Lemonade Stand - It's Been 500 Days | Ep. 065 Lemonade Stand 🍋

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

On this week's show... DougDoug is sold chips from the UAE, Brandon is handed a government contract, and Aiden is granted immunity from the IRS. We launched a Patreon! - https://www.patreon.com/lemonadestand for bonus episodes, discord access, a book club, and many more ways to interact with the show! Episode: 065 Recorded on: June 2nd, 2026 Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCurXaZAZPKtl8EgH1ymuZgg Audio Listeners can hear us: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0Yz44z9z3t8VQu4WRmsrs6 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lemonade-stand/id1799868725 Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/7d7e1f54-49a3-4082-81e8-f70bfe1ace63/lemonade-stand iHeart: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-lemonade-stand-269417962/ Follow us TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@thelemonadecast Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thelemonadecast/ Twitter - https://x.com/LemonadeCast The C-suite Aiden - https://x.com/aidencalvin Atrioc - https://x.com/Atrioc DougDoug - https://x.com/DougDougFood Edited by Aedish - https://x.com/aedishedits Thumbnail by Cheyenne DeWolf - https://x.com/cheyedewolf Produced by Perry - https://x.com/perry_jh Segments 0:00 Intro 1:30 - 1.776 Billion Slush fund 19:25 - Trump's Sons 32:01 - Anthropic Ad 33:27 - Trump Coin 52:42 - Nordic fun fact 1:01:21 - Fora Travel Ad 1:02:39 - Truewerk Ad 1:03:48 - Samsung strike update 1:06:28 - Nationalizing Companies New takes on Business, Tech, and Politics. Squeezed fresh every Wednesday. #lemonadestand #dougdoug #atrioc #aiden Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's O-D-O-O-O-O-O-com. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, I'll let you in on some little inside baseball for the podcast. Right before we start, we often go, who's got an intro? You know, just to get a little joke off the ground. We look around, we do with who's got an intro. And then Aiden, for the past, like, six weeks in a row, gets a little glimmer. in his eyes and gets a little smile, he goes, I've got one. And then every time it's like

some fucking joke at my expense. It's like some, my address or some shit about me that leads to a lot of comments. So I said, I've got one. I don't have one, but I'm taking it. I'm taking his slot. I'm taking your slot. So now the intro is almost over. We've already got through the intro part. Well, I mean, you're used to taking up a lot of space

in this podcast. Yeah. Yeah, I forgot that I'm fat, too. That's another thing that's been going around from this podcast. Just fill a lot of air. We have two podcasts that fill a lot of their time. Phil almost as much as you were supposed to. You are a load-bearing fat guy. We were supposed to make fun of him.

That was the point. It was to do the yard thing. You guys said early on, I believe this is the first episode. This is a safe space for me. Yeah, but it's turned into an unsafe space for me. Are you proud of the jobs that you create for these jokes? Do you know how many people work at the yard?

I assume you're paying full-time commenters because they're doing it. There's a lot of jobs in that. But we have a more serious discussion today, so we have no time for Aidan's tomfoolery. You know, it has been losing weight. Donald Trump. You think he's been losing weight? We're going to find out.

Because, ladies and gentlemen, it has been 500 days of Donald Trump. Sond's mustache. This is an earlier prop. We are 500 days in. As of the uploading time of this episode, it really went by, I mean, not in a good way,

but it just kind of goes. 500 flies when you're having fun. Time flies when you're enjoying every minute of it. It's been 500 days of Trump term two. And given that that is a pretty significant milestone, we thought we'd take a look at some interesting aspects of that's 500 days. We were discussing how to tackle this off pod because there really is a million ways you could take this.

And a whole hell of a lot has happened, many of which we covered in this podcast. And we decided that one area of the Trump term that is worth further reporting is the financial scandals, which I feel like people's eyes sometimes glazed. It's hard to like get into the, weeds of it and make it interesting. So we each took- And that's why we're doing a full episode of Hunter's laptop. Yes. It's, we got to start at the beginning. You know what I mean? And then the

Patreon series. Patron's all about Hillary's emails. We're going to Hunter, Hillary Pelosi, and then maybe we'll get the Trump edit of it. No, we wanted to go into that, talk about some of the stories that kind of, you know, every year there's a new story with Trump. And so it kind of flies by. And so we each kind of went in our own directions and tackled a story we thought was interesting with regards to the financial crimes. Some of us even did the same. Some of us even did the same story. Specifically, I said I was going to do a different thing. And I literally read an article that was talking about Aden's story. And I was like, that's really interesting. I'm going to look at that. I just forgot to say it. So I'll back you up, big man. Well, we got a couple

things at least. I do think the financial corruption in the second term specifically has been notable. It is the unique spice of the second term. That's like way more juiced up. Yeah, I think it's weird to see how much more prevalent it is. And I think because the headlines go by, you see these huge numbers, you see tweets without an explanation behind them. You have this vague idea that, oh, Trump, Trump's family,

making millions, billions of dollars while he's in power right now, but not really having an idea of where that's coming from. Yeah, and how corrupt it really is. And are they just successful or what, you know, what, but I think when you look into the details on a lot of this stuff,

it starts to paint a pretty uncomfortable picture. And then, by the way, we're going to talk about all that. We're doing 500 days. We're going to do a little bit of recap on these stories. We're going to talk about, is there anything in the 500 days that we liked? And then we're going to talk about, you know, what we expect to see in the future. So I don't know if you want to start, Aden. You had a topic that I think was pretty interesting.

Yeah, okay, this is probably the most recent thing going on. The anti-weaponization fund you may have heard about. Is this the IRS thing? Or what am I? Yeah. So I actually thought the daily did a good background summary. on this from a couple weeks ago, and I'm gonna yonk from them.

Well, the deal is no lemonade stands. First of all, let's get that straight. Michael could never do what I do. It would just call me fat. He would never. And that's his biggest weakness, if you think about it. I think there is this recent talk of this $1.8 billion slush fund.

And where that actually begins is during Trump's first term, there was a leak. of his tax returns. So he didn't want to release them, which was like unprecedented at the time, a bunch of people talking about it. And then a, someone who had an inn at the IRS leaked

Trump's tax returns among other high profile. I remember during the election, it was like a big contentious point. Hillary released hers and he didn't release his. And then he said, don't worry, I'll release mine once some stuff gets sorted out. But then he just never did it. So when the leak came out,

it was like, oh. Yeah. And then he, in reaction to that leak, and he wasn't the only one who was leaked. It's worth saying. The guy who leaked it was an IRS contractor whose name sounds like he's a spy in Game of Thrones.

His name is Charles Littlejohn. It sounds like a rapper. What? Came right on a Sherwood Forest with those tax returns, bro. Yeah, he took tax returns from thousands of like the wealthiest Americans and then leaked them.

Yeah. And Bill Gates. Elon, Jeff Bezos. Yeah. Which is Ken Griffin from, Citadelic and he's he's in prison. Like he pleaded guilty at 2033. This is like a big crime. Yeah. It's like to be clear, it's like it is a big deal that he did that even though most of us are like, oh, that's cool. Yeah, let's check this out. I mean, for us, it's like, duh, we'll get more information. For them, it's a pain.

And I think with with that, Trump wanted to sue the IRS for damages. And this suit was going to move. He'd been trying to move the suit forward for a while. But the issue is, Now, because he's trying to do this and he has control over the Department of Justice, there's a conflict of interest there that the judge clearly sees. So there's a base of every lawsuit that you actually have to be in conflict with the other party in order to sue them. Sure. There has to be an actual disagreement. I can't just sue my homie to like for fun if we get along.

Yeah. And so the judge is about to throw out this lawsuit unless someone, Someone comes forward at the DOJ and speaks out against why Trump is in the wrong. But nobody at the DOJ wants to do that at a time when he was particularly vengeful against people who speak out against him. So no one is willing to be the adversary at the DOJ for this lawsuit to actually take place. Okay. So the Trump administration's proposal is like, we'll drop the lawsuit.

but in exchange, let's create this $1.776 billion fund. That's 1776 for those you point out. An eagle screech right now. We're going to make this anti-weaponization fund in exchange that allows people to make claims to the DOJ that they were weaponized against by the government and need to be paid out some sort of reparations for that. And this immediately comes under scrutiny because... Can this go to himself? So no, no.

He cannot pay out himself or his family directly from that fund being created. Okay. But all of this is arbitrary. To be clear, Trump is suing his own government, who's then agreeing to create $1.8 billion to pay whoever the fuck he feels like. All of this is just arbitrary, right? Yeah. And he, Todd Blanche, formerly Trump's personal lawyer,

who is the attorney general now is the person sort of in charge of the fund. Technically he would appoint five people of his choosing to choose who the fund gets paid out to. And the immediate attention

that's brought to this is that people who were like victims of the Biden and administration like those people who were prosecuted for January 6th would be able to make applications

for payouts out of this fund for you know thousands or maybe millions of dollars, whatever, right? And so it's, but it's essentially a slush fund that Trump can tell Todd Blanche to deliver to whoever he wishes. Well, if you asked Todd Blanche that, he would tell you no. But what did he give an exaggerated wink when he does it?

There's a little shiny tooth in his mouth. He, he, the defense, okay, there's, there's one other important caveat that's tacked onto to this as well, is that also as a stipulation of the lawsuit being dropped and this fund being created, Trump? I'm supposed to believe that if Donald Trump says, hey, Todd, pay this guy out from the slush fund, Todd Blage is going to go, no, sir. That is beyond my purview. I'm sorry, the sanctity of the law is too paramount. That's not really Todd's defense, actually. Todd's defense is more along the lines of, if Trump asks me to pay out a Democrat, I'd pay them out too. Okay, I have a question.

