more workers forload after the end of the month

uh as besson said there you know come november 15th troops are no longer going to be paid um doesn't look like they've been sort of like moving different pots of money around um again in a way that it's not really entirely clear as legal but they're moving different pots of money around to try to make sure the troops are paid a lot of times what happens in these shutdowns is that Congress will pass a separate bill saying just like, okay, well, we are going to pay the troops no matter how long this thing goes. But they have not done that. So they're really in the same camp as basically everyone else as this thing stretches out. Median average saving for an American is $600. And so, you know, it's true that a lot of these workers end up getting back pay, but that's

not helpful if you're paycheck to paycheck or even a little bit more comfortable than paycheck to paycheck because we are now going into what could end up being one of the longest government. Actually, it might end up being the longest government shutdown in history because there is no end in sight whatsoever. And Jake Sherman, loathe as I am to invoke any of his wisdom here of Punch Bowl, he says the flaw in this is Democrats have sold their base of membership that they aren't trying to make a point. They're trying to enact change.

That's actually kind of an interesting way to put it, because the leverage that Democrats have, not the leverage, but the, sort of the reason that Democrats did the shutdown was to show the base that they're fighting. And so what have they gotten at this point? What can they get at this point out of it? They may get Republicans to negotiate on premiums as possible on something for that, but nobody's even talking right now. Yeah. No, it's, I mean, there's really at this point is no insight. We did get that report last week that we talked about that maybe Republicans were open to something on the ACA subsidies. You know, I do think Democrats would take if they could get any kind of a win.

I think they would probably take it. You know, Schumer and Co. were really forced into this by the base. It was not the politics they wanted to pursue. And their persistence in it, too, is really forced on them by the base, which is really interesting. I mean, I think there's kind of a tie in here with some of the Zoran clip that will show of Kathy Hokel and the crowd chanting at her, like, tax the rich. you have now leadership and establishment Democrats really feeling the pressure from just a normally liberal base that is increasingly disgusted with them and wants a more hardline and more radical

direction for the party. And so the fact that Democrats, you know, I mean, Sagar and I both early on were like, yeah, they're probably going to fold because that's just what they do. The reason we were wrong is because they're feeling much more pressure from their own voters than we expected. And, you know, I think the Trump administration has taken a lot of the sting out. of the, you know, the mass destruction of the federal government workforce, they've been doing that all along. So when you're like, oh, we're going to hurt them more, it's like, well, you were already doing that anyway. And when you, I think they've also been buoyed by a lot of polls that show the public are predominantly blaming Republicans. And it makes sense because they are in control

of everything. So people just look at this and are like, you guys run the show. So get it together. You got to negotiate with them, figure something out. And so they feel like Republicans are taking on water with this thing as well, which I think has strengthened some backbones. Another test, though, is going to come. I mean, this is really, honestly, really terrible and really dire. We could put B5 up on the screen. Food stamp benefits, SNAP benefits are going to run out at the end of this month. You've got tens of millions of Americans who rely on SNAP benefits. Originally, it had looked like the administration was going to use some emergency funds to keep those benefits flowing. Now the USDA is saying, nope, we're not going to do that. So, you know,

heading into November, heading into the month of Thanksgiving with the potential loss of those benefits, you've got Americans who are going to go hungry if something is not done to extend this funding or to get the government fully back open. I'm just thinking about this now. One of the sort of designs behind Doge is that you kind of can do things, right? Like Republicans are like, hey, you can do things. And so I'm wondering. if the USDA SNAP funds run out, if that becomes a sort of predicate for some type of permanent reduction, I don't know, but there may be legal avenues that a Russ vote or someone else the administration tries to pursue to make permanent cuts like they are with they're

trying to do with federal workers. So I'm not sure about that, but I do wonder if that's part of this. We can put the next element on the screen. House Democrats are calling back their members to D.C., according to Punchbowl, Laura Weiss. They're holding in-person caucus meetings tomorrow, so Tuesday and events on Wednesday. It's possible we see an end to this by the, I mean, it's possible by the weekend. I don't know that anybody is particularly optimistic, though. If we put the next element up on the screen over the weekend, there was a ground stop at LAX. It disrupted flights from LAX to Oakland.

