Lemonade Stand - Political Ads Are Getting Crazy | Ep. 083 Lemonade Stand 🍋

Episode Date: October 7, 2026

On this week's show... DougDoug watches an ad, Aiden places a bet on that ad, and Atrioc contemplates selling a boat. 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: 083 Recorded on: October 6th, 2026 Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCurXaZAZPKtl8EgH1ymuZgg 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 Topics Intro Fake Political Ads Paxton's Wife's Commercial Trump Using Tax Dollars Prediction Market Alpha Traders Ohio and Tennessee Suing Kalshi German Spy Arrested For Treason Palestine - Aiden Knows A Guy Oil Transport Is Insane Now Trump's Approval Rating $5000 for everyone Man City 18yr Fraud Google Investing in Finland Alabama vs TikTok Stock Game Announcement 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

Where some see heroes and others see egos. Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes. While others follow the noise, we follow the money. Learn more at Bloomberg.com. I'm Ina Garten, and each week on Happy Hour, I invite new and old friends for a drink and a fun conversation at my kitchen table in New York City. On this week's episode, I'm joined by Nathan Lane.

We talk about his critically acclaimed run in death of a salesman, taking his dog to therapy, and winning an Emmy for only murders in the building. New episodes of Happy Hour are available every Wednesday. You can watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Cheers. On Lemonade Stinn, and I've been arguing with these two, because I think Michael Babaro would be the perfect guest on The Yard.

And you guys disagree. We don't care. Yeah, we don't. You guys are not deeply invested in the Yards' guests. It's a weird way to start an episode where we have millions of new listeners because we were highlighted on Moist Criticles channel. That's right. That's right. Charlie gave us a shout out by watching exactly 28 seconds of one Twitter clip and making an 18-minute video about it.

And I appreciate that. I love a Charlie video. Any press is good press. That's what I said. That's what I texted Mark Merrill. I said, I said, fuck. Let's get rid of context. Yes, sir.

Yes, sir. Nuance is dead. I honestly, I did want to make a quick comment about it, which was, I think, like, it's funny seen fighting game Twitter like light up about the number because they're all like, how could they possibly have expected this number of people to play? And then if you watch the previous 40 minutes of the interview, it's like, oh, they did. They did it. That's the answer to that question.

They, they did it. That's what the whole interview is about. One thing I feel bad about this whole interaction is that, you know, Mark Merrill, generously came on our show and he had two riot guys with him. And then after the interview, like, we loved the interview. That one part with the $100,000, that might get taken out of context. And we were like, trust us. We were like, don't worry.

We print this. It's gold. So I do feel bad about that one clip going viral. But it wasn't, I enjoyed it. Yeah. I thought the interview was. We're in the now. We're in the today, the modern era.

And you know what? Also, yeah, who even watches YouTube nowadays? It's all TV, maybe. New media we call it. TV's coming back big. That's what I hear. Gen Z, they're going out again, right?

They like physical media. They like TVs. And they're watching Fox. They like watching the NFL on Fox News. That's what they're liking. They're buying Comcast subscriptions and droves. Cables. And apparently, this swarm of political ads around the midterms

is something you've been investigating. Yeah. So I'm sure everybody's started to experience some degree of political ads that are riling up right now. And I thought that there were two very interesting ones that I actually happened. I saw separately news articles about him, but I watched these organically because I'm a god-fearing, freedom-loving beer drinking American and I watch football this last weekend. All right?

And both of these ads are somewhat significant. And both I saw on TV, these are real things running. Well, asterisk on the last one. So first off, let's talk about Texas. We've talked about the Senate Texas race between Tala Rico and I believe your goat, Ken Paxton. If you pull up and especially we're going to be talking. that Trump is.

You see Trump talking about Ken Paxson. It's crazy. He loves him. He insults him all the time to his face. It's so funny. He actually cannot talk about him without insulting his appearance. He calls him ugly every time. What?

Wow, I didn't know that. I mean, to be fair, though, we constantly insult each other. Yeah, maybe it's like a bro thing. I mean, it's like, it's literally Trump giving his speech, packs in front row and he's like, he's just locker room talk. He's not much of a looker. He's not much of a talker.

But he'll be, you should vote for him for Texas. That's the speech Trump gives every time. Wow. Anyway, I'm sorry. So, okay, Tala Rico seems to be leading. So, so as we've discussed a couple of times, Tala Rico, the Democratic candidate, continuing to go up in the,

in the polls, predictions, all this stuff. He's now at 68% to win. And this is, again, this would be a massive, massive upset if Tala RICO can win in Texas. For audio listeners, he's 68% on, like, Kalshi, a prediction market. But I think he's also, by a smaller margin, he is winning in polls as well.

Yes. Yes. Yeah. In both polls and prediction markets, Tala Rico is currently favored. Though it is like very close. It's all within, yeah.

It's close. This is not a guarantee. Like 66% does not mean it is a win, obviously. And this is a prediction market. This is not truth. But anyways, because of this,

we are seeing a lot of money and a lot of different strategies being attempted in Texas, as we've talked about. One of them, I'm not going to show them here. There are full deep fake commercials made by Paxton's team

of James Talarico like saying previous thing. Have you guys not seen? those? No. Oh my God. Okay. Wait, so just him saying things he didn't say. He's, it's, it's him quoting things that he has said in the past, but out of context, but it shows him, one sec, let's pull it up. That's insane. Uh, here, here. Um, while you're pulling it up, can I just, do you guys see the story of the, the man who died in a vehicle accident? And then when the judge was deciding the punishment, the defendant who had killed someone with their

vehicle made an AI video of the dead person forgiving them. And then the judge said, I really like that video and gave them a lighter sentence. It's insane. It is beyond deranged. Now, my understanding is an appeals court overturned that because it's such a ridiculous thing for the judge to have done. But like, it's through the looking glass on some shit. That's crazy.

That's crazy to me. It's like truly insane. It's literally the guy looking direct the camera, but it looks all kind of fake. And he's like, I was a good Christian. my life and I believe in forgiveness and I don't think the person that killed me should be facing, you know, it's like... Imagine doing that without the tech and just making up, like, Your Honor, if I imagine what the guy would say.

Here's a puppet of the guy saying, your honor, here's Jeff Dunham to be the guy that I killed was my car. It's serranged, dude. I can't believe they attempted it. They're the balls to bring it to the courtroom. I'm sorry, but they're doing it on TV to millions of people. All right. So this is one of three interesting things going on in political campaigns. This is only, I couldn't find the full thing here, but this is at least the video.

This appears to be James Talarico writing in his Bible, and he is narrating these are snippets of quotes he said. And they have the what the pride fist flag on his wall. Yeah. So they've deep faked him. He is drawing into the King James Talarico Bible like a child. And they're taking specific like phrases he said. But then he is deep fake. through them while I mean it looks like him I mean it looks like he is saying this and drawing this

is by Ken's pet Ken Pax and team so most people would agree like this needs to be illegal this is insanity to have just literally show your opponent doing something else from what they said out of context so this is horrifying they've tried this didn't necessarily work although hard to know this would this would I mean I guess it doesn't matter I don't know what I can get in the mind of every voter but I feel like if you saw this this this This would make you angry at the person that made it. If you knew it was fake. I think with the example you just gave, though,

I think there's just such a disconnect as to like what this technology means to different people, right? Like this older judge doesn't even, he's literally in the opposite direction of what I bet, like 90% of people listening to the show would feel about something like that. That there is something like at least vague, like vaguely yucky about the show.

that being leveraged in a court, you know? And the judge is like tearing up. And the same thing for this is like, there's probably a portion of the audience that is watching this and then might not even realize that it's fake to begin with. And then there's another portion that doesn't care that it is. Yeah.

I mean, I think in this case, the deep fake one we are showing is, you know, some boomer who doesn't really understand AI technology and still thinks it's these like totally over the top videos that don't look realistic is not going to know that that's fake. And there's a small disclaimer that says this was made by AI at the bottom,

but it's hard to see, as you can imagine. They tried to too obfuscate it. I mean, most people read the tiny disclaimers of the bottom of course. Yeah. This happened in the, you know, Thomas Massey lost his primary to Ed Gawreen. Yeah.

Republican primary. And Ed Gawrine ran a deep fake ad of Thomas Massey having lunch with like Elon Omar and AOC. Yeah. And like being a secret, whatever, secret communist. And like they were all hanging out together.

And then it had the little disclaimer, but people didn't notice it. They did a follow-up study. I cover this. They asked a good portion of elderly people that voted that election and they thought it was real. Like a significant chunk of them

were like, not only thought it was real, but it swayed them. They thought, oh, this is like damning evidence. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this so clearly should be illegal, but it's so early in the stages of what's happening, you know, right? And like everybody's just in the fervor

of like getting towards midterms and the craziness around it. It does not appear to my knowledge that there's legislation coming anytime soon to stop this. And of course, they put disclaimers and nobody's watching them. So this is one thing Paxton's team is trying to hold on to Texas. What is another thing?

Well, uh, Paxon's, Paxon was impeached. As a reminder, he is not a very likable guy. He was impeached by a Republican Congress in the state. As attorney general in 23, he cheated on his wife, who filed for divorce on biblical grounds. Now, fun fact, his wife, Angela Paxon, is a state representative in Texas since 2018. She's like an elected member of the Texas state. So many people have been curious. What does his estranged wife think about this? And that is one of the two ads. Perry? People have asked my thoughts about this election and turns out I have some.

Let's talk about the elephant in the room. In a general election, it's not as much about the individual players on the team. It's about getting the whole team across the finish line. Either we hold every Republican seat or we hand the future of Texas to the other team. That's why I'm voting for the Republican ticket on November 3rd. So the strategy now. is we are going to not even address the person who you'd be electing. Just ignore them. Don't look at them. Just kind of think about the broader mission. And that's from his wife.

