Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 925: Tucker Leaves the Party

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

The Democratic party is being hit by a leftist tidal wave | Ben Davis | The Guardian Fetterman casts only Democratic 'no' vote as Senate passes measure to block US action against Iran - pennlive.com Trump's $14M Reflecting Pool Paint Job Is Now Peeling Off And Floating To The Surface | HuffPost Latest News "I'm out": Tucker Carlson says he's done with the GOP 'We Are DONE': Marjorie Taylor Greene Quits Republican Party Amid Trump Feud Senate advances housing bill to limit private equity purchases of single-family homes

This episode of Cognitive Dissinence is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. Reporting live from Gloria Hull Studios in Chicago and beyond. This is Cognitive Dissinence. Every episode to be blasts anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any topic that makes the news.

Makes it big or makes us mad. It's skeptical. It's political. And there is no welcome at. Today is Friday, June the 26th. And I don't know as of this telling whether the straight of Hormuz is open or closed. I know that I... It's been a confusing series of weeks.

It's very confusing. It's so confusing, in fact, that Iran launched a drone at a ship that like yesterday night, I think. because it was passing too close to like Oman, and they were like, no, you can't take that shipping away. Yeah. That's how we're doing gender reveals now. It's like a drone will fly past and explode near your ship. Does anybody even know what is happening?

Like, the straits are not okay, is what I'm saying. Here's what I will say. The administration does not. The administration, and even if they did, they wouldn't tell us the right thing. That almost certainly is true, right? Like we're supposed to This is one of those areas where I was kind of laughing

Because I'm trying to read the news Sure Out what's going on Oil prices are back down Back down to pre-war levels So okay But the oil isn't flowing like pre-war levels at all But then Trump's like we used to

More oil went through the straight than ever before But it was like no like it's about 15% Of what had gone through before So just lies everything is just lies And you can't know what's happening anymore So like I don't know if we have a deal, if we don't have a deal, if there's oil flowing, if there's not oil

flowing. We recorded early last week, a little early, and we didn't cover it because we were covering very specifically a couple of stories that we wanted to cover. And there was a point, and I think it might have happened after we recorded, where someone,

they were at one of these meetings where they meet with Iran and then other countries are there as well. And during that meeting, Trump had tweeted something or said something, and the delegation just got up and left. Is that when he tweeted that if the, I think he tweeted,

he tweeted something out that was essentially, if these negotiators don't go well, we'll kill the people negotiating. Like he threatened to kill the negotiations. And they just left. And at that time, what was so funny is there, it's almost like you're watching an episode of the office.

And they sort of show the guys in the front. And then the cameraman just turns. And J.D. Vance is in the corner and you see him do the gym face at the camera like, he cannot do it. Because at this point, it's almost like we're in such, it's, the world is a satire. Yeah. It's a satire of itself. And we're in this, we're so deep.

We're four Inception office levels in. It's insane. There's no way to know what's happening. There's no way to know if it's good or bad. Well, there is a way to know if it's good or bad. It's bad. definitely bad. It's definitely bad. It's definitely bad. It's interesting too because I know that this whole debacle has been such a hot potato and difficult for the Republicans to deal with.

It's been such a strange, crazy thing because there are points that that gain a lot of ground and there are points that that really hammer home their ideals and that put people on their side, bad people. Not, not, I'm not talking about everyone. But I am saying, I'm talking about Republicans. I'm talking about Republicans. But they, they will, they will have, if they go after immigration, ICE traveling all over the country, stomping on human rights, doesn't matter to them.

That's exciting to a lot of Republicans. That's, that's exciting. That's a, they're, they're excited. They like the hype videos. Right. That they put out. They think those are cool. So that stuff hits, it's a home run with.

those people. It's an absolute home run. These are the same people who, two years ago, were sitting in a large conference, in a large convention hall holding up sign that's a mass deportation now. This is a bloodthirsty, disgusting group of people. Right. So for them,

throwing these scraps of meat is exciting. This is cool. They didn't want this. Many, many, many of them did not want this. They're perfectly happy waging war at home. They don't want wage war overseas. No. Yeah, that's a good point. Because when they wage war at home,

they understand that the opponent, in quotes, is completely powerless, right? Yeah. So it's like, it's like, that's a good point. Yeah, good point. I'm going to go beat up a bunch of kindergartners. Yeah. Yeah. You know, they wildly underestimated Iran, you know, I think they thought, you know, from some of the analysis that I read, I think it is fair to say that it is likely that Israel convinced the American officials, primarily Trump. So I think Netanyahu probably convinced Trump. hey, if you support us in doing this, we can flip the regime and the Kurds will come in from Iraq, they'll take over the country and we'll have regime change. We'll have a whole system change over there. It'll be neat and easy and we've got the intelligence to do it. Neat and easy if the

Kurdish people come in and take over the country. I think that that's really genuinely what they thought. And I think that's why the initial messaging from Trump was we're going to bomb everybody to death. And then you guys, it'll be up to you to take over. Remember that original messaging was like, It'll be your country to take over. You'll only have this one chance to do it. He was basically saying, let's foment a revolution and put new people in charge. And, of course, that didn't happen. It's so aggressively didn't happen that Iran has actually stepped up its hangings of political dissidents since the war, since the bombing phase the war has concluded.

So they're hanging more people locally. They've consolidated their power. They're more hardline than ever. it's the same people in charge. They actually have more financial power than they've ever had before. So they won. By every reasonable margin, they won. Their ballistic missile program is still intact.

They have not given up anything or negotiated anything away on the nuclear front whatsoever. They've got potentially 24 to 300 billion more dollars. They still have control of the straight. And even if they don't control it, they have the ability to control it at a moments notice, which is a huge amount of leverage, they've won. They completely won. And now we're fucked. And the right never wanted this. The left never wanted this. Literally nobody wanted this. There's no way out of it. Yeah. And everybody who knew anything knew that was going to happen. There's a reason why it never happened before. Yep. There's a reason why we went through

multiple presidencies with Iran in the background rumbling about making a nuclear weapon. It's not like that hasn't been something that they've been thinking about for a long time. Those types of things have been happening for a long time. Obama literally had a deal in place to try to prevent that, right? So we know that this has been, but even going back all the way to, to, hell wasn't it Reagan with the Iran? He's the one who came in right after the Iran hostage crisis. This is a group of people who we've been at

odds with for a very long time. And even somebody as gung-ho as Reagan, even somebody who look at the two bushes, both of them started wars. Even those people didn't even try. No, this is, everybody who has, like, advisors that they listen to.