Nation's busiest airport. Yeah. And so, the longer this goes on with people blaming Republicans, I think that's probably stable, those numbers of Americans blaming Republicans. I would probably put some of the blame on the media for that. I think it's a contrast in how the media is covered it when Republicans literally were the ones withholding their votes. That doesn't mean there's no blame to go around. There's definitely blame to go around in this government shutdown. But maybe that's weighing on Democrats' minds that they're sort of technically.

if the public is blaming Republicans, they have an upper hand of some sort when they go to negotiation, presumably this week. But the positions are hardened when you look at Republican leadership. They really are not projecting that they're willing to come to the table on premiums and the ACA subsidies. So we'll see. Yeah, we will. And, you know, I think there's also concern you were saying that vote might use the, you know, the funding shortage on food stamps to make some sort of permanent cuts, even though, again, it should be illegal. That should be something that has to go through Congress.

But, you know, whatever, laws don't exist anymore, apparently. There's also concern that those federal workers actually who, you know, some of them are working for free right now, by the way, don't get back pay. A lot, yeah. Because he put on a memo saying, oh, we're probably not going to pay, actually. And again, there is a law that was passed that mandates during a shutdown, federal government workers will get their back pay. but this administration just does whatever the hell they want.

So I don't think that federal government workers feel particularly secure that they're ever going to see the paychecks that they're missing right now. You know, this is the guy who said that he wants to cause them, what do you say, he wants to cause them trauma or something like that. Yeah. So, I mean, that is part of his goal. That's his MO. He's a true ideologue in this regard.

And so I don't think anyone should be surprised that he, in particular, who is one of the more powerful members of the administration, is certainly one of the more, you know, ideological architects of the direction of this administration that he would use this as an excuse to create more pain and suffering among the federal government workforce and to shrink the federal government more than they've been able to successfully do with Doche. And already they ran into, you know, with Doge, they ran into things where they'd fire a bunch of people from the CDC or whatever and be like, oh, you know what, actually we do want to track

Ebola, it turns out. Or, you know, they'd fire a bunch of people from that thing and be, oh, you know what, this whole like air planes crashing to each other situation. It's not really great. Let's bring some of those people back. They've already had to do some of that. We had the situation in Texas with the floods and a lot of questions over whether or not some of the cuts that had been made to relevant agencies there impacted the ability to respond to those absolutely devastating floods. So they've already run into like hitting the bone in some of the cuts that they've made. But there's no sign that individuals like him in particular are interested in slowing down. Well, and also, listen, I'm someone

who thinks SNAP needs significant reforms and somebody who thinks Obamacare needs significant reforms and Stoller has a good post on that over at Big this morning. Yeah, I was reading that too. Yeah, it's super good. But the, there's a lot of Trump voters who are on SNAP. So that's another, as Democrats return to Washington this week, that's another thing, that's another big piece of leverage. It's another

arrow in their quiver as they try to bring Republicans to the table on something in addition to the subsidies, which Marjority Taylor Green has been outspoken about the Obama subsidies. Snap is that, I mean, if you have most of the country blaming Republicans for the shutdown, and then you have troops going unpaid, lines at food pantries, snap benefits, lapsing, and like potential increases in premiums, that's starting to look pretty dire for Republicans if they don't come to the table. It's, again, I think it's a different situation than other shutdowns. Democrats are the ones technically withholding the votes, but Republicans, if they're taking the blame

with the public, that's a recipe for a political disaster heading into a midterm year. I don't think people vote on shutdowns, you know, a year from now. I'm not sure that'll be on the front of anybody's mind. But obviously, it's one of those moments that can make you feel whether this party cares about you or not. The MAGA movement, whether it really truly has your best interest at hand. That's something that can kind of sink into people's psyche. They may not vote on the shutdown, but they may well vote on, hey, my premiums just went up 100%. You know, and that's, to your point about this really disproportionate hitting the MAGA base, 73% of those subsidies go to red states because it's overwhelmingly the states that didn't expand Medicaid. That's where these

subsidies are really filling the gap. And those are all red states. The poor states in the country are all red states. So you'll have a disproportionate number of the SNAP benefits going to those states as well. So yeah, you're talking about a lot of pain specifically for oftentimes Republican voters and oftentimes some of the most, you know, diehard supporters of Trump himself. I mean, yeah, it's one of those, it could potentially be one of those moments, actually sort of like the Epstein, particularly when Pam Bondi said we're closing the case, basically, let's wipe our hands, we're done. It's one of those moments that can make people who thought, you know, as Donald Trump was campaigning, saying everybody's going to have health care. You know, I think at the Madison Square