That's from his wife. X-wife, right? It's currently estranged. The divorce filings are proceedings by understanding. So current wife basically. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's that's crazy. Like that's, that's the degree they're going to. That's the degree that Ken Paxton is a horrible candidate. that they're like, they won't even say his name. They won't even say his ad for her. She calls him the elephant in the room. You're,

your wife on TV saying, just look at the R. Just look at the R. Forward Dallas County Republican Party chair, Jennifer Stoddard said, quote, I think it'll help. She knows better than anybody being a state senator herself

that we need to cast aside all personal feelings and we need to vote for policy. Just a banger. You just personal feelings. Things shouldn't come up when it comes to politics. But it comes to electing. And Tala Rika responded by saying,

asking Texans to close their eyes and vote for a political party instead of the best person for the job is exactly what's wrong with today's politics. And it just makes you think like, it could be, Ken Paxon could be dead. It doesn't seem to matter. That's not the focus anymore. Tala Rica's been running YouTube video,

I don't know if they're ads, but videos of him calling Paxton and asking for a debate because Paxon has declined every single, there's not a single debate happening. Pax is basically trying to be invisible. He's trying to pretend it doesn't exist and hope that the Texas are, you know, just lean wins. He's not speaking in anything. He's not talking to anyone.

He's not doing interviews. It's crazy. It's a crazy like subversion of the democratic process where, uh, yeah, you're just trying to hope this guy doesn't get noticed enough. There's something similar happening in Maine, but the other way around. I think it's like Troy, Troy Jackson is the Democratic candidate that is, uh, like filling the spot that Graham Plattenham. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then Susan Collins is the Republican on the other side. And this is a pretty like democratic state, right? Like they won handedly even in the previous election. And Susan Collins is beating him in, the polls and like favorability because people just aren't, they just aren't vibing with them.

They just, and she, she even for like heavy, Democratic-leaning voters being polled in the state, they're like, Susan Colin seems all right. They've been doing it for 58 years or something. It's crazy.

I just don't think they should pay any attention to the individual. Politics should be just a vote for a giant party. And there's no other human person matters. It just run the same ad in reverse. Yeah. For Troy Jackson.

All right. And one more ad for you that shows our wacky political environment. Trump's been doing all sorts of things to try to get people riled up. We're going to talk about one of them later, this $5,000 check. He keeps promising to people. But he's also now running ads. As a reminder, Trump is not on the ballot. So here is one such ad. Go ahead. With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state. We will expel the war mongers from our government. We will drive back. I'm sorry, can you pause from one

second? That is a crazy opener. We're going to demolish the deep state. They have the house, the Senate, the presidency. And we're going to expel the war mongers as we're currently a war and Ron, you started. That's a crazy funny line. And for audio listeners, this is black and white footage of Trump walking at the camera down a hallway. There's nothing happening. Go ahead. Keep it going. Okay.

Cast out the communists, Marxist and fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country. We will route the fake news media and we will liberate America from these villains once and for all. And at the bottom, it says paid for by the U.S. government. There is no other text. There's no point to this video. It is just to make Trump look like a badass. And they are paying $20 million out of the Homeland Security budget to put these on TV.

Holy fuck. New York Times reported that Trump personally directed the White House budget director to use taxpayer money for these TV spots. What happened to the deep state in the first four years? Did they rebuild the deep state? Last year. What about all the Marxists and the fascists in the first term? What is happening? Also, how are we simultaneously in a golden age?

But also, we have to dismantle the deep state that's rooting the country. And the news media sucks. And it's a major. A communist. But AOC, Aiden. Have you seen AOC recently? Well, the scene and just heard things about her from Fox News. Yeah.

I heard she's in a dinner with Thomas Massey. She's in a dinner with Thomas Madison. Jesus Christ, it goes even deeper than I thought. The deep state, bro. Do you think that Trump in going into his seventh year will be able to dismantle the deep state that he's control? I've been, obviously my three-time voter for Trump.

It's like all the people, it's all the insane people who are like he's going to tackle the deficit this time. It's like if only there was a four-year example period to look at. If only there was a sample size of what he had already done. Like a year and a half ago, when we had to be on this show,

and like earnestly talk about whether Doche would reduce the deficit. It's just crazy. Yeah. It's like anyone's still believing is wild to be. But also, let's be real. We'll talk about later, but people aren't believing it as much. Like it's not. Yeah, yeah.

That's the good news that we'll get to a little bit later. I mean, Trump's approval ratings are incredibly low. And the odds are looking very bad for Republicans going to the midterms. Him doing things like this is a response to things not going well. So, you know, this is almost encouraging to see like this level of desperation for a Republican Party members to be like, just pretend that there's no individual for Trump to just be. And so a quick follow up on this, because ultimately this is going to sift into the hundreds of crazy thing Trump does every single week, right? Is doing that illegal? Probably not. No, the government

can spend money on advertisements for like policy, like to join the military or like sign up for this new health initiative or whatever. But it's not supposed to be a political or partisan thing. It's supposed to be you are barred from publicity or propaganda with federal money unless Congress authorizes it. So the question with these ads is like, is this a politically motivated thing or is any public service announcement? That's such a hard question. That's what we'll have to figure out. You need the best scholars to debate that for it. I feel like it's like if you, if you made the wish to like an evil genie and you were like,

Jeannie, I want, I want publicly funded campaigns. And then he grants the wish. And the monkeys paw curls. The monkeys paw curls. And then I get that ad from the government. So we'll cap off this segment. Like he, uh, Trump on Monday. I believe this is, wait, they aired for like one day.

I happened to catch it. And then he, he truth on truth social. Oh, that just, if you pull this up, the radical left is upset with the fact that I'm taking ads, which I consider to be a positive promotion for our great USA. He's just promoting the USA and paying for them with US money. This is a rather standard thing to do. But rather than doing that, I have decided to do the patriotic ads and pay for them myself

with money I raised for MAGA, Inc. And so he has not pulled them. You might still see them, but he is now going to pay for them himself, supposedly, like he did with the wall and the ballroom. All right. He got my vote back. He got my vote back. This is what I'm talking about.

I was on the edge, but he won me back over. I actually can't locate truth social posts without thinking about how somebody pays. $100,000 to get this five seconds early. I think about it every time. We'll see that's to check every one of these instantly. Well, speaking of paying fees to get social media posts early and taking advantage of it. I read an incredible article about Polly Market recently. So there was an article on the FT about Polly Markets Alpha Traders.

And it was basically the writer following the story. story of a group of young polymarket traders who are in like a discord together that they call alpha. And the idea is like we're a part of this limited group who has

an ability either in like mathematics or analysis to take advantage of information available out in the public to find the alpha in polymarket trades. So these are like young guys who are like constantly online or running some sort of like online analysis or analysis of data in order to get an advantage on the platform and telling

their anonymous story of like the stress that they're they're under and the way they see what they're doing and I thought this article is just kind of their lives were insane yeah they're insane it's it's it's really interesting uh to to begin with but in the beginning of the article it drops the fact that point one percent of users are making 50 percent of the gains across the entire platform. So when you're one of these people who like engages with this gambling platform, you and you like take a bet on something

because you think it might win, you vibe it out. You are what these people in this like discord of like 10 people call a fish. Like they, they are farming the grander scheme of people who like want to gamble on this platform for money. And, uh,

no, oh sorry. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. I was just a one of the strategies that they mentioned in the article. And I think it was the most common one for people in this group is just finding trades

where regular people might have left a bet running too long or whatever. Like they were like, like, if I want to place a bet on a political race, and then the facts on the ground have changed but people don't pull their bet out or whatever. Like, we're just farming the fact that most people are slow.

Don't check the news every day, don't update. And they just do that over and over again just take your money. Basically like, the mispricing of regular people's attention. It creates this psychotic lifestyle for like, like these guys are constantly online.

They like barely sleep. They're always collecting information. They're always stressed. They're always. Yeah. They're skipping Thanksgiving, skipping Christmas, not talking to their family. It was wild.

I feel bad for them. And openly, and openly admitting that at least a few of them are addicted to gambling. And like, that's why they enjoy doing this. And I thought this article was more, compelling than anything, just an interesting story.

But at the end of it, one of the guys is talking about how part of this urgency and fear, the reason why he wants to do this so much right now while it's working, is because he's pretty confident that as soon as there's any change of wind in political

power, these platforms are going to be taken down. Because ultimately, what are these sites? Everybody knows their fucking gambling platforms. It's not a big, I think there's derivative swaps that should be managed by the federal agencies. And this is starting

to get approached by states. And New York led by Attorney General Latita James has just sued Polly Market recently over the fact that it is indeed a gambling platform that is circumventing state laws. And

this is part of a pattern by this specific attorney general tackling online gambling in general. So They went after Kalshi earlier in the year, but they've also gone after CS skins. Oh, really? That was a story we talked about earlier.

Yeah, I remember that. It's the same attorney general from that story. And not only that, Gemini, a different platform than Google Gemini, and Coinbase's trading platform, like, what do you call it? Why am I not? Bonauss. Trading platform, right? Is that correct, right?

Trading, yeah, Coinbase is like trading market trading platform for events that they have. they have also sued those two things as of April this year, prediction markets. So she is on this tear of tackling gambling in the online space and the consistent theme across all these cases is all of these platforms are doing things

to not only circumvent New York's laws in order to have the platform exist at all, but also encouraging and allowing people under the age of 21 to use these platforms who are particularly vulnerable to the effects that gambling can have. They should be gambling on Pokemon cards like God intended. They should be opening packs.

