PBD Podcast - $6 Gas Chaos, Ken Griffin Rips Mamdani + Nvidia’s AI Home Takeover | PBD #792

Episode Date: May 6, 2026

Patrick Bet-David, Tom Ellsworth, Brandon Aceto and Jeff Snider break down California gas prices hitting $6.06 a gallon, Trump's sudden pause of Project Freedom, Nvidia's pitch to put personal AI data centers in your home, Ken Griffin firing back at NYC Mayor Mamdani's wealth tax targeting his $238M penthouse, and the Anthropic CEO warning that AI disruption to white-collar jobs is coming faster than anyone is prepared for.------✍️ FILL OUT THE PBD PODCAST SURVEY & GET $25 TO VTMERCH.COM: https://bit.ly/42dpShr🦁 THE VAULT 2026: AUG 31ST TO SEPT 1ST: https://bit.ly/4mZdLhDⓂ️ CONNECT ON MINNECT: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4kSVkso ⁠⁠Ⓜ️ PBD PODCAST CIRCLES: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4mAWQAP⁠⁠👔 BET-DAVID CONSULTING: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4lzQph2 ⁠⁠🥃 BOARDROOM CIGAR LOUNGE: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4pzLEXj⁠⁠🇰 KALSHI: ⁠⁠⁠http://kalshi.com/pbd⁠⁠⁠💬 TEXT US: Text “PODCAST” to 310-340-1132 to get the latest updates in real-time!

Did you ever think you would make it? I feel I'm so much like it takes sweet with the theory. I know this life meant for me. Adam, what's your point? The future looks bright. My handshake is better than anything I ever signs. Right here. You are one of one?

My son's right there. I think I've ever said this before. All right, gang, you know, they say times are so hard right now right now that apparently this guy named Marco, I don't know if you guys are following this or not, Marco already has like two or three jobs and he's got another job that he's working part-time as a, you know, taking questions doing Caroline Levitt's job because she's, she's about to, she's about to have a baby, Rob, right? So Marco Rubio's like, any other jobs I'm willing to do the hardest working man in business right now

is taking questions. And he crushed. We'll play a couple of clips for you to see. Filling in for a co-worker. Yeah, filling in for a co-worker. While this is going on. He was a DJ too. Yeah, he was a DJ. You're right. For a friend, for a wedding. So while this is going on, Coinbase announces that they're going to lay off 14% of their employees. That's 700 employees. On top of that, King Griffin, who was docks by this guy named Zoran, Mandani. He's allegedly the mayor of New York City. He docs. He says, that's where he lives. He's like, wait a minute. You forgot what happened to United Healthcare CEO? You're saying that's where I live? Of course, it's public information.

but why would you even do that? When am I going to feel safe going to this place now? And you're the mayor doing this? Yes. Seriously? Yes. You know what? Forget about it.

He's at an event. He's asked about what he's going to be doing with New York and a project that they have that's going to create, what, 6,000 jobs? And it was 6,000 construction jobs, 15,000 vice versa, like 21,000 total jobs. Nope. Now we, he says, when we were leaving Chicago, we were thinking about New York and Miami, me, I am so glad we chose Miami, and that was a right move. You have to see this clip on the conversations with trying to tax these guys.

And it could have been anybody else. But no, it was a mayor, the mayor of New York City, who happens to be a big deal for the left. And then Project Freedom paused. Allegedly, the president says they're talking about getting a deal going, oil prices, drop, cash prices. You look at the numbers right now. Tom was reacting, Rob, can you go to the numbers to see where it's at? Was it 96?

It keeps moving aggressively. 96, 26. Down 6 this morning, under 100? That's right. The market is up slightly, I mean, pre, but we'll see what's going to happen with that. Down 6 so far. Jeff's got a lot of thoughts on that on $5 gas prices and the lag that it has with pricing. He's got a good breakdown.

We'll go through that as well. Vivek wins primary in Ohio by a landslide. It's not even closed. And the other person, the opponent on the Democratic side, was a, you know, the COVID-Zar. I believe, Rob, if I'm not mistaken, in Ohio, saying Anthony Fauci is a hero. You want somebody that wins who says Anthony Fauci is a hero. If yes, that's your governor for Ohio. If you want to fight that mindset, you may want to consider this guy named Vivek,

who's a fighter and who loves America. Then you have FedEx driver, the guy that said, you know, you realize I will never see my kids ever again if I go to prison. You should see what just happened to this guy and what he did to that seven-year-old girl. They just announced it yesterday we played a club. Michael Saylor is finally saying he may be selling Bitcoin. And people are reacting. Wait a minute.

The guy that keeps buying Bitcoin is now saying he's selling Bitcoin. Some people thought it was AI. Some people said he would never say such a thing, but he's saying it now. And by the way, Bitcoin didn't even react. There was no movement with Bitcoin. Who knows what that means? And then aside from that, we had a couple other stories with Starbucks, Joe Brian Nichols saying, you know, we have to make the coffee, the $9 experience,

It's a great experience for customers that come in. Brandon's not happy about it. Brandon wants that coffee to be 99 cents. Like back in the days at 7-Eleven. And he's just, he's upset. He wants that price. So maybe we'll get a perspective from him. Apple lawsuit, if you guys are watching this Apple lawsuit,

for those features that they said that we're going to have certain AI features with the new phone that didn't deliver. I believe the couple models that will talk about, Rob, on the phones, the 15 or the 16, maybe even the 7. there's going to be an $81 on average refund that they'll send to the customers. We'll address this as we go through with the exact details of it as we get into the article. Marketing lied. Yeah.

So that's the marketing never lies though, Tom. You better respect marketing. Marketing never lies. They would never do such a thing. And then Tom's just not happy about, like out of all the stories that I'm going through here, Tom's very critical of California. I'm surprised the first time Tom's ever doing this. You know, with gas prices in California.

One of the clips we may want to show Rob is Steve Hilton saying, hey, everywhere prices are going down in red states, but in blue states it's going up. You've got to stop saying everything is Trump's fault. It's your policy. It's a very, very good clip of Hilton in the debate, but California has a massive syphilis problem. And this is a real, syphilis is a chlamydia, right? Is that the same thing that they say, like, there's, you're quiet, Tom. Yeah, it's like I don't want to touch that one. Well, you know, Adam's not here today.

We need the resident expert. You can't say that. He has a, he's going to come attack you when he comes back. This is how you guys start fighting. Oh, well. And I tell you to avoid it, especially after the survey we did. Oh, wow. Another day ending in Y.

Yeah. So anyways, then we have Anthropic AI CEO comes out and says within 12 months, you may not even need coders. You have to see this clip. He's breaking out saying you may not even need coders. And then Jamie Diamond gave some thoughts on management. saying, you know, he wants companies to get rid of managers who do not, dot, dot, dot, we'll get into it. It's a great story that will address as we get into that part with those of you guys here on the podcast.

But before we get started, I want to remind you of something, those of you guys that did the survey, we originally thought, because it's a lot of questions, it was 27 of them. We said, we're going to give a $25 gift card. So we sat with finance. And we say, guys, it's not like it's going to be that many anyways. We said, let's put a budget of $25,000 to $50,000 for these $25 gift cards. Well, the report comes out this morning from our digital marketing team, 11,976 of you did the survey, which is going to cost us $290 some thousand dollars for this gift card.

And a lot of you guys were tweeting saying, am I going to get the gift card? If you completed the survey, you check your email today at 9 o'clock. They started sending all the gift cards from Shopify to go to vTemerge.com. And so check your email. If it hasn't, just remember, it's 12,000 people. So all of a sudden it was put in the system. You're probably going to, if you haven't already gotten it, if you check your mail, you will check your email.

You will in the next 15, 30 minutes, one hour. But go to vtemerge.com. That $25. It's a straight-up gift card by whatever you want. We have a lot of good things that people don't look at. There's some unique accessories that we have. You can go look into. Yesterday, we had an event at our cigar lounge.

We have this value taming cigar set with cutters, lighters. There's so many great gifts that you can give somebody, but you have your $25 gift card to use. And by the way, for those of you guys that are watching, saying, but it is so revealing the report that came back. FYI, just so everybody knows. nobody knows what the results were. Tom doesn't even know the results.

It's driving him insane. But I get teased a lot. Yeah. Brandon this morning's like, come on, tell me, where am I? And him and Humberto are getting to. Humberto's holding people hostage. I don't like what he's doing, but he loves it. He loves this kind of stuff.

If you want to see what the report results were, we may make a one page or two page or to kind of share with the audience. If you text the word PBD to 310340-1-1-132, again, text the word PBD to 3-1-1-3-1-3-2. 1-10-340-1-132, that report will be sent out to the audience. Our YouTube guy called and says, wait, you guys did a survey on your audience to ask what they didn't like and did like it? Yes, we did.

Nobody does this. And you gave away $25 gift coin. How many people? You spent $300,000. You said, well, we weren't expecting $300,000, but it's already too late. So there you have it. So everybody that completed it, I want to say thank you on behalf of the team. This is great intel for us on finding ways to improve.

the product that we have here and without your feedback, we're going to read every single one of the piece of feedback, and some of you guys may even get a call from us. So again, text PBD to 3103401.132. We may send a video, a report to you guys specifically in a text once we have that report. And some people are not going to like it, but it is what it is. The report was very good for all of us. All right. With that being said, let's get right into it. So today's Wednesday business podcast. One of the stories I want to start off with, even though we're going to get into the oil and all this stuff, capitalism is a reason why America became what it became. One of the reasons, the greatest country in the world where you can come and build your business as much wealth as possible. And the one city in America that was the hub for capitalism was New York City until this one guy named Zoran, Mamdani became mayor.

And people said, nothing's going to change. Everything's going to be fine. This is going to be great. Give the guy a chance. So what if he, you know, speaks to the common? language and the socialist language and he's an Islamist, nothing will change to the greatest city in America. Well, last week, he goes out there and makes a video outside of King Griffin's house. King Griffin bought the most expensive penthouse in America, a quarter of a billion dollars.

He has that kind of money. He's busted his ass in Chicago, Illinois, made his money, and right here, Mamdani made this video to call him out, and Ken Griffin responded to it at an event yesterday, Rob, we don't need to watch the whole thing, but we can watch the first 20 seconds. Go for it. When I ran for mayor, I said I was going to tax the rich. Well, today, we're taxing the way. I'm thrilled to announce we've secured a pia to tear tax, the first in New York history.

So watch this. This is an annual fee on luxury property is worth $5 million. Whose owners do not live full time in the city. To someone's house. Which hedge fund CEO, Ken Griffin bought for $238 million. This peer to tear tax is specifically designed for the church's to be. Can you pause it right there?