Okay, so Trump sued, Trump sued his own government, the IRS because his taxes got leaked by the IRS. What's five years earlier, six years earlier? Yep. And so he's suing for the damages because his tax returns got leaked. Yes. What the fuck does a anti-weaponization fund have to do with the lawsuit about his IRS documents being leaked? That is a great question. Okay. So it...

Why is he dropping the suit in agreement for this thing, which has absolutely nothing to do with his lawsuit? Why is he... I mean, why is the damages of your tax returns being leaked? Which seemingly are no damages at all. You're still president. No, okay. No, the reason he says it's...

So he sued for $10 billion. The reason is because he's saying that every single publication that reported his tax returns was an additional, like, offense. It's another billion on the... Right, right. So it's not just that it got leaked to the New York Times.

It's that every single other public... who reported on that story increased it, and that's why it's worth 10 billion, but now it's suddenly not worth that for some reason. So he's actually being quite generous. Todd, Todd, why, why does this make, why does this make Trump's lawsuit against the IRS now? Okay.

So Todd would tell you that this fund is available to anybody. So I could apply. It's for the good of the American people. Atriot could apply. Well, he's a bad example because he's there on January 6th. I was there on January 6th. And so that way I could apply, I was persecuted. Literally is going to be for January 6th.

You're good. I guess weaponized by the government in any capacity, regardless of your political affiliation or actions, you could make an application to this fund to receive a payout from it. And he's saying it's like there's nothing exclusive about this fund to like help out January 6th protesters who were convicted.

But there is no direct like line that I can. can see between the original IRS lawsuit and this, except one of the additional stipulations is that not only did Trump want this fund to exist, but he also wants complete immunity from future auditing of the IRS and his family as well. So that's the big, that's the other big chunk to this, is that even if the IRS finds him at fault in an audit in the future, he will owe nothing. Yeah, so it's like his businesses, his family and himself are immune

from any tax-related investigation in perpetuity. And he has been audited in the past. I think the New York Times reported in the past that if the alleged concerns with his taxes in previous years come to fruition and these audits come through, he could owe over $100 million in addition. taxes. We don't want that. And if this, you know, provision is to hold in the future,

then he would not owe that amount, even if the audit were to uncover that he had done something. That's just smart for tax planning. Well, here's it. I mean, here's another way of putting this. We've saved almost $8.2 billion because Trump graciously dropped the lawsuit. That's right. We're only having to pay $17.70. The government should have to pay out $10 billion of taxpayer money to a much bigger slush fund. Oh, you'd leave the tax returns. But he accepted a, that's actually a really nice thing. And Hillary's email if you think about it. There's already a conflict of interest in the initial idea of the lawsuit,

of course, right? Oh, I have another question. Is this surely the money that this is all going to come up, this is somebody else's money, right? It's not like taxpayer. It's actually Japanese taxpayers' money. Oh, no, thank God. Because I was going to say, I don't really want to pay for this. I think there's a huge overblown part where everybody's like, what if my tax

money or debt we take out? Funding something like this? It's actually all in the Japanese. That's actually all. They don't even know. They're on the wiser. It's weird. It's really underreported. I had to dig super deep for it.

Okay. The big, big update is that today, there was already pushback for this, not just among Democrats, but among Republicans. They were trying to move forward a new immigration spending bill. And as a way of like pushing back against this,

some Republicans were like threatening to drop their support from pushing forward that bill. And because of the collective negative reaction, even on that side of the aisle, uh, to, uh, this, this slush fund, uh,

it got dropped today. Todd Blanche told, uh, Congress in like a hearing that they're not going to move forward with this any. There's no slush fund. The slush fund is, is axed. Trump saves us another 1.7 billion, baby.

He can't stop winning. And they can't move forward with. with the original lawsuit either. However, the stipulation that he has complete immunity from future IRS audits and the damage, or like the missing tax money that he would have to pay, that was sticking around. Shockingly, that's like the most important part to him. Is that he's never ever investigated for tax crime. The Trump appointed lawyers defending the government from Trump did a pretty good job, I think here. Uh, I think there was a, there, the weird thing to me, I was a little confused at first because

I did think, I was like, doesn't the DOJ, like, not to say that this isn't corrupt or a conflict of interest, but why do you even need this fund? Like, doesn't the DOJ already have the capacity to, like, settle suits against,

for people that are, like, suing the government? They already have money to pay people that sue the federal government. Yeah, but I think it was just for Trump to be able to give it to allies and friends and hang it over as a, like, yeah. And as far as I can understand the difference here with this fund was that I wouldn't have to sue you to get the money. I wouldn't have to go through this legal process. I would just apply. And then if the board of

five people that are picked by Todd Blanche that was picked by Trump picked me, then I could get money from this fund. You know, it's crazy. At the end of it all, I remember looking at the tax insurance. He doesn't pay a lot of taxes. Like he's notoriously pays very low taxes. He'd paid zero in 10 of the last 15 years when it was leaked. That was the lead. Because he lost, or at least on paper, lost money. I know, I know there's an actual answer to that, but like, I still ask myself, like, how?

When you hear that about, like, Jeff Bezos or Trump, how? I pay, I pay a lot. I pay a lot. Yeah. And they don't pay anything? Yeah. With Jeff Bezos is incredible.

I mean, the way they do it where they borrow against their, their stock sales. It's always in dead. And I don't got it like that. You don't have. You don't borrow against mogul moves. As soon as I escape the gravity of lemonade sand, I will also be abusing American.

I don't say gravity like that. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Okay. I'll contact my one. Is that, no, that's basically it. So like the slush fund canned officially as of today,

the stipulation of immunity ongoing still. And, uh, I guess one thing. say is like the precedent Trump has set is that the previous rules and norms when you go into office don't matter. So I don't know how he puts so much stock in this piece of paper that says, I can never be investigated by the like if he loses power, theoretically someone can run the same playbook he does to dismantle that. I'm not, it all, you know, one of the greatest things of his

second, not the greatest in a good way, but like the most impactful of his second term is how many things relied on just everyone kind of following a norm or agreeing to. Like he, if he just ignores them, what I mean? What do you mean? I guess what I'm saying is like he, he has been able to do a lot of things that, it's like airbud rules. You know what I'm saying? No one ever said you couldn't. It's just like, I'm just going to throw some stuff out there. Yeah, I'm just going to do things. And he also, to be clear, it's not just airbud rules. It's like he releases 300 dogs onto the court at once. Yeah. There's so many dogs. And he were like, they're trying to have rules for each one of these dogs. for this. Dude, I think it's that, but also sometimes

some of the rule books do explicitly say you can't let a dog out and he's like, ah, fucking let the dog. But that's the thing, he's letting so many dogs. And there's all the same time. And there's cats. Like, there's just shit going into the gymnasium all the time. So even when they catch one of the dogs and they're like, look, here's a piece of paper that says you can't be here. There's like 20 more dogs already. When Steve Bannon said flood the zone, he also meant in Air Bud terms. I think that's where he got it from. Yo, speaking to Trump's

dogs. Let's talk about his kids. Oh, somebody's kids. Okay. These are his dogs, though he didn't go to his son's wedding. So not that close of a dog. I guess it, as this is being pulled up.

This slush fun thing that we talked about is notable in that one, it's one of the most just insanely egregious forms of conflict of interest ever. But also of the stories, I believe that we're going to talk about, this is the only one where there's been some kind of reckoning, where like the Republican senators were willing to push back against Trump and say, this is too far. Well, that's what it requires.

Like any of these if you talk about, the only way to stop it currently with the way things are set up and the way they have the boats is to have Republicans flip. And so they did on this one, who are they threatened to. So that's like, that's mildly encouraging. That's, that's, that's one win. And now let's hit you with like six fails. No, no, no. I mean, I see what you're saying. I do think that as is polling drops and people feel more emboldened to take a stand here and there, it does put a limiter on him in a way he didn't have before. The reason I picked this topic, which is Trump's family is because thinking back on the last 500 days,

Obviously, there are many things that everyone, or almost everyone's upset about that I could talk about. But this is the area where I feel like I'm, I'm asymptotically more angry than other people. His family somehow makes me more, because it feels, I think the nepo-ness of it or the corruption of it bothers me. So I wanted to look into specifically his two sons, Don Jr. and Eric. And when you look at how their net worth and financial situation has changed in just 500 days, It is unprecedented in any presidential family history. They have gone from being moderately wealthy, you know, millionaires to near billionaires. Combined there are over a billion.

And so in, again, 500 days. And Reagan, in 2021, after January 6th, Don Jr. was doing cameos for 500 bucks. And now he is on the Forbes list of billionaires, largely through abusing the connections that he has through his father. And there's many ways I can go through this. I mean, you know, people have talked about they've made massive investments in drone companies, which then the Pentagon buys a bunch of drones from their companies and make a much of money. We talk about World Liberty Financial, which is the single largest financial aspect of this, which is that they own or are heavy investors in a stable coin called USD1.

And it wasn't doing that well. It wasn't a very successful stable coin company compared to the other stable coin examples. And then the UAE mysteriously put $2 billion into World Liberty Financial. and then two weeks later, they get a clearance to buy chips they weren't allowed to buy before. And it was like just a weird coincidence that they just happened to pick this stable coin and then happened to get this huge release that they wouldn't have before, which again was blocked because there was a chance they might sell those chips to the Chinese, which there's reports they're doing.