It's funny. I know that there's truth of what you just said, but it is funny. It's like, when I turned to 22, I was not like more resistant to gambling. Like, I was just as fucking likely to waste money. Probably more so because I had more disposable income. We just got to protect these 21-year-olds. Fuck 22 and old are 28 is 5. 20 is 5.

No, you go to Vegas and it's rows of 80-year-olds fucking dumb. There's no age where this isn't fucking break over. You cross 60 and you're immune. I've been saying it. So, Couch, in the. Kalshi case from earlier in the year, New York said that they were demanding, they're demanding the court, sorry, they're demanding Kalshi to forfeit all illegal gains, distribute restitution to consumers who were harmed, and pay fines equal to three times the gains the company

has made through its illegal actions. And the exact- So, if you're a gambler in New York, you should gamble more right now, knowing that your losses will get recomped. You're going to get refunded. So just make sure you get back on track. take out a big loan is call swap. And that, I think, exact phrasing was used in the demands for the polymarket case that just came out as well. But what is also interesting about this is the day after polymarket countersuit, the state of New York, basically saying that you are putting our entire business in jeopardy by trying

to leverage state laws against our company. Like you're fracturing the precedent that. we have to operate in the rest of the country. And because you're threatening that through laws that should not be applied to us, you owe us like the damages to our reputation for doing so. And they are saying that the only thing that can regulate our platform is the federal commodity futures trading commission, which as far as I understand is compared to something like the SEC has a lot less teeth to actually regulate markets. And it's why in the crypto industry right now,

there's a big push, like lobbying in D.C, to get the CFTC to regulate crypto instead of the SEC because it has so much less teeth. Right. They don't do anything, yeah. And the gambling companies, the polymarkets and the calches and all of these other companies that are running prediction markets are saying,

this is the only body that has authority over us. You don't have authority over us as a state. I think it's less about them wanting to be regulated by this body versus that one, but more that they want to be regulated at the federal level, not at a state level. Because if, as long as they are regulated at federal level, individual states cannot say, we're banning you, right? So that's the huge golden pie. It's just one of the federal agencies having total oversight. Because if the states start banning you, what are you paying LeBron James for? What are we paying for? What's even the point? Think of LeBron James.

We can't change anything. I don't want Braun to lose any. I don't want any money. Yeah. I mean, this is a very small follow up, but like this, very similar thing just happened in Ohio and Tennessee. This went to the U.S. appeals court that ruled that Ohio and Tennessee can regulate Kalshi under gambling, uh, gambling laws. So like, and we've talked about this in the past. There was like Wisconsin tried to do this and they failed because they tried to ban it statewide. Other states are doing just the sports side. So it's this ongoing question with every single state of is it the state's authority or not. And it looks like this is going to go to the Supreme Court because now you have in multiple different, in multiple

different appeals courts and multiple different states, you're getting different rulings. And of course, like, this is weird and should not be this, like, strange patchwork thing. Um, one of the things I thought was particularly funny about the Calci one is what the judge, the appeals judges said. Um, because like the idea of, so, so here, she said, the commodity exchange act's core purpose was to protect the national interest by providing a means to manage and assume risk and to obtain pricing information. And this could make sense, imagine you're a farmer and you sell wheat, okay? And wheat right now is $5. And you don't know whether it's going to go up or down at the end of the year.

And you want to hedge risk. And so you want to like do a swap such that if it goes up, you're going to owe some money. But if the price goes down, you'll get some money. And so you are saying, hey, this risk that might substantially affect my future, I'm going to have some kind of hedge against it to protect my future in whatever way might economically or affect my life. Right.

And if the Lakers lose, my future will be set. So I'm hedging against you. Yes. So the judge said, quote, it is therefore difficult to see how, determining the probability that a certain number of corner kicks will be taken in a given soccer game would serve to advance those goals. So obviously the core premise that these should be derivative swaps that a person is using to hedge their future for safety. My happiness is dependent on the number of corner kicks and how many threes will LeBron make? I need to parley them

right now for my future. And isn't it about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Yes, America. USA, baby. That's so so fucking funny. If we could just get these German spies out of our judging abyssem. Okay. Just just heaved it over to him. No, I appreciate that setup because I actually

And the judge said, I think that, no, I can't do it. It's got that. I'm too sick. So this story's only 13 hours old. So I'm kind of, I'm braiding it. But, you know, the equivalent of the CIA in Germany, which I'm going to say right now,

to nail it, okay? It's called the bunden snak recognized. Lived in Germany, by the way. Grew up in Germany. And I know it's called the BND and that is a circle of the CIA. And it turns out the head of this agency for, let's say, 2000, let me get his exact same year, 1990, 2005 is as time as the head. So that's seven years. And then he was chief of staff for like another eight years after that. So he's a lot of time in this, in this agency.

Turns out he was a foreign agent. This is the highest Like position you could have in Germany for intelligence For which foreign place? For Germany. I'm sorry. Oh, oh, they don't say. This is so new.

They don't say. This is the suspicion is Russia very obviously Because, and this is a weird story that dovetails with something I've also covered. I did a video about German nuclear a while back. And in that story, I mentioned that the prime minister of Germany at the time ended up after he's positioning, leaving Germany and going to work at an oil company

gas prom in Russia. And that guy was very compromised. And during that time, they built the Nord Stream pipeline. They shut down their nuclear plants or began the shutdown. And like did all these things to make themselves energy dependent on Russia.

And so it seems that around the turn of the millennium, Germany's intelligence agency and prime minister and maybe more were foreign agents. And we don't know if there's more later on, but this is like began a process of deindustrialization that is like hurting Germany later down the road. Like their energy security is a big problem right now. And it's just, that's fucking wild to think about

the level of influence that another nation had. No, again, I can't confirm for whether this guy was compromised Russia. They didn't say, they won't say. What if it's fucking right? It's like Kenyan. It could be Kenyan. It's like Kenya has just been pissed in Germany. And then we clip this and posted after the Kenyan thing is discovered.

And we're like, what a dumb ass. He's trying to connect the dots. Yeah, maybe I'm misconnecting the dots. they were from a different country who was working for them. They were just, they were compromised in terms of like pay for play. They were selling state secrets.

They were essentially a foreign agent. They found out that not only were German secrets being delivered, but this guy had access to, you know, if you're the highest level of Germany, you were having close debriefs with the CIA, with the MI6, with all the intelligence agencies of the allies, especially during this period.

Right now America and Europe are a little more on a standoff, but like in 1998, 2006. I don't even though, I don't think we know our own secrets. So it's like a shocking revel. It's like one of the highest levels of treason or spy that people have ever recorded. And certainly the largest one since, I think they said, 1976, the last time anything even close to this happened or someone was found. It's like a crazy deal for Germany. I got there, they're freaking out. Yeah, I mean, this is one of the highest positions in one of the most geopolitically important countries in the world. Like, it's insane. And extremely extremely tied in with the entire

NATO apparatus. So yeah, the levels are pretty crazy. I don't know if it's Russia, but whoever is doing it, they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams on the level of heights they could reach. Who do you think? Who do you think the highest level of

in America? The U.S. government is? That's comparable. Like who has the most info? It's not the president. It's, I don't think it's the president. You know that that onion? I think about that new onion bit all the time where they're talking about, and this is a conspiracy theory that goes, oh, to the top. Everyone below the vice president is implicated. It's hard to believe how far this

goes. And he just like keeps, he hammers it over like 10 minutes. Uh, yeah. It's not a big storage. I just want to bring it up because it's fascinating and how about today. And like people especially in the German sphere are like, holy shit. This is crazy. And they're re-looking at all the decisions that happened in that period. And like they're, wow, they're through the lens of, I have a theoretical for you guys. Knowing the current state of our country, would you rather have current leadership or compromised Russian agents who are pretty good at their job. That's the funny joke. Some people say it's like, you couldn't tell him. Even if he's not compromised, the things he's doing are like what someone compromised would want him to do.

Would you take Putin's top guy for HXF? It's why? It's funny because I'm like thinking about it. Wait, so just to just to clarify, he's not in a position anymore. This has been found out like retroactively. Directively. Yes, but he was very close to power even after he left the top position and certainly had access to information. Again, he was chief of staff for a long time. And there is one other person unnamed.

They used the name Manfred D as a code name, who I believe is currently in the think at a lower level who is still connected to all of this. The guy's handler to shuttle things back. So like the web goes kind of deep. And it's like certainly it's a call for a renewed look in all European American nations. Like what the hell's going on? Are we compromised in ways we didn't think so? Support for this show comes from Anthropic.

Anthropic, as you may know, is the creator of Claude. And I want to talk about a Claude use case that I've been legitimately using. I know I talk about how I use it to quiz myself, but since even though I have absolutely no technical ability, I created a Chrome extension that when I'm reading an article, let's say in the Financial Times, I press Alt Control Q and it generates a sidebar pops out and it generates a quiz on the article I just read.

Oh. It's awesome. It does five multiple choices. and then a short answer. And I do this after every article I read now and I feel like I legitimately retain and understand more. This is all facts.

This is just a... I mean, I think that's a really great use case. I think my brain is built different so I couldn't even imagine not retaining the article I read. You know, serious? I've been using it. I've been using it.