Because the thing is that, like, Trump's advisors were not, for the most part, from everything that I've read. I've read as much as I can about this. So it's not nothing. Most of Trump's advisors were like, that's nothing. You can't do that. But I think he wanted to be bold and carve out this thing and like be the first president who. It's legacy building.

It's legacy. That's all he's doing. Because he's not a guy who's well liked. As much as he pretends that that's not the case and says it's all fake polls or whatever, whatever he's saying, the man knows he's not well liked. He knows that his popularity is plummeting even amongst the people who, supposedly support him. I don't care how genuinely stupid he seems.

He has to know that's true. And even if he's going to lie about it, it doesn't matter. Reality doesn't care whether you lie about it. Right. So he's in a position where he has to do something in his own head to continue to maintain himself on those news feeds

as a person who's at succeeding in the face of other people who thought he would fail succeeding to galvanize his side in a lot of ways. And I think that this was one of those moments where he thought he could build his legacy and quickly topple someone like he did in Venezuela, where he could easily just fly in and say, I fix this. I fix this. No one was bold as me to go fix this problem. I fix this problem because I'm Donald Trump and everyone should remember who I am and make sure to dust off that rushmore because that's where my face is going to go afterwards. Dude, 100%.

And the worry that I have to follow Iran, well, I mean, like, I think I've got a couple of quick worries. Then we'll talk about it. Oh, I got a lot of worries, buddy. Yeah, I know. Like, I think it's very evident that the Iran problem is just worse now than it was before. It's unlikely to get better. It's not going to have easy diplomatic solutions.

That is over. And I think he's going to lose interest in it because it's not going to produce legacy. It's not going to be this historical marker for him. And I don't think he's going to let that rest. What I think is he'll take Cuba because he wants to do one big thing. Yeah. And Cuba would be an easier win. And I think he wants to have that bold, decisive, one big win, something to mark them down in the history books, a turning point in global politics.

Venezuela, the world was like, that was weird, but like, that was it. You know? So what you're saying is, guys, get your polymarket back. Yeah. Any attempt to restrict drinking and driving here is viewed by some as downright undemocratic. It's kind of getting common when a fellow can't put in the hard day's work, put in 11, 12 hours a day, and then getting your truck and the lease around one or two beers. They're making it laws where you can't drink when you want to. You have to wear a seatbelt when you're driving.

pretty soon we're going to become this country. So this story is from The Guardian. The Democratic Party is being hit by a leftist title wave. This is exciting. All of Mamdani's supported and advocated for candidates, his endorsed candidates that he really worked hard for and didn't just passively endorse. All of them won.

Not one or all of them. That's great news. It's great news. This is a big deal. It's great news because I think, think what it really is, is people on the left embracing a populist message saying, we're going to help people. We're going to do our best for people. And the people who are struggling are going to get help. And we're seeing some of those things start to come to fruition in New York. You're starting to see

some of the programs that he had pushed for to work hard for. I know that a bunch of people are shitting on how the budget was balanced or something like that because I guess they got some money from the state to try to balance the budget. But I think back to all the people who have ruined the budget over the years. You think, well, they should probably get some help to try to fix it. And now we get an opportunity to see whether or not it can keep it balanced, right? You can see what will happen. And he has instituted different taxing plans that change how we view taxes and how we tax people in different income brackets, which is good. There's lots of people and lots of noise, but a lot of that noise is coming from real high-paid media.

We're talking about media like The Washington Post and other places where these things are clearly owned by billionaires. And then you also hear a lot of billionaires doing the op-ed route or traveling onto these talking head shows to complain about this type of thing, how it's going to ruin everything for them. They're going to leave because you're taxing me on this mansion or whatever it is. Right. And so, but I see a person there who's doing all the things I think that everybody who has had the short end of the stick for so long, they want to see him do those things. They want to see, they want to see some sort of something happen that makes it feel like there's some sort of equity that in some way they feel like they could get ahead. And I think that's really, it's a really powerful thing. It's exciting. And one thing that I think is very interesting and worth noting is that a central criticism

that keeps being leveled at Democrats in general and of course Democratic socialists in particular is who's going to pay for all this stuff? You want all these different entitlements, all these different like programs, all of this, who's going to pay for it? And what Mamdani comes in with is a revenue model that matches his expense model. He comes in, he balances the budget. I don't care if he got some money from the state to do it. it. It wasn't fucking balanced before. Now it is. He's been there 20 minutes. It's like he walked in and was

like, did nobody press this button? There's just a balanced budget button. We could just press it. And he fucking pressed the button, you know, when we show successes on the entitlements and benefits front, and then we also show how you can build a revenue model that supports that, then I think you show America that this is a viable system of governance. We've sold ourselves the false idea. that all we're trying to do is give without having any way to pay for it. Who's going to pay for? Where's all this money going to come from? Remember, the Republicans are the ones that don't want to increase revenue.

They're the only ones that don't want to increase revenue in. The Democrats are like, hey, we would like to spend some money. Absolutely. Also, we would like to intake more money in order to do that. And here's who should pay for it. It's the people that can fucking afford it. That makes all the sense in the world unless you're great. grouchy about being one of the people that can afford it. But guess what? If you are,

you can afford it. Yeah. And nobody cares because there's more of us than there are of you. So it's fucking fine. Like there's something like a thousand billionaires in the world, in the whole world. And about 700 of them, give or take, I looked this up the other day. These numbers aren't perfect, but they're close. About 700 of them are here in America. Almost all the world's billionaires are here. An enormous amount of wealth has accumulated to the top. And we can pay for these programs. This is viable. We just got to watch somebody like Mom Doni say, all right, cool, yeah, you've got a fucking luxury home worth $5 million. You can pay a little extra in taxes. You'll be fine. You're not going to wake up and not be able to fucking buy your

Starbucks tomorrow, man. One of these people bought a penthouse for $250 million. Yeah, come the Fuck on. I mean, what are we talking about here? Yeah. You're not going to, you're not going to walk up to them and pick their pockets so much they're going to be poor. No. That's not going to happen. No. They're going to have enough money to survive, not just survive, thrive, continue to make businesses. Generational. Continue to make as much money as possible. The amount of money that they'll have to pay is a tiny pittance in comparison to the money that they're going to get and the money that they're going to continue to get and the money that will be renewed because now there's a group of people that are taken care of better, right? There's a group of people who are more excited about

America when there's some sort of social safety net and there's not a bunch of unrest and a bunch of people who are at each other's throats and a bunch of people who can't get by, who can't, and I'm not even saying thrive. I mean, at this point, could you imagine being someone who just got out of college and trying to start, it would be impossible. I mean, it's, these people have to climb such a, such a steep hill to try to even get a foothold. Think about how much it costs for median home prices. Think about how much a car cost compared to how much wages are, the average wages. Think about how much your grocery bill is every single week. Think about energy costs. Price of gas on a fucking slinky. Yeah. Like all those things are so, that could ruin you right now. Think about,

How many times in your past? And we're talking about, you know, 30 years ago, Tom, where you'd go and you'd say, I can't spend another dime this week. Yeah. Because if I do, I'm going to incur a $50 penalty from the bank. Yeah. And that's going to put me back my next check. So from this point on, I cannot use my card.