Garden rally, he said he was going to cut energy prices in half and inflation was going to significantly decrease. And that's why he's so concerned about the beef, as we talked about earlier in the show, because beef prices are the things that are going high. And he knows, he's shrewd enough politically to know that that really matters to voters because he talked about it on the campaign trail. So it could potentially be one of those moments where the working class section of the MAGA base starts to question whether or not MAGA really does care about them. You could, you could see that happening. And Epstein was a big moment where they said, is this really about what we thought it was about.

Does he really care like he said he did? And, you know, not everybody who voted for Trump loves Trump, but there's a level of he told you everybody else. He was right to tell you everybody else was wrong. Does that mean that he's right? That he's right. Right. And he's actually making things better.

Exactly. Well, I will say, I think Epstein landed much more clearly squarely at his feet because it's like cash, it's his people, right? Right. With this, I could see a lot of people blaming Congress. I mean, the thing in the Trump era that we've seen is similar to how Obama had this particular hold on, you know, on a certain population, Trump has this certain hold. And it doesn't translate to the rest of the Republican Party. You know, the midterms, he hasn't done well in midterms in particular.

And so the other thing is maybe people still are like, oh, it's not Trump's fault, this Congress can't get their act together or whatever. But that doesn't exactly make them excited to come out and vote for Republicans in. midterm elections upcoming. Well, it doesn't also necessarily give you the faith in a MAGA candidate that you might have otherwise. Right. They're saying, you know, because there was the working class of this idea that the Republicans worked for them for a long time. And, you know, we've all talked about why that might be. But that's a, that's always been a problem for Republicans. And it's especially a problem if you've already traded a lot of suburban voters for more working class voters, especially in the Rust Belt, places like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio. So does the MAGA candidate lose some,

some credibility if they're still, you know, your typical Republican in their like Brooks Brothers suit, but they claim to be MAGA. The trust gap is significant when voters who vote for Donald Trump, A, have to go vote for you. Do they even vote? Let alone, if they do vote, do they vote for you when they see their snap benefits lapsing and their premium's about to explode? Yeah. It feels like a lot of like 2010 level kind of like disillusionment is what I've potentially. We'll see. Interesting. We should interview somebody who maybe ran for Congress in 2010. I think I haven't in. Let's see what we could do. I actually always love when you talk about it because it was such an important year and there's so many different trends that came to like blossom six years later.

Yeah, I had a front receipt because I went to every, I went to so many tea party meetings because my policy was like, anyone in the district invites me to come talk, I will come talk to you. So I got berated by a lot of angry people who thought that I was ushering in Sodom and Gomor. To be fair. To be fair, you were. Here we are. Here we are. Have you heard WAP? I blame you for that. I blame you for Cardi B. You should do your Ben Shapiro-esque rendition, your own rendition of Wap Fort Assembly. In the new podcast, Hell in Heaven, two young Americans move to the Costa Rican jungle to start over. But one will end up dead. The other tried for murder. Not once. People went wild. Not twice.

Stunned. But three times. John and Ann Bender are rich and attractive, and they're devoted to each other. They create a nature reserve and build a spectacular circular home high on the top of a hill. But little by little, their dream starts to crumble, and our couple retreat from reality.

They lose it. They actually lose it. They sort of went nuts. Until one night, everything spins out of control. Listen to hell in heaven on the I-Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Big Tick podcast from Bloomberg News dives deep into one big global business story every weekday. A shutdown means we don't get the data, but it also means for President Trump that there's no change. of bad news on the labor market. What does a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich reveal about the economy?