I have to like pay out Ludwig's contract editors every month. I dump screenshots of like the videos and like revenue into to make like the sheet so that it's like way easier to like calc all the data. And it saves me so much time from what I used to do it by hand because of how many uploaded videos there are. So yeah, it works great. So for problems worth solving, get started with Claude at clod.a.i slash lemonade. That's clod. dot a.ai slash lemonade. Check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all the features mentioned in our episode. Clod.a.i. slash lemonade. We're just about one month out from the midterm elections in these

United States. And despite all the gerrymandering and voting restrictions, legal challenges and personnel shakeups, it looks like the Democrats are going to flip the House of Representatives. The vibes of U.S. Democrats are incredibly strong. It's mostly Democrats trying to tell each other, like, don't oversell how amazing of a night we're going to have. So on today, explain from Box, how are the Democrats going to mess this up? Nah, JK, JK, JK. Let's enjoy it for while we can. The question isn't any more, like, will Democrats flip the House majority?

It's how big is that majority going to be. So on today, explain from Box, we're going to talk about the new sheriff in town. of this goes as Democrats think it's going to go. Hakeem's House on today explained Monday through Friday afternoons in your feeds. What we're after. Support for this show comes from upside. Okay, we actually met these guys in person and got to talk to them about their business model. They let you get cash back on expenses like gas and groceries.

Basically, you open the app, you find a participating store or gas station in your area, and then when you go to purchase things at that store, you get cashback through upside at over 100,000 participating locations. Yeah, it's awesome. They literally, it's a win-win because the store wants to drive more customers there. So they pay upside and then upside get it to use. It's sick. Yeah, it's, it's, yeah, we spoke to them.

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promo code lemonade to get an extra 25 cents back for every gallon on your first tank of gas. That's an extra 25 cents back for every gallon on your first tank of gas using promo code. Lemonade! What's the, what's next story? Yeah, this week is eight in, is that your jingle? Yeah, where do you know? I hope it's some more fun. It's Palestine. So we talked about the ceasefire like a year ago on the show.

And since then, uh, daily airstrikes have continued to occur. The genocide in Gaza has continued, and I think maybe less well understood is the West Bank in Palestine has been under a bunch of different pressure from the Israeli government over that same time period. And we've also talked about that on this show. And recently, I saw two stories in the early part of September that caught my eye. So one was that Benjamin Netanyahu announced the like curtailing of outposts in the West Bank, not settlements, but these like smaller outposts of like,

like, smaller groups of, uh, Jewish settlers would like come out to the West Bank in a new area that they're, you know, not under any like legal, they have no legal right or like means to this area. And they just set up shop and then often terrorize the Palestinians in that area.

Okay. It'll often be like younger guys who like come out and commit acts of violence or kill the Palestinians that are around there. And this is what the Channel 5 video was about, Yeah, yeah. And like, I think like Louis Thoreau, Channel 5, there's another like really good Guardian series. They've been going, they have been in the West Bank and have showcased a lot of these things. And then, and Netanyahu had made an announcement that supposedly they were going to start like cracking down on these outposts. And then also around the same time, the UK announced that it was going to start sanctioning trade with these Israeli settlements that exist in the West Bank. And I, I, I, I had caught, like, the idea that like the goods and services in these areas that might be, like, exported to the UK. I think a couple other European countries also made this announcement around the same time. The idea that they're not going to do, like, trade with this area anymore. Uh, so I wanted to ask my friend who is from the West Bank and now lives in the U.S., do you think that things like this have any material impact on the situation? Because of how, like, uh, the, you know, the situation in the West Bank is so bad. do these things even move the needle? And that's where the conversation started. So the thing that I thought was really interesting that he told me is the thing with the outposts and these

crimes that like these settlers come in and commit on Palestinians is that they're really eye-catching in the news right now. But Palestinians are particularly like resilient people and the smaller outposts and the terror from these smaller groups of people are what make headlines, but aren't necessarily like the huge impactful things of what make life in the West Bank really fucking bad right now. Um, and, uh, you know, people can withstand or stand up to like this violence to a degree. Like, they only have so much room to like fight back because of the backing of the Israeli military behind these people. But the, uh, basically the more, there are larger institutional things

that don't tend to make the news because they're less, you know, maybe eye catching on the surface that have a much stronger impact on how awful it is to live in the West Bank at the moment. And the couple examples

that I wanted to highlight that he told me that I did not know. So over time, because of the displacement of like Palestinian people, these refugee camps have formed in certain cities in the West Bank.

So like people that have to move into cities and they make, they have made these like dense pockets of kind of makeshift towns that have become semi permanent as time has passed. They have a lot of people in a small amount of space. And historically, the Israeli government has allowed those refugee camps to exist. But in 2025, there was a big bulldozing of one of the largest refugee camps in Janine, which kind of broke this previous precedent. and 20,000 people lived in that camp and were immediately displaced from the bulldozing. And then they continued to bulldoze three similar camps for 20,000 more people were displaced from that. And this is being done by the IDF. This is not like settlers doing this.

This is the IDF coming in and doing that. And there was a quote from like the United Nations that said, repeated and destructive operations have rendered the northern refugee camps uninhabitable, trapping residence in cyclical displacement. Basically, it's like you can never like rebuild your life because your home has been destroyed and you always struggle to move somewhere else. And then the other part of this

that I think gets highlighted way less that my friend was like revealing to me is the degree of economic sanctions in the West Bank. So I thought this stat was insane. This area has experienced a 15 year loss of GDP gain in the span of a year. after October 7th. So that's, that is, because a ton of the, like,

the West Bank became way more restrictive in the wake of October 7th. So the economy has been, like, completely destroyed. They're at a stalemate compared to, like, where they used to be. And then you have these things, like you have curfews, you have checkpoints, you have restrictions on the type of roads

that you can use for, like, transport of goods. So your ability to do, like, commerce with, like, other Palestinians in the West Bank. A lot of friction. It's totally limited. So much friction with that, right? And then the area of like Palestinian control is like continuously more spaced out by the amount of settlements that have been allowed. And then you combine that with like a loss of jobs like prior to this, a bunch of Palestinians had like permits or the allowance to go commute into Israeli controlled territories and then work jobs and then come back and like use that money that they earned.

But that's not allowed at all anymore. So they don't have all of that income that came from those jobs has just gone away completely. It's gone from the economy. And then you top it off with the rising fuel costs from the war in Iran. So you have a place that like all the transport is relying on diesel and diesel is more expensive than it ever, it's ever been, right? Like $9 a gallon for diesel fuel. And then the last thing, and I had never heard about this, is that there is this cap on Palestinian liquidity. So you,

I think this is like best explained. I'll just read what was sent to me because I think this is, I just want to make this super clear. The major, the majority of financial transactions in the West Bank take place in Israeli shekels, often in cash. Palestinian workers and businesses deposit those bank notes in Palestinian banks, which credit their accounts electronically. But Palestinian banks themselves cannot carry out that conversion on their own. For that, they have to send truckloads of cash to Israeli banks in exchange for electronic balances. So what's the issue here? Israel caps the transfers at $5.8 billion US dollars annually. So even though that Palestinian banks receive around

$9.8 billion in cash each year, this creates a severe liquidity shortage with more than $5.5 billion dollars in cash just sitting untouched in Palestinian bank faults. So less liquidity means less room for economic activity. So anything that you would need to like take out a loan for, like to make a major transaction, or any time that you need to do a foreign currency exchange, maybe to like handle the importer export of goods that would allow your economy to flourish. All of these things are like controlled and limited by the way the Israeli banking system subjugates the Palestinian one. And I've never like, I, I've read so many articles about,

and this is still terrorism, but when people like firebomb and like shoot Palestinians from like these outposts and things. But I've never read an article about like the financial ways this region is being like choked out by the, you know,

the government that is occupied them. And I think I just wanted to share that because I think that's something even through the documentaries and things I've watched is gets a really limited amount of exposure. I wonder if it's almost part of this strategy of, you know, like, yeah, have these outposts go out there. And that gets the attention. And then, and then you have all these things underneath the surface that are just preventing a person from growing their life in any way. I think you're, I think there's like a subset of like even further right wing people in Israel that are like cause as much like carnage and damage as possible.

But then there's a more like, and I use this word very contextually, moderate version where people are like, if this. if this is what demands people's attention, but ultimately, like, Netanyahu can, like, make an announcement about how, like, we're cracking down on the outposts because it doesn't really matter if they're, like, if, like, these kids committing acts of, like, terrorism are... Do you know what I mean?

Like, because it's backed by this much larger institutional displacement of people that is doing the bulk of the work that makes it very difficult to live there. This is going to sound like an insane sentence, but there is, there's a funny angle of this. And I'm going to tell you why.

It's going to sound crazy. The things that you're talking about, these horrors, right now there's an Israeli election coming up, and the party that is probably going to beat Netanyahu is running on him being too pro-Palestinian. Yeah. What? Can you show this?

This is a Vigdor Lieberman who probably will win. I guess it's not. I'm not, I'm not uncertain. I have to do, we're doing a presentation on it, we're working on it, but he's running ads, like you can see on the left here, where Nanyahu is painted as being like, like, almost like Thomas Massey with AOC. Like Nanyahu within Israel is being painted as being this like, he's too soft on Palestine. And you're talking about all of the things that are happening currently right now. Yes. Under his long tenure as leader.

And it's like that, that's wild to me. That to me is like shocking. When I found this out, we're doing a- It's just this insane ultra-right wing within Israel politics like these like the Ben Gavirs of the world

that are like Hill all Palestinians so we can have all of the land like that's basically that's basically what is rooted in and it's crazy because it's like the whole world is watching like Benjamin Nighting Yahoo

be this incredibly evil guy and then there's a guy in Israel who is like he's not evil enough like he's not evil enough like Yeah, wild. Insanely sad and tragic. Yeah, but I really appreciate

my friend's time, like walking me through a lot of this. I thought it was worth sharing on the show because I feel like this is, this is some of the stuff that is like less, less reported on, at least, you know, in my world. Maybe we'll put on some great news coming out of this region one day. And until then, God damn, I hope things improve.