I have to buy a ramen and I have to just do nothing. I can't do anything. Haley and I were just talking. It's so funny. We were just talking about this this week that both of us remember very clearly the times in our lives where you would, you'd be like, I wish I could buy myself that $3 treat that like just that cup of coffee or just like I'm out and about. And my errands took longer than I thought. And I haven't had a chance to eat, but I can't stop and get something to eat because it's not in my budget. Oh yeah.

And every dollar is budgeted for. And if anything goes wrong, now it's on credit or you're trying to borrow some money, or maybe you have to, like, take another job at borders shelving books at six the morning, or, like, be the janitor at your work to make ends meet or whatever you have to sell something you really like. Yeah, like, just to try to like make those ends meet. That's a, that's the world. That is the world for so, so many people. It's a couple of things are worth noting, too. Every dollar at the low to middle end of the economic spectrum feeds right back into the system. So every dollar that you give to somebody that is not in the top five or 10 percent, all that money gets spent right away. Dollar in is a dollar out.

It creates economic churn. So that is how the economy actually drives itself. That's the engine. That's the juice of the economy. When you accumulate money at the top, it doesn't spend back into itself. It just hoards. It goes into stocks. It goes into bonds.

It goes into investments. Less of those dollars saved at the top actually gets spent on goods and stuff. services. So moving dollars around into the bottom and the middle creates more opportunity, creates a deeper economic engine, increases growth, increases wages. It's a virtuous cycle. Money pushed to the top is a vicious cycle. It's not as good. And then in case anybody was scared that all you're going to lose all your millionaires and billionaires and your wealth creators, think about this. Let's say I have a $5 million, $10 million, or $20 million house, right? and I am in New York.

And oh, now I'm going to pay taxes. Oh, fuck it, I'm going to leave. You're going to sell your house to someone that will buy it, which is just going to be another millionaire that bought that house. It's not like they're going to abandon the property and just leave, and now there's less rich people. They're not leaving until they can sell their property. There's not going to be less rich people.

You're just going to replace one grumpy fucker for another rich fucker. That's all you're doing. No one abandons a multi-million dollar property without selling it, which means they have to sell to somebody, which means that somebody else rich has to buy it. There's the same number of fucking rich people. Also, New York is a major economic engine. People can't just get up and leave. They are working there for a reason.

They are living there for a reason. That's where all their assets are tied. That's where all of their revenue is tied. They'll bitch about it, but they're not fucking going anywhere. Where would they go? cares. You're not going to pack up your operation in New York from some ritzie neighborhood in New York where you own half the building and move it to Arkansas. Right. You're not going to do that. I'm going to work from home. It's not going to work for you. You're just not going to do that. That's

not something you're going to do. You literally bought in New York a place that's ultra expensive because you knew you needed to do business there. You knew you needed that address to do the business. So this idea that they're just going to not do business there is silly because there is no way they're going to say, well, fine, if you want my money, I'll just burn it. They're not going to do that. They're not doing it. They're going to say, well, you want some of my money. Okay, well, I guess I'll have to just suffer with less. Yeah.

They'll bitch about it. And that's it. And we shouldn't listen to them bitch about it because their needs aren't important. Yeah. Because their worries are not existential. And nobody should care that a rich person wakes up and is less rich tomorrow. It's not a big deal. And I think people are realizing that you're never going to convince anybody in any part of the

country that is deep red that any of these people are worthwhile. But I think the problem that the Democrats have had for way too long is they try to be something for everyone. They've done too much to be something for everyone. And I think what proved this was how quickly all those people who ran these. businesses, these big, large corporations, literally throughout every kind of DEI policy, any kind of pride week thing that they were doing, anything that signified that they had any kind of leftist ties, right? Anything that would make you think that they had some sort of humanist ties,

they threw it all out when Trump got elected. They literally just fucking jettison that shit in the space. Yeah. Because they never cared about any of that stuff. They literally only cared about it you would shop there. And I don't think that that's a bad thing to get them to care about it because you want my dollar. That's fine. I'm willing to trade you my dollar so you care about these things. But I'm definitely also willing to do the opposite, which is not give you my dollar

if you don't care about these things. So I think what we need to understand as people on the left now is that those people are gone. They're not coming back. They may come crawling back eventually, but you've got to make them come crawling back. And so anybody who's in the corporate world, you're never going to convince. Anybody who's like a diehard person with hatred in their heart who doesn't like anybody else that doesn't look exactly the same skin tone as them, those people are never people you're going to win over. Those people, you may make their life better on accident.

Yeah, but you probably will. But I don't think that any, if they gain any benefit out of this, the hatred in their heart burns hotter. than any benefit you could offer them. Man, I think I've told this story before, but like it just reminds me, and I'll tell it again, it's probably been several years. There was a guy,

so my wife was friends with a woman, and I was trying to make friends with this woman's husband. I was trying to be friendly, I should say. And we got to talking, and they had a child together, and their child has hemophilia. So that's a blood clotting disorder. Yeah, yeah, very dangerous.

Sure, yeah. Treatments for hemophilia are inordinately expensive. And this gentleman was, self-employed. So he and his girl did not get married on purpose because they were able to manipulate their income level on paper to take advantage of state benefits in order to get their son the medical coverage that he needed at a price that they could afford because, like, the state saw them as lower income and kicked in and all of this stuff, right?

So fine. I'm not shitting on that at all. this guy was the most rabid, diehard Republican maga lunatic you've ever met in your life who would bitch about socialists and all the rest of this stuff. They all do. While at the same time, literally manipulating his own love life in order to gain access to a welfare state benefit. That I don't begrudge him, right? Like, I think everybody should have that benefit.

and nobody should have to lie about their income or not marry someone they love in order to do it. Shouldn't be a shell game for my kid to get some sort of coverage. And the fucking, the cognitive dissonance inside this man's fucking head existed only because of what you were saying. And I did not make friends with this guy. The level of like vitriol that he held absolutely occluded his ability to see that in reality, this is what he wants the world to look like because that's what he wants. for himself. So like we we should not separate what we want the world to look like for us from what we want the world to look like for everybody else. If you do that, you're a fucking asshole and a

hypocrite. So he was an asshole and a hypocrite. And I was like, I'm not friends with that dude. That you can be, that dude sucks. Sure. I was just fucking, I remember asking him about it. And he just tore, tied himself up in knots, talking himself into circles. Basically, when I want an abortion, it's chill. And when you want one in first. I was just going to I was just going to say, the only ethical abortion is my abortion. Because that is literally the exact same thing. It's someone who's saying my needs supersede everyone else's. No one should have any of the things I need are my rights.