Our breakfast foods are consistent consumer staples, and so they sort of become outsize indicators of inflation. What's behind Elon Musk's trillion dollar payout? There's a sort of concerted effort to message that Musk is coming back. He's putting politics aside. He's left the White House. And what can the PCE tell you that the CPI can't? CPI tries to measure out-of-pocket costs that consumers are paying for things,

whereas the PCE index that the Fed targets is a little bit broader of a measure. Listen to the big take from Bloomberg News every weekday afternoon on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I live below a cult leader, and I fear I've angered her. Well, wait a minute, Sophia Adia knows she's a cult leader. Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week. on the OK Storytime podcast, so you'll find out soon. This person writes,

My neighbor's been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals, and now my ceiling is collapsing. I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder. I think they may be part of a cult. Hold up, Sophia, a real-life cult? And what is a dirt ritual? No clue. But according to this person,

contractors are tearing down the patio to find out what's going on with their ceiling, and her neighbors are not happy. Well, she needs to report them. ASAP. She did. And now they've been confronting her in really creepy ways all the time. So do we find out if this person survives their neighborhood cult or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, moving along. Speaking of Ben Shapiro, let's move on to Candace. There we go.

Candice has some very interesting thoughts about some of the tech oligarchs who are like, you know, completely taking all of our fates into their hands with no input from us whatsoever. So glad to see that she's focusing her mental energy on them. Her take is very interesting, though. Let's take a listen. I don't even think people are human. Like, I look at Elon Musk and Sam Altman and Peter Thiel, and I'm pretty sure they're hybrid. You know what I mean? Like, they just look like an Apple software that I should be able to download at night, you know? Like, my phone's getting an update or something. It's something in the eyes. Like, I don't know. I'm like, I don't know I'm human, I don't, I don't know if I stabbed you if you bleed, you know?

I'm not going to stab them, but I don't know if they bleed all the way. I think a battery would fall out. You know what I mean? And I just get that sense. I've always known it was demonic. And people just get on board because, as we talk about in this book, they are using science and this idea of technology and this idea of transforming society for the better to indoctrine us into accepting this.

And it's wrong and it's backwards. and they weigh their main component of all of this is psychology, right? They're able to do it because of psychology, making you think that society has gotten better. Our kids have objectively gotten dumber. We've become fatter. We've become less healthy. We've become less emotionally sound. And yet they are convincing us that this is like humanity's great leap forward.

We put a man in the mood. And he just like called them up and was like, hey, press, what's up? I'm up here. Yeah, it's so cool. It's really great. It's nice. night up here. Okay, I'm going to text you. I go by in 69 and they get these people, they tell you, like, he's a genius. They're all right away. He's a genius. We should just accept

that Elon Musk's as a genius because like all the writers who are obviously indoctrinated and see the occult are telling us that this is the next person that we should worship, the establishment of Hollywood. It was all cults. They were all Alistair Crowley protégés who were just raping kids and summoning demons. And demons are real. So at the same time, if they're summoning demons, They are making us all believe that faith is not real. And that has been, I think, the greatest trick that the devil ever played, right? Is making people think that he didn't exist? Emily, agree or disagree?

I mean, she's certainly cooking. Crystal, she's certainly cooking. She is cooking. Everyone can agree on that. She was also potentially believing Trump for her friend, Charlie Kirk's assassination. Yeah, it's pretty wild. There was a lot of. speculation, which we do not mean to get into because we were not professional, medical professionals,

but she may be having some type of episode because she is sort of starting to sound like the person who has like a literal tinfoil on their head on the street corner. Okay, but I mean, she has been doing the whole Brigitte McCrone thing for a while now. Yeah, that's true. It's not like the logic has been entirely linear here. Although I will say that, I think that particular, I imagine, people sense that in that particular clip, there's a certain, usually you can follow her logic when it's crazy, you know what I mean? You're like, this is wild and wacky,

but I can sort of follow along. There's a sense of just listening to her there. I don't know, but it seems different to me. It seems like a little bit more, a little bit less rational. Like we're just- I don't know, I follow her logic on this perfectly. Crystal is bullish. Myself, I follow this logic personally, perfectly.