This is horrible. How do we transition? How do we transition? From that to the Strait of Hormuz. Oh, oh, I can do this. I can get this. I specifically mentioned that $9 diesel prices right now are a part of what is like compounding

the economic effect in the West Bank, right? And I think you had like a general straight of Hormuz update. So, yes, I think this is relevant to what you said. We're talking about $9 diesel in Palestine, but even in America it's $7, $8 a lot of place. Like it's very high. People all over the world are encountering higher diesel. There's riots in France about it, among other things.

but there's fuel prices are becoming a big issue. And an interesting fact that is like counter-narrative is that actually right now, as of literally four days ago, this is from the BBC, oil flows out of Hormuz are almost back to pre-war levels. Like, it is not closed in the way that people think about. And in fact, I've covered this for a few weeks now. It's at first, it was 40% pre-rower oil and it's been going up.

They have been getting oil out of Hormuz. I did a longer video, but the basic idea is that all of the Gulf states, other than Saudi Arabia who has the pipeline, all the other ones, Oman, etc., they really have this oil and need to get it out. Like, it's like they just, they're stuck without it. It's like a huge part of government revenues, they have to get it out.

And the reason chip tankers weren't going through Hormuz is because, number one, they were afraid of getting hit by Iranian drones. But number two is they couldn't get insured. Because even if they were willing to take the risk and go, no one would give the insurance and then they're fucked if they get hit. So the pressure of this economic, desire to get it out has created that the governments themselves are stepping in and basically providing either the insurance or low-cost boats, smaller boats that just go through,

say, fuck it. And then we get to the other side, they ship transfer it to a larger tanker that's insured and goes onto China or wherever. And like this policy, along with the United States providing like extremely expensive, like military and drone covers along the Oman coast of the Hormuz. Like these two things have combined to start with a trickle and then eventually just the flood of oil going out. And so it is getting out.

However, this has not impacted diesel prices because all of the extra costs that go into either maintaining it or the insurance or the ship transfers are being added on to the price of a barrel. So even though there's more oil getting out, it hasn't just changed the price. And I have some, here's just like an example.

Ship captains that are going to make this extremely dangerous sale are being paid 100,000. $100,000 a month. Like the cost of every member of the crew, because it's now super dangerous. Like you might actually get struck. But if you think about it,

Iran doesn't have the supply chain to actually strike every ship. But they just strike a few and they rely on people like being too afraid to do it. But now that there's just a wave of them going through, they're kind of ringing. So it's this weird,

that is the thing, but here's the cost. Here's the crude tanker oil rates. So to get a VLCC, very large crude carrier, I think is like the term they use, used to be around $200,000 or less to be able to make this full transfer.

You can see this price here in the top right. This is a great oil report. 1.2 million. Anybody that owns a tanker. By the way, any tanker that's like even like, they're going as far as like 40 years old, like really old, rusted ass tankers, they're all getting bought for a thousand percent markups.

Like every tanker that exists in the world is getting bought and they're just throwing it in Hormuz. And like, the older the better because if you lose it, it's almost not a problem. And they're just running the oil out. Is this like the gold rush in America where just everybody's fly? You can make big money if you get to the straight of Hormuz right now. So anyone who's like super risk tolerant, I guess not risk averse and has any connection

to like tankers or like oil oil energy. They're going to Hormuz because that is where an absurd amount of money is because of the economic pressure to get this oil out. And so this is weird like this is not a narrative that is yet being picked up. Most people are not talking about the fact that Hormuz is kind of technically open right now, but because it's open in a way where Iran still is striking some ships, the cost is still absolutely astronomical. And all of this gets added to a barrel of oil.

Now again, I don't, yeah, here it is like, you know, it's 43 times the cost of what it used to be. And it's equivalent to $33 a barrel, which is, again, this number right here. Or 27% of the delivered cost of the crude oil. And this used to be, I think, 2% of the cost of oil. So a huge chunk of the cost of oil now is just the cost of delivery because of the risk. but they haven't stopped delivery. So it's just a difference from what's before,

but it doesn't meaningfully translate to people's like quality life getting better. But it does change the narrative. So I do want to say this. Obviously we should never be in the war and around. We've said it on this podcast from the beginning. I said it personally. It's a fucking foolish idea.

My memory's hazy. I seem to be here. You were extremely proble. But I do want to say that I think the narrative that it's like a hardcore Iranian victory. I would say he's being. a little bit undermined because right now the only country that can't reliably

get oil out is Iran because it can't get past the next layer of American blockades. And the real, which is their currency, is every three weeks, like significantly getting hammered. And so there is like a real economic crisis. Now I saw a really good analysis by someone who

is an Iranian foreign policy expert, I think, from there. And he basically said the regime there is so like I guess used to withstanding economic problems and sanctions. Like they are so entrenched on that front that it is unlikely that even if it gets really bad, it will change their ability to maintain control. So it's kind of like this weird standoff waiting game where they are very entrenched,

hard to remove. And like the trend line is actually kind of bad for them. but they have more ability to tank it than I think America, which has like midterms and, you know, so it's this weird thing. But I just want to say it's different than I think the easy narratives

they're coming out. And I kind of wanted to cover it because I thought it was interesting. I think it's like, it's more complex than that. And certainly it feels like both sides. Actually, the entire world economy and Iran economy is all taking simultaneous pain until I guess somebody gives in.

Somebody gives up. Yeah, which is like bad. You know, it's not, yeah. Do you know what the, the, the output is on the Red Sea side? Like how much does that play a part right now? I don't have the exact numbers because another, so there's a pipeline across Saudi Arabia,

which we've talked about. It transmits seven million bears all a day. They did repair it after it got struck by, they say question mark, but it was probably Iran through Iraq on drones. And so it's flowing again, but then the Houthis are still striking only Saudi Arabian ships as they try to go out

the bad albumin into the Gulf of Aden Eden Calvin, your Gulf. And so, it's question mark. I know that tankers are still going out, going up through Suez, going through the Mediterranean,

going out and around Africa, but the cost that adds to a barrel of oil is massive. So either it's through Hormuzan expensive or it's through that way inexpensive, but it's not really going out the cheap way, is my understanding. But they don't attack anybody else's ships.

It's just sad to ship. My understanding is the Houthis have made a deal with America. and other countries. But literally, the who, yes, I know it sounds crazy. I promise you. That's crazy. That through negotiators in Oman, America has talked through Omani negotiators.

The Houthis have said we are not going to strike even Israelis ships. Not America's, we're only striking Saudi Arabianships, which is why Trump has not returned MBS's calls. MBS. I'm sorry. Trump is not coming to like send U.S. resources to fight the Houthis. And so it's this weird, it's just a very weird time in the Middle East. And I think it was all completely unavoidable.

Nobody could have prevented this. We didn't have it. There was another choice. No, it was just destined to be this way. But, uh, do you think when Trump made the deal with the hoothies, he like hung up the phone, he was like, damn, I'm good.

Art of the deal, baby. Chapter 11. Yeah, I don't know. I just think it's crazy. I think it's a weird time. It's weird that that so much oil could go through Hormuz and the prices still be not only elevated, but more elevated than they were

when less oil was going through Hormuz. It's like, it's really mind-boggling. The way, I think this whole Hormuz thing because I've been pretty following it closely, is just a testament to the weird interconnected nature of the global economy and how pressures make insane things possible. Like right now, oil from, I think it's the UAE,

they're literally loading thousands of barrels onto trucks and trucking them across the desert to get the difference. Like things that would not be economically viable are viable because of how expensive it all is. So it's just weird. It's just weird. And I thought it was worth covering. But I think this will segue nicely into our next topic, which apparently all of this combined people don't like.

No. That's actually wrong. Oh, really? They love it. Approval rating through the roof. Oh. It's 180. You imagine if all this is happening in Trump was like at 90%?

People were like, fuck yeah. I mean, yeah, maybe if I'm just, I don't know. If it's, if they had attacked us first. you know, maybe if he'd waited for that. Oh, there's a million things. I mean, I feel like that would be the only situation, right? Yeah. Perry, do you have the Routers article?

Okay. What does Routers have to say about this? What does my internet router have to say? Look, Rota Router did a little bit of an investigation. As you've probably heard, Trump's approval rating is very, very, very low. But I thought that I would call out a few highlights from both this article as well as no opinion did an article. So first off, you can just scroll down until you see the graph. right now, 32% of Americans approve of Donald Trump's presidency. This is historically low. It's

real bad. I mean, you can see at the start of the election, it was like 47%. And it has just been plummeting. So this is, it's not only low. It is historically low, as we'll see in a sec with another poll. What I thought was interesting from this as well is that he's particularly plummeting with Hispanic voters. So there's a quote from them, Hispanic voters helped propel Trump to victory in the 24 contest. He won nearly half the Hispanic vote compared with roughly one third in 2020, but that support has waned in the recent months. Now it's only 24% of Hispanic Americans. So it's interesting that, you know, you have the Iran war and you have cost of living, which is probably the biggest factors that are causing the Republican base or his, you know,

voters to be turning away from Trump. But this Hispanic voters, which were this, you know, long-sought dream to like court that group. Yeah. And he did successfully do that. Going into 20, is just like blown now. They've blown that lead entirely. This is what's, younger people. This is what's backfiring on him, especially in Texas,

because they're like, I think the state is like disproportionately young compared to average states, and then also very Hispanic. So because this group is pivoting so hard, it's like what is making Texas such a swing this time around? Yeah.