And no one else should have those rights. It's righteous one I do. No one else should have those. It's really gross. But my larger point is, no, it's okay. My larger point is we've been trying to court that guy. Yeah. Right?

Maybe not him. but certainly people that are just a little bit, they got checked a little bit into the boards closer to us. Right, right, right. They're kind of like a far right leaning centrist. And so often, all across the country, in places where you know you're not going to fucking win, we've been sending people to try to court these people.

They're not courtable, man. Yeah. And I know we've been saying this for years. We've been talking about this for years. Those people aren't courtable. There may be one or two purple states where there's a possibility that someone who's more purple is going to have a better chance. But I really do think this is the path forward.

What they're doing now, just help these people once. And it might change their mind because they are selfish. That's key. And if you can play on their selfishness, maybe you can win them over to be like, those fucking guys, my whole life I've been voting for these guys because I hate the same people. But it turns out I actually have more money. in my bank account. I'm not as fearful as at a charge back

or something or whatever they call those. Overdraft fee. I'm not as fearful of that anymore. I'm able to make my car payments. These prices are maintaining and I've gotten a larger wage because of these people. Might change their mind if you can access

that selfish center in their brain. Right. And maybe this could do it because more people benefit under these people and under their policies than would ever benefit. from people on the right. Yeah. Speaking of which, let's talk about Federman,

because he's a piece of shit. And his whole thing was he's one of the few people who actually voted. They tried to vote to tie the hands, very symbolically tie the hands, very symbolically tie the hands with a very nice piece of ribbon that can be easily untied by the magician. It is, but they wanted to say, you can't, we're going to sort of slow down

or block the Iran escalation and stop the conflict over there with a vote. Wasn't going to do anything really anyway, but Federman was one of the people who voted against it. And they wanted to picking up four different people to vote for it from the Republican side.

I believe Massey, the lady from Maine who's trying to keep her seat, Collins. And then that lady from Alaska who once in a while will occasionally vote in a regular fashion but is still also on the crazy train most of the time. So they did a Federman though jump ship and he was one of the reasons why it was so close is because he's not, he definitely votes more often. with the Republicans, and it will be a great day

when he's no longer part of the Senate. Yeah, fuck this guy forever. Fuck his stupid shorts and his dumb fucking car heart, performative, fucking sweatshirt that he wears. Fuck his stupid, every man, like, plain Joe, like kind of fucking persona. This is a Republican.

I don't know what happened to this guy. I think people were excited about him when he first got elected. He appeared to be something other than what he is acting now. I don't have anything. I know people, speculate about whether or not that had something to do with his stroke.

Yeah, people think that. I don't know. I don't know. I have no fucking idea. It doesn't even matter, though. Like, I just want to point out, that doesn't matter. The why makes no difference. All that matters is this guy's got to go. He's got to fucking go. This guy is a piece of shit. He is a Republican in disguise. Yeah. He doesn't have the fucking balls to switch parties and say who he is. Yeah. Be a fucking man. Switch parties, man. Say who you are. Stand up for the thing you believe. want to be a Republican, stand up and be counted as a goddamn Republican. If you want to be an

independent, stand up and be counted as an independent. But he is tied to our side, but doesn't fucking vote in caucus with us properly. And this guy sucks. This guy absolutely sucks. He is more pro-Trump than some of these, like, in many cases, than some of these, like, more centrist Republicans. Yeah, wishy-washy Republicans. Fuck this guy. He's a fucking Kristen cinema. He's a fucking mansion. Mansion. These guys are liars. They are they got to get voted out.

I can't wait for this guy to come up for fucking re-election. I hope he gets fucking jettisoned into space. Yeah, I agree. And I think when I look at the other side, I see these cowards too who their entire career voted with

Trump, voted alongside of Trump, was trying to get endorsed by him. I'm thinking of the person who lost their seat in the primary to Paxon. The coronin, his name is, or Corwin. I don't know. I can't remember. It starts with the C.

But he's the fella who was in the Senate who lost to his primary, to Ken Paxton, who's from Texas. And he was trying to garner favor with Trump. And as soon as they don't, then they start voting away. Then they start veering away. As soon as they don't have that favor anymore,

where they're like, fine, I guess I'll vote my conscience now. Massey's doing the same thing. And I think, you were such a coward. I can't believe this is what we've decided to, we've shaken out, you know, when they pan for gold. We've shaken out all the dust and these little globules of shit are the ones that are left. These people are cowards, that none of these people have any backbone.

I don't like his policies, but I will say that Adam Kinzinger, the Buffy McBuff face who was constantly constantly showing people where the... Who's the beach? Is the beach this way? By the way, January 6th, where's the beach? So that guy, at least that guy had like one term. January 6th happens.

He's like, absolutely not. And then he stood on that and then he just walked away. He was like, I won't win. That's fine. I don't need to win. I fought one term. I was on this thing. That's the end of it.

That was enough for him. to say, none more of that. We're done with that. That's not going to happen anymore. At least that guy had enough courage to look everybody in the face and say, I'm not going to do that. I have at least respect for somebody who's going to have those kind of principles. Isn't the all of a sudden conscience finding of those who are no longer up for re-election? Isn't that 100% proof positive of the need for term limits? Yeah. Because look at what you have when being reelected is not the primary driver.

Such a great point. Such a great point. You're absolutely right. Everybody makes the right choice. You're absolutely right, Tom. I'm blue. Dada de da da die. This is a fucking delicious, delicious controversy.

Huff post. Trump's $14 million reflecting pool paint job is now peeling off and floating to the surface. Trump entered into a no-bid contract with his fucking Mar-a-Laga pool boy or whatever. No bid, huh? Interesting. They're like, we can do it for a million dollars. And he's like, $1.8 million.

He's like, awesome. They're like, actually it'll cost $14 million. He's like, still awesome. And then they went out and they did a, by all accounts, literally terrible job. My favorite is the videos when people are just walking up and you're seeing this latex shit they sprayed on the bottom, literally falling off like someone's bad sunburn. It looks crazy. It's pulling off in sheets where you. you're just, it's amazing that it's falling on.