Can you imagine? if somebody, a young 22-year-old, citizen journalist, YouTuber, went and made a video saying, that's where you live. Okay? How would you feel? He lives here. This guy's rich. He lives here.

Then imagine if this 22-year-old kid is not a 22-year-old kid, but as a 30-something-year-old mayor of the financial capital of the world points at the penthouse of a guy that bought a property for $238 million. whom just recently last year a young kid was inspired. A man, 26 year old young man was inspired for whatever reason after being missing for 90 days to kill the CEO of United Healthcare. And you think you make a man like this feel safer?

After he sees like I'm investing into your city. I'm buying, I'm putting money into your city to say I believe in the city. Well, he was asked the question yesterday. Here's what he had to say. So where does that leave us at 350 park? That leaves us with the fact that we went to Miami and revised our building plan to make it a bigger office building. You're bailing?

So what do we do at 350s is still a point of discussion internally, but what is no longer a point of discussion is that Miami is now, you know, when we moved from Chicago, there was a debate between New York and Miami. It's unquestionably true that we may have that we made the city. that we made the right choice. I'll leave it at that. It's unquestionably true that we made the right choice. And now what the mayor of New York

has made clear to my partners, and principally my New York partners, my New York partners, is that we need to double down in our bet in Miami because we want to be in a state that embraces business, that embraces education,

that embraces personal freedom and liberty, and that embraces, people having an opportunity to live the American dream. And it's... Okay, so by the way, this is a $6 billion project, okay, that this mayor called out the guy that was about to create 20,000 jobs. This is what socialism and communism does and bad policies do. Tom, your thoughts on Ken Griffin's reaction to Mamdani?

Well, first of all, elections have consequences, and here you go, folks. Those of you that are working in the city trying to make ends meet and you thought your dad, your brother, or maybe you're your dad, your brother, your brother, or maybe your sister, whoever, working in construction. It's not just mail anymore. You thought they were going to get a good job and be working for

18 months on a good project, on a big project. Well, guess what? That job's going to go away now. That's not going to be there. So I hope there's something else being built. So elections have consequences, and there it is. Rubber hits the road right there, people with the jobs. The other thing is, it just shocks me

that how tone-depth the left is. And the answer is, Mandami is a Marxist. He's He's not a Democrat. He's not part of the core Democrat that wants to build a platform of power in Washington to get their ways. He is a Marxist, and he wants to seize, and he wants to go. What's interesting is in New York City, you know, they say New York City is not dangerous, but yet in 1980 is when, you know, we lost John Lennon, who was murdered in 1980 in New York City by Mark David Chapman.

And in Strawberry Fields area of Central Park, they put this beautiful mosaic in a tribute to the song, Imagine. that member imagine there's no idea. Well, guess what? They should put another memorial up there on the other end of the city. There it is. And tribute to Mandami and a different Lenin song, but it should go,

all we are saying is give thieves a chance. Because that's exactly what's happening. And that's what I think. People don't realize he's not a Democrat. He's not trying to run a Democrat campaign, Pat. He is a retributional asset seizure Marxist, and people are saying, whoa, I got to move. This is not Ken Griffin. Jeff, where are you?

I mean, they got to pick a different song because imagine was a communist anthem to begin with. Imagine there's no property. I mean, anyway. You're right, Tom. Mandami is not a typical. He's not a chance. He's not a typical Democrat. and I think what should worry people is why that message is resonating.

I mean, Mandami knew exactly what he was doing. I'm going to disagree. I don't think it was tone deaf at all. I think it was, that was his purpose. No, I'm saying he wasn't tone deaf. He was on a mission to do this. Yes, exactly. This was intentional.

In his message is, what does this do, though? I mean, is this, Jeff, is this going to cause some guys to be like, yeah, I don't know if I want to stay here. Do you think the tipping point is here yet? like do you think there's even more people that want to leave or do you think new york's case study is different than california's case study would well tax well tax well i think the tipping point may have already been reached i mean 2020 and co-bent people people move south i mean you said new york is a financial capital i think it's the former financial capital um a lot of a lot of

that center of gravity moved down to Palm beach Miami you know south florida area to begin with so yeah i think this i mean anybody who has the ability is going to see this and say this is not for me. And it's not for me in a way that this is, you know, okay, it's uncomfortable. Maybe I can deal with this for a little while and Mandami goes away. New York as a whole may have reached a tipping point. And it's the tipping point you've seen in various places throughout history. Once you get to, you know, it's almost like the corporate life cycle. When companies go too far, they end up making more and more mistakes and they just leads them right into bankruptcy. Yeah. You think that's what's going to be happening. Brandon, where are you at with this? Yeah. So it's unfortunate that most people are not

sophisticated enough to understand why they're in such a difficult position. And then somebody like Kim comes along and says a story that's easy to understand where it's like, oh, the rich people are greedy. They're, you know, taking all the money. They're overcharging you. It's their fault. Blame them when it's really, in reality, a very complicated reason why it's the government's fault that the average person doesn't understand. So, you know, simplicity and messaging is the really important thing. And, you know, it's easy to give a simple socialist message to say, we want to take from them because they have a lot and give it to you because you have a little. So, you know, it's a very easy sales pitch to pitch socialism or pitch communism without calling it that. So, right? Isn't it one step further than that, though,

because what they're actually saying is your life sucks because of Ken Griffin. Right. And so we need to not just take his money, which is not tax, it's confiscation. We need to make him suffer. Yeah. We need to, we need to demonize that guy. He's the reason why your life sucks. And they skip, you said choices and circumstances. They skip that and go straight to blame. Yeah. Of the other guy. Right. It's their fault. And I, and I, and I, and I, You got to know, I love, I love that this is happening. I'm going to explain to you why. Yesterday I did a two-hour-plus podcast with CZ from Binance.

He flew from UAE to do the podcast, got back in and went back home, okay? And how do I know this? Because when there was the bombing in Dubai, I said, were you affected by the Iran? He says, yeah, I was on the plane. They kept saying, we can take off. We can't take up. We can take off. That clip we're going to post sometime today.

The interview is going to go out next week. But one of the questions I asked him, I said, I said, Binance, we know obviously when he went away for four months, that's to pay to $4.3 billion a fine and $50 million personal. All this stuff was addressed. It'll come out. It's a very good interview. But the one part that was discussed that I think we need to repeat over and over and over and over again is the following.

He lives in UAE. So why do you live in UAE? He loves the regulation for crypto and UAE. He feels safe over there. Fantastic. What other places have you lived? He goes and tells me all the other places. Do you know Binance has 5,000 employees, Tom?

Do you know in how many countries? Binance has 5,000 employees. How many countries do you think Binance has employees in? I want you to guess. 100. 100 plus countries, Binance has 5,000 employees in. There is no real headquarters. It's 5,000 employees, 100 countries, okay,

250 to 300 million customers. Do you know how much money they've processed? $125 trillion dollars, Binance has processed. This guy's worth $110 billion, okay? And yesterday he says he's never been in a Lamborghini in his life before. So we brought up a Lamborghini. He got into a Lambo.

You got to see his reaction when he gets in. But this was the question. I said, can you go live anywhere? Yes. Why? His wealth is tied to what? Intantial assets, which is kind of what we talk about on Monday. Defy.

That's right. Defy. Somewhere. And he's got a defy company in a hundred percent. By the way, I'm going to keep repeating this because I kept getting, there's 10 states right down to America that are in the process. of trying to do exit tax. Julio Gonzalez's menectomy yesterday

and said there's 10 states that want to do exit tax. You know obviously Julio Gonzalez is a county. He does very well for himself, successful guy. Watch what happens here. They're using the playbook socialist from the 70s, assuming your assets are tangible. Because it used to be wealth was tangible.

85 to 90% of the wealth was tight in the SMP 500 was tangible assets. You couldn't really move and be that mobile. You know what that number is today? What? 10%. So 90% is what today? Intangible assets.

These guys are going to keep doing this not real. And by the way, let's just say AOC gets elected. Let's just say somebody like that gets elected. These guys can move their assets anywhere because it's digital. So keep doing this California. Keep doing this New York. Keep doing this Washington. Keep doing this Illinois.

See what ends up happening. It's a lot easier for people to move. their wealth today than ever before. They can continue trying to bullying. People will find a different place for them to go to. It's not going to end up being good for these guys. Although their policies will continue to spread saying, well, no, we're going to do it better.

We're going to do it better. So anyways, that's that part. By the way, have you guys seen a movie Animal Farm or no? I'm getting mixed views about Animal Farm. Some people are telling me, and it's by Angel Studios, and it was a comment made in the movie about Sound of Freedom, which I didn't like. I'm going to have to go check out the movie

and I'll give the review on it because, you know, we've done some reviews on a lot of movies. Animal Farm is the whole thing about communism and capitalism and all this stuff. So we'll see. We'll see. We'll see.

I'll give my thoughts on that on a separate time. So let's go to the next story. Next story, Project Freedom, Rob, if you want to get into that, is the peace deal. The president tweets something this morning, you know, because in the last couple of days, according to the Strait of Hormuz website,

that you can track on how many vessels are coming through. Yesterday was only five. The day before was 12. The average day before the war happened is around 60 a day. So there are around 5 to 12 the last two days. But the president tweeted this yesterday, Rob, if you want to go to it, he made this comment here based on the request of Pakistan and other countries, the tremendous military success

that we have had during the campaign against the country of Iran and additionally the fact that great progress has been made towards a complete and final agreement with representatives of Iran. We have mutually agreed. While the blockade will remain in full force and effect, Project Freedom, the movement of ships through the Strait of Hormuz, will be paused for a short period of time to see whether or not the agreement can be finalized and signed. So this is 652 p.m. on May 5th, which is yesterday. The market reacts today. Gas prices go down. You know,

we see some movement there. But I'm going to come to you, Jeff, with this. Because when you're seeing this message made, some people are like, well, we're in the terms, we're negotiating, but is this kind of you said this a week ago, you said this two weeks ago, is this actually going to be or is this not actually going to be real? What are your thoughts on what's going on here? And then if you can also break down the $5 gas price is why there's a little bit of a lag in it. Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive. The price is right fortune pick.

BetMDM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly, 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, Peace contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor, free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. Well, I mean, I'm kind of conflicted here because you don't really know exactly what's going on. Like you said, Pat, we've seen this before, where oil prices start to creep up and President Trump will put something out there and immediately oil prices will slam.

Because, I mean, the fundamental price of oil right now is 50, not 150. That's where it was heading to at the end, you know, last year and into early part of this year. So he's leveraging the knowledge in the marketplace that, you know, when the conflict is over, oil's going down and down by a lot. So all it really needs to take, all he really needs to do to get oil prices to go down in the short run is to put out a statement, which he's done repeatedly. The downside to that is do we really know what's behind it? Is there anything really behind it?