It's funny because if you see a graph of both Gen Z voters and Hispanic voters, it's like this magical six-month period in 2024 where they go from like, relatively low interest or approval in Republicans and policies, and it spikes up to 50% plus, like going into November of the election. It's this, I mean, it's this collective hallucination

that a huge amount of people had right around, like, the assassination attempt, and, you know, Commonwealth not being a good messenger and also the gas prices being high. And then it plummets right back down the second they actually get the policies. It's crazy. Like, a lot of things change because of that moment,

that excitement, I mean, you guys remember the fucking vibes around the assassination attempt when he said fight, fight, fight. And it was a weird time. And we're paying the price. I think so no opinion did this article. The second Trump presidency is a world historic failure. And if you pull up the two polls, I sent you Perry, I think it's worth acknowledging that

while you see, I think especially as, you know, left-leaning people, it is easy for us to say there's this collective delusion for like two months. And then they woke up to reality. But I think an argument that Noah makes and many others have made is like, and we just covered. Trump has fumbled the bag real, real bad, right? In theory, people elected him to do what he did in the first term, which is, yeah, he's going to be bombastic and annoying, particularly on social issues and online and do a lot of locker room talk. But, you know, in the first term, he did not start new wars. And he just focused on the stock market getting pumped and a couple small cultural.

I just say like, so like what I'm saying is Hispanic voters have over a many decade period, not even just Trump been mostly voting against Republicans. Like that, but then this, and even Trump won, I'm saying, even during Trump won their approval. This is two month period where like two groups that traditionally vote not

Republican, which is younger voters. And they just, they both surge at one time right into the exactly when it matters and then immediately. It's just a weird. Yes. That's what I'm saying. Yeah,

that is true. But I think that the argument that folks are making or Noah does in his article is the idea that like these are self-owned by Trump and you wouldn't necessarily see that plunge back down. if, for example, he had just closed the border and not had ice go around and like shoot people and round them up, right? Like, that is not a great way to get Hispanic support to be like,

probably most people were like, yeah, we want the border to be closed, stop illegal immigration, not have gangs round up people based on their skin color, right? And then with the younger cohort, now they were told we're not going to go do wars and the cost of living is going to get better, right? And in theory, if he had not started a war and focused on inflation

and not been spending so much money, again, these self-owns that go against what he was at least pitching, in theory that would have happened as much. But obviously... No, I think there's a strong case to be made that if Trump had done absolutely nothing. Like if he had literally just, you know, talked on TV and talking rallies, but nothing at all.

He would be substantially more popular. Right. And probably like have a, you know, been able to carry that vibe shift for a long time. Right. So it's just this like unbelievable self-owned. You know, he's never going to get our side. But I think he could have kept the other side.

And instead, what is happening is here. So Wall Street Journal poll, presidential approval before the midterms. You can see that going back, this is what, 30, 40 years now since we've had this type of polling. Trump is going in at 37%. It is the lowest historically ever since we've had these polls. To be worse than Bush 06 is fucking nasty. Yeah.

Yeah. And then, go to the next one. That's nasty. This one, Trump's approval among Republicans on handling the cost of living. Now more disapprove of how he's handled cost of living than approve. And that was like supposed to be. Again, like that was the thing where he was going to come in and stop the inflating. and just deal with the stock market

and not do all this crazy stuff that Biden's doing. And they disapprove on that. Peter Teal's going out saying the administration's full of not competent people. And then Republicans, there's one more thing in this article. Republicans now say, do they support the party, the Republican Party or Trump more? And 56% said they support the Republican Party.

And only 34% they said they support Donald Trump. It was like 7% said both. I bet a year ago that'd be so different. Exactly. Swap. So now you have people who, who, you know, lean conservative or vote Republican saying it's not really about Trump. It's about the party. And it's like, dude, this is a massive swing from a year and a half ago. Yeah. And then we're only a year and a half into is, I feel like he is going to get fed to the fucking wolves by the end of this. Like, the anger is building up. He is going to be the totem of just throw him on every problem. Like, I think, yeah, in a way, I'm kind of worried about that, you know, like he, he,

will become this pariah that will be blamed for so much when, don't get me wrong, he's responsible for a lot of it. But ultimately, so many people are complicit in the choices that are being made, like the whole way down. Peter Thiel's a funny person to like, like, you did so much to help this administration and these incompetent people get the power. Uh, I saw, this is a much smaller scale, but you guys see Theo Vaughn with Zoron? Yeah. And he's like ruffling his hair. And it's like, It's just funny that like that's the new wave and he's just on it. You know what I'm saying? Like this guy one year ago was super Trump,

super going to the inauguration doing it. And now it's like, hey, Zaraan. You're done of my guy. It's just this new wave. It's a whatever's the. I go back to what I was joking about earlier so much because what I find so and I know this is fucking. It's not really what I want the show to be about,

you know, in a sense like I don't want to just complain all the time. But it is fucking insane to me that like you had, you had a four year period. to go look at. It's like, it's not like every other election ever. I think that 40-year period is so different from this one. Yeah, that's, I think, the counter argument is like a person could have voted for Trump and let's say, you know, this big independent block or, you know, they're more in the middle, right?

That is now objectively swinging away and presumably when faced between Kamala and Trump, they said, well, we have the evidence of both of these at, let's say, administrations have, you know, they've done a term and I think Trump will probably do what he did. And I think if people knew what Trump was going to do, maybe that wouldn't have gone its way. I mean, that's... Yeah, I mean, I guess even evidence through like the approval rating, like, you can look at... If he ran on what he actually did, yeah. Like Trump, Trump in 2018 is like in the middle-ish of that chart we looked at. It's like, okay, if he had just stayed that guy, then presumably he would have retained

more of the support. So I can see that perspective, yeah. I will say Peter Thiel is just... He loves putting out insane quotes. Can you imagine being his publicist? Peter, just say,

just all you have to say is being evil is bad. You don't have to... Peter, when someone asks you are the antichrist, don't pause. Peter,

I'm begging you. Don't pause and think about it. Like, you just say no instantly. Snap that one. This gets so, it gets like that thing, though,

you know, like Elon and Peter Thiel and Trump, it's like, I don't, if they weren't that type of person, they wouldn't be in that position in the first place. Yeah,

for sure. You know? Yeah, of course. Support for this show comes from Lisa. Okay, so in my household, I've recently gotten two cats, and I also recently got a Lisa mattress. And now the old mattress we had, when we first got the cats, they didn't like hopping up in bed with us very much, I noticed.

But more recently, we have started a tradition, where we bring out a treat at the end of night, we get in bed, and then the cats hop up on the bed with us, they eat the treat, and then they started staying up. on the Lisa mattress. They just hang out up there. And then I, if frankly, I've been sleeping better than I ever have. Because I was going to ask about humans.

And if humans would like these. The Lisa mattress has designed for specific sleep positions and fuel preferences. And it's great for humans. But if you need a cat specific mattress. I don't think they're worried about cats at all in designing. I'm not sure. You know, the cat is many, why wire cutter awarded Lisa with the best hybrid investment. memory phone mattresses.

But apparently, wire cutter, all the judges are cats. All the cats. Wire Carter's entire writing stuff is cats, and they've been plugging Lisa for years. So if you want, if you're a human who wants a great sleep...

For your cat. Or you just want it for your cats. Go to Lisa.com for 20% off select mattresses, plus get an extra $50 off with promo code Lemonade, exclusive for our listeners. That's L-E-E-E-S-A.com promo code lemonade for 20.

off select mattresses, plus an extra of $50 off. Support our show and let them know we sent you in the survey after checkout. Lisa.com promo code Lemonade. Here's the thing. It's hard to even find Republicans on the campaign trail right now. And it's even harder to get them to talk about Donald Trump. Ladies and gentlemen, bring up the next governor of the state of Ohio. But there's at least one Republican right now who seems to be.

to be trying a different strategy. Good to be in Parma. Thank. I love the energy in this room. If you take this out in 44 days from day, we're going to win this thing in a decisive victory. Who's ready for that? All summer long, Ramoswamy has kept up an unusually ambitious calendar full of fairs, rallies, town halls. Let's get this done. This week on America, actually, what is the GOP message for the midterms and how are Republicans dealing with the elephant in the room? Trump's second term has flopped.

I think the Republican Party has not looked highly upon right now, and I think that everyone knows it. Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. Okay, well, this leads into one of the hilarious, funny things that Trump has done. We're starting funny ones back and forth. So that fucking TV ad that we started with is one example of Trump responding to all this and be like, well, maybe if I say I'm going to kill the communists, that we'll reverse this trend. Okay. Which, by the way, he's spent, again, funny for a, we just. talked about, large cohort of people who are upset at how he's handled the cost of living.

And he then says, here's an ad you're watching while on TV. And it says paid for by the US government. And it's like, I don't think people are going to appreciate that when it costs a lot of fucking money to live right now. And then the other thing he's doing, which certainly won't affect the cost of living, is he is repeatedly saying he's going to offer $5,000 checks to every single Americans. Aidan. The main thing I want to bring up is like that he's so insisted about it because we had covered this a while ago when like it had been he had just posted about it on truth social i think and then jd vance was kind of doing the rounds you know jd vance is doing clean up on it where he has to go get interviewed by people and answer like why this is like a

rational and good idea his job is so funny he has to like take the most insane things and like put a spin on him of veneer of intellectualism dude him and beset and rubio they have to have to do this over and over again they do the like world strangest media circuit where like you Anyway, but Trump made his own video, I think, this week or end of last week, where he was announcing that this was going to happen again. Basically, if you, if you vote Republican and keep the Republicans in power, we'll pay everybody $5,000. And I think this has been catching my eye even more is because people are going to town on that smiling friends clip on Twitter where so many people are posting, smiling friends and animated show on YouTube is like, or on HBO, it's funny. there's a clip where the two main characters are hanging out with this guy that's president. And he makes a public service announcement. He's like, hello, everyone, I'm the money president.