That's happened. So like it's a, you know, there's a clear systemic corruption there. But I picked, I picked, by the way, this is a good piece of reporting. I want to point out that people analyzed the UAE deal to try and find out, is there any reason they would have made this? And there really is no financial reason, which under, it's like similar to like, it reminds me of, uh, you guys know, Kauai Leonard, aspiration, fake tree. It's like, oh yeah, yeah, you can't find any reason they're going to pay Kaui Lern as much money to plant trees. And so obviously there's another reason for it.

And I think this is what tracks to that. But I wanted to go into a more recent example. This just happened. This is Vulcan elements. I think this story crystallizes what's happening over and over and over again this for 500 days. So Vulcan Elements is a company that refines rare earth metals in America. Now, we've done episodes before about how important that is because China controls the whole rare earth supply chain. And everyone's like, fuck, we have to get out from under their thumb on this.

You know, magnets and jets and everything goes through China. And so Vulcan Elements is one of the hundreds of companies that have popped up to try and help fill this demand. because there's a lot of urgency. And Vulcan Elements recently won a massive Pentagon deal. Okay, they got a huge amount, they multiple millions of dollars, and they can finally expand. And when you look into how Vulcan Elements

got chosen over hundreds of other companies, it comes back to this guy, Peter Navarro. They gave a $620 million loan and a contract to buy what they make. So they basically funded the company and gave it a client. which is like instant success. And it was only founded two years ago.

Of the dozens of companies the Pentagon was considering funding, Vulcan was the only one initiated by a top aide to the president. Who was that top aide? It was a guy named Peter Navarro. Peter Navarro seen here on Triggered, Don Jr.'s podcast,

talking about how he's my boy, my good friend. Okay? These guys are close friends. Peter Navarro was an advisor to the president who constantly mentions rare earth metals. I think I have a clip from Triggered. What a banger name, huh?

China has revealed itself with this rare earth issue as a country which is using the weaponization of their manufacturing. No, you know, it's really interesting. Their supply chains to exert pressure, not just on the United States, but to every other country. So look, Peter Navarro rants about it on here. they're talking about it. Then all of the sudden, all of the hundreds of companies, the one that Don Jr. is heavily,

heavily invested in, suddenly is fast-tracked through the Pentagon. Now, you can talk to, let's see if we can get the insiders here. They say that he had no involvement in the record set of the deal. But look, Peter Navarro comes in and asks them to move at an unusually rapid pace.

The staff worked late nights and with little sleep to get the loan through in a matter of weeks. The call came from the White House. We have to get this done. So this one company gets forced through and all of a sudden it's generationally more valuable than it was before, and Don Jr. owns a massive percentage of it,

making him more fabulously wealthy overnight. And you can find examples like this over and over again with drones, with rare earth, with crypto, with any sort of tech where the government's big pot of money is spent on something that's strategically important, it goes to a company that Don Jr. or Eric has invested in before it happens. So following the trail here, it's like they can set, They know this is not part of the process every time.

But when it happens again, again, it seems like there has to be a connection. And so I ended with this quote. On January 8th of this year, the New York Times interviewed Trump. And they asked him why so many more of his family members are involved financially in White House and government and Pentagon dealings in his second term than in his first term. And he said in his first term, he found out that nobody cared. allowed to. I prohibited them from doing business in my first term and I got no credit for it.

I didn't have to do that and it's really unfair to them. It's really unfair to his family. It's unfair to his family that they can't get involved in all these deals of government money and now since nobody cared, he can do it. I was literally hoping you'd pull this quote out. It is kind of fucking why. That just sums up. Nobody cared and I'm allowed to.

He's like this sentence that described. the second term more than anything else to me. Okay, here's my beef, right? What's your beef? You, it's like we, we get up tight about this, and I understand why somebody might be upset, but I feel like the, the animosity towards this type of corruption

is so one-sided. Like in 2015, Malio Obama was selling F-35s. Back to the government. And nobody said a word. In the school yard. In the school area. And it's, so it's like, do we pick and choose? That's true. Who to blame?

No, it's funny. So on a more, real level of your example. You actually sent me a great graph on this. People have talked about the Hunter Biden laptop scandal and his dealings in Europe using his connections with his family.

And there is some shadiness there and it's worth looking into. But when you add it all up, it's in the tens of millions. I think I don't remember that. It wasn't even 10 million. It was like five. It's 20. So let me rephrase that. Sorry. With the Hunter, okay, so with the Hunter Biden thing, the House Republicans like made this big,

argument against him, right? And they're like, we think Hunter Biden was basically getting all these business dealings because his dad was vice president. And maybe Joe Biden was aware of this and was giving favors in return, but that part's unconfirmed. And it was basically he was getting like $50,000 a month being on some random boards. And their accusation is he made over $20 million from foreign business deals. So at, at the worst, from the Republican argument is Hunter Biden made $20 million. And Joe Biden might have been a part of it, but we have no proof. Yeah, absolutely. And so the gratitude showed, just Trump coin alone scammed our poor friend Ludwig out of 97% of his money. They made hundreds of millions of dollars just from rugby people off of that. Yeah, yeah. I think it was each was like hundreds of millions. But that's like, okay, the other, the other thing I looked into just because we're talking about comparisons. I'm like, what is another comparison? Do you guys, I get angry just thinking about it. My, my, my, my ass tote is also like what you said. Okay. The

teapot dome scandal. You remember that shit? No. God, that fucking sucked in 1922. You remember how Interior Secretary Albert F. Fall gave land oil rights to private companies without competitive bidding in exchange for bribes?

That fuck. Yeah, I remember that. I was pissed on and I'm pissed on. I'm pissed on. I don't remember that because I'm young and energetic. I don't have a whole life ahead of me. I just turned 45 and I was like, this teapot dome thing is pissing me off.

remember the towers fallen. I remember Albert Fall making. And to be clear, the total gifts and bribes he got was about $9 million in today's dollars. And that is, quote, regarded as one of the greatest and most sensational scandals in the history of American politics by a story in Robert Churney. So this is one of the biggest scandals ever. And it's in 1922 and it's $9 million in today's money of bribes for a private company. They are eclipsing that by like a thousand. No, so I guess about 100, 500. Was all of Hunter Biden's plotted. And then they were like, okay, let's go bigger.

Let's go Nancy Pelosi's husband, which is considered to be he has probably some insider access. Yeah. And so they took everything he's made. Let's assume every single trade he's ever done is corrupt. Since 1974 or whatever, every trade is life. Okay, so that was like, I don't know, 80 million, whatever. It was a much bigger number in the Hunter Biden number. And then they plotted what the Trump family is made off of crypto and these dealings.

in this one year. And you couldn't see them on the graph anymore. It was such a tiny sliver. I mean, a billion versus a million is so astronomically bigger. I think the example of the amount they made in these 500 days is greater than the profit of, two times greater than the profit of Starbucks in the same time.

I mean, it's going to like four or five people who are in his family. It's an astronomical level of difference and it's coming so fast. I have a counter argument. Maybe they're just better than us. Maybe they're just. Maybe they're very talented business.

You know what? I'll give you that. Maybe they're the greatest business of all time. Why are they so much greater when he's in office? Why are they seemingly bad at being great businessmen when he's not in office? And then they certainly just hit their fucking stride right when he gets into power. That's the weird part. Late bloomers.

Well, because, and this is a kind of us. They weren't swagging out in the first term. Maybe their dad inspired them. You know what I'm saying? It's like, dad's working hard. Dad works so hard. I need to work hard too. He's so old and he works so hard still.

Success isn't linear. We, a lot of books about this. You got to work hard and then suddenly so you succeed. Yeah, maybe you're right. Okay.

Maybe I'm like when my YouTube channel went from like a 500 views of video to 500,000 in one week. Yeah. It's like blew up early 2019. That was where your father ran YouTube, right? Yeah. Those are coincidences.

And I worked really hard. But also Hillary's emails. Hillary's emails. Let's move on. No, let's, never move on from that because that's the biggest scandal of all time. Do you have more here?

No, that was basically, I mean, you know, broadly, I think his kids are very openly and nakedly abusing their access to the president to make a lot of money. And it's, that's frustrating. Okay, I think. It's almost more frustrating than Trump to me. I don't know why. Not that there's, not that I think this is necessarily defensible. But I do, there's like something more vague about these, uh, there's more ambiguity in

investing in a company that is like producing an output or a service that the government is using to accomplish something. Not saying there's nothing wrong here. No, I just want to push back a little bit in that it's like all of the companies they're investing in are companies that only make their money from government contracts. It's like they're thriving businesses that then do a government deal. It's like they're they're getting the funding to build the factories that don't exist yet and then they're getting purchase orders from the government. So it's kind of a direct transfer of taxpayer money to them using strategic goals like

rare earths and drones, which are important but are these really the best companies for those jobs or are they the ones most connected to Trump's family? I would say almost certainly not. This episode Eliminate Stand is sponsored by Anthropic. Now we've all been using this for a while there's lots of different uses of Anthropic

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that's T-R-U-E-W-E-R-K-com code lemonade. It's built like it matters, Aidan, because it does. You have never left your home. When you approach somebody who is like a die-hard Trump supporter, right? They find, like, the ambiguity and they play in that

to, like, rationalize why it's okay. Like when you bring things like this up, right? Yeah. One thing that blows my mind and what I wanted to segue into is Trump coin specifically. Okay. Because I feel like it's,

it's like so much of a joke that people don't, I don't think people like realize the gravity of it, like the size that it was at. And to be fair, our friend did buy it in a stock trading competition that we all participated in. That's true. One of me is the world's biggest supporter of Trump coin

and I think he believes it's gonna bounce back. But I think when you ask people about like a lot of what you outline here, who are Trump supporters, they're like, oh, like they're just doing business and they're doing the right thing. And I can kind of- Is it what they sound like?