It's like the masks that people put on their face. Yes, yes. Like a fucking, like a peel mask or whatever. That's what's happening to the pool. And we know that it was a problem for a while. This algae stuff was a problem for a while, et cetera, et cetera. Trump again,

sees something he thinks he can put his name on and say, I fix this thing. No one else had the courage to go up and getting a no-bid contract with my best friend or whatever. But he'll point out and be like, I fixed it. No one else was willing to fix it.

I'm willing to fix it. And it's sort of that boldness that allowed him to tear down the ballroom, right? Or that make the ballroom and tear down the east wing. So Trump sees this as a way to create. I think in some ways Trump knows that he wants to always keep himself at the front of the news. And we even write a book.

The book that we read is his book. The art of the deal. Where he explains this in great detail that his whole plan is to always stay on people's mind and use the news as a way to do that. And this is one of those ploys, right? He's obviously doing this as a PR stunt so that people will talk about it.

And whether or not it fails or, it works doesn't really matter. People are talking about it. He's in the news. To him, the result doesn't matter as long as they're spelling his name right. So he's constantly in the news. The one thing that's really disturbing

about this is that they got people from out of state to come protect it. That was weird. Yep. And they just started arresting random people. Which is also crazy. And one of the things I want to mention, and I think needs to stay in the front of our mind throughout the entire

Trump presidency is Trump can only do so much. He has to have willing actors in the state in order to continue to push his policies and enforce his policies on the American people. The fact that there are enough

willing people to go along with him to arrest people and to take them in and to prosecute them should scare the shit out of us. Because this is a group of people. This is the, authoritarian arm of the government. This is a group of people that have, that can use deadly force against anyone they want and

most of the time get away with it. So we should be very leery of the fact that Trump can control these people so, just so totally. Yeah. Yeah. Like Trump is saying that vandals, bureaucrats, he's calling them bureaucrats, too. So the suggestion is that there are deep state bureaucratic vandals who don't want to see him succeed in fixing the reflection. The Department of Vandalism went out and did this, yeah.

So, like, they're going out, and he said, like, I listened to a thing this morning where a literal quote from Trump, where he's saying that Vandals went out with a knife or a box cutter and cut like a 350-foot gash in the lining. Yeah. And, like, no, you can just see it peeling up. You just see that if you jump really fast and you do a flip. They have to do a cartwheel across the water,

but they're doing it so fast a time they skim across, like a stone. Sonic the vandal. It's Sonic the vandal. When you hit the reflecting pool, rings just shoot out. Just ping! And the, like,

the, uh, algae, the whole thing is very funny. So like, this reflecting pool is massive. I guess it leaks millions of gallons a year of water into the system. Sure.

They fill it with water. They've a choice whether to fill it with water from the Potomac or water from D.C.'s water system. Like, they chose to fill it with water from D.C.'s water system. But when they did that, D.C.'s water has phosphorus in it. It has phosphorus in it because phosphorus helps to coat the pipes to prevent heavy metals like lead from leaching into your drinking water. Phosphorus, and I know this from having a pool myself and learning about pool chemistry, phosphorus is food for algae.

It's num, num, num, num, num, num, num, food. Sure. So they put all this water in the pool and basically have a still, hot, shallow pool of water. full of algae food. Did they think to put a sign up that said no algae? They did not. And that would have worked. Because that's a smart.

Let me tell you, no algae allowed. No algae allowed. Or algae only allowed on this side of the pool. That'd be right in line with the Trump administration, though, by the way. To segregate the algae out would be perfectly in mind. We're going to arrest all the algae. The algae is Antifa, algae. There's one cell algae.

This unicellular antifa, immigrant algae. So it of course that algae, blooms right away, which is the only thing you would expect. Then they have to treat, so they chose to treat it with hydrogen peroxide, which is fine. There's reasons to use hydrogen peroxide instead of chlorine. That's not as crazy. Yeah. But the pool was just painted, and hydrogen peroxide can be caustic to the paint. Oh. Because the paint doesn't have time to fully cure. It takes a long time for paints like this to fully cure. So they pour all this hydrogen, and then it cracks the fucking paint. These guys are fucking making it up as they go. They don't know what the

fuck they're doing because they're rushing it because he wants to solve a problem fast to be a big swinging dick instead of solving a problem well and taking the time to do it. It's such a wonderful symbol. It feels like a metaphor. It feels like a metaphor, Tom. Yeah, I know, man. Feels like a lot of it feels almost like an inception level of metaphors. It feels like you're stacking metaphors to reach a larger metaphor. It's so crazy. It's insane. It's insane. But I think I think that Trump he had this idea and I think that many, he thinks he's the only person

who can handle things. And that's the real problem. And nobody on his side wants to pay attention to that. But micromanaging a pool is not what I want him to do. No. To be honest, it's what I want Trump doing

because I'd much rather have Trump micromanaging a pool than pretending to be a leader on the world stage. Fair. But if you are somebody who takes that job seriously, I don't want you thinking about what a pool. I don't want you thinking about monuments. I don't want you thinking about what's going next to the, what's going to happen with the

Rose Garden, how we're going to change the East Wing. I don't want any of that stuff on your mind. Not at all. I want you to think about how best to serve the American people. And that's not something he's been doing at all. Literally at all. And that's exactly right, man. Listen, if you wanted to join a PFJ, you'd have to really hate the roads. I do. I do. Oh yeah, how much? A lot. Right, you're in. Listen.

The only people we ate more than the Romans are the fucking Judean people's front. Yes, and the Judean popular people's front. Oh, yes, split. And the people's front of Judea. Splitters. The people's front of Judea, splitters. We're the people's front of Judea. Oh, I thought we were the popular front.

People's front. Whatever happened to the popular front? front. He's over there. Cecil, these next two stories are exciting. I wonder, is what we talked about two, three years ago? Is it happening? Is the Maga Party splitting? Could be. I'd like to hear your thoughts on it. So this story is from Axios. I'm out. Tucker Carlson says he's done with the GOP. Huffington Post also has a similar story. This is Marjorie Taylor Green. We are done.

Marjorie Taylor Green quits Republican Party amid Trump feud. The thing that I wanted to talk to you about is, does this matter because neither of these people are actually in Congress or the Senate? Right. Marjorie Taylor Green left the house. She quit. Yeah. Tucker Carlson has never been a politician. He's just a right-wing pundit. Yeah. So the fact that they are leaving is, I think, like, potentially, like, influencer level, interesting, but it does not yet rise to politically relevant. So I hope that this is the beginning of a fracture on the right. I think there's a good reason to believe that those fissures exist, whether or not those fissures actually erupt and crack and spill and divide.