But I mean, like, let's say, say it lets humanity off the hook too much to say that these characters are not actually human. Agreed. That would be a very convenient. Ryan always makes that point. Yeah, I would love to think that these are not fully humans, that these are some sort of weird hybrid alien beings who are, you know, and that's why they are doing all of these terrible things. But in reality, they are human and humans are capable of, you know, terrible destruction. And, you know, and the weird thing is that all three of them, I think, see themselves as like heroes, actually. And, um, the, This is, it's also sort of has a somewhat directional truth to it, though, because they also are transhumanists.

They want to turn all of us into the hybrids that she's talking about. They actually do want to go in that direction, the merging of the human and the machine and are deeply interested, of course, in consolidating all of his power wealth in their own hands at the expense of actual humanity, which is why when Peter Thiel gets asked, do you think, by Ross doubt that? do you think the human race should survive? He has to sputter and stumble and think before he can answer what should be the easiest question of all time. You know what actually they're doing is turning all of us into Candace Owens?

Like, that's actually what's happening, is they're turning all of us into people who are driven by the algorithm into madness. And I think she's a glimpse, and producers Matt and Grython are just saying, only crime is being right too early about Candace and Mattis

like Candace is on to something here. Yeah, because like that's what happens is there's truth to the fact that they want to make us less human. And there's something very human about wanting to make us less human because it's driven by

greed and lust for power and utopianism which has been with us since the human race has existed. And so this drive for transhumanism is deeply human. And actually, Candace was getting to that when she was talking about the devil's best trick is making people think that the devil doesn't exist.

Like, that's what she was getting at with that point. There's something deeply, deeply human about the pursuit of power and money that tricks people into buying utopian fantasies. And even, like, the rich and powerful people themselves will be seduced by this idea that it's not actually about the money. It's not actually about the power. It's about the idea that we're creating a better life and a better world, which I think everybody can see over the last, like, what, 20-year experiment since Peter Thiel's technologies and just in the last couple of years of Sam Altman's technologies and what Elon Musk has done to X, which, I mean, just look at it. What that does is it makes us, it turns us all into crazy people because the algorithm has bad incentives.

we communicate, we export all of our communication. This is just a preview of what's to come. We've exported so much of our communication onto platforms that can be the flip of a switch by one person like Elon Musk can change the direction of the entire political discourse. We've seen it. We know that that's what can be done. And that controls not just what we say, but it controls the incentive system of what we decide we're going to say.

They're colonizing our minds. 100%. I mean, that's what they're doing, and successfully, by the way. And so, I mean, that's why, listen, as, you know, wild is what she said there is, I am glad to see her taking an interest in this subject because, as we've discussed before, like, this is a dire situation we're facing. Yes. It's dire from a job loss perspective. It's dire from a resources and energy perspective. It's dire from a cost perspective in terms of our electricity.

bills. It's dire from a controlling our thoughts and minds and being able to tell truth from fiction and like live in reality together perspective. It's potentially dire from like an actual true existential threat, which I think is a real and genuine risk that I do not put off the table. It's dire from a mass consolidation of wealth and power perspective. Like you want to talk about a democracy crisis. There's no way a democracy survives. If you have someone, one of these characters able to achieve AGI and all of the incredible economic power and benefits that come along with that. So, you know, which is why someone like Elon Musk, who was very concerned about the things

we're talking about. Oh, yeah. And that's why he started Open AI with Sam Altmeto. Okay, we can develop this, but we'll do it in this nonprofit way. No, I'm not saying that the conception was like, was like great from the start. But he had some mind of we have to do this in a safe way. it can't be for profit. It needs to be in the public interest.

And then once he sees everyone else. Same thing with X, by the way. Yep. And once he sees everyone else is off to the races, then he's off to the races too. So it's, it isn't actually existential conversation, in my opinion. And if you listen to that, it's an existential conversation, because they'll tell you, we're trying to eliminate human labor. We're trying to rewrite the social contract. We want to completely upend society as it exists today.