I mean, the market reacted immediately. Oil prices, they dropped after they were going up yesterday and the day before. And the other side of this is that he, President Trump, everybody in the administration, everybody around the world understands that where this is going. And that's $5 gasoline. And $5 gasoline is well in a territory of demand destruction and economic pain. So you can understand why he would have a, let's keep energy prices underwrapped as much as we possibly can. But there is the fundamental economic reality where you have this much oil sitting unused

and not flowing through the Strait of Hormuz that eventually the energy system's ability to absorb that loss of supply and flow is limited. It's finite. You get to the edge and then physical reality takes over. So what we've seen in the energy markets is that if you look at the wholesale price of gasoline, which is traded in liquid futures on the CME,

wholesale price of gasoline since April 17th ran from $3 a gallon to $375 a gallon. Now that's the wholesale price. That's what businesses trade back and for. to deliver to one another. Sure. The retail price of gasoline is roughly a dollar, $1.25 higher than the wholesale price. Okay.

So just do some quick math here. So 425 to $4.95, give or take. Yeah, and if we get wholesale prices of gasoline, it's up around $3.75, that's $5. That's $5. Right. Makes sense. So is Trump tweeting or putting out the true social in response to oil prices creeping up and wholesale gasoline prices keeping up and trying to get the market to go back down again?

or is there something legitimate behind it? Tom, where are you at with this? Well, also, Rob, if you could flip this over, I'm going to echo that. But also, I've been watching something else. I watch this too, but my number one I've been watching is diesel. And right now, diesel is now up over five and a quarter. And when you get to $5 diesel, it's the same chart, Rob. You just go to flip over to diesel.

And where are we right now? No, no, no, no, no. Anyway, diesel right now is 5.5.5.5.30, Jeff. That affects everything. Diesel, there it is. Current average, 538. And then year ago, diesel was, I think, $3.38. So I think it's the same $2. But the danger of diesel is diesel is the economy. When you look at the price, excuse me, diesel is the product economy in the United States, meaning physical products, whether that is a Apple or that is a big screen TV. diesel carries it from here to there. And that is what is so freaking dangerous in terms of destruction in the economy. It's long-term diesel is a danger to internal inflation. Because you're adding almost 40% pat to the cost of shipping the apple from the farm to the supermarket, of shipping the big screen TV to the distribution center at Best Buy,

and then having it delivered to your house by Amazon Prime. That just flips me out that diesel is kind of below radar when the mainstream media likes to talk about gas because the mainstream media wants to talk about gas because gas hurts voters and they want to move voters. That's it. The mainstream media doesn't give a crap about the broader economy at all. But the broader economy, diesel is, and I keep saying it, Pat,

I'm going to stop repeating myself. I don't know what you think. No, $5 gas. The reason why it's such a big deal is you just hit the nail on the head. It's voters. The perceptions of the RAND conflict are driven by the pump price. Yes, diesel is harmful to the economy, but the average voter's perception of how things are going is dictated by the retail price of gasoline.

So retail price of gasoline at 4 and a quarter, that's not good. That's painful. Retail price of gasoline at $5 is potentially catastrophic. So that's why there's a reaction to gasoline prices creeping up in oil prices and everything else. Brandon. Yeah, the scary thing, though, is that even if this is all to stop tomorrow and you start ramping it back up, it's not like a quick, you know, flip of the switch back on. I mean, like there's systematic problems now as a result of this. And I wonder if there's ever going to be like some type of snap effect where like the reality of the situation kicks. And because a lot of it's being dictated by headlines of what Trump is saying and how the market's reacting to that. So it's like more headline driven than actual what's happening on the ground driven. So I wonder how to detach those two things. are like the narrative that Trump is putting out there versus what's actually happening in terms of the amount of oil. Brayda, there's two, there's really two different marketplaces right now.

There's a cash price of oil, and then there's the futures price of oil. What Trump has done masterfully is manipulate the futures price of oil. Yeah. But every time futures price starts to creep up, he'll put something out, it goes back down again. The cash price of oil doesn't care what Trump has to say because that's, hey, I need oil delivered here and this is the grade and I need it. And the cash price of oil, this entire conflict has been well above the future. So the actual legitimate price of oil today is really like 130 to 140. So you see 100.

W. TIs at 95, but the cash price, something like dated Brent, is like 135. And how delayed is that when the future price kicks around? It takes a while for that actual cash price to work it straight way through the system. Who's buying that $130 oil? Where is it going? What is it going to be used for? But more and more as the market shifts to the cash price of oil rather than the futures price of oil,

you're going to see the effect filter through. And that's where it's getting into the gasoline. And one of the delay gap effects, you and I were talking right before the podcast, can you break down aviation fuel and how airlines hedge? And so it's a delayed effect on your plane tickets? But you only hedge for a certain amount of time. There's a time component to it. So you buy an option or some kind of derivative, usually future,

for delivery based on a certain price. So if you're insulated because you've got the option to buy jet fuel at, say, a lower price where the price was before the energy shock. So for a short time, Southwest has a runway. Sure. Just keep operating at yesterday's aviation fuel price. And all of a sudden they run out of time because the option runs out. Well, the option runs out, and the options to replace them get more and more expensive to the point that you can't hedge.

So even airlines that have hedged up into this point, they're on the clock too. So eventually what you're going to start to see is that airlines are going to start to, their prices and their ticket fares and their bag fees and everything they charge you are going to start to reflect the actual price of oil, which is more like the cash price than the futures. And that's why for the first month of the conflict, the airlines held their breath. Yeah. But at 30 days, Pat, the airline said, ah, I got to do bag fees. I got to do this.

I got to touch prices. And because they're looking at their July options, July futures, and they're like, crap, it didn't go down. Well, now I'm stuck. Now I got to move the price. And Brandon, what were you saying before I interrupted you here? I appreciate it. You know, there's a time component here. This is not going to be done.

Even if they, even to get everything open tomorrow, the market is saying, okay, you get everything open tomorrow. it's going to take, you know, a couple of months at the very least. The Dallas Fed did a survey. One was this, a couple weeks ago, where they asked 140 oil industry companies, when do you think the flow of oil will be restored through Hormuz? And the vast majority were August or later, with half of them saying November or later. So even if gas prices or even if the conflict is over tomorrow, the price in energy is going to linger on for quite some time. Yeah, so it's best case scenario, and I mean, worst case scenario,

if it drags on until they're saying it's going to drag on until. People are saying it's going to be wrapped up by that time. So what, we're talking all the way until the end of the year before things are back to normal? Potentially by the end of the year. If the conflict wraps up by September or so. My date is June 14th. Yeah. I've said it June 14 is a June 13, June 14 is a day to get a wrapped up.

You go past 10. You're in trouble in a big way. But like, let's say he'd want to do everything in his power to wrap it up right now and make it happen. Is that even possible? Could he even do it with everything in his power? I think the blockade is putting enough. We don't know. Like, to be honest with you, everybody that says whatever they say, nobody really knows what's going on. Because unless if you have intel on the inside in those conversations with Iran to see how they're managed and we're seeing what's going on in the climate with the Iranian people, they're not happy. They're paying a price. but the government's not going to be able to, they don't sit there and worry about, like we have midterms in America.

Iran doesn't have no midterms. They don't give a shit about no midterms. So they have a lot more leeway of saying, no, we'll go a little bit. They know exactly the pressure points of what's going on here with the U.S. Iran. To me, they've got to get it done by June 14th and they'll be fine pre-World Cup.

If it goes past that, it's going to be a very nasty 2026 second half of the year. If it goes past June 14th, we'll see. June 14th is what? I've been saying June 14th, a while. June 14th is five weeks from now, give or take, something like that, five weeks from now. Let's get to the next story. Next story I want to talk about is in regard to a business story to get into is I watched this story by the CEO of Anthropic. Rob, if you want to pull this up,

the CEO of Anthropic is being interviewed and he's explaining what's going to happen with coders. Can you go back to it to see where the tweet was, Rob can go? Yeah, Anthropic CEO says 100% of AI will be written, AI code will be written by AI less than a year from now. So this is Anthropic CEO. Rob, go ahead. I think coding is going away first or coding is being, you know, done by the AI models first. And then the broader task of software engineering will take longer. But I think that is, you know, that doing that end to end, I think that is going to happen as well, I would say. But, you know, again, the elements of like, you know, design. or making something that's useful to users

or knowing what the demand is, or, you know, managing teams of, like, AI models. Like, you know, those things may still be present. Again, like, there's this comparative advantage is surprisingly powerful, right? Even if you're only doing, like, you know, 5% of the task, like, you know, that 5% gets super amplified and levered because it's like you're only doing 5% of the task,

the AI does the other 95% and so you become, you know, 20 times more productive. Again, at some point you get to 99%, 99, and then it becomes harder. But I think there's surprisingly much in that sort of, you know, in that zone of comparative advantage. But I would really think about the things that are human-centered. Like I think there's something to that. I think there's something to kind of the physical world or things that mix together, human-centered, the physical world, one of those two, and analytical skills that somehow tie them

together. It's similar to the... So a bunch happened. I mean a bunch happened with this statement and from May 4th, 5th, and 6th. And I'd like to unpack that if I could, Pat. So on May 4th, Anthropic, Dario right there, Modi, announced $1.5 billion joint venture with Blackstone and Goldman Sachs. And they said, we're going to help...

AI do the work. So that's point one. Point two, the multiple outlets say that Anthropic has moved past Open AI. Anthropic is 40% of U.S. AI spending, Enterprise AI spending. Open AI has slipped down to 27% market share from 50. So now Anthropic. Well, he's saying Open AI is going to get crushed in five years. He doesn't think they're going to be in business in five years. On the trajectory, yeah, it's pacing to be dead. Yep, and watch this. I don't disagree. Then on May 5th, Goldman Sachs, CIO Marco Ageny, was with Jamie Diamond and Dario Modi at an invitation-only confab.

They're on stage together talking about how this is going to work to replace a lot of white-collar jobs and a lot of coders. The next morning, Brian Armstrong announced that Coinbase would be removing 700 people, mainly in coding. And so basically, here's what you saw. When you saw Jamie Diamond on stage with Dario Modi, you didn't see the future of AI. You saw a customer and a vendor shaking hands on a mammoth deal. Do you follow that, Pat? Everybody said, oh, it's all about AI in the future. No, you saw it.

There it is right there. There's the picture. What you saw was a deal. They've gone from talking about the future of AI to now you're looking at the operational implementation of it in major banks at scale. That's what we saw, and that's what I wanted to unpack. It's no longer about statements. It's $1.5 billion deal where now major banks are, in fact,

eliminating low-level jobs. Jeff. I think that, you know, what he said, the CEO said, is really the important point, is that it will replace jobs, but people who learn to use AI and leverage its capability, you become the 5% worker and you get the 95% productivity. you know, a 20 times productivity boost. For anybody who's listening here, this is the message.