I don't know how relevant these two people are. Yeah, I think there are, if these people are leaving, that doesn't mean they're the only people leave, right? True. I think that these are the indicator that there's trouble if they're leaving. In my personal opinion, I think that this is trouble for their party. That being said, there are other people. And for instance, I brought him up earlier, Flaxie McFlas face,

the Adam Kinzinger, I saw a post from him two days ago talking about Marjor, Taylor Green, and Tucker Carlson. And his posts, this is from a Republican. Basically saying there was no way they could ever stand with Trump because they always have to be fighting against something. So his take is that their identity is fighting against things. It's not about what's good and what's bad. It's about fighting against things. I think that's short-sighted and really a very simple view, in my opinion.

I heard a better view, and I think it was you who said it, which is Marjorie Taylor Green's always been in this place. and the moment, and this, I'm pretty sure it was you, because you said that the moment MAGA changed, she stayed the same. Yeah, I remember this. And so she's never really shifted. And I like your theory better, which is she's always been bad. Right.

And she's always had bad ideas about government. And she's not somebody who has any kind of empathy in her heart. Right. She's always been a person who's been on this road. I think Tucker Carlson's very similar. I think he's always been a person who's been on this road. And I think there are some things that Tucker and Marjorie Taylor Green

will not compromise on. And I think that the party, like you suggested, follows a very twisted path that has to follow Trump's whim. And that's just too hard to follow for people who have sort of in their own mind been on a path and are righteously staying on that path.

So in my mind, it shows where the party might go with Trump, and Trump may lead it off a cliff. He may pipe it. Yeah. He may pipe it. And people planting their anchor far away from Trump and saying, I'm not going that way, that's a good thing. Because I think it accelerates Trump.

I think hearing about these people makes Trump want to do more and more brash things and more and more things in their face to show that he's right and they'll follow him that it could run them right off a cliff. I don't disagree with any of that. I think politically speaking, I think the Republicans are in suicide mode right now.

I think they really are. Because the Trump political coalition has been built around this sort of unlikely coalition that includes, you know, a bunch of people who are low information, low propensity voters who were excited about one guy. And now we've got this fissure and this schism and this splitting. And they really can't afford that because low interest, low information, low propensity voters will revert back to their apathy as soon as they don't have something that's exciting to them to vote for. Trump's never going to be on the ballot again. That's over.

So what's going to bring them out to the polls? Probably a little bit less, right? There's less excitement. There's less energy into their side of the system going forward. But Trump still wants to maintain control. So he's going to try to stay interested and relevant and in part. And then there's going to be the schism on the right. And I think it could lead a lot of people to just stay home.

That would be that previously were MAGA voters. Because now they don't really have a MAGA candidate. And then you've got people on the right who are like, I don't like these. So I think what's going to happen is, You're going to have, you know, these MAGA endorsed Trump endorsed candidates who are surrogates or proxies, but don't have the magnetism and draw and like cult-like following of Trump. So he'll put a bunch of fucking surrogate proxy assholes in. He's strong enough to do that.

But I think those people will not be strong enough to get those people off their asses in November. Because no, it's not fucking Trump. I don't really care about that guy. And I think the whole thing falls apart. And I think the Republican Party starts to break and split up because for the longest time, they're not about anything anymore. Remember that they didn't even put out, like their last mission statement or whatever, I forgot what it's called, was just basically like, yeah, we just do what Trump says.

That was their platform. Platform, that's what I'm thinking of. Their official platform was like, well, whatever Trump wants. They didn't even put out an official platform. So what are they about anymore? So if you're one of these people, it's like, I don't know, man. I'm like, I don't really like paying $5 a gallon. We went to war with Iran, and that didn't really do anything for me.

What did I get out of this? I thought I was going to get something out of this. I'm staying home. I don't think they're going to vote Democrats, so I want to be very clear about that. Yeah, yeah, no. But I think a lot of these people that previously stayed home, they should stay home again. Yeah, they're not going to. I think you're probably right.

I think the, there is something that brings some of these people together, and it almost certainly is the attack on immigration. is delightful to a lot of people. I think that they feel like the system hasn't done right by them for a very long time, and they've been lied to enough to think that immigrants get a much more easy path. This is a common lie, part of the Great Replacement Theory, part of a very coordinated attack on immigration and it also is a way in which people mold their politics now because they know it is so motivating.

They know it is a thing that does motivate people. This idea that not just that you're being pushed out, but you're not getting anything and they are getting something. So there's a sense of fairness in there. It's tweaking a lot of selfish buttons on people and it makes them hate. And it's really good. It's a really good.

system. It's literally what turned the Nazi party into a party that was willing to kill six million people no problem. Right. So it's really effective at manipulating people. And it's not very dissimilar today than it was then. So what you have is you have a group of people who know that this is a thing that can tune people up and can

in excite and insight them. Right? It does both. and so I think that that's something that that group of people will continue to use. Tucker not being part of the Republican Party doesn't mean he's not going to do it. In fact, the No Rogan experience we're veering off a little for some of the bonus episodes we're doing.

We just covered an episode that's going to release in July, middle of July it's going to release, and it's Tucker Carlson talking about a murder that happened in the UK. And it is literally the great, replacement theory. It's just the whole thing. So Tucker's not going to lay off of this. Right. And other people won't lay off of this. So while the Republican Party may fracture,

this theory is going to, it's still insidious and it's still going to work its way in. And people will still come and see, it's basically like walking in a room and being like, oh, these rains are on the ground. I can still ride this thing. And they will. And so it's not like that will be a self-destruct of the Republican Party. I think it'll just reform itself. from the slime that it grew out of. Does that make sense? It does. It does. And I, I, because it's so powerful. It's such a powerful thing. And it's so deeply ingrained in our political culture and not just ours, it's all over the world, that it will be something that they can utilize. 100%. One thing I'm curious what your thought is. So I know and you know that immigration enforcement

has really not slowed down at all. But the optics of it have changed. So in the beginning, the optics of it were very shock and awe. They were very right up in front of everybody. And the response to that really was galvanizing. And I think that I feel like there's been an optic shift on the side of the right to continue to find ways to aggressively pursue, I mean, the Supreme Court just handed them victory after victory, to continue to pursue aggressive immigration policies without the sort of negative optics. But I also wonder if that without those optics, is it as motivating for the low propensity hate-filled voters? Like, they're not getting the, they're not getting the call of duty show anymore, right?