So I am glad to see figures on the right, like Candace. occasionally Steve Bannon, you know, certainly like figures like you, Sager, who are looking at this with clear eyes and going, this is horrific. And we have to come together and take control in some way because otherwise, you know, we are barreling towards an incredibly risky and dire future. Well, and it again, like it gives rocket fuel to those conspiracy theories that people aren't like actually human. And it makes those things much more believable as you break down the law, break down the wall between fact and fiction with your technologies and your algorithms. rhythms. And so again, they're, they're turning us all into Candace Owens. And for a bit more

cogent, I would say, argument along the lines of what she is making about, like, if you want a faith-based argument, I recommend Living in Wonder by Roderre, which came out recently. It does a really good job with this. But it's all happening so quickly. In fact, we should get to this clip of Theo Vaughn, who asked Sam Altman, if he feels fully human along the lines of the Ross Douth at interview of Peter Thiel that Crystal reference, these guys are having conversations in public because they think they're untouchable. And to some extent, they are. I mean, think about the Amazon Web Service outage last week. The consolidation of power combined with AI. So when you have consolidated power that's running on AI, they have lost control of their

AI already. Yeah. And they admit it. So think of how consequential the AWS outage was last week. And then think of what happens when you have massive consolidation and AI together all at the same time. And people like Sam Altman running the show, here's C2. Yeah, I'm just always, I'm like, God, yeah, these people are able to see things differently and quantify things differently. Do you always feel because some tech guys, they just have a different understanding of possibility, right? A different understanding of feeling and thing. Do you feel human all the time? I do feel human all the time, but I feel like I have noticed that I think extremely differently about the future, about exponential change, about compounding technology than almost anybody else that I kind of come across in regular life.

So that's cool. I feel extremely human. I feel like, you know, driven by crazy emotions as much as anybody. But I am like very aware that I have a different lens than a lot of people. Have you met some people in tech space? You're like, whoa, that guy is only like six or seven percent. low, not a lot of human in him. Yes.

Yeah. Okay. I love how Sam's like, yes, I've met people who are not human, but I'm, me, myself, I'm totally human. His interview with Tucker Carlson came out, like, I think it was a couple of days before Charlie Kirk was assassinating, so it kind of got buried. Yeah, I never actually got around to watch him. You have to watch it.

So Tucker asked him how he sleeps at night, and Altman's just like, not well. It's so wild that he goes out and says these things in public. not doing a great job installing confidence in the population. Meanwhile, Crystal, who is working on behalf of these oligarchs, but Kristen Sinema? Of course. I had to let the pause hang because I know it's surprising to people. Oh, yeah, that she's doing the most evil thing imaginable in the wake of her senatorial career. Yeah, I might be open to the hybrid hypothesis.

when it comes to Kirsten Cinema. So here she is testifying at a local town hall, basically saying to them, listen, I'm working to push these data centers into communities and you can either cooperate with us or the federal government is just going to come in and force you to accept this. And then you're not going to have any say

over how it goes for you or, you know, or like it's coming. So you can either work with us. We can do this the easy way or the hard way is the subtext of what she says here. Let's go ahead and take a listen. I'm here tonight on behalf of Active Infrastructure. I also am the founder and co-chair of a national coalition called the AI Infrastructure Coalition.

We are a national coalition formed earlier this year, and we're canned in glove with the Trump administration as we prepare for AI American dominance to prepare against a competing pet from China, but also to ensure that domestically that we are prepared for the AI revolution that is. The AI Action Plan set out by the Trump administration says very clearly that we must continue to proliferate AI and AI data centers throughout the country. So there she goes. Hand and glove with the Trump administration to make sure that AI data centers proliferate throughout the country. And I'll tell you, you know, I live in a town where one of these data centers may be coming. There are, and it's a very conservative's rural area, it's very conservative, you know,

voted, like, 65% for Trump or something. And you see tons of signs, like, stop the data center. I mean, this is, it really is something that there are a wide variety of cross-partisan concerns here, including about local autonomy, you know, as cinema is basically threatening them. Like, it's coming whether you want it or not. Local autonomy is one of them, you know, there's the water usage. You've had wells that have gone dry near these places, you know, especially in rural areas.