The message here is you need to learn AI. You need to leverage AI because, you know, like Tom is saying, it's happening now. And it's going to take some time to ramp up. It won't be tomorrow. But over time, the people who are going to succeed in this economy are people who know how to leverage the technology, which is true in any economic cycle that we've been through in history. People who adopt the technology as it becomes more and more productive

and end up succeeding the best. Yeah, I think he's exaggerating a little bit with the 12-month thing, because I don't think we're going to not needing software developers anymore. You think he's exaggerating? Yeah. You all think he's exaggerating a little bit because he's also sitting on stage, you know, this customer or vendor relationship I talked about. He also wants to go public, and he's going to need Goldman and J.P. Morgan because the size of these companies going out public, no one investment bank can do it anymore. Oh, no, no. They're saying it could be.

There's some people are saying this is $800 billion to $300. trillion auto valuation company. Yeah, guess what? This would take everybody on Wall Street, including Bear Stearns, and they've been dead for 20 years. To be able to do it. To move that much paper. Right, right. Makes sense. Brandon. Yeah, no, but I mean, it makes all sense in the world from to say that. It's a great, like, marketing pitch. But I don't think we're close to not needing software developers, because, you know, it's a disaster when you have AI just purely writing code. So you need some human elements of it. Like, maybe it'll take two people, what it used to take 30 people to do, and you could do it much faster, which is super productive. And that's why Elon says

that we're going to have a hypercharged economic growth cycle. But, yeah, I don't think we're anymore close to that happening. I hear people say things about software developers all the time. I see people who do develop software working with AI saying it, you know, it still gives them a hard time with a lot of stuff. But that's super helpful. But most coders do use AI to write code now. They're still in the testing phase.

That's what they're doing. This is a real-world testing phase to see how it works outside of the sandbox, right? That's what they're doing. They're making these deals to start testing these. applications in real-world settings. So they're going to learn a lot along the way, but there's a process there that's going to take a lot longer than 12 months. I'd be sure about that.

People should start thinking about different things with college, though, because, I mean, people have been hearing STEM for the last 10 years, but it seems like a lot of the STEM stuff might be most threatened by AI. Well, entry maybe, you know, entry maybe, but somebody has to be the AI master. Mm-hmm. Right? I'm the AI master of the agent that I'm building, and I spent 20 hours this past weekend working on security layers to protect credentials because I see what's happening in the future.

And I partner with our CTO on this. And so that doesn't get built without me. I know what I want it to do in terms of chores, efficiency, research, and stuff like that. But I'm still me driving my job, but it's going to help me do things faster. And now I'm adding a security layer. You're going to go willy-nilly and just follow a YouTube video that tells you how to get a Linux server on Amazon EC2 and put open clod on it. But let me tell you what CZ said yes.

I said, you guys have 250 to 300 million users. He says, yes. I said, what's the vision of the company? He says, well, the current CEO says he wants to 10x that in the next five years. I said, so in the next five years, you're estimating to have $2.5 billion to 3 billion users. He says, yes. I said, what's the long-term vision? He says, well, long-term vision, we're going to have, you know, 100x what we have today.

I said, what do you mean 100x? There's only 8, 9 billion people living in the world. He says, yeah, but you're going to understand what's going to happen. everyone, people are going to have AI agents that are working for them. And all of those are going to need to be their own accounts because what you're going to know in one day, you have 100, 200, 500, AI agents working to create wealth for you. They're managing your finances.

They're making decisions for you. This is going into a space. You know, there's three things that disrupted the game in a big way. One was Internet, two was blockchain. Three is AI. And with AI, the speed is a much. much faster speed. So if the average person is watching is saying, man, I have no clue what you guys just talked about? Look, you know what's the most revealing thing about the report?

About the 11,900 and something people that did the survey? Do you know what percentage were business owners? 35% of the people that did the surveys. You know what's crazy about that number of 35% being business owners? You know, because when you do 25, it's like, well, you know, the people that are going to go get the $25, it's not going to be the business owner. It's going to be the guy that needs a $25 gift card. So imagine the people that did the survey for $25, 35% of our business owners, they're watching this. What are they thinking about?

Here's the reality of it. You better find a way to get into it because your competitors will. And if you have kids, if you want to find a way for your kids to be having an edge competing, find a way to get them to play with learning how to code. It'll be a massive advantage for them long term.

For me, a bigger part of this is how can we set up our kids Of course, we got a lead from the front. But how can we set them up? Because this is just a space they're going to be competing in. And if you go to a job and they ask you, have you ever coded before? No, never. Versus you go to a job interview, no matter what you're hiring for, no matter what you're applying for. What have you ever coded?

Oh, I've been coding for many, many years. I learned how to do it and I use this and I use that. And then you start speaking a language. In the interview, the other person, wait a minute, this person is also versatile. Hey, we were going to make this kind of an offer to you. I want this guy to show me what you built. Can you talk to our CTO? you, I built this. You did this all yourself? Yes, I did. It's going to be a differentiator for them

to be a little bit more competitive in a marketplace. Now, let's go to the next story. The next story is with Jamie Diamond. Jamie Diamond comes out and says the following. He says, he wants companies to get Rob. Is this a clip of what he says? Yes, sir. Okay. So here's what he has to say about companies to get rid of managers who do not do this. Go ahead. Okay. When I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids and I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime.

I wonder if my out of office has a forever setting. An IG Private Wealth advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at

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The real power move is leveling up your business with FedEx intelligence and accessing one of the biggest data networks powered by one of the biggest delivery networks. Level up your business with FedEx, the new power move. Dureaucracy, complacency, and arrogance will take down a company. bureaucracy is like the petri dish of politics and everything else. And you could be a small, company to have it. You can be a big company to have it. You can have it in your branch. You can not have the other branch. And it's always the manager, stupid. I mean, almost always.

The way you fight it is, with me, all the information is shared beforehand. So, you know, there's no one's secret. I remember going to companies and, you know, this wouldn't share that part of the company. If it isn't shared properly, I can't, I generally just cancel the meeting. You know, if someone comes in and says, you know, Nikolai wants X and I don't believe if that's right, I say, well, why did you wait for this meeting to do that? Go talk to them. Everything, no matter how small, get on the road, go see clients. Clients are a gift because, you know, look, they're demanding they should be,

but they also tell you, you know, in our case, what our competitors are doing better. Why we didn't get something? You know, if we don't do this in that country, you're not going to give us a big piece of business because how important it is for you. And I uniquely know it might cost $30 million to build a payment system, and took up to a country. But it's easy to say, well, we're going to do it now. I just found out why the staff isn't doing it.

So when you have a meeting, people often don't know who's running it. That's a mistake. When you have a meeting and so on ends the meeting by saying, that was a great meeting. We'll pick it up again next week. It's usually a bad meeting. The meeting should end with, OK, David,

you're going to do X, talk to these people, not hierarchical. It says you could cut across the company. You talk to HR. Consumers got the most people. This change in the program is going to affect their branches. Talk about, come back, make a recommendation.

Pause right there. I have a lot of thoughts on this. I have a lot of thoughts on this. Tom, I'll come to you first. Go forward. Well, I love Jamie Diamond. I love this. This is sort of the on stage mellow version of Jamie. There's the famous bootleg recording of him, you know, flipping out on return to work and Zoom meetings and you're not paying attention and you're on your phone. This is the common sense, Jamie. And my favorite part of what he just said, my favorite part is clients are

gift. They tell you not clients are a gift because they run your business. Not clients are a gift, they bring your revenue. Not clients are a gift because, you know, they give you some sort of ratification. No, he said they're a gift because they tell you where you didn't win. They tell you what the competitor's doing. And this says that this guy's in touch. And he says, get on the road, get out, get on the road. Guess what? Work from home doesn't do that. AI doesn't do that. It's get out. And I love this. And by the way, if you've never, Don't search for it now. Wait till the end of podcast.

But go find the bootleg tape of return to office and Jamie Diamond and paying attention. It's a little bit of profanity in there, but it is a great lesson in leadership. Jeff. I mean, it's kind of rich coming from a top banker because next to maybe the Department of Motor Vehicles, banks are just famous bureaucracies. They're built on bureaucracy for a lot of good legitimate reasons. So maybe you take it as, you know, Jamie Diamond now saying the bureaucracies, you know, is bad, or at least it's a hindrance to operating a bank in the way that needs to be operated, you have to wonder, does something change?

Because over the last 20 years, the banking system in particular, the banking sector in particular, has gone, you know, 2010s in particular, became more and more bureaucratic. So maybe they're starting to loosen the reins a little bit, understanding that it is, it is trying to micromanage everything, has held them back over the last, you know, really since 2008. the banking sector changed dramatically in 2008. Before then, it was sort of like what he was talking about. You know, people just did things. You got together in small meetings.

We have a common task to perform. We figure out who's going to do what, and then we move on and do it. After 2008, for understandable reasons, there were just layers and layers of management, bureaucracy, committees, and everything else. So you wonder if maybe the tide is shifting a little bit in the banking sector where it's starting to loosen up. and maybe being loosened up because he can see that there's a competition element to it. What is just what he's talking about with his customers. What are we doing wrong?

And the customers these days are not just other banks. The cartel is breaking down because for the longest time, money flow, money intermediation and credit was just, especially the largest banks. They got bigger, bigger, bigger, smaller number of them. Now you've got hedge funds, you've got private credit, you've got shadow banks, you've got decentralized finance, seeing that down the road. He's got to compete with a whole bunch of different people. I wonder if he starts to see the writing on the wall here that this is a big deal. I think, listen, no matter what, when Jamie talks, people listen

because it's Jamie Diamond. So he carries that weight and he's run the biggest bank with 318,000 employees, just 65,000 engineers. Engineers alone, they have 65,000 of them. So imagine how many engineers you have in your company? They got 65,000 engineers working for Chase. So massive behemoth, I think they transact around $7 to $10 trillion a day is what they do, $700 trillion a day.

But here's a part of him when I'm listening to Jamie Tom. You know what I think about Tom? I'm thinking he's in the legacy mode because as time's coming up and he's moving on, and he wants to, he has probably, he's probably coming out of a meeting or a conference call because sometimes when you're being interviewed, what people don't realize is you're going to give the answer of whatever experience is fresh in your mind of what happened last 24 hours, generally the last six hours. I don't know if that makes sense.