And if they're going to show up to vote, like people have short memories. It's June. In five months, if I haven't seen somebody repelling out of a helicopter in a year, am I as a hate-filled bigot following the, like, complexity of the news that tells me that, like, oh, actually by getting rid of like, temporary. protected status, like we can actually deport more people, but it's quieter. So I don't know that if I'm a hate-filled, great replacement theory, white supremacist, low propensity asshole, I don't know if that does the same thing in terms of like getting me out of my seat. Does that make sense?

It does. Maybe I'm just being over the whole. It really does. And I think what's playing into that and the reason why that works that way is two things. one, incompetence and two, optics in a negative way. And the first, let me cover the first, which is incompetence. The people who were in charge of this stuff have never been good at it. So we're being saved in some ways by groups of people who are hateful but stupid.

So they're not good at their job. I mean, tell me, tell me that the lady you shot her dog. What's her name? It's not Pam Bondi, it's the other lady. Christine Nome. Christine Nome wasn't good at her job. What she was doing

was using her job to fly her all over the country, cosplay as a cowboy once in a while, shoot a gun, pretend that she was wearing fatigues with a rifle. She was playing a part.

She wasn't good at her job. She was bad at her job. Now, Holman, Holman's a demon. Holman's a bad, person. Holman's a Holman's probably a deep-seated racist, right? That

stuff flows in his blood. And he's probably pretty good at his job. But what she was doing was trying to control things. And then she's like fucking some guy on the side and like all kinds of crazy shit going through her head. So she's not good at her job. And the people in charge aren't good at his job.

They got a UFC guy now. Like Mark Wayne Mullins is now your guy. He's a UFC guy? He was. I think he was a UFC guy. Or he was a mixed martialist. I couldn't tell you if he was a UFC guy or not. But he was a mixed martial artist. So these are guys who are not very good at their job. I mean, this guy's like, he's probably more qualified to get CTE.

Right. Than he is to do anything else. So they're not good. They're not qualified. These are sycophants. The best quality they have is sucking up to Trump. That's their best quality. It's not anything they're good at.

So we're being saved in some ways because they're really bad at their job. The bad optics part is the American citizens being killed by ICE who are negligent and it's on camera. Right. Because those things happened and then pieces of the deep Republican mindset

were involved. The idea that someone had a pistol on them, a concealed carry pistol on them and they were killed for it. That's a huge, that's a huge problem for them

because now they're inflicting cognitive dissonance in the hatred of the people. Right. because they don't know what to think. This group of people just killed somebody for a right I think everyone should have. Wow, that's crazy, right?

That's an insane thing to do. So I think that there's a double-edged sword there that caused these problems. If those two things didn't happen, if they had an effective group of people who were working and they also had somebody who wasn't, they were able to effectively get rid of protesters without killing them,

I think we would still see this every single day in our news. I do too. think they're just bad at their job and they hit a couple of real big road rocks that they don't know how to fix and it's too much heat for Trump. And so Trump is a chicken. Yeah. So he pulls back when it's not worthwhile.

That doesn't mean that evil fuckers like Tucker Carlson and the people he cultivates won't fucking pick those reins up when they walk in the room. Oh yeah, yeah. A hundred percent. You know what I mean? And they're going to hire people that are better at their job and not cosplaying. Yeah. I'm worried. Like, the worry

is that I have a couple of, like, I would like to be optimistic and say that I hope that the fracture of the party creates enough disinterest on kind of both sides of that fracture to keep enough people home that it allows the Democrats to take over and take charge. I don't say, I'm not saying that will happen, but I hope that that is happening. The fear is that, like, the right is already extreme. And what we're seeing is a fracturing of even more extreme. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like which party of extremity on the right will out? I don't know. My hope is that neither does. My hope is that it is a level of incompetent infighting that like creates problems for them for a generation. Yeah. And I think that that's possible. I really do think that's possible. I think they've

made a bed that's real hard to sleep in. Well, roll back to the story we talked about earlier. If you can satiate some of those people who are fueled by racism now to feel okay about their situation in the United States and not care as much about how many brown people are near them, you could remove their base from them. You could destroy the foundation of this thing by empowering the people underneath them

to realize they don't need those people to get ahead. If you can do that, and you can get those people on the left, to give the people who need it in this country better conditions, it might change a lot of minds. That's my hope. It's my hope that everything starts to get better

when someone who cares about other people enters office. That's my hope. And that hopefully changes minds of, selfish people as well as it changes minds of people who are also just commonly empathetic. Yeah, that makes sense to me because if I'm a low propensity voter, what's going to get me out? Either you hate the same people I hate and so that makes me get off my ass and drive to the polls or I'm afraid and I need help and I think you're going to help me. But if I can take away the people, you're never going to change the hate, right?

No, the hate's going to be there. You throw them in hate trash and you just be like, all right, that's those are garbage. People can still be whipped up. It's possible. 100%. But I don't think we have to build a strategy against that. I think you could just be like, all right, cool, not cool. Yeah.

Right. And that's the strategy. We're going to raise boats. Right. But if the other guy who's only voting because he can't afford to live his life and he needs, well, now all of a sudden, hey, you know what we have? We have child care subsidies, courtesy of the Democrats. Oh, you know what?

Now I don't have a $1,200 a month bill that I used to have. And that buys me a hell of a lot of breathing room. Yeah. And I'm not going to worry about what's. happening in November, I got other shit to do. I'm not afraid. Yeah. That could change people's minds. And I think there's a lot of places in the globe when there isn't things like our government happening or things like that are happening in the UK where there's sort of like a really far right push now and a lot of demonstrations and things like that. Government should be something that

you think about the fourth or fifth thing you think about in a day. Yeah. It shouldn't be the only thing you're thinking about. And it almost should be that the government does change your life, but only on occasion. Most of the time your life is just sort of set. And your decisions make decisions on how your life changes. It's not how the government is constantly involved in your life. And you think about it's almost like we're at the point of existential politics, that people have to be involved in politics all the time now, whether they want to or not. But when we were growing up, that wasn't a thing that you didn't have to be part. You could be a political person. and still live a pretty normal life

and it wouldn't interfere in your life. And nowadays, it's just not possible. Yeah, I think that's true. Like, I think when I was coming up, politics was something you were naturally interested in or it was a bunch of esoteric shit. Yeah. And I think if you didn't have a natural interest in it,

when you try to talk to other people, like, they fucking know what, they fucking tax policy? Yeah. And they look at you like you're a fucking crazy person, you know? And I think now it's like, yeah, we all talk about politics because we understand that, like, there's a, you're exactly right.