Yeah, and they do it. And they sort of dance. while they do it. Oh, who lives in a, I don't know why they sound like that. We're doing a SpongeBob thing. You have some crazy Trump supporting relatives, bro. I don't know.

I think Trump coin specifically drives me fucking insane. You guys might remember, Trump coin was announced by Trump on Twitter a few days before he started in office in 2025. And immediately this coin takes off. and has a ton of traction. Because I just remember this moment so vividly, not to,

because I was reading so much financial news and financial substacks and stuff going into this. And I remember they were all praising how Trump was going to be, not all, but a lot of them were like, he's going to be more fiscally responsible. He's going to be the guy to get us off this Biden Harris nightmare.

And, you know, some of these are visual podcasts. And like the moment he did this, their whole, you could just tell the wind came out of the sales because like, it was like the whole energy got evaporated because he's immediately before we come in office doing a huge meme coin scale.

And they all know that meme coin, like these guys know. So it's just a funny, it's a very vivid moment for me because I was like, wait a minute, you guys are fucking wrong. So the president, the soon to be president of the United States

announces his official meme coin on a website called get Trump memes.com, which is still up right now. Dude. The AI Trump looking shredded is also crazy. He's just so much. Celebrate our win and have fun.

They built him. Signed digitally by Donald Trump. And you guys might remember the highlights. Like there was a promise of like some of the like 200 of the top investors were going to be invited to a private reception with the president. And like the top 25 holders would get special VIP White House tours that Trump would be present at. And after, like, upon the announcement, there's a huge traction in the coin. It does, like, become one of the highest valued overall coins in the world in the top 100.

And then upon the announcement of things like the VIP tour jumps another like 50% in value. And even, I remember going so far to announce an NFT associated with the project called the Trump diamond hand that would earn new reward points of some kind. And I think what's insane about this to me is there's no, even if you're a diehard crypto guy who like truly believes in this like decentralized future and the power of these technologies, like some of these things have applications like, I don't know, like Manero has a, it has a purpose, a heinous one perhaps. Drug dealing and human trafficking.

Yes. You bring up Manero like you're paid to promote it. You bring it up all the time. Oh, whoops. Looks like I stumbled into a bit of human trafficking. And I'd see that, I never mind. No, I'm digging that in.

No, I'm digging the hole. Do not cut that out. That we're going to, that's in your opening soundbite. No, but I think, I think there's this vague idea that like crypto could have some sort of utility, right? But it's well understood by this point,

by the time this coin is announced, that you're basically pump and dumping a speculative asset. You are trying to get in and get out in time to get lucky and make some money. Purely for that, I feel like it's almost universally understood that that is the case at this point. When you buy a fucking Sheeb coin that produces yield. You are trying to find a Ludwig to hold the bag. Yeah, exactly. But literally. And I think even for the boat, like, even for the hardcore crypto believers, they aren't looking at Sheeb as the future. It's like, no, I'm trying to fucking speculate and like gamble and like get some money out of this.

So it's the fact that he did this is so blatantly for money. You know, whether it was money that goes directly to him, I'm sure Trump's not the guy at the computer launching the fucking coin. I understand that. But it's under his name for people associated with him who are directly, directly tied to him, including his family. So the, and this is. Baron Trump is deeply involved in this.

I heard he's got a net worth at 18 of 150 million entirely through. It's better than us. Crypto. Crypto. There's a more talented family where he's like, he's talented. Barron's got four of these wallets. I don't even know what a crypto wallet is.

Man, it's so awesome. I just realized, you know, like you can't, you can't, you get, there's a limit to how much you can like pay for someone's campaign or

right. Yeah. And, uh, but I guess if you make a meme coin, you can just say, I'll meet with the top 200 investors. You just buy access to Trump.

That's so cool that. it as long as it's a meme coin. So Trump... Or a stable coin. Yeah, you just dump it in. And it's like an investment. The FT... Are you upset that Ludwig put $1,000 into Trump coin and lost 95% of it?

I think it's not that's that what upsets me. It's the idea that the FTA reported shortly after the coin launched, like within the first 18 days, that they had made 300 net. They had net $350 million from the coin within that first first. period of it launching, which is insane. And it's $350, $350, $350,000, $350 million of what I see as the most indefensible money imaginable. Like it is, there's no secret, like, utility of the Trump coin. It's a pump and dump coin that we all know what it is and he made a bunch of money on it.

How could you possibly rationalize your defending? Not that I, it's like, for me, I think the meme coin is so tacky and classless for a president coming back in all this. Do I get that? But it's the most similar to like selling merch. So I don't, it's like almost like this is a dumb product for really dumb fans to lose money on. To me it's like sports gambling or something where it's like have fun. I mean, it literally says have fun quote Donald Trump. It sounds to me it's like equivalent, which is like, look, we all know this is gambling. Good. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's not as, like, hidden behind, oh, this is real business as some of these other ones. No, I think that's what I think is crazy is like, the fact that it's not hidden and people still are like, it's fine that the president is doing. No, I think it's, because the other ones have this ambiguity, if you're like, if you want to have the cognitive dissonance, it's kind of easy to.

But on this one, it's like, I feel like it's difficult. It's like, dude, it was literally designed to make money for. from the end of user while giving you nothing. Wait, this segues well, though, because, okay, counterpoint. So we were supposed to come up with possible things we think are, or what of the 500 days, what do we think was the best? Or like, was every part you liked or anything that you thought he did right or was on the right track or whatever.

I mean, that was kind of an open-ended prompt, but we wanted to look into it to have some semblance of, of not just showing one side here. And I want to be honest with you, I don't think he intended this, but one of the best effects of the first 500 days, of Trump, directly caused by him, is that I think he has

kind of put a bullet in the entire crypto meme dream. I don't think that we can give him credit for a thing he clearly tried to not do and then caused it. I don't think we can give him kudos for that, dude. Well, I'm gonna do it.

I'm gonna give him kudos. Okay. Because through... Okay, so we're gonna list what do we think? Some of the things he ended up doing well and yours has killing crypto accidentally. He has, I mean, crypto,

Bitcoin is taking today. He has basically, if you flash back crypto right before he got inaugurated and now, him removing the SEC's ability to investigate crypto, him making it so that you cannot, you basically can get away with any crime with crypto, launching his own meme coin. All of this kind of ironically shoved every sane investor away from it. It became, it pushed it more to the fringe. It made it less safe. And in a way, directly, I mean, it's like one other thing you credit for is like a lot of the weird. far-right populist parties in Europe are losing some traction because of him. Okay.

He's done more. He, Carney would not have won in Canada had it not been for Trump. Can't seal mine. Can't steal mine. Do you have more to say on that? I just, that's his thing, bro. He's had some unintentional effects.

And then there was one thing I want to say. Yeah. That he did do, apparently he pushed for this, or was one of the close things that I think was on the whole good, the elimination of the penny. The penny is gone. It saves the mint $80 million a year. We don't even use the damn penny anymore.

And I think Trump specifically said, like, we don't need the penny. I think that was good. He, like, pushed it. So kind of even Stevens. Yeah, that's my point. What I'm trying to say is that take the good with the bag. All right.

As long as you have one that is, look, I suggested doing this, not only because I'm a big Trumper, but also because a publication I really enjoy called Tangle. basically did a piece that he fucking hates Trump, basically. And he's like a very like, tries to be very moderate. Um, and then did a giant piece about his corruption.

And then he did a follow up, I believe a week ago now, which is like, what has Trump done well? And prefaced it with like, I think he's just dog shit in all these ways. But for the, for the point of trying to even acknowledge good things that are happening, let me do that. Okay. And so that's why I brought it up. And I got me the pennies one. Although it's like the least, if I were to get broad, I would say, like, The way, but I don't like the broad tariff thing,

but I think the way he has engaged with China via tariffs has ended a like head in the sand 40 years that we've had where we completely ignored it. And I think if we had done, I think he's done it in the worst possible way. Yeah, that's a problem. I think it's execution on all or everything. But I think the idea there of like we need to reindustrialize America

and there should be, I think there is truth to that. And if no one was going to do it, maybe there's something to that. But that, I'm sorry. stretching because I really don't like how he executed it. Yeah, yeah, from Tangle. Concurrently from April 2025 to April 226, the U.S. total trade deficit fell 14%. So if that's important to you, which to me it's not, but if that is like, you know, he has to some degree of success dropped trade deficits. And that's across the whole world, not just with, not just with China. You know, one thing I think he did well is the Trump accounts.

I like the Trump account thing. We talked about a little while ago with the birth, basically every kid who gets born, gets a $1,000 account. he's trying to get all these businessmen to, like, invest into it and, you know, use this as kind of use his, like, chummy relationship with people. Yeah, okay, but I just want to say, so I watched the announcement of the Trump accounts, and I remember, I did it live on stream, and I was like, you know what, I can't really see the problem here because Michael Dell's putting his own money up. Yeah.

And he's one of the biggest investors. And it's going to kids. And it's like, this is great. I mean, but flash forward and Dell just got a massive, $10 billion government contract and Dell stock is up like, like 4x. I mean, like, and it's entirely from the government connection. So it just feels like even on this simple thing, there's so like a quid pro quo level of corruption where Dell gives a little bit the Trump accounts and then gets a lot back.