So you just came from a crisis or something you have to overcome or a dumb meeting or something that happened. So you're really talking about that meeting than what was on your mind pre that meeting taking place. I'm going to talk about these three things. Boom, you shift. You're talking about this experience. I will tell you a couple things, though,

when you're talking about this, is when you're smaller and you're coming up, if you don't get ahead and control the manipulation, the gamification, and you don't teach people to deal direct, it's going to be harder for you to fix it when the company gets bigger. It's got to be addressed when the company is small. At a call the other day with a guy, he says, one of our clients, he says,

I've had this person with my company for nine years. She's been here from day one, and you can tell he's nervous talking about her because he needs to fire her, but he doesn't know how to fire her because his COO is sitting right next to him, explaining what this girl is doing and how much chaos this person is created in this construction company. And I said, does she know your expectations? of how she needs to be in a company.

What do you mean by that? How clear are you about what things you're not willing to tolerate or do you avoid the conflict? There's a great book out to call Five Temptations of a CEO. If you've never read it, I mean, I don't know how many thousands of copies I've sold for this guy, Patrick Lansioni. If you're a CEO, do yourself a favor and go buy this book, Five Temptations of a CEO.

You'll see, you're dealing with one of these Five Temptations and he was. Rob, can you pull up what the Five Temptations are on a, just on an article, yeah, just type of what are the Five Temptations? and he breaks it down, go to images that come up, right? There's status over results, okay? Oh my God, my status, let me tell you how important I am, right, focused on career development. And we have that in our company as well.

We have it everywhere. Popularity over accountability. I want to be liked. I want people to like me. Certainty over clarity, right? And in harmony over productive conflicts, you need conflicts. And last but not least, invulnerability over trust. Like, hey, every once in a while we have to, you know,

be willing to talk about areas that we need to develop trust. And then if you don't do that, what ends up happening is triangulation. Departments compete with departments and they find ways to throw them under the bus. And they'll say, well, let me tell you, that guy got a higher score and this guy got a this and that guy got a this versus guys, cut it out. Everybody's got to get better. One of the things we did the last two years, because I hate company conflicts, corporate I hate the politics. I cannot stand it. And sometimes when you bring people that have never worked in startups, they don't know

anything different. All they know is called. We had a guy that used to work with us many years ago. He was one of our C-suite executives who managed the finances. I won't get any more specific than this. But I remember I was sizing up a handful of our guys to see who was going to replace me to be the president. And I held a meeting one time and I went to Dallas. And one by one by one, I asked everybody, I said, who do you think should replace me and be the president? And I was kind of watching to see what people were going to say and who was going to be recognizing themselves and I think it's got to be me and I think it's got to be him and I think it's got to be this and I think it's got to be there. And I said, who do you not think is ready to be a president? And one of them kept targeting

one person. And that one person was Moral. Okay, because to me, she was the one that wanted the job, was willing to do the job and she was hardworking and I trusted her. And so when the decision was made, The other guy went and one by one by one. I kept seeing people being in his office. Hey, let's do one-on-one. And he's doing one-on-ones with all these people in his office. Like, why are you doing all these one-on-ones in your office? And it's one-on-ones.

It's not like them and the manager. So imagine, like, let's just say Tom reports to Jeff. But I don't have a meeting with Jeff. I'm just having a meeting with Tom. And I said, hey, we're hearing that Jeff is doing XYZ. Have you had that experience? Well, I heard it from somebody as well. Oh, really?

Tell me more. Tell me more. And then they go into this mode. And then I'm like, hey, are you doing this? No. They're coming to me. So you're not setting it up. No.

Handful of the employee came and said, is there a reason why this guy keeps calling us into the office to have these types of meetings? I said, so he is prompting. But he's not HR, but he's prompt. Yes. Why is he getting ahead of it

and undermining morale? Collecting information. He's going to drip out later. Let me tell you, it was so disruptive. So what he's talking about caused us to create higher metrics. We created higher metrics on a calibration that we do for every single one of our employees based on five different metrics that we go through.

And we score 100% of our employees every quarter based on these five metrics, effort, attitude, leadership, innovation, and results. And then quarterly, we also send a 10 questionnaire to every manager and every employee in the company. You know what the questionnaire is about? It's about how well of a job is your manager doing with career planning? How well of a job as a manager doing talking to you about what your long-term plan is going to be five, ten years from now? And they score it. And it comes out and managers get a score and departments get a score and business units get a score. So now we sit there and we're like, wait a minute, you don't spend a lot of time to career planning with your guys. So then the managers

won this questionnaire went out. Guess what the managers are saying? Oh, shit. I better start talking to you about your career, Jeff. Hey, I care about your career. What do you want to do long term here, right? And then employees are like, oh, this is the first time this guy's ever come to me and ask me about, so everybody was, and by the way, if you're a small business owner wanting to find that this software, we have, it's a SaaS software that a lot of our small business owners are taking advantage. Go to the bottom of it. Fill out your information at higher metrics.com, higher metrics.com. Most people don't even know we've been running this business, changing a lot of people's lives with their companies to get them more efficient. You get more out of your employees.

it eliminates politics. People know when to get a promotion. People know when they're going to get a raise. People know what to expect. People know the recognition. It becomes very clear and very honest. So I love the fact that Jamie said this. I thought it was a great point he made.

And I hope more smaller business owners get ahead of it instead of being afraid of having this type of a conversation. So let's get to the next story. The next story I want to go to Brandon. I'm coming to you first. Starbucks CEO, Brian Nicol, who we love, we're very complimentary of. He had a rough week after.

he made this comment about finding ways to improve the $9 coffee experience at Starbucks. Some people said at least he's being honest. Some people said this is a little bit crazy to talk like that, especially at a time where people are dealing with inflation, gas prices. Here's the CEO of Starbucks, Brian Nicol. Go ahead, Rob. In some cases, you know, a $9 experience does feel like you're splurging. And then what that means is we have to make it worthwhile, right? We've heard so much this year about the K-shaped economy.

fortunes for some Americans very different than for others. Is that not really something that's coming up in your sales? You know, we're not seeing that in our business. What we're seeing is people, you know, they want to have a special experience. And regardless of what your income level is, in some cases, you know, a $9 experience does feel like you're splurging. And then what that means is we have to make it worthwhile, right? And in other cases, people believe, well, this is a really affordable premium experience because they're saying like, well, it's less than $10 and I get a really premium experience. So regardless of where you're stationed in those income cohorts, we want to make that experience worth your while.

And what we know is what's definitely something that drives that value is to be able to have a great seat, have a great moment of connection with a barista. Brandon, thoughts. Yeah, so I think I'm going to surprise you here. So I mean, I think this guy's a beast. I think he crushed it at Chipotle. I think he's doing the right thing here. And I, you know, the people are going to get mad because they have the impression maybe that everybody is a Starbucks person. But no, it's not the case.

It's probably 20% of the population that are Starbucks people. And then, you know, everybody's a Dunkin' Don't's person maybe. So the most money comes from that upper echelon of people that the top 20% of income. So people who could afford $9, that's their target customer. They're not targeting the people who are, you know, living paycheck to pay. And I think that's a smart move. And I think, you know, we talked about experience, like, something as simple as not having long line weights. Like that was the biggest thing that would turn me off from Starbucks is like bad service, you know, rude, um, baristas, long waiting in line,

dirty tables, dirty seating, whatever. So if you get that stuff squared away, if you get the experience faster, more efficient, then people, you know, in that top 20% won't mind paying $9 and that's who they should be concerned about. So yeah, people who are outraged about that, I think they don't understand who Starbucks's ICP is. Tom, do you agree with them? I agree in principle. I think what happened here with Brian Nicol is, number one, you know, everybody's looking for headlines, and this was a Wall Street Journal doing their AM minipot or something like that.

I think it was, where this was covered. And he was talking about a $9 experience, making it worth the while. So he's talking about, I have a duty to deliver to my customer. You spend $9 or $3, and he used $9 in his example. I have the duty to deliver to you something great. To deliver a product. Deliver with the experience. Deliver with everything's on there.

That's what I have a duty to do. And instead, people take it and warp it and they use the $9 to create clicks and a headline. Because you know what? By and large, the media thinks that CEOs are bad. You know, I could go out one morning and say, good morning. And people say, people are dying in Iran. And Tom says it's a good morning. Oh, my gosh.

They'll spin anything. And so I think they've latched on to this. make it bigger in what it is. This was a CEO saying I need to deliver on experience for whatever price you pay. And in the case of $9, that may feel like a luxury to you. It may feel like you're splurging. And if it does, I don't want you to feel ripped off. I have to feel like you felt like you got something out of it. And so there's a little part of me. I'm not defending Starbucks particularly. What I'm defending is the fact you have a CEO goes on, you know, like a mini pod like that, and you say things and words get twisted and they make little headlines. And

That part of it I find is kind of disgusting. Jeff. I think, no, I mean, Tom, you're exactly right. What he was saying is, look, you pay $9, you got to give you value. Otherwise, you're not going to come back. I think the reason why people are having fun with it is because you don't think $9 value from Starbucks, given everybody's experience of Starbucks, but he's exactly right. And the reason why this is coming up, I think, is even more important.

They talk about the K-shaped economy, but the K-shaped economy is now starting to impact higher-income Americans. Look at Walmart. Walmart has had a fantastic year. And the reason they've had a fantastic year is because $100,000 plus income earners are now shopping at Walmart. Dollar General is remodeling a ton of their stores to cater to higher income shoppers.

So what basically the CEO of Starbucks is saying is this economy is tough. And we've got to start delivering value over and above what we thought we were delivering before. So he's recognizing the economic climate and saying we need to do something about it. And by the way, let me tell you, I saw Walmart commercial yesterday

in one of the games I was watching. We had a couple friends over. And the commercial showed how quickly they're delivering faster than Amazon. In an hour, two hours, you order something that shows up. Why? Because there's a Walmart within a 10-mile radius of your house. So they're able to do things. So Amazon is may have a, they have how many warehouses in America?

If you think about it, every store to them is what? Every store to them is a warehouse. Every store for them is a place where you can go. Amazon doesn't have as many factories as they do, right? So you have all these different, even though it says logistic facilities for Amazon, Amazon's got 600 of them and varied 1,100 fulfillments. How many stores does Walmart have in America? It's a lot of them. Thousands.

It's thousands, yeah. And so they have an edge. But going back to what Brian Nichols said, 4,611 retail units in America. Think about that. Supercenter's 3,500. Neighborhood market, 673, discount. Walmart realized what their competition was. And they rebranded themselves.

Very good point there. Jeff, but let me go back to Starbucks. I want to know what is the profile of a Starbucks customer. I just pulled it up. So the average customer makes $60,000 to $150,000 a year, okay, for Starbucks. And if you go even tighter, it's $80,000 to $100,000, the average person that goes to Starbucks. Estimated customer serves 4 to 5 million customers every day in U.S. alone, 90 to 100 million customers per week worldwide.