I'm giving everyone a million dollars. And people keep posting that over and over and over again. And I think the obvious questions are all, like, even Fox News is asking him like, okay, like, sure, you want to do this. It's like, but the Republicans aren't in control everything right now. Why don't you just, why don't you want to do it right now? No, that doesn't make any sense.

It doesn't make a fucking sense. We have to win. And I think it's funny to see, it is interesting to see like somebody like J.D. Vance get interviewed on Fox News and even see a Fox News host be asking questions like, this doesn't really make any sense. There's 250-ish million adult citizens in America. That'd be about $1.5, 1.25 trillion dollars. Do you think that that would

Help or hurt inflation? Tariff money my friend Maybe you haven't heard of the tariffs They're bringing in the fucking bacon baby And I know I know what you're thinking in the audience You're thinking didn't the Supreme Court Strike down the tariffs and we have to refund them Well with a law workaround

We can still tariff Canada And the Canadian tariffs just them will pay for all of it Pay for everyone to get $5,000 While we're refunding the previous tariffs Yes. Uh, yeah. The argument that JDB has to go on fucking TV and say, no,

this is not a bribe because it goes to every American. But like, when you make a direct statement, if we win, you get 5,000. That is a bribe. Uh, but that's a good news on that is I saw polling on this

and it is pretty unpopular, even among Republicans. Yeah. It's not a well-received policy. People are like instantly recognize this as like, what it is, a bribe. Yeah. And then secondly,

almost more importantly, is that even Rob against, most people do not believe him. They just think it won't happen because he's made other promises like $2,000 tariff checks and yada, yada, yada, over and over. And none of them have come into fruition. And so people just think like it probably won't happen. And also the caveat is that he also demands

they win the House and the Senate, which is also just mathematically very unlikely. Right. So it's kind of smart on his end in like a twisted way, which is that that's not going to happen. The Democrats are at least going to win the House. The Senate is the contested one. So he'll be able to throw up his hands

and say, only we had the house. If you had shown up and vote, we couldn't do anything. I would have given you the check. But we didn't win. Okay, I do, I have the Nordic fun fact next. Yes, dude.

I want to hold on to it for a little longer. I don't want you to. I want to take it out of your hand. I'm hungry. I'm hungry. I'm hungry for the honey. I'm keeping it for me now. We've been doing all this America stuff.

I want to do because I'm itching to get to this because I didn't do the research on this story and I want to hear about it. about the Manchester City football scandal. But I promise he'll give me the Nordic Funfax afterwards. Okay, I'll tell you about this. It's not a huge story.

Your gift will be there. Thank you. You pull us up, Perry. So I don't know nothing about football, really. I'm not going to pretend to be an expert. Okay. But I just say it correctly. It's just funny about the English team, but yeah.

This is Man City, which has since 2009, was when they were acquired by a sheik from, uh, UAE, UAE, uh, have been one of the winningest teams in football. They've been remarkably successful. And in that time, people have been praising their ability to raise revenue, get sponsors, higher top talent, and run their team well. Recently, it was found out that they are enormously guilty of financial fraud. And the unique rules of, I believe this is Premier League, Premier League football is that, you know, it's not like most leagues here in America where there's like a salary cap or

across leagues. Mostly, they just want everything to be sustainable, which is the idea is you can't have a rich owner come in and pay for everything. They basically say, you can spend a percentage of your actual revenue that you get from sponsors and jersey sales and yada, yada, yada, but you can't use your owner's money to do whatever you want. So they're very, very, very absurdly wealthy owner. Didn't like those rules. He wants to win. And he doesn't really care about money because he is not only personally wealthy, but he is the vice president and deputy prime minister of the UAE as a whole. He has enormous political power. It is basically a state where, you know,

personal wealth and state wealth are very intertwined. He basically has access to the resources of a state. And he wants to win. He also wrote his $68 million yacht, nearly a billion dollars on a single boat, Topaz out some of the games. So this is the revenue of Man City over the past, let's say, two decades, right?

And it's interesting, Etriac. It looks like it's actually performing rather well in the revenue front. I wonder if any of the sponsors, are getting value out of their sponsorship. So this is their commercial revenue from their sponsors. And you can see since he takes over in 08, it has been an unbroken line up,

even incredibly during the years of COVID. When every other football team had massive dips, they just kept going. So these are the years they're currently being investigated on, the ones I've highlighted in red here, though it's possible this has continued in the years on the right. Let's find a split. They've been found guilty, as I've said.

they looked in the numbers and they wanted to see what percentage of that sponsorship revenue was real revenue and what percentage was the rich owner paying a sponsor

to pass through the money to you. The red parts are the parts that pass through. Jesus. So essentially their actual sponsor growth has been almost nothing until they started winning

and they got a little bit but like almost nothing and even after this enormous guilty verdict which is a massive deal in football and has been completely you know, a major piece of news.

It only covers through 2018. So still legally, it's saying the part of the right here is all good. I bet it's clean. I bet it's all clean after 2018. Starting in 2018, they just got clean. They found Jesus and it's all. So it seems to me that this team

has been basically a massive front for an extremely wealthy person to cheat the rules and they've been winning consistently. So it has worked. Like they've had enormous success in football because of it. And they haven't announced the punishment yet. though I do believe, even though usually these things aren't,

it should be quite severe. My understanding is they have got them dead to rights. There is no realistic appeal at this point. They've got like emails and financial accounting. And they've got them. It was literally 114 counts. And they found him guilty on 113 of them. And like, yeah, locked out.

So, uh, it says they're going to tar and feather Erling Holland. Yep, yep. UK law says you can do that. Yes, they're going to pick one guy and just put it all on him. And yeah. And that's him. on. So it remains to be seen whether there'll be an additional investigation into the years

after where they almost certainly did the same thing. But right now, if you're a man city fan, it's going to be a tough time because it seems like they're going to lose a lot. But this is not like, my understanding, it's not like a criminal offense still. This is a, maybe it is. I guess it is like a fraud on some level, but the rules they are breaking are within the league. And so it is like they're going to be punished within the league. Nobody's going to jail, am I understanding? I think the big thing here, and football fans, you can explain this better than me, I'm sure, is that people knew this was happening for a really long time.

Actually, can you pull this up? Last thing I'll say. This is manager Jesse March, who, uh, for leads, another team. He said, I think Man City should be punished severely.

I think they should have to go down. And by the way, everyone knew about it. Everyone knew. And the idea is like, this is a completely open secret. And, and,

and finally they're getting some justice on it, even though it's like literally decades later. Yeah, because it's an explosion, like an explosion in revenue that the team never had before. And all of the sponsors are like UAE-backed companies. It's so clear what was happening. And it's interesting because I think there had been complaints from fans for so long that this was continuing to go on unchallenged. So I think similar to the way the, I would argue this is like a bigger scandal, but I think it's similar to the way that the NBA

Kawhi Leonard Clipper scandal was breaking out where it felt like such a long time of knowing this is what happened and waiting for the NBA to say what the punishment was and it ended up being something pretty severe in that case. But in that

the Kawhi stuff was over the course of like a year basically from when Pablo Torre like revealed the information to when the NBA made their statement. And this is been, I mean, more than 10? Like, I think 50, 18 years, right? Yeah. And that whole time, people had an understanding that this was very, very likely

the case with the management denying it. Yeah. Not only the management deny it. At certain points in these years, there have been smaller investigations where they were found guilty or fined, and they appealed them and won every time. Like, they used their pressure and their size and their money to get out of it. So, yeah, I do hope the punishment is severe. It is funny to think that if they are punished severely,

that sports leagues are doing a better job of holding the wealthy accountable than... Which isn't insane thing to say. But it is a wild thought. I don't know if anyone anything is to do that. That's it for me. No, I mean, that was pretty much it. We can skate on over. I'll give you your treat now.

Yeah, give me the order to find out of Finland. So this is a story out of Finland. And there's been a couple updates recently. Google. You don't like that? You want a different country? Finland, Bo. That's Doug.

Marketing. Who? Marketing. Marketing. It's not really marketing. Finland? Oil. I'm interested in that.

Google is committing one of their largest, the largest investment they've made in Europe, a $15 billion commitment to Finland to build new data centers in the northern part of the country, partly because it's cold? It's so cold up there. And it's more cost-effective. to be able to... Probably use for the shitty weather

of the Nordics is what I'll say. Some people like the weather. It's my jealousy. You didn't like... I did boots on the ground reporting there. Sorry. You did boots on the ground reporting today. I took one of those 12 axes

political things. Yeah. And, you know, it's not... I didn't do that many questions or whatever, but it put me as like Nordic social democracy and I wanted to shoot myself. Dude, I took... I took the,

Sweden has this like election compass thing. I saw it in the Discord. I took it to send to my friend and I landed on like the two like further left parties in Sweden. And I sent it to my friend. I'm like, I'm the Sweden Democrats worst nightmare.

But I heard that that question have like, I'm coming to ruin the country. Let's ask Tucker to do it too. Let's get Tucker's thoughts. I heard that quiz. I saw on the disc where they're making fun of it. It had like very Swedish questions where it was like,

if there's a reindeer farm and they want to do like mining in it, Do you support the reindeer or the money? I think me and Fumi were talking about that. I was like, it's like, I need the content. Like I didn't tell me, tell me the reindeer thing, how it works. Anyway, Google making this investment in Finland a different country. And partly because it's so cold up there.