And I don't know. So I agree with you that like I think the kids getting the money, that seems like a win. But yeah, I think what like what I got and we're looking into it and from Tangle is like a lot of the wins that you'd be like, Yeah, that's good. Like crime is reducing. Medicare. They're continuing to argue for, like, negotiate for better prices with some of the things. But these were all programs and trends that were happening before he got elected. He made money from that Intel investment that I think was unethical. And, uh, and illegal border crossings are down, although overall it has been a fucking shit show with not increasing

legal immigration and obviously everything with ICE just being done in a horrific way. So I literally, these is all I got, really trying to give like an earnest sincere look at it. And all of these have caveats, man. It's not good. I thought about that one too. Like I feel like the, like for his supporters especially,

they'll note like immigration at the border specifically. And I want, but I feel the same way about that as I do with like China where like there's some aspect of this system is broken and not working. And you're doing something to like, try and approach the issue, but it's not working in the way that... I don't agree with any of the approach at all.

And that was my frustration when I was going through this, is like, I don't think that there's anything other than the, like, accidental outcomes, other than, I think just the base... I think there's base things that benefit individual people. Like, I think there's, like, little things, like, no tax on tips that I'm sure, like, individual people are happy for.

But I don't think is, like, a broadly good. Yeah. I think of good ideas. So it's like, yeah. Yeah, but like my, but other than that, like, even if like there's a addressing of some sort of issue or thing in the past, it's almost, it's not the way that I want or support going about it. And now, uh, I think the only thing I was like, okay, this is like a really net good

that I feel like was countries, a country's almost like unionizing globally. You know, like the mid-tier countries of the world are like, we all need to like gather our strength as a block in order to combat the like two great powers in the world and like how they influence us. And I think that's like a really positive outcome that I don't think would have arrived without this happening.

But is it and then it like begs the question is like, is all the trade off and like strife like worth that, Worth that outcome? Probably fucking not. Like, I don't want to be here. We can't, like, it's based on the reverse rule where, like, that doesn't make...

And there's a difference between, like, hey, we as America are going to unwind the American Empire and influence. And we're gonna, and this is how we're gonna do it. And we're gonna work with you and be constructive and try to make this as painless as possible, like a breakup. Versus a breakup where you just start

throwing plates and knives at your partner and they're like, I need to leave. For this is very different. I think it's like, it's like the, like having immigration raids at the Home Depot down the street and being like, I wanted more asylum judges. Like I wanted, I wanted you to do that.

And not that I thought this guy was specifically going to do it. You know, freting to invade Greenland and be like, well, no, I just wanted Europe to spend a little bit more on defense. It's like, that's not, it's ridiculous. So it feels weird to be like, yeah, I think that's my problem. Like, as I was like trying to find things and like going through the exercise of this,

I was like, I think it's, good that Europe's doing that. But it's like it could have just, we could, we surely could have gotten there another way. A different way. Yeah. No, I legitimately think it's the I mean, you know, I'm not as old as you say. It's the worst term of a president in my lifetime and it's not close. After doing this exercise, I could not find

enough upside to, and it's only been 500 days. It's really crazy. So last, last thing, and then we'll move on because we have a lot more stories actually. I don't know these are good about. Is there anything? What are you worried about for the next 500 days? What's your... Everything else that we've been talking about for the last year and a half.

I'll give the biggest one. Because I think in this sea of the 500 days, obviously there's way more than the financial corruption. There's like these new violations of like civil rights and like consolidation of power, a... This real, like... All of these things are awful in their own right,

but what scares me the most is the idea that elections are being messed with to a degree that they don't have their integrity anymore. Yeah, I agree. And so if there's a removal of my mechanism to like remove the people from power in the safe way that we ideally want to keep, that's what I'm the most worried about.

Yes, you're so impactful, man. I've been buoyed with some hope seeing the continued cratering poll numbers and seeing, you know, a lot of that. But if something weird happens around this midterm, I'm going to be much more upset. But we've talked about that before. I think that's the main.

Yeah. Yeah. I think for me, it is the breakdown of, I, you mentioned that the middle powers uniting is good. I think there's many great things about that. Yeah. There's a lot of problems with the American Empire over the last 80 years, what, 85 now.

But it is worth acknowledging that there's been in a historic level of peace over the world over the last 85 years. There's no world like great powers who have openly been at war. Yeah. And so has it been perfect? No, of course not. Am I worried about a world where America suddenly becomes this like totally chaotic attack everybody instigate anything all the time? It just feels like the likelihood of World War III does actually go up a lot. And that is pretty fucking concerning.

be honest. Yeah, like, I mean, there's like this rise in like nuclear armament. Right, because like if you're, dude, you know, Ukraine, right, they gave up nukes voluntarily, right? To Russia. Because they're like, okay, cool, we trust that the world system will protect us and then we gave up the nukes and then they're fucked. And so every country is going to justify I'll be going, I got to take care of my own. And that's just going to lead to a cascade of horrible things. Ah, man, it's real sad. Probably, probably maybe this was going to happen in some form regardless, but it's But the way it's happening is the most chaotic breakdown with, yeah, I agree.

And it's truly sad to talk to people from other countries and realize just how little respect, like how sad people are about Americans and like our country now, you know. And I know we have lots of European like hate watchers. And we've talked about this. But no, but like legitimately, you know, you used to go to a foreign country. And for the most part, you know, growing up, people would be like, oh, cool, you're American. There's like a, to some degree, a sense of like happiness or excitement towards that. And it's like a real sense of shame.

And it's just, it's a bummer. Yeah. By the way, I mean, you know, you could extrapolate that for a longer period of time. But based on the polling, because I've seen the charts of the polling on that, like, foreign citizens, attitudes towards America, you can localize that entirely almost to Donald Trump's second term. Like, it literally craters. In fact, there's a great chart that shows attitudes towards China versus the U.S. And it's literally China is flat down here.

America's flat up here. in this term, it is crossed for the first time ever. And that, that, I mean, the amount of damage done so quickly is, is shocking, man. It's shocking. But you know what else is shocking? What, my Nordic Factor of the Week? There's like shocking about you having another Nordic movie. Let's get to the important stuff.

What happened in Sweden? I guess, what local municipality has a new policy around shoveling snow, Aiden? Meta, I guess, I guess a, I guess, I guess a, Meta got hacked. We can do the North Factorily, but I did want to talk about this because it's related to world leaders in that, I believe, Obama,

a previous U.S. president who... Heard that guy's corrupt. He already's corrupt. You made a lot of money in office because he sold the book. I don't know what his slush fund was like, but he is Instagram account got back. There was a massive meta hack that just happened.

And I want to walking through it real quick because I think it is actually pretty funny. So meta dissolved a lot of their trust and safety system in terms of getting moving fast and breaking things, getting a little quicker. And they've also been all in on AI. And so the meta AI support assistant was attached to the customer service aspect of Instagram. And it turns out you could just go to any account, ask the meta AI support assistant, say, hey, I forgot my password. Can you get me in? It would say, okay, I need to make sure you're in the right location.

So you could just spoof your IP to be in the location that that person normally is in, like their same region. Right. Then it would be like, all right, well, I need to see a live photo to make sure it's really you. But you could use AI to take a photo of Obama, for example, and make the mouth move. Make the Facebook. And then all after that, it would go, okay, fine, then what's your new email? And then you give it a new email.

And then it would send a code to that. You would use the code. And then you have access to the account, your past two factor. And so they were using that to get access to like literally hundreds of celebrity accounts and handles. And you might have fixed it relatively quickly, but we don't know the fallout of everything that's been leaked. It's just, I mean, this is brand new. This happened, I think, yesterday. So, uh, I thought that was a really, really funny result of, like a higher stakes version of the Tinder thing we talked about. Yeah, exactly. Uh, I just think it's a funny example of

AI and security in a different way. And I do think using the meta AI to create the video that breaks the meta-AI is a funny recursive loop. Yeah. But yeah, that's it. It's just a little story. I just wanted to show that up. What's the Nordic fun fact of the week then?

I'm sorry. No, I did. Hold on. I was making that up. I don't have anything. Nothing. Do I have a Nordic fact of the week? They just fucking drank beers this week.

This show's bedrock is the Nordic fact of the week. Surely their health care with bad. Was it good again? Their health care performing well, relatively. It's crazy. Some problems. Because we've done

100 episodes. I don't know how many episodes we've done? Not done 100. Wait, no, it's not a hundred. We've done a year. 180 episodes, I think.

And in 179 of them. You said that's so confidently. I second guessed myself. And I was like, are there 100 weeks in a year? And then I realized, no, no there or not. On episode 212,

in these past 211 episodes, Aidan has come to every episode unprompted with a Nordic fun fact of the week. Then we establish a new, segment about it and it lasts one week. Oh no. Okay. Let's be fair. The instant something becomes your job, it's not that fun. I don't play video games that much anymore. All right. We made it his job. We made it his job. He doesn't have a Swedish snow snuffling permit fact or something. It's crazy. We're going to ruin all the fun of it moving there. Well, I do. It's sorry. I guess I do have

fucking something. Oh yeah. I guess I'm excited. Now I'm excited. It's a segment. In the vein of middle powers. Okay. Cooperating. Okay. And the man who made the big speech that we talked about a while ago, Carnie. Carnster. Canada. Barn dog. Canada and Sweden. Two great nations.

Have recently made an agreement. Rather, Canadian Prime Minister or the Canadian government making a deal with SAB, the big defense company in Sweden, that they would be buying a surveillance planes from Sweden and also reconsidering a deal to buy a bunch of F-35 jets from the U.S. instead redirecting that purchase to that company in Sweden to buy fighter jets from them and also being the grounds for where that Swedish company will produce or build some of those planes in the future.