They have 35.5 million active rewards members in America, an all-time high. 35 and a half. That's a man. I never had. Did you think there was going to be 35.5 million? That's 10% of America. That's insane. That's insane.

35 and a half million. That's part of the rewards. The rewards members drive nearly 60% of all of U.S. company operated revenue. Crazy. Those loyalty members spend $13 billion in America in 2025 alone. Okay. loyalty members visit Starbucks 5.6 times more frequently than normal customers. About 71% of Starbucks app users visit at least once a week, roughly 21% of customers

return within three days. Crazy. Revenue annually, $20, $27 billion. So you're not going to get to a point that without knowing who your customer is, targeting it. So he is saying that $9, I've got to find a way to get the experience to be better. and if there's a guy that can figure it out, it's this guy. He took Chipotle from $7 billion to $71 billion. They know who they hired.

This is the guy that knows how to work this business. His expertise, Chipotle order became on the app. You would make the bowl in the app and you'd go pick it up. He knows that business. And Starbucks knew. If we got 35.5 million active reward members in America, let's bring the best guy that knows how to do this. So I'm pro Brian Nicol.

And what do you say at the end of it? I endorse this message or whatever that they say. I endorse Brian Nicol. I'm a big fan of what he's doing. Well, at least he's being honest, right? I mean, come on. Are you kidding me? Exactly.

What else do you want? You want me to lie to you? No. Yeah, this is the price. You know, I think we need more. And by the way, same with Jamie. Jamie's kind of telling you, here's what we're at. So, kudos to Brian Nicol and I think the 35 and a half million people in Starbucks.

They're probably going to keep going back and doing business with those guys. Let's go to the next one. Next story I want to get into is a, well, I got a couple stories I can go. to, let me see which one I want to go to first. Let's go to the Nvidia story. Very weird. Let me tell you what Nvidia on the Palti Group, which we had on the podcast here before, he's great at what he does, but the Palti Group and NVIDIA had a conversation, and apparently they're starting a startup, they're helping the startup put many data centers on homes. So let me say this one more time. So imagine you have a house, and you're buying a house,

and Vinty on Palti Group is saying, hey, let us build a small data center on top of your house. So let me say this, Wait, what? Yes. Is this real? Apparently it is. Span of California-based startup has developed a small fractional data center or notes called the XFRA Unis. The idea is to take advantage of unused electrical capacity on local grids, which dispan smart panels can pinpoint. Nvidia GPUs are powering the units and the Palti group is testing the system in a handful of communities. Tom, your thoughts on the story. Well, you know, it's really interesting is, you know, you started with home. and as we started getting things like, I'll say something, low voltage wiring. What is low voltage wiring? I don't understand that. Guess what? That was fiber and stuff that were in your walls.

So suddenly, a Pulte Group and others were adding that to your home. So you could do it for alarms. They were pre-wiring by windows and things like this so that when you called ADP and have some in there, it's done. So home building has tried to follow the waves of services that people want to put into homes. Right? You don't find, you know, coax going room to room. anymore because Wi-Fi powers the whole place.

You find things coming up to like a closet where everything can be secured in there. And what I think what they're doing here is they are making it possible to put those nodes up right on the house. And now you say to your house, hey, your house is AI ready if you're going to have a small, you know, LMS or you're going to have services or maybe you're working from home or you have a home office. You're not going to have all this available to you. And we're testing this.

and we're also testing the energy part of it. So I think it's great. I think it's pulte riding the wave and trying to stay in front of the kind of things that people are going to want on their new house. It's like when you got into Microsoft, it never worked very well. Microsoft will hate that I said that. But you remember Microsoft first put their stuff in the dashboard? Was it Ford or G? I think it was Ford.

Microsoft put the thing in the dashboard, and it didn't really work well. And then later, you know, CarPlay. on Apple, as long as car play could work on your dashboard. It was great because you had carplay on your phone and whatever you had on your phone and suddenly on your dashboard. It was the same thing, Pat, as when the automakers made it easy for us to drop our phone into the center console where there was an inductive charger there.

You didn't even need a cable and it could talk to your car. This is Pulte doing the same thing, riding tomorrow's way to give you what you want in your house, so you buy a new house, and then you have to say, wow, now I've got to spend 10 grand wiring and doing all this stuff. Nope, you can buy it. And thanks to Nvidia, it's right here. Jeff.

Yeah, I think, I mean, there's a couple of things here. One is electricity, trying to find spare electricity and capacity rather than having to build new capacity, which is expensive and it's leading to all sorts of problems. So they're saying, look, there's spare energy in people's houses, let's take advantage of it. But the bigger idea here, looking at the future, I mean, we're talking about AI, data centers, and everything else.

I forget who it was, just recently said there's going to be a market for compute. Rob, was it Goldman Sachs? there's going to be a market for computing power and computing, which is, it's a far, it's far-reaching idea, envisioning what the future would play. Larry Fink.

Yeah, Larry, that's, okay, BlackRock. So a market for compute, and in order to achieve a market for compute, you're going to need a ton of capacity, you need a ton of a lot of players, and so they're going to wire everybody in, and so you have computing capacity all over the system. To the average person, what does this mean?

So the undergoing and unprecedented explosive growth pays driven almost entirely about and sat down with demand for AI training and reference. What does this mean to the average person? Well, I can sum it up quickly. Airbnb allows me to rent out a room in my house overnight to someone, as long as I can trust it, it's not a crazy person. Uber allows me to use my car to drive other people around. What if I could Airbnb a certain computing power or energy that was at my house?

That the part that I was not doing, I just set it up Airbnb. and I let it go out to a market, and then I get paid for that excess that gets used by someone. Yeah, or Amazon says, look, I have a service that requires a lot of computation power, and it's up to me to find out

where this computing power would be all throughout the system. Then you are engineering essentially tons of efficiencies, because Amazon can be as a centerpiece of the computing market and everybody competing with Amazon. Could I borrow your CPU while you sleep?

Or I'm going to buy it from you. I'm going to rent it from you. So if you have it already installed in your home, you're making money off of the grid. Yeah. So first things first, Pulte group, worry about building houses before you start doing all the complicated stuff because we have 10 million short that we're not up to speed with. So want to hear about that before we start building AI data centers on top of houses. But when it comes to the shortage in computing power, it makes you think of the shale boom and how bad of a situation we were in before we learned how to frack for oil.

Because, you know, we were getting up to like $5 for gas around that time, right? Like $100 are a barrel for oil. And the shale boom really, you know, saved us in a huge way with, like, America became the biggest producer of oil because of that. So, I mean, people really overlooked that in terms of, like, energy demand and, like, how vulnerable of a situation we were in, how expensive energy was at that time. So I, I, just a guess, just a prediction, but I don't think we're doing this in the optimal way. I think it's, like, a really expensive, messy way that we're looking for in building computing power right now. So I think there's going to be some type of innovation that makes it, you know, easier, cheaper, and more. abundant because it's not sustainable at this way. They're trying to do it right now.

I disagree, actually. Can I disagree with you? You know, I respect you, but I'm going to disagree here. What do people do with solar? In certain places in America, you can have a net meter that if you're at work, let's say it's you. And let's say you own a small house. That may be someone like J.P. Morgan bought you or something. And so you take that small house and you have some solar grid and you go to work. And during the day, it's making more energy than you use and you have a Tesla battery power wall in your garage, it gets filled up. But then the excess, what does it do? It goes out to the grid.

And if you're in certain jurisdictions, you get up what's called the net meter, where you're actually getting paid for the little kilowatts that you're putting to the grid because you're at work, your air conditioning is turned up to 80 degrees on your house, no one's home, and yet your roof is putting energy into the grid and you're getting paid for it. How is this any different? I mean, yeah, I used to all solar. So, I mean, the government had to subsidize it for a reason because, you know, it gave you a 30% tax credit because it's not really that efficient when you blow it down, especially if you're in certain areas.

Like if you have a cellar and facing roof and have sunlight most of the day, then it's good. But if you're in the north and it's not efficient, if you're in a place where there's not sunlight for, you know, more than a couple hours a day, it's not efficient. So, I mean, it could work, but I don't think the cost versus benefit is quite there yet. Like, you know, like shelling out this amount of money just for computing power that's going to be exponential in demand. Brandon, there's two major constraints here. The one is hardware, which I mean, the more efficient model is to build these gigantic data centers. But the other is energy. What they're basically saying is we're running up against hard limits on energy.

So we've got to find it somewhere. What they're saying is there's spare energy in people's houses. So let's unlock that untapped potential and use that to help cheapen the cost of people. You'd be open to it if they came to you. Absolutely. You would be as well, Tom? Yes, I would. Okay.

Rob, would you be open to it? I'd have to look more into the cost of it. But if it's not going to cost me anything, it's going to be inside of my own. They're going to give you free Internet. They're going to give you, your electricity prices are going to go down, and they're just going to be using some of the power. It's $25 gift card. What does the poll say? You ran a poll.

What did the audience say with the polls? 75% said no. What was the question? Can you pull up the question? Would you allow Navidia to install a mini data center inside of your home? 25%? Yes, 75%. I'm interested to see why they said no.

Can you put in the comment section, audience, if you could, why did you say no? Why wouldn't you do it? Do you think about it as a they're invading your privacy? I think it's probably privacy slash surveillance. You know, one man's privacy becomes a government surveillance, right? And Brandon, you know, you think entrepreneurily, you work with clients that are entrepreneurs. And I kind of feel like you were like, wow, I don't know if this will ever work. I won't work in the North and stuff.

I think where do we start innovation? We have a power crisis. I think this is kind of a good way to start that, don't you think? I do. I just got frustrated with. when it comes to energy because I feel like energy's been thwarted by, you know, the powers that be. You know, things like where Elon Musk says, yeah, we just need 100 by 100 miles in the desert somewhere that there's sun all day, and we'd have enough energy to power the entire country.

Oh, can you imagine if we had nuclear plants? Right, that too. Can you imagine that? Those have been thwarted by lobbyists for the last 30 years. So, like, I get 50. I get frustrated when it comes to energy because it has been thwarted by, you know, whether it's big oil or the solar companies or, you know, the clean energy companies. I don't know exactly why. I could imagine why, because if you control the energy, you control those,

society, but that's why I don't love this particular idea because I don't think it's the best way to do it. I think there's a lot of better ways to have infinite energy that we've thwarted over the years. Yeah, I mean, if you look at some of the comments, AI mass surveillance, some of it is health. Some of it is radiation. Some of it is radiation. Yeah, these are valid issues. Health privacy, privacy, privacy. Okay, great.

Great. Maybe they're going to have to find what to overcome this. And if it becomes a norm and all of a sudden, people start saying, hey, man, it's not even electricity. It's not even this. They actually send me a $580 check every month. What? Yeah, they actually send me $300. This could turn into a very different era.