They want to build the data centers out there. And part of this commitment also is they're like pre-purchasing a bunch of Finland's nuclear power capacity for, the coming years through 2050. And what was interesting to me is that the plant, like one of the plants that is supplying the power

to the data centers was going to be closed in the year 2030. And this investment by Google is keeping the plant open through 2050. So one of the pro arguments for it in Finland is like they are paying

for a level of electricity generation that wouldn't have been like the normal society like wouldn't have paid for without this investment. There's like concerns from different parties in the country about like, you know, does this strain the grid? We need to evaluate whether or not like prices are going to go up for people. You know, does this actually make sense?

But their prime minister who I've watched a few interviews of, I think I'm a fan of the guy. He is saying, no, this, you know, the economic impact, like this isn't supposed to limit any of the electricity that is needed for like day to day life. and economic activity and we think this will benefit the like Finnish economy. You know, it doesn't seem, you know, the thing is with Nordic politics

is they all seem so relatively chill compared to when we talk about our stuff. Boring is what I think. You know, you have a little thrill. You want a president who's spending state money on his ads for himself. And they even started a new war anytime recently? Yeah, where's the wars?

They bombed. What did they talk about on Nordic lemonade stand? You know, they did actually, they did actually do some, some, oh, they did some crazy, for the first time, like Finland and Sweden did some joint military exercise against Russia, Russian things. See, I'm not explaining it, but it was cool. I like the Nordic fundbacks end up in Ukraine eventually. I, you know there's other, there's other countries, Satan. Not just Ukraine and Russia and Scandinavia. If it doesn't have to

do with Scandinavia or Sudan, I will not cover it. Anyway, we're making fun of them, but if somebody who owns a reindeer farm wanted to chat with us, that'd be so open. I would love to interview someone about a reindeer farm and the deep concerns they have with mining. That would be actually fascinating. It'd be very interesting. Why don't we slide on over to our last topic? Last topic of the day, this is a follow up from a, let's say, series that we've been doing about social media companies getting plowed by reindeer in the ass. Okay.

Metaphorically, the reindeer being the legal system. Right. Okay. The legalism being the reindeer in the situation. Yeah. So in this analogy, Mark Zuckerberg is in front of a reindeer. And the rainier's bent over. So let's move from that. Okay. Uh, situation. Okay. Over to a different dolliance. Okay. We're TikTok. You're closing your eyes and imagining it. Let's, okay. Okay. So TikTok. TikTok. Tick talk bent over. Okay. And Alabama. Okay. Is it? We've been, we've been recorded for like three hours to be fair. Okay. Metaphorically, Alabama's about the fucking talk. Metaphorically, TikTok is being torn asunder. Okay. Needy ravaged by Alabama.

Okay. Because in 2025, Alabama Attorney General sued TikTok over concerns about teen health. Same story we've said a number of times. So we've given updates about how meta has lost some very high profile lawsuits this year. And, uh, and has agreed to change various things on their apps for teens. and pay out all this money. TikTok's also been getting sued by a lot of people. They have been, for the most part,

I mean, actually for all of them, just settling. So none of these have gone to trial and there haven't been like big exposés on what TikTok is doing. So they did this again. Amazon, Amazon, Alabama had sued them saying you guys are letting teens evade your age restriction and you're trapping them in these like content things

that harm their health. So they settled. This is just recently two weeks ago now. And TikTok agreed one, they're going to do limitations for teens. This is just in Alabama. for right now, but it's going to be a two-hour daily time limit. You have to have pausing after 15 minutes of use. It's going to be stricter age checks. And they got to pay Alabama $100 million,

which will go up to $300 million if other states' attorneys sign on. So this can get even bigger. If you're a state with a budget deficit, you should be suing TikTok just for the money. A hundred. Isn't that like how much the California wealth tax is supposed to raise or something? Yeah, I think you just call this a wealth tax basically. They don't pay their taxes. So let's just sue them for the other harms they cause and get the money. Yeah. So this is just part of a bigger trend where this keeps happening over and over.

So there's like 27 states that are suing TikTok right now with similar lawsuits. And I think you're going to continue to see this just massive attack because, again, this is just for states. You also have individuals and municipalities also suing. You know, META lost that case against

that teenager. An individual who was paid out, I believe, $3 million. It was between $3 and $7. That's for one person. These cases are increasingly succeeding, and I think you're going to see major changes to how these apps are used by teenagers because they have to. They are getting, they are getting, you know, you already are picturing it in your head. I'm picturing it. Yeah. It's vivid. I think this is like any American opportunity for money. There's a bit of a gold rush here, perhaps, where if you're, you're realizing as more and more of these cases succeed, that, oh, I as a lawyer can, like, encourage people to go after this type of case. I, as a person who feels victim to it can go after this type of case. Like, more and more people are going to go for it as president. Yeah.

Yeah. But, I mean, you know, I think it is probably good. I think we have discussed this. I thought TikTok should have been banned when the entire country passed that bill and then didn't do it. It should be banned. So actually, that falls up. I was curious as I saw this, like, what's happened with TikTok? Because if you remember, you know, they created a joint partnership.

And now the American side is owned by this large... Larry Ellison, mostly by Oracle. Yeah, yeah. But still partially by Bite Dance. And there were all these stories about like, oh, everybody's leaving. But you always hear about that whenever, you know, when Elon took over her X or Twitter and everybody started leaving and going to, you know, pick your choice.

Yeah. So according to survey data from censor tower, there was initially a surge in deletions, like in January for TikTok. But by February, daily active users was back to 90. percent of it was before. And it's still 80 minutes of average daily time per American. And I just want to, I just want to re, I want to say that again, an hour, an hour and 20 minutes. You cut that down 20 minutes. Is the average of what an American is spending on TikTok. And that still appears to be the case. We don't have like, they haven't shared explicit data since February, but that's the

survey data we have. That's so much. Yeah, I feel I relapsed on YouTube shorts, bro. I was like, I successfully stopped watching YouTube shorts for like the first half of the year and then recently. And I can tell it got really bad because when you click on shorts a bunch, it reorientates your YouTube feed to like highlight them first.

And it came back for me. And I'm like, dude, I'm fucking, I'm back at the trough. I'm back of the trough. I'm a weak link. Aren't we all though? It's fucking, it's getting us all, bro. The 50,

I wonder how that pause after 15 minutes work. It works because when you mentioned it and made me think of like that little pop-up that would happen during like Wii Sports that would tell you to take a break and be like, you know, like, and then you just like swipe it away and you like keep going.

Yeah, it's kind of useless. Uh, I mean, that wraps up, do we want to call it? I think that's the news, yeah. Yeah, yeah, we go there. All right, that wraps up this week's episode of Lemonade Stand. If you want, I know what you're thinking.

You guys have been doing a lot of guest episodes. I don't like the guest episodes as much as the normal show. keeping on with the new. We do the normal show, an extra hour of it on the Patreon every week. You can go to patreon.com slash lemonade stand. And also, we are launching something we've talked about for, actually since before we we started the show, our stock game, where you can use a set budget to draft stocks,

and we will track the results over the course of how long, Perry? Over each month. Well, it reoccurves over each month. And we have the winners. the winner of each month or the top three get a special role in the Discord and then we will

read out the names of the top 20. Yeah. So we're going to... Real quick. Do you have an image? Do you have like a visualist? Let's show it because the image is fucking cool.

We're going to be covering on the show in like a similar way to how we covered our own stock market game that we did like a year ago. And this is... This is September's winner. So Taco won, eliminated stand,

Anthropod, and then she's are our top three for September. And then the October game, you need to get your, if you go into the stock game channel on the Discord and you go down

and scroll down at the bottom, join game, select your stocks, you get them in by the 14th, and you'll be in for the October. I just want to reiterate, this is not real money. This is just a fun for fun game. You are drafting stocks to see what you hypothetically would have won. The fucking winner right now is doing

2X leveraged Bitcoin ETFs. Yes, sir. This is not financial advice in any way. I think it's the fun game like the one we play before we even started this show. which was really fun. It was a good time. I do want to point out, by the way, our second place,

great investment into Doug. Douglass Alamond, Inc. with down 18%. Let's not focus on the numbers. It was part of an overall balanced portfolio. We have no idea how Doug was doing during the middle of the month. Also, the number three and number five

just used my face as their profile picture. Well, so actually what you can also do is you can join a fund. So there are five funds, one and one for each of you, as well as independent and, I think the one with the communist sickle and hammer out. There's a communist fund for.

I think, I forget the name of it, but it is, you can pick your faction. Let's read all 20 of our top investors from September. First place, taco, and then lemonade, anthropod paw, cheese, who is apparently Atriarch, judging by their profile picture. M. Lama Love, Little Hugh, jawbreaker? A lot of atriacs

on the leaderboard. Well, that's our plan, I guess. Atcock. Atcock. Edge Santa. Kate Wolfe. It's Adcoq and E.J. Santa. It's not Edge Santa. I'll call them when they want if they have my profile picture. By the way, the eight one is fat eight. Eleven. Eleven. Kevin.

Let's go. We got a done one in there. Gruaba. And then Peyton. Wernlap 13. Silvermont, Texas. Avocado, another one, let's go NJ-E-331, King Rico, Wesley, Jolson, and Taco, US.

Is that two tacos? Am I confused here? Do they have, like, some pre-set profile pictures to pick from? They're weirdly all us. He said it's the... Oh, this is the... These are the funds that they picked. I see. Not the people picking a lot of the Aiden Fund.

There's a couple Aiden funds. It's because you invested fucking reindeer. No, I said we should mine instead of the rain house. So if you want to come play, check out the Patreon Or you want that normal episode every week Patreon.com slash lemonade stand

All right, we will see you guys on the next main episode Thanks for watching, bye All right.