Basically, Canada has said for a while that they're like too reliant on the U.S. when it comes to defense, at least starting last year. What happened last year? Whatever the past 500 days. I don't know what could have changed their mind. Dude, I could have forgot about that. If we, to go to Canada and say,

you should be the 51st day is crazy. Locke. I feel so long ago. We don't even talk about that. That would be so crazy for either president. It's so wild. It gets away with it. Yeah, Perry's scrolling through some of these planes in the background.

Some planes. Non-F-35s. But I think this is an example from what I can see of this partnership or this change. Do the Swedish ones send you a bunch of parts and you have to build them yourself? me going to ICA to buy my fighter They have other companies there, man They have Spotify They have meatballs in there

But made out of thin cardboard Looks like a Swedish fish I think Canada similar to NATO A lot of the countries European countries in NATO Not meeting their base commitment of spending a certain amount of their GDP on their military.

Canada is in the same boat, not meeting that 2% threshold that they're supposed to meet, while simultaneously admitting that a lot of their defense spending and defense strategy has been too reliant on the U.S. for so long. And this is them pivoting away

to a different company and partner to strengthen ties there, like in defense and also economically in order to diversify away from the U.S., a direct result of those conversations and that speech that we saw. last year. So I just thought this was interesting. Like it's an example of these things like progressing and not just like a headline that

you saw at some point. This is happening all over Europe countries, European countries specifically. I mean like Germany's really leaning into this as their export slow down and their manufacturing is in trouble. They're kind of pivoting to a pure defense, not a pure defense, but a heavy defense industry, a lot of their companies are doing quite well and they're selling to other Europeans. They're building tanks and missiles and planes and, uh, Anyway, as everyone knows from history, a militarized Germany is a good sign for dogs.

Just as long as they sell the weapons to other people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Third times, charm. Third time is, Hey, look, my German ancestors had a great track record up until those two times. Okay. If you exclude, if you exclude those two times.

I thought it was a three strike rule. And then also, yeah. What are we talking about here? We're going to knock somebody for two times. If you take away the two times and you also don't go much, before that. If you don't read, read about any of the before stuff, if you start in 1910 and ignore two times. What no, dude, germs were great before that. I got Prussia.

They were, you know, they were whooping, they were whooping some ass. That's always what you were. We got the Germans. We got the Celts. We got the barbarians. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. You're barbarian as fuck, bro. Remember that scene in Gladiator when the Germans fight the Romans in the, yeah, we were badass. We're fucking bad ass. That was literally my grandparents in that movie. That was fucking sick. Good shit, bro. You got, you got, I would love this. Guys, I love this.

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Introducing O-Doo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part, O-DU replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch.

So why not you? Try O-D-O-F-Free at O-D-O-O-D-com. That's O-D-O-O-O-D-Com. Hasam Piger has blown up in recent years. After the 2024 election, the popular leftist Twitch streamer became a go-to voice for the Democratic Party. But Pikers' glow-up has angered a section of Democrats who are growing louder in voice.

Hassan Piker is anti-American. He is bigoted. He's anti-Semitic. And he is deeply misogynistic. So in March, a Democratic group called Third Way published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal's opinion section saying, quote, Democrats are too cozy with Hassan Piker. He is such an extremist that it will only do damage to Democrats. and hurt their chances of beating right-wing populism.

Now, Piker is controversial, no doubt. But is he toxic? I don't think this helps Republicans at all. I think, as a matter of fact, third-way's brand of politics has helped Republicans. Their attitude has been to constantly concede on culture or issues to the Republican Party and never focus on economic populism.

I'm a Stead-Hurndon, and this is America Actually. Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. I would live. love an update about the Samsung strike. Oh, yes. All right. So not, there's not a ton here, but I did think this was an interesting thing worth following up on. So last week, we talked about how Samsung's workers who work in their chip division had agreed the labor union had gotten

Samsung to agree. We're going to give you basically 10%. I believe that's the number. But giant percentage of the, I'm not even giant, a big percentage of the profit of Samsung this year is going to go to bonuses for you guys. And what that turned into, 314.4.4.4.4.5.000. I don't even 340,000 on average per person in the semiconductor vision. And that's dollars for somebody in South Korea, where it's a lot cheaper than the US. So that's crazy money. And then I steal mandate and I was like,

okay, well, the argument would be like maybe that money should be more broadly spread out. So there were some Bloomberg articles this week that I read about this, where there is, in fact, now a bunch of division and resentment, not only sort of broadly in Korea, but in Samsung itself. Because in other units, they're like, what the fuck? we're being excluded from this generational amount of money.

You're like in Samsung HR or Samsung like washing machines. Yes. Chip guys got like a new Ferrari. 60% of the workforce of the Korean workforce is in the semiconductor division. Everybody else in the company is getting a $4,000 bonus, which is 1%. Dude. Wait, I should Aidan knows a guy this. I know somebody that works at like Samsung corporate in the U.S.

I wonder what the vibes are like. Yeah, even that because this would go to the Korean work. So, okay, so here's some interesting quotes. Samsung Electronics is one company, said Lee Hoseo, head of a smaller union made up mostly of workers in Samsung's finished product of business division known as digital experience. We cooperated with each other and overcame crises when there was a crisis. But now the strong results have been achieved saying that only the division where the performance occurred should get them bonuses makes no sense at all. Another one said anonymously that the gaping compensation divide had killed motivation for workers who don't make men or each. chips. And on top of that, the memory unit, I looked in, they were unprofitable during entire

periods of Samsung's history and other divisions of Samsung had to funnel money over to this division to keep it alive. And now that division is going gangbusters and only those employees are going crazy. Right. Like, including from the galaxy smartphones is like allowed them to keep building factories for chips and whatnot. This is why all the money should stay in the CEO's hands. Yeah, dude. It gets too complicated when you try to distribute amongst the pores. You just keep it in the executive class. You consolidate.

Yeah. It stays safe. Everyone's like, well, that guy's rich. He's going to keep billions. And then it might. They don't know the difference between four or five or something. It might slowly in small parts make it swayed down. Yeah.

It'll trickle back. This is a genuinely interesting thing. If the CEO buys a bunch of jets from IKEA, Sweden, yeah. This is, you've seen that kind of resentment from people I know in, in SF, where it's all the, yeah, if you're in Anthropic, the Anthropic Open AI, you're gonna be, you're gonna be $20 million in a couple months. Yeah, is there, is there truth to, to that where I've heard in the Valley,

like people feel like they just coin flipped the wrong companies or startups to work at, and it's like you happen to work at one, like we're both good engineers. I work at this one, you work at that one. And your lives are dramatically different. It's, it's tens of millions of dollars. And that's, I think, so there are also, quotes like from a taxi driver. It's basically the rich getting richer and the poor getting poor. Somebody who's worked and lived as a taxi driver for 30 years. So now the South Korea

presidential policy chief is suggesting using AI tax revenues to essentially create a sovereign wealth fund in Korea. But it's interesting you have, you know, within Samsung now there's this divide. And then in Korea, somebody who's, because again, what's worth for remembering is Samsung is one of the most sought out companies in Korea. This is the equivalent of giving, I don't, This is the equivalent of giving a giant bonus to people at Open AI or something like that. Where it's like you are, these are people who already went to the best schools in Korea and have the best opportunities and get to work at fucking Samsung where they're paid really well. And I are minting them as millionaires. So obviously you want to see this spread out to some degree more.

But it's this really bizarre thing happening right now. And if you're a taxi, like you'd be so pissed at this, right? I can't think of any similar analogous situation in the United States. No, we don't, we don't do it like that. It's terrible. But here's the thing, it's kind of tough. So it's, because you could take this a lot of different directions. I do think you could tax Samsung with a less loophole's corporate tax and spend that on the public.

Right. But it's, for me, it's like this is a step in the right direction. So I hate to shit on it too much. It's like, no, no, no, I think's great. Like your profit sharing with the employees of the division that did really well. That's better than, you know, at all going to executive bonuses. So it, I don't know. I can understand the frustration, but it's also like,

compared to what other companies normally do. This is kind of good. I love where the trend is going. And I want to hit it to a broader question, which is, is this moment in AI development a good opportunity to create a sort of sovereign wealth fund? And coincidentally, I believe yesterday?

Bernie? Bernie said he's putting a bill to the floor that the U.S. government should take control 50% of these AI companies. And the idea would be this is, you know, the profits from this would then flow to some sort of like public. I don't think there's a clear policy

of how the money is distributed. But, you know, as a reminder, like Finland and Democratic Saudi Arabia have sovereign wealth funds. Norway. But maybe Finland has one. I thought it was Finn. Norway got the big one.

Sorry, sorry, sorry. I mixed them up. Yeah, yeah. Norway, not Finland. And then Alaska, our fucking, we have a state in America that has like a sovereign wealth fund from oil where people get UBI,

which we forget about. And it's like incredibly successful as a program helps lift people out of poverty. And so the idea of, of you, like, potentially creating a sovereign wealth fund from this, treating this as though we hit the jackpot with oil and other companies

countries doing this. What do you think? I, okay, I did see this. Or conversely, do you think the CEO should get it all? I think, I think that's my real opinion. Now I'll steal man what my, you know, what the opposite would be. Uh, no, I saw this headline and I was thinking about it. So there was something a, a little further back.

where Canada made an announcement about creating a sovereign wealth fund in the vein of Norway in order to support local investment in Canada. And that's one of the goals of that fund. I'm not against nationalization of companies. I think I'm very pro that compared to most people. I think in this specific situation, my confidence in it wavered a bit. Because as far as I understand,

if you want a successful sovereign wealth fund, a lot of that, like you're trying to diversify away from your own economy, and it's like shortcomings. Now in the U.S., the economy is so large and so diverse. Maybe that doesn't matter.