Like, you know, the whole UBI thing? Companies can have a form of UBI. Absolutely. Because think about companies start having a form of UBI. And one of the bigger reasons why Binance blew up is because they decided to say, we're going to do free. Everybody else was charging fears. They're like, no, we'll do it for free.

And that put out a lot of people out of business. So there's going to be some people creatively that may come up with ideas that others are not thinking about. Let's go to California. With California, there's a couple stories I want to get into, okay? One by one by one, one we can get into it. We have to get into the GameStop and the eBay story, Rob,

for whatever reason I want to get into that because that was the strangest thing I saw in a long time with a guy saying, oh, we're going to find $56 billion. How? We're going to find it. You got to see that, but let's first go to California. So with California, which story do we want to go to first? Let me see this.

Okay, let's go to, man, that's a nasty one. I don't want to go into that one. You want to go into the fire one? Tom. I want to go into the California oil one? Let's go into the California oil story. What page is that on? There it is.

Okay, oil Titans blast. Gavin Newsom over California's oil and energy crisis, okay? Energy crisis. And by the way, there's a clip on the debate about this as well. We don't need to get into that first, Rob. You can go into what you have first, and then we'll get into the California's oil industry, tore into the Democratic leadership on Monday after the last oil tank arrived in the state carrying fuel from the Middle East, It's not that the state will face its real test of how to replace 200,000 barrels of oil a day

as Iran restricts the passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz and its ongoing war with the U.S. Last year, based on the state day, the California refineries sourced around 30% of foreign crude oil from the Persian Gulf. Unless action is taking gas prices could spike even more, experts have warned. Tom, thoughts on this. So, well, first of all, if you're going to run around and say, well, I'm governor of the, you know, fourth largest, fifth largest, you know, economy in the world. Okay, and you're going to call yourself a country. Okay, Prime Minister, who's your Secretary of Energy? And what are you doing for your citizens? And Gavin Newsom, you've made policies that caused people to leave. And now that is Iraqi oil, I believe,

that is coming on tankers all the way. By way, go take a look at a map. The tanker has to leave Iraq, go all the way over here, past Hong Kong, pull over to Macau, gamble a little bit, Go past the Hawaiian Islands, get yourself a Mai Tai. And finally, the oil in a tanker gets to Southern California. When there are small rigs off the coast of Santa Barbara with rocks and fake palm trees. Remember those, Pat? We used to look out and you had them all these rocks that they put out there decoratively and fake palm trees, trying to make an oil derrick look like anything but an oil derrick.

And yet you had oil out there. And you had a little bit of oil in Central California. And you had also the ability to build pipelines. But no, but no, this is where bad policies. And so guess what? Gavin Newsom, prime minister of the fourth largest economy, you don't have a Secretary of Energy. And now you're allowing this to come in. And now this is the energy industry. And you may say, oh, those are CEOs that are evil.

They just want to sell things to us. Yeah, at a lower price in which you're getting it now. And you chase Valera out. You chase Chevron out and people close refineries because he said, we're going to put more inspectors out there. And if there's a paint chip on your front door, we're going to find you. for it, and they made it so onerous. And so I think that Gavin Newsom deserves

this heat, and I hope the people in California, the voters are paying attention because you could have been not only in a great climate state, a great business state, but you could have had very economical energy using today's regulations and things to help keep things clean.

And by the way, Steve Hilton addresses it very eloquently in this debate that they were having. Go ahead, Rob. Mr. Hilton, go ahead. It's not Donald Trump who's given us gas prices $2 higher than the rest of the country. It's Democrat policies which Antonio and all the Democrats here support. It's not Donald Trump that's given us the highest housing costs in the country. It's Democrat policies that all these Democrats support.

Donald Trump is the president in all the other states of America where the cost of living is way lower than in California. Obviously, it is way past time for changing California and endlessly going on about Donald Trump. Trump doesn't serve the needs of the struggling families and small businesses. Can you say whether or not? Mr. Hilton, go ahead. Thoughts on this. By the way, very well said. It's unintended consequences, right?

The reason why they chase the oil industry out of California is to appear to be virtuous about the climate. And where do they get their oil, as Thomas saying, you get it from Iraq and the Everglary, or the Amazon. So now they're buying oil from Brazil that comes out of, I mean, they don't care about that, though. That's not the point. It's virtuous signaling right here. It's we need to feel better about ourselves, so we get rid of our domestic oil. Now we have to buy it overseas, but we don't care because we don't see that. And so what Newsom and everybody in California are doing is simply detaching their responsibility and saying, look, it's not us.

It's Donald Trump. Typical political playbook. And we talk about the price of gasoline being $5 a gallon. It's $5 a gallon nationwide. That's potentially, it's going to be seven or higher in California. So you're paying essentially a tax for what? I mean, just to feel about it? I mean, that makes absolutely no sense.

And meanwhile, the prime minister runs around ducking podcasts and ducking people that want to have an honest debate on. Why did you make the decisions? What do you do? Who's this? Does that Newsome? Newsom. No, no, he's not ducking podcasts. I don't know if I put him as he's trying to get on places to talk.

I'd love to see somebody do a tough conversation with him to have him sit down and talk about it. I'd love to see a good long form. He called out Rogan recently about Rogan. not going to play the clip. He calls that Rogan about, is this it, Rob? That's an older clip. Yeah, there's a, oh, it was an older clip of, I think it was even Joe and I when we sat down on a podcast that he was reacting to, where Joe said a few things about it, and he says, why are you ducking me? Why are you ducking me? I do think he needs to go in one of these bigger podcasts and be pushed respectfully. I do think he needs to do that, Tom. I don't know if I put him in

the ducking side. When we were in California at Simi Valley, when the Republican debate was taking place, you know who was there the entire time? Newsom. Guess who he's talking to? Everybody. Newsom was the only Republican Democratic candidate that showed up to the presidential debate and Simi Vali and is talking to Fox walking around saying, go ahead, what's your question? What's your question? So we'll see. We'll see what's going to happen with this guy. He does the, he needs need a good sit down with somebody to challenge him on his position. Brandon, your thoughts. And by the way, before you go to it, if you look at the highest gas prices in America, today, average gas prices,

you know who's the highest today, Tom? of course we know. California. $6.13 to date. California. Beat your prior best. That's right. You know, Rob, can you pull up who's the lowest?

So look at these states. Look at these states real quick. California, Washington, Hawaii, Oregon. What's the lowest gas prices? Some parts of California is at $7. Can you flip it, Rob, and go to AAA and put lowest gas prices? Just flip it and just put lowest gas prices. Watch this.

This is the question. Oklahoma, 389, Georgia 391, Mississippi, 392, Louisiana 392, Arkansas, 395. California is $6.5? These are the things that if a Steve Hilton knows how to drive this issue. And if the average Democratic voter that's sitting there saying, I'm sick and tired of these policies, I hope he creates more momentum there, Jeff. What's common about all of those states?

They're very close to Texas, whereas getting Venezuela and heavy crude and refining it in the Houston. Refining capacity in the Gulf Coast. That's what California used to have an advantage. They had all sorts of capacity to be able to not just, you know, pump oil out of the ground, but refine it into a useful product. That's what they chased away. That's what they're really missing is the ability to refine.

So you get cheaper gas where you have the ability to make gasoline. It's not rocket science here. Yeah, there's two really key events. I mean, the Santa Barbara spill apparently made it. They legislated offshore drilling out of it. You know, that was the emotional thing. And then Arnold Schwarzenegger actually legislated that carbon emission rule where now, I think it's like 54% of production domestically within California has been cut since that bill was signed.

So, you know, they're attacking it on all fronts. I've gotten rid of the refining offshore, gotten rid of the actual production in California. So that and they have always been at a disadvantage because there's less railways that connect, like, from the east coast to the west coast because of the Rocky Mountains. So, yeah, I mean, but they have all the resources in the world. It's really the self-inflicted problem. I wonder if it's a similar thing to Europe. Because, you know, I always wonder, like, are they consciously doing this? Is it, like, ignorance or is it malice?

And in Europe, I know that Putin actually did a propaganda campaign that convinced a lot of European countries to go with them the green energy sources because you wanted them to be dependent on, you know, Russia's oil pipeline. So I haven't looked too deep into it with California, specifically what the intentions are, but it feels like one of those things, like, where it's almost intentional destruction. Dude, if you just look at the highest gas tax, in America today, okay? Gas taxes in America today. California has just a state gas tax per gallon of 71 cents. Why? Why do you have that? Illinois has 66.4. Notice Blue State, Blue State.

Washington, 59 cents. Pennsylvania, 59 cents. Michigan, 48 to 52. Indiana. What do you notice about all this stuff? 54.5. Maryland, 46.2. Jersey, 44.95, New York, 40 to 62 cents. And if you go to the lowest, Alaska, nine cents. Hawaii, 18 and a half, New Mexico, 18.9, Arizona, 19. Oklahoma, 19. So these are, if a candidate in California, by the other way, did you see the Katie Hopkins commercial that they did for her

running for governor? She actually addressed the fact that she got called out for being rude to one of her snapping on live, zoomed. I don't know if you saw her at or not. Rude. She was belligerent. I keep saying Katie Hopkins. Katie Porter, is this the one where she's, that's the one? That's the one. Watch this clip. This is another one that's running. She's my favorite because she's crazy, but she's my favorite. Go ahead, Rob. I'm Katie Porter, and I'm not like most people who run for governor. I actually get what you're going through. A single mom of three kids, I know what it's like to push the shopping cart.

My minivan has almost 200,000 miles. I have a grown kid who may soon be living on my couch. To give Californians what they need, it's going to take standing up to Donald Trump, calling out greedy corporations, and stepping on some toes along the way. Now, could you guys please get out of my shot? You know the whole thing, could you please get out of my shot?

You know what that is, right? Could you please get out of my shot? It's the clip when one of her staffers was in, And she was actually asked about it. And she's like, well, unlike others, I'm not perfect. I have made mistakes. But I talk about it. And that staffer and I, we ended up working together for another four years.

I mean, I hope she stays on TV more and more because I love her. She, I'm truly, I'm going to go ahead. Press play. She is a natural villain. You're out of my fucking shot. Don't you love this girl? Wow. That should be the ad.

It should be the ad. and then she shows Steve Hilton. Maybe with the shopping park, get out of my effing way, and then at the gas station, I'm filling my effing tank. Right. And by the way, let's just turn her into the avatar

that she is. I have so many comments. Did she actually say that she's a single mom? Wasn't there a thing with potatoes and her husband? Potatoes out of her ex-custom. Oh, yeah. She scalded the poor bastard with mass potatoes. But now she's saying, I'm a single mom now.