I'm personally on well water. A lot of people in my county and in the area are. are, you have the noise concern, the light pollution concern, you have the skyrocketing electricity, energy costs. So you have, you know, a lot of just like immediate concerns about these massive construction projects that are just like proliferating across the country and that, you know, people like her are pushing onto communities that really don't want them. Well, and there was that great semaphore report.

I think it was a Dave Weigel report from a couple of weeks ago about how this is like the sneaky issue in the midterm cycle. that because so many communities are experiencing problems related to the data centers that anybody who's actually able to do the anti-cinema here is probably whichever party is able to do in some of these like congressional races, the anti-cinema approach, that'll behoove them because in many, many communities this is becoming a significant problem. And on that note, guess who is on this? Bernie Sanders, let's roll C-4. Do you think OpenAI and ChatGPT should be broken up?

I do, but it's a deeper issue than that. We need to take a deep breath and understand that it's like, you know, media are coming. We've got to be prepared to deal with it in all of its complexity. Economically, I worry about massive loss of jobs. In terms of what it does to us as human beings, there are products not being sold is you don't need to relate to a human being anymore. You will have somebody hanging around your neck. It's your AI buddy. And in a country where there's a lot of emotional distress, I really worry about that.

How we continue community, how we relate to each other as human beings. And then, of course, in terms of AI, we worry about this super intelligent AI, which supersedes human intelligence. And one day the AI says to the human being, sorry, but actually, no. You worry about a Terminator-like scenario. Something like that. So that was Senator Sanders in an interview with Alex Thompson of Axios Crystal, showing a path forward, not just for Democrats, but for Republicans, if anyone is smart enough, to take it.

And that's where the question is right now. Yeah. Well, at the federal level, certainly the Trump administration has decided that they're all in, You know, and obviously J.D. Vance is very much backed by Peter Thiel, has been throughout his career. They're thinking he's their guy. They've decided we're going to take any breaks that we're on the car. We're going to take them off, right? We are going to make sure in terms of regulatory breaks or make sure the funding is there. We're going to make sure there's no sort of like, you know, any sort of SEC enforcement actions coming your way. We're going to go all in in the most reckless manner possible because we've got to win. this, you know, war against China. We've got to win the race to AGI before China gets there. And so that is the full thrust from the national level of the, you know, the Trump administration, certainly right now. And if J.D. Vance is the predecessor to Trump, then I fully expect him to continue in that direction. And of course, Trump is out there. Steve Bannon is saying,

oh, Trump is going to be the guy again in 2028. I don't think we can put that off the table either. And he's clearly decided that, you know, being fully in bed with these. tech oligarchs was the best thing for him politically in the direction that he wanted to go in. So it does leave a massive opening for someone to articulate all of these fears. And as I said, the fears are both immediate and medium term in terms of job loss and long term, as Bernie articulates there as well, in terms of these more existential concerns about what it would mean to have a superior intelligence on the planet. Like, has anyone thought about that? There are people who have thought about it, most of them have concluded that it's going to be really bad for human

beings, yet we continue a pace anyway. So if, you know, 80-something-year-old Bernie Sanders can figure all of that out, I think a lot of Americans are thinking in the same direction. And it seems to me like we're at an inflection point as these data centers increasingly crop up, especially in rural areas, where there's more and more awareness of what is happening and the speed and pace of which, you know, at which it is occurring and the massive impact that it could have on all of our lives in the future. And most conservative Catholic intellectuals are deeply suspicious of AI,

which puts J.D. Vance in a fascinating position. And we did a long segment on why Peter Thiel is talking so much about AI, the apocalypse, the catacomb recently. And I think the conclusion that we landed on is he's trying to seduce, especially religious conservatives in the midst of this nationwide religious revival that everyone saw on display at the Kirk Memorial, he's trying to convince those people, which are such an

important part of the Republican coalition, to put their faith in AI and to put their faith in big tech. And if he's able to do that, he bring the JD Vance's on board and start making this argument, a faith-based argument, literally a faith-based argument, for acceleration That's a huge win because you can see the argument that Bernie just made there being appealing to people around the country who are honestly like conservative Trump types or just normal, you know, suburban parents who are freaked out about what's happening to their children. So that's a huge reason why we're starting to see Teal. I think Teal is smarter, honestly. And he's more politically savvy, much more politically experienced. than Elon or Sam Altman. I mean, his political involvement goes back a long time.