But in like Canada's case, to replicate the Norway sovereign wealth fund and then have the majority of that fund's investment go into local companies sort of defeats the mechanism of that sovereign wealth. fund's success. Right. That's why Norway does it.

They don't want to be so reliant on their oil. They want to diversify money away from that industry. So is creating a fund where we invest primarily in an American industry a good thing? Do these things matter at all in this conversation? I was kind of asking myself those questions without coming to an answer. I don't know if I would vote like, like, if you could. can nationalize these companies. Like, do you kill all of the willingness?

Do you kill all the willingness to continue developing those products? I'll be the econ brain of it. Because I saw this. I don't know the exact details of Bernie specific thing. I like Bernie a lot. So maybe I'll look at me into it. But the thing that spooks me, and it's like, you know, I was against Trump when he did with Intel, is I don't like the government picking winners and losers, especially

this early and injured like AI. So if we take 50% of the biggest AI companies and now they'd be. become directly tied to the fortunes of the American government and American people, there's a strong incentive to make sure that those are the ones that succeed and that we all profit off of it. Again, I'm just a bigger fan of closing loopholes and you just tax all corporations at a certain amount and we all benefit no matter, they all compete. Right.

And then we get 25% or whatever. We just always get it. I like that a lot more than like the government taking shares and stakes in these companies and it creates a lot of weird distorted incentives that I'd, I'm generally against. And I was against it when Trump did it with Intel and I'm against it, I think, based on this. I've looked at it a little bit more.

I obviously agree that, especially with all the money flowing into AI, it's creating a real divergence in outcomes. People who are not in the AI industry are getting, just even as like businesses, even small businesses are not getting any investment dollars. They're not getting any money. It's all going.

Every amount of CAPEX in America is going to this one industry and it's creating a huge K-shaped diversions. So I agree with that. I just think taxes usually solve this. I think we've given up on taxes as a concept because people have invaded Texas for so long. Okay, let me start two things your way.

One, so basically this appears to be it. It's just the bill proposes that, that the government would take 50% stock on, on the two companies, like just direct ownership. So two, two kinds. Like anthropic and open AI. Yes. Yeah, I just like that.

It just says the large, it just says the large AI ones. I mean, I tend to, I tend to agree. and then one, it's like the industry is so young. But there's two things that I think are interesting. One, these companies are unprofitable. They burn through billions of dollars every single quarter. And so it's not like, I don't even know where the money would come from. It would have to be from the stock market.

But even then when these, and Craig remember wrong, these are going to IPO soon, right? And people can invest. But it's not like the entire company goes up for sale. No, just a percentage of it. Even if it was a trillion dollars and America got half of that and then sold that, that's like this one-time win for. fall and I would rather see something that's like a sustainable thing long term, although I guess if we hold ownership of it forever, that would be the idea. And then the other is what do you think of a proposal that has come up a lot, which is a value added tax on tokens, which is instead of taxing a company's profit, you tax every time that AI models are generating something for like as part of a business transaction, you know, whatever Microsoft or insert SaaS company here or insert person who's using chatypt for their own stuff, that a piece of that transaction just, you know, whatever Microsoft or insert Microsoft or insert person who's using chat chitpity for their own stuff, that a piece of that transaction just, instantly goes to the government. It's an interesting idea. I do think, again, I just worry right now at this

moment. By the way, I probably should think this through more because I want to have something I suggest that I want to advocate for instead of being against. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, when I hear that, I'm worried because I, for example, know a guy who's doing a startup in the nuclear energy space with, that involves AI. And he told me off the record that all the companies, even the startups in America in these areas, even in these critical industries like nuclear are using Chinese models because the cost per token is way cheaper. And so if you make it so that American models have a tax on each token that makes it more expensive, then everything is going to switch to Kimmy and Deep Seek and all the data goes to the Chinese companies. And so that's my

concern is that that might be prohibitively expensive. Again, I'm not like the ad companies do succeed at all cause. I'm just thinking of like, if you want this industry to be something, and you went to be America, I just, I guess I don't know why kicking out loopholes, getting taxes, spending on people is like,

that was a great system that has worked in the past. We've like abandoned it. I think I agree with you. I want to preface this. It's like, I don't think I really understand the full consequences

of nationalizing a company or even buying like 50% of a company and in an industry that's developed, and changing so much. I can't really like weigh that. I don't know either. But it did make me think of a conversation I had

about co-ops a while ago where a business that I think we're all familiar with was a co-op initially. And I talked to some people that work there. And now I guess, is it still around? Three million more dollars in my pocket. And I remember I thought that I got from somebody about the work discrepancy within that company

and how co-ops, like, the thought from somebody was co-ops work really well for companies that have an established straightforward business model. So if you're just like, if we were like a utility and we had to like supply... You do one thing, you do it well,

you do the same thing over and over. And we do that over and over indefinitely because it's probably not going to change. That environment works really well for a co-op. But when you have a company that's like not established, growing, demands a bunch of extra work. It's not necessarily clear what direction it's going in. You often need some sort of technological or innovation at the company. The co-op structure, which is not necessarily

nationalization, begins to fall apart because of the discrepancies between the amount that people are willing to do and what is necessary to continue innovating and developing the product. So I feel like there's something here and that if you take something like nationalizing, Saudi Arabia's oil or Norway's oil. It's like the value proposition is very straightforward right now. You know, there will be a time when like oil's demand ends in the, you know, far off future still. But it makes sense. But this is a technology that is still like developing and people don't really know what the endpoint is

or how it's going to be effectively monetized and so many things about it need to be changed. I think about a company that we toured last week and how, like how they're on the cutting edge of something, but they don't really know where this is all gonna end up yet. Right. And I think with that all in mind, the risks of taking that over from the government's perspective

and just trying to force a winner upon something where we don't even really know it's gonna end up seem like it might not work. I wanna look more into it because I, you know, I think- As far as I can tell, the bill is not actually out. He's just saying he's going to be introducing something soon. And it's just says, quote, from him on X,

give the public a 50% ownership stake in the largest AI companies. So that's where the idea is at right now. And if there, also, I want to say that I think if there's enough, like, if there's enough willpower within the government to work, like, say you wanted to like fully buy out one of the big AI companies, have that be the public AI company that gets a ton of investment and like, uh, attention put towards it.

Well, the government has built a bunch of extraordinary, successful, innovative, scientific achievements in the past, Like you could, you could develop the winner and have that. The Manhattan Project. Yes. And there were no. Yeah. Yeah.

No, that's cool. I want to follow up with us. I think we should learn more when he puts the bill out. That'll be interesting to find out. Yeah. I have a question for you guys. And it's related to. We're doing a whole segment on Game 7?

Oh, I want to talk. No, not necessarily Game 7. But I do want to talk about basketball real quick. And you don't need to be a basketball fan to enjoy this section. All right? This is what I want to talk about. There was a really highly profile interesting series between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the San Antonio Spurs recently.

Went to Game 7, really exciting. And one thing that has been remarked upon both in the media and by me now is that the vibe was quite angry at one team, the Oklahoma 70 Thunder. And there was a lot of like vitriol against their lead player, Shea, Gilshed Alexander, for flopping is the idea. He's like he's exaggerating contact to draw fouls. Again, you don't even know the specifics. But the analysis that I saw said that this is kind of a rising trend in sports discussion.

People are getting, instead of being like, this is my team, that's your team, and I like this team and I like this team, people are kind of uniting in hatred against certain players and the refs. It's like the way that sports media landscape is changing. And I think it's undercutting the vibe of the game. and the competition because people's wins are discredited and their losses are amplified. And so a solution was proposed by David Stern, the commissioner of the NBA. And he said, what if we had,

like they have now in tennis and some others, and I think hockey, this Hawkeye AI system that automatically scans the court, tracks the players and calls fouls. Okay, this is, sorry, you said David Stern, this is now. This is right now. Did I say David Stern?

I thought you were going on like a history day. Adam Silver, I'm sorry. Okay. David Stern, I'm fucking old. No, Adam Silver,

commissioning NBA now. Okay. Said Hawkeye, AI, AI, NBA scanning. Obviously the refs would do some parts still,

but for like things that are guaranteed, like on the line or whatever, they would just be instant. And I was wondering to know what you, it's like a, it's like a philosophical question about what you guys think about,

uh, computer vision refs, AI refs. I think if you took the word AI out of this and said, should we have some sort of like digital checking and you're not just going off of a person standing there making the decision? And almost everybody would say yes. Am I crazy? I say yes instantly. And I don't even care you put this stupid word AI in it. It's like I find it to be something I beg for when I watch. Every person. It would be faster.

Unless maybe I'm wrong. Because I've never been a diehard, like sports fan of a good team. But every sports fan ever has experienced the feeling that a game was. A game was. robbed because of poor refereeing, right? Referring. Referring. You know, maybe this is less common in soccer, but no, absolutely. It's more common in soccer. It's an insane thing. The incident that came out of my mouth. Like basketball, football, everything, right? Like, like, I can think of visceral moments where, I mean, literally Perry and I grew up in like one of the most, there's like big scandal where's the Sacramento Kings didn't, anyway, we don't have to get into it. But, you know, giant refereeing

scandal, which is like deeply, deeply personal to Sacramento and like ruined our entire sports career and trajectory. What is the, what is the counter is that we like the human mistakes of referees? Well, I think there's the idea that the AI won't be good enough

or doesn't understand like the human nuance of the game and won't be able to call it correctly. But presumably a human is checking, right? There's no way they're going to just send it and say chat Chachabit, make the call, right? No, they either be a human to check the output. And I just want to say, so I was looking into this, baseball has done this recently with the,

you know, whether it's a ball or strike system. Yeah. And the players can just tap their helmet to challenge whatever the umpire says in the field. And it instantly goes to the AI analysis. Yeah. And if they're correct, they just,

they get their challenge back. And it apparently, according to baseball fans, I know, it has sped up the game and made it more watchable and entertaining. And their ratings are up. Tennis has done this for things when they go on the line. Like sports are trying this and it seems to be successful.