Listen, it reminded me at a Frank Rizzo clip, but back in the days from potato in the tennis ball machine. I don't know if you know that one, Rob or not. We can't play it. It's not inappropriate. But if you know Frank Rizzo and Jerky Boys, you know exactly what reference I went to. Meanwhile, Spencer Pratt running for mayor of L.A.

did another one. Okay. Another one. And by the way, you know, earmuffs, because there's some foul language here. Newsom's in it. Kamala's in it. Everybody's in it.

This is funny as hell. Watch this. He's phenomenal. Go ahead. Keremlass. Kamala Newsom. Nice. Please, I'm begging you.

There's homeless drug addicts in front of the schools. My children aren't safe. Look, if you were a transgender migrant, I could get you a free pussy. Let's move the drug addicts closer. Bass already solved crime. I endorse her. Mixed. Yeah.

Is that not a great clip? That's awesome. Please, I just want to rebuild my home. It's been over a year. You got to give it to him. He's doing it right. This is a machine. If we want to burn this town to the ground,

throw that. I feel so close. You can do it, Spencer. Worth saving. L.A. is worth saving. So that's the way you're doing that. Okay? The difference between Katie Porter,

in LA and Spencer Pratt. So anyways, he has the benefit of the truth on his side. He does. I don't think Katie Porter can pull that off. No, no, no, no, no. It's impossible. But you know what? As crazy as California is, you have no idea who they're going to be elected. It could be the guy. What's his

name, Rob? The Hispanic guy that they may be elected as a governor. Xavier Bacera? Yeah, Javier Bacera. Yeah, that guy right there who was to the right of Steve Hilton. This is the leading guy today that they're looking at. This is the leading guy today. going to be number two on the on the ballot where there is because right now in

California it's a a jungle primary pat which means everybody's in and this guy is probably going to be number two out of the primary let me get to this next story because I do know you wanted to talk about this next story Tom because we're on California California is rising syphilis cases prompt warning to get tested to get tested we have by the way this is a business story apparently I don't know why Tom wanted to talk about this but allegedly there's links to this and business what product does well we're about to learn. So let me read this to you.

Is this it? Yes. Go ahead, Rob. Experts say the surge is due to a decline in consistent screening, reduced public health resources, and because the early symptoms can go unnoticed. Keeping an eye on the ongoing... That's it.

That's it? Yeah, that was it. Okay, well, Tom, that was incredible, Rob, that we played that clip. So, Tom, what is going on with syphilis cases? Because I'm looking at some of the numbers here. It says across the country, syphilis cases have a recent risen sharply over the past decade in states like New York infections have increased five folds since 2013, reflecting a broader nationwide trend. This is a New York Post story, even more

concerning. Federal data showing that congenital syphilis, when the infection is passed from a pregnant mother to her baby, has skyrocketed 700 percent compared to roughly 10 years ago. And the CDC has a set national goal of reducing syphilis rates amongst women of reproductive age of 4.6 cases per 100,000 by 2030. What's going on here, Tom? So what's going on is that California is out of control, and they have this, and in terms of everything from education in the schools, resources,

and it's up, which means that people with syphilis are giving it to people without syphilis. That's how you get the number of cases go up. It says, and the thing that's really horrifying is they said that these are women that are giving it to their unborn babies. This is horrible, which means the father, you know, somebody gave this woman syphilis. So she either had it before she conceived or it was the guy that conceived gave her a pregnancy and syphilis.

It's horrifying. And it just, it just, it shows just a decline in the moral fiber of, you know, communities. but it also talks about, you know, this is what's spreading. And so it's spreading among who, you know, and it's spiking in California. So I think it tells you everything you need to need to know about California. And it just makes me sick. It breaks my heart. I mean, it literally breaks my heart to see this and the story we haven't covered what's going on in San Diego.

I want to ask, Jeff, what insight do you have on this? I don't, look, I'm going to make an economic argument because that's what we're going. I'm more comfortable doing that. I think a lot of it has to do with just people. First of all, Obamacare did not fix health insurance and health costs. So things have got, as we know, have gotten even more expensive. There are more people who are going without health insurance, which means they don't get tested, they don't get screened.

When they start showing symptoms, they don't go to the doctor because they're afraid, oh, my God, if I have something serious, I'm going to be bankrupted. So they can't afford to access health insurance, even though there may be, you know, the local government has a local screening. that's not the same thing. And that's the argument that a lot of politicians,

certainly in California are making, is that, okay, we need to replace the private sector that we made so expensive that nobody can access and replace it with the public sector that will just offer terrible service. But I think there's an economic element in here that's just gotten way too expensive to access health care. Brandon?

Yeah, I mean, California setting all the records. I mean, it's not surprising. It's like the gay capital of the world. It's the homeless capital of the world than the gay, homeless, sex, capital of the world. So, of course, there's going to be, like, nasty. Are you sure about that? No.

You're estimating. Yeah, estimating. Based off observation of statistics. Direct observations. Not direct. You're observing statistics or you're observing people? Observing statistics. Well, listen.

It's a shame when that happens and what they're going through, they have to find a way to fix it. Of course, right now it's very easy to dump on California, because I got so many things going on. But I wonder, like, how is Newsom going to spend all this stuff in 2027, 2028 when he runs? What's he going to say? He's really good at it. I'm just a regular dumb guy. I'm not that smart.

I don't know how to read. That's why I didn't look at these policies. And the reason why I did $24 billion because I'm dyslexic and I couldn't read the whole thing. I thought it was $24 billion. We were going to give to our homeless and everybody was going to disappear because it's not my fault. Why is he going to spend all this stuff? He's not. He's incredible at it.

He's not going to spin it. Their whole thing is, I'm not. Trump. I'm going to get Trump. So ignore everything that I've done up to now. Yeah, I don't know if it's going to vote for me because I'm anti-dict. I don't know if that's going to be a good market for, although Calci. I'm not saying it's a successful strategy. I get that. I get that. Cal she has new somewhat at 24-4 today. Yeah, but Kamala is 10-8, AOC is gone from 5 to 11. And most most of these polls over the last three weeks. I'm still going to say, do not

pay very close attention to AOC. Pay very close attention to AOC. quietly. Very close intention to AOC. If Mamdani won in New York City, AOC is going to be formidable going into 2028 for people that look away from her. But anyways, with that being said, just some breaking news that came in. Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, the owner of the former, you know, the former owner of Atlanta Braves, Atlanta Hawks, a bunch of different things just passed away 30 minutes ago that was reported. He's a legend in what he did in his space. It was a book I read many, many years ago about Ted Turner Club, they call me Ted. It was a phenomenal, phenomenal book. I believe at the end of the book, he says CNN turned into something I didn't want it to be.

He says, I wanted the news to be the star. And now at CNN, the host are the star. That was never the mission. That was never the vision. He opened up this business space for a lot of different people. May he rest in peace. We tried many times to do an interview with him. And they kept telling us he's not doing well. He's not doing well. So rest in peace, Ted Turner. Our prayers goes out to his family and those who are dealing with this loss today. You should listen to the book. Call me Ted and get the audio book because he narrate it and you hear the tone of his voice. You hear everything.

A great, great primer on entrepreneurship. Ran for president a couple times if I'm not mistaken. And, you know, an American success story. Yeah, a great American success story. All right. So let's get to the next story. Next story I want to get into is we hit Starbucks. We hit Jamie.

Which one am I missing, Rob? I do know there's a couple ones. Oh, Michael Saylor. So rumor came out that Michael Saylor is entertaining, possibly selling Bitcoin. What do you mean he's entertaining, selling Bitcoin? Isn't he the one that Micro Strategy keeps buying, buying, buying? Yes. He said he would never sell Bitcoin.

Now he's saying he might. This is a story that came up from this morning. Strategy's first quarter loss is bigger than expected. Michael Saylor is the Bitcoin evangelist who has reportedly emphasized that he would never sell. However, his company, Micro Strategy, announced a net loss of $12.5 billion for the first quarter of this year. Sater did what had been previously unthinkable. He told investors on an earnings webinar that he would consider selling the cryptocurrency. He's long promoted passionately.

We'll probably sell some Bitcoin to fund a dividend just to inoculate the market, just to send a message that we did. Look, the company's fine, the market's fine, the world didn't come to an end. So what do you think is going on here with Michael Saler? Jeff. Look, the knock on strategy was always that numbers don't add up. If he has trouble raising funds through all of his creative ways of raising funds, liquid cash, to be able to pay back all those investors and pay the dividends that needed to be paid, eventually he was either going to have to bring in new investors or he's going to have to start selling Bitcoin. That was always a knock on him, and he always said, no, we'll never have to do that. Everything's fine. I love how we're kind of

spinning it here and saying, that, oh, we're doing this for the benefit of the market. We're just going to test it out so that you can see that everything's good. But I have to, you got to give it to the critics here because I think the numbers are not adding up the way that they're supposed to. And this is potentially something more substantial. And of course, he's going to want to downplay it. But like I said, the knock on this has always been they don't have the cash flow to pay off the investors. And the rates of return that they were giving new investors were just astronomical.

How is that sustainable? It's not. How is that sustainable? That was the argument. It was not sustainable. Now, you have to wonder, is the crack starting to show? The average price of the Bitcoin he bought is $75,500 to $76,000. Total Bitcoin holding is $818,334,000, roughly $64 to $67 billion, depending on Bitcoin's price on that day, is what the numbers are at. So strategy owns nearly 4% of all Bitcoin that will ever exist as of today. Tom, your thoughts on this. Yeah, I agree.

At some point in time, the music has to stop because you need liquidity to go in and do this. And the theory that a lot of people had on micro strategy was that they were going to be so far ahead on Bitcoin value that they could get low-cost commercial debt and then pay the dividends. And there's nothing wrong with that strategy. except for the back end of this little chart here, which is sort of taking you all the way back to the beginning of 05. Just take the dot where we are now and just draw a horizontal line across. You see that, Pat? You take away the whole surge there, the lump in the back of the camel,

and you end up back in January of 2025 a year ago, and then January 2021, two years ago. And now you're like, wow, okay. Also January 2021, though. Yeah, January 22. The first run above, I think that was 68, if you show that, Rob. I think that was in January 21. A little bit high, Rob.

You're at the right place. Just, oh, okay, you can't do it. Got it. Yeah, got it. Anyway, the point is he's been long on this. And if it grows enough, well, look at it this way. Real estate holdings grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. And let's say you and me, Pat, owned a bunch of commercial buildings in Miami.

And now all these things are having, you know, the Citadel, Ken Griffin's coming down, I'm going to build a place with residences. I'm sorry, he's doubling the size of the office because of New York forgot. And all of the value of our portfolio goes up, we go out and get commercial debt to do bigger improvements or buy more. And I think that was the play here, but he's kind of stuck. So I think he's going to sell a little bit to show the systems working. But I also think