And so I think that's where you're trying to see, where you're seeing him try to get out ahead of some of these arguments to bring. So like Candace Owens, conservative Catholic, actually. Interesting point. Big audience among conservative Catholics, trying to make the point that, hey, we don't know where any of this is going,

but we have to put our faith in this accelerationist because otherwise the degrowthers sure look a lot like some biblical prophecies about the dark forces. So that's, I think, all of this, I think, lends credence to the conversation that we had the other day. And on top of that, where does,

I mean, the Trump administration, we heard a lot in the lead-up. You probably remember this last year, this time last year, about little tech, right? Like, accelerationism, little tech, we have to open up everything, make a much more liberal, lower-case L regulatory environment

for all of these little tech companies to thrive and to innovate. I feel like the regulatory environment right now since Donald Trump retook office is pretty much designed to favor big tech. Right. Like, are we seeing this flourishing of... The tech itself is designed to favor big tech.

Exactly. Because at least the theory of all the American companies, you know, deep seek prove potentially a different direction as possible. But the theory of all the American companies is basically you just throw as much money at this thing as possible. You build out as many data centers as much compute as possible to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, and that's the way to win the race.

And so, of course, like, you're not going to have some plucky startup that's able to pull that off. Especially not with all the lobbying here that's going on. Yeah. I mean, it's going to be the giant players, which is why I always thought the little tech thing was complete and utter bullshit. And I think it was complete and utter bullshit. I don't think that Mark Andrews and these other people that are pushing it are so, like, out of touch with the nature of the tech to not understand that it was going to be the big players that dominate the space. Now, are there going to be, you know, startups that are using the tech and, you know, ancillary, sure. But in terms of who is developing the core technology, it's going to be one of the giants.

And that's why all of these guys have thrown in so hard for it because they were. want to be the guy. They want to be the master of the universe. That's the way that they see it. And Emily, your points on the, on what Teal is doing and your insights into that, I think are really important for people to understand whether or not he believes what he's saying or not. Who the hell knows? It doesn't really matter. But he's trying to square the circle of convincing religious people that this technology, which on his face looks anti-creation and anti-human, is actually, actually, it's fine. And actually, we have to do this.

Like the proper religious course to take, you know, if you're in the Christian faith, is to pursue this at all costs and take all the brakes off the car and just trust that it's going to work out. That is the, like, the proper thing to do. Just turn your mind off. All your concern, don't worry about it.

Right. We've just got to go drive this car at 100 miles an hour. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, it's interesting because I think a lot of people are engaging with the teal argument as it's entirely sincere.

And I think it's probably both sincere. He does seem entirely sincere about it. But it's not just sincere. It's sincere in a very particular direction. And there's an audience that he would have a motivation to try and persuade right now. And so I think that's an important lens to look at what he's doing through. Man, what a time to be alive, Crystal, what a time to be alive.

Indeed. Johnny Knoxville here. Check out Crimeless, Hillbilly Heist, my new true crime podcast from smartless media, campside media, and big money players. It's the true story of the almost perfect crime and the Nimrods who almost pulled this. off. It was kind of like the perfect storm in a sewer. That was dumb. Do not follow my example.

Listen to Crimeless Hillbilly Heist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Two rich young Americans move to the Costa Rican jungle to start over, but one of them will end up dead and the other tried for murder three times. It starts with a dream, a nature reserve, and a spectacular new home. But little by little, they lose it, they actually lose it. They sort of went nuts. Until one night, everything spins out of control. Listen to Hell in Heaven on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I live below a cult leader, and I fear I've angered her.

Wait a minute, Sophia. How do you know she's a cult leader? Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week on the OK. Storytime podcast. So we'll find out soon. This person writes, my neighbor has been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals. And now my ceiling is collapsing. I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder. I think they might be part of a cult. Hold up. A real life cult? And what is a dirt ritual? No clue, Dakota. Find out how it ends. Listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Thank you.