So I just think it. It's weird because the referee union has a lot of power in basketball. And there's like a hesitancy to this. But I think from my POV, it feels like it would speed up the game and be better. So I just wanted to know if there was like, maybe it's open to the fan. I'd love to there if there's a counter argument that I'm missing. But I kind of want this bad. Yeah, I'm kind of in the camp of if you're a big sports fan,

what your practical pushback to this is. And but and then also imagine the world where the AI is literally perfect at calling the game. Like 99.99% effective at calling basketball now. Are you still against it for some other reason? Because in my head, it's like, it's like cars. As soon as it averages out better than the humans, I prefer it in this case. Yeah.

Yeah. And I'm not super pressed about NBA ref unemployment. I'll talk to it. Well, no, there's a car, which is like if, if this replaces refereeing, you would presumably get an increase in interest in the sport, as you saw with baseball, which will overall increase the investment and interest and jobs. Like more jobs will be creative if the sport is more popular. I have a hard time seeing what the argument against this. And the last aspect of this, which really kind of drives at home for me is that the unfortunate reality of sports in

2026 is that gambling has become a much, much bigger industry than it ever was before. It's always been an undercurrent. The Zach Mender King's example, definitely. But like in the past few years, It is just 100xed in the amount of money flowing around and gambling. And of course, there is a massive incentive, especially because we've gone from just betting on the winner of the game to betting on how many rebounds one player will get

or how many point. Like point shaving has so much more money you can make. And so the incentives on every ref to just do small things that can have a massive financial impact are real. They're just real. And so taking it out of their hands is not only like, I think, a good viewing experience,

but maybe the smart thing to do to reduce the impact of a human over a financial decision that's becoming more and more. I don't think the gambling is a good thing, but it's happening. So yeah, I don't know. I just want to bring,

I guess we're mostly in agreement, so it's not as a debate like I thought it might be, but I want to hear what the audience thinks because I'm, I've watched a lot of NBA this year, and I found it to be the most frustrating part is the refs and the slowing down to the pace of the game.

Is this done with soccer, do you know, right now? I only know, I only know baseball tennis and I think hockey is doing it too as well. I mean, everything to do with like even adding cameras to the review process of sports that's been integrated over time is, I feel like I don't know anybody that doesn't like that.

And this feels like just the next evolution of it. Well, I have a juicy little basketball tidbit. You got a basketball segue? I kind of lobbed it up. I didn't know if you had... And you might remember, listener, you might remember I have a friend who was driveling

his ball in a terminal in China. And that basketball, he was dribbling. What brand was it. Lee Ning. Lee Nang. So I thought this is pretty fascinating. As a lot of people know, the way that athletes, at least superstar athletes, make a lot, maybe most of their money, is through their endorsement contracts, like their shoe deals

and athletic wear, all those types of things. Steph Curry, notable figure for having a deal with Under Armour. And bringing it to a point of popularity through his. own superstardom. He's seen as one of like the great oversights or snubs by the other athletic brands. Like Nike. Yeah. They got his name wrong or something in the pitch apparently.

Yeah. And his contract or it came up or he ended it with Under Armour, I believe a year or two ago. And he had a 13 year partnership with Under Armour that had gone really, really well. But then he effectively entered free agency within this world of sportswear endorsements. especially shoes. He recently, I think it was today,

signed a 10, or sorry, yesterday, signed a 10-year, $400 million deal with Lee Ning. Steph Curry, like 37?

Yeah. He's not competing in the league, bro. He's doing 10 years. Yeah, but Roger Federer makes shoes and he's retired, you know?

You're right, you're right. I think the value of Steph Curry, uh, they see it. This Chinese company recognizes it, which we became a little more familiar with while we were there. And this deal is expected.

He not only gets to produce like shoes through this, but it's also a golf wear brand because Steph Curry's gotten like really into golf in recent years and he's actually very good. At least, you know, as far as a casual golf player goes. He won like some celebrity tournament a couple years ago. He just keeps winning. He just keeps winning. How does he do it?

But I thought this was kind of interesting because I don't. Can you pause up? I want to jump back because I I think it's fascinating the growth of leaning. And do we not have, okay. So this is an analysis I saw on Twitter of the number of mentions of Chinese footwear brands on the Reddit subreddit running shoe geeks. And if you go back to 2023 and 2022, essentially no mentions. And in the past few years, even in these Western audiences, hyper niche audiences of people

like looking for the best quality stuff, it is spiking. And this trend is the same across basketball shoes and all of the other, like, major enthusiast footwear subredits. And so you're seeing kind of this invasion. At the same time, you're seeing the implosion of Nike stock, which is just getting crushed. So I think this is like a big, like, you know, you guys hate the book, but when everyone knows that everyone knows type moment where Steph Curry, a massive superstar, kind of breaks that ice and signs a deal outside of the big Western brands.

I think he's expected to be the gateway for this brand in the U.S. market because they have such a limited American presence as it stands, right? I think it's interesting because we went to that one store. It was Anta Guangchun. Yeah. And we all bought some stuff.

We thought it was cool. It's this brand that within China surpassed Nike last year. Yeah, same vibe, selling the same type of stuff, but now they're actually more, basically a Nike competitor directly. And I think it's, What's cool about that is having worn it back at home, most people are like, oh, what is that?

You know, and this is like this giant American athlete that is their means of like promoting this brand in the U.S. Lean in. Well, I have a question. So for your guys' knowledge, is this, are these brands like better? You know, the everyone knows what everyone knows thing kind of implies like, this has been around and that's suddenly this big wave of change is happening. Is it just new players entering the market? or is there some reason this would disrupt?

So my understanding about leaning specifically versus Nike is that the big thing at the factor in is cost. So the quality is as good for a lower cost. So they are selling lower. That's the idea. Interesting. The idea is that they have like the prices for established brands like Nike and you just have gotten higher and higher specifically Nike.

Nike's the one that's like really being eaten into here. Right. Because they have kind of fallen behind. And one thing that Nike did specifically is that they wanted to switch. to an online direct-to-consumer format of like selling their shoes. When they did that, they lost a ton of retail space

at all these shoe stores. They didn't think it mattered. But it turns out they did matter because people find their first shoe there. So they, they like, they did like the Disney thing where they cater only to the Disney adults

who already they love and you lose the new flood of consumers. And so they're now panicking and backtracking, but it's created this opening for a lot of competitors, specifically Chinese ones to really swoop in. And it's just, it's an interesting time. I mean, even in like running shoes,

right? There's been companies like on that have like really popped off in recent years that like are eating into their market on the running side. Hoka. What's that like New Zealand or what was that? Hoka's French right? Hoka's French, yeah. But I mean there's like it's not just Chinese like a lot of companies are are breaking this established like

triopoly of running shoes. I think it'd be particularly interesting if these also are definitively better you know because that's happening in EVs right. It's like these are some of just the best cars like when we were there in China was like these are better than the cars we are driving or seeing in America. And I would assume with running shoes, there's a cap.

But I don't know. And I run all the time. I've never noticed the difference between the shoes. So I doubt at some point I'm going to try a Chinese shoe and be like, whoa, they cracked the code. So at that point, but I think even in EVs, like, you could say the Porsche take hand is like maybe even a better driving experience than. Yeah, I guess that's fair. But it's, it's one fourth the cost. So it's like that is where the real like, holy shit moment comes from.

Yeah. No, actually, that's a fair point. That's a fair point. folks, Aiden, you made a noise like you're going to say something. And now you've been looking directly at the camera without changing your face. You're grimacing. I have them all in suspense right now. You've got us in the palm of your hand,

but you might lose it. If you don't, you have to bring it home. Ladies and gentlemen, prepare yourself for the final words of lemonade stand. If you want to see my palm, you can see it on the Patreon. Oh my God.

That was terrible. That was terrible. We're going to be replaced by cheaper Chinese podcast. We need a cheaper Chinese aden, dude. Yeah, you need lean-nanging 8. You need lean-nagating. You get a Patreon. If you want an extra hour of the show every week.

How about that? How about that? How about that? Check us out on patreon.com. com slash lemonade stand. We need a new Patreon goal to travel somewhere or something. We're going to come up with a new plan.

Thanks guys for watching. That was another week of news. Appreciate you. See you next week. Goodbye. Formula One. So hot right now. It's like if traders in succession at a baby on wheels.

Teams lying. drivers beefing. Celebrities everywhere. And scandals. Lots of scandals. So we made a show about it, the Red Flag's podcast where we recap races and break down all the latest F1 headlines. But no nerdy tech talk. We only cover the stuff you want to hear about.

Yeah, and the only thing hotter than the drivers are our takes. And now we're doing it on Vox. Oh, we're so legit now. We're basically thought leaders. Ted Talk incoming. And we do a podcast with Gunter Steiner called Venka Hours. I still can't believe that's true. Well, believe it.

There is so much for the beautiful Vox Media audience to enjoy. So come check out the Redflax podcast every Monday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.