There's a politics of existential. that's like in our face all the time. It's every day. Miguel! No! Like seriously, your jacket? No. Both your jacket, though.

Whatever. From CNBC, Senate advances housing bill to limit private equity purchases of single-family homes. So there's a massive bipartisan housing bill, which has cleared both the House and the Senate. And I think it's a little bit of a weak housing bill, personally. I've looked at the provisions in it. This is my industry, so it's a big deal for me. Yeah, I think it's a pretty weak housing bill, but there's some good stuff in it. And Trump has said he's not going to sign it into law until the voter safety act gets signed in.

That's not going to happen. So it may stall out. Technically, a bill that passes the House and the Senate becomes law automatically if it's not signed by the president after a period of time. I think it's like 14 days. It's a pretty short period of time. He has to address it one way or the other, except that that that. the house could decide not to send it. They could just be like,

I don't know, and then just like play a little rules bullshit and not send it up the chain. I don't know which one of those things is going to happen. There's a couple of things that I think are worth talking about in here. So the biggest one is that this law caps private equity firms from owning more than 350 single family homes and renting them out. That's a relatively new thing that has begun. to really accelerate over time. And it limits the amount of housing supply available for people to buy from other people. I think it's just a net good. I think that number is way too high.

Way too high. Way too high. I would like to see also some significant restrictions on ensuring that they don't just create spin-off companies. So. Right. Because if I, if suddenly I'm megacorp and then I say, well, I'm ultra megacorp and megacorp.org and megacorp.org and move on. Megacorp. Yeah. So I'm not sure that there's really any like teeth there that I've seen that prevents a company from creating a spinoff. And so, okay, I got to buy 350. I can only own 350 in any one time. But I want to own 350,000. I'll create a thousand little companies. Maybe they would get in trouble for that. Maybe not. I'm not sure what all those provisions. are. I didn't see anything specific that restrained them from doing that. So, but overall,

anything we can do to address the housing crisis, any activity in that direction is urgent, really fucking urgent. And the fact that Trump is sitting on his ass and being like, until you give me my, you know, voter suppression law, I won't help people is just so emblematic of how little that fucker cares about what happened. to actual people. There's a lot of things that this bill doesn't address. There's a lot of good criticism

to level against it. I think it's a little weak and anemic. But all that said, something's better than nothing. There's nothing in here where you're like, that's going to hurt housing.

It's going to help a little. And helping a little makes a big difference because the multipliers are huge. So let's help a little. And this fucker is just like, yeah, I'm not going to help at all. Go fuck yourself.

Give me my voter suppression law. This reminds me of just sort of where we've been for so long, with nothing happening, very little legislation gets through either house, very little winds up working its way into law. This is one of the few times where you could say the words, bipartisan bill.

Think about that in the last 20 years. Think about people saying bipartisan bill and it not just being a symbolic nothing, right? We're going to fold the flag differently today. Whatever it is, right? We're going to call this day this day. We're going to do these things. That's all that it's been for a very long time.

I mean, I'm sure somebody could send me in messages and say, oh, well, you forgot about this. This was a bipartisan thing. And I'm sure I'm missing things in my memory. But really, this is the first one that I remember in recent memory, where I think this was an actual bipartisan bill. And broadly so. Broadly accepted by multiple people, not an issue to get it passed.

Yep. That's a big deal. deal. And I think that we have come to accept this level of inaction by Congress and our government. And it's appalling. We have come to think that that's a normal thing, that that's okay. And it's not okay. They should be working for us every day. They should be trying to make our lives better every single day. They should be trying to make, and even if it's not your life individually, it should be a majority. of the lives of the people in this country better every single day. Maybe

I'm on the outside of that because I'm in the wrong am come back. Maybe I'm on the wrong side of that because I'm a guy or something like that or whatever it is that they're trying to do. You know, it could be, maybe I'm singled out in some way. That's okay. If a majority of people, lives are better

today than they were yesterday, Congress is doing a good job. If they're not doing that, then what the fuck would you say you do here? Right? Yep. Why did you do it? Why did you raise your hand? Why did you come up?

Why did you spend all that time talking all those people, shaking all those hands, kissing all those babies, kissing ass of politicians, business people to give you money to send you to Washington, Mr. Smith, if you're not going to filibuster on behalf of the people. Yeah, man. Because we have lost sight of what it means to have functioning government in this country. Yes, we have. Like these guys, it's always important to remember, these guys, begged for your permission to work for you. Absolutely right. That's what they did. They begged for this.

I just want to leave with, imagine we have this bipartisan bill, which to your point, we've had almost none. That speaks to the urgency of the housing. Really does, doesn't it? It is urgent. Our housing crisis and our housing shortage, our supply problem in that space is severe. And it gets worse. Every day we don't do anything to fix it. It gets so much worse. is so hard to buy a home now. It is back-breakingly expensive to buy even a starter home. Yeah, man. The, like, median home price is over $400,000. The income needed to buy a home like that is somewhere around $130,000. And that compares to a median household income of around $76,000, $80,000 now, about $80,000 in the U.S. $50,000 a year gap between the median home purchase price

and the median income in America. That gap is accelerating. It's not staying the same. It is accelerating. We have a crisis on our hands. There is not going to be a great turnover from the boomers down. Boomers are, by and large, aging in place.

It's a whole thing that's happening. They're aging in place. They're not moving out of their homes. And boomers are like in their 70s. People are living in their 80s and 90s. You've got a 15 to 20 year marker still on that home before those really turn over in great numbers and move down the sort of like economic food chain. That puts millennials who are the children of millennials and Gen Xers are the children of boomers in their 40s, 50s, 60s. This is a problem.

This is a crisis. We have a supply crisis. This problem doesn't get better with interest rates. It gets better with more supply. All right, that's going to wrap it up for our show this week. We'll be back next week, and we're going to leave you like we always do with the skeptics Creed. Credulity is not a virtue.

It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-babelon bullshit. Couched in Scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo-quazi alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy healing, water, downward spiral, brain dead pan, sales pitch, Late-night info docutainment. Leo Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage, death and towers, tarot cars, psychic healing, crystal balls, bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques, and synagogues, temples, temples, giants, giant worms, Atlantis, monsters, curses, wizards, wizards, vaccine nuts. Shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, doublespeak stigmata, nonsense. your signs. Thrust your hands, bloody, evidential, conclusive.

Doubt even this. Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at patreon.com forward slash dissonance pod. Help us spread the word by sharing our content. Find us on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and Prits, all under the handle at DissonancePod. This show is Can Credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm on their hotline at 617-249-4255 or on their website at creator accountability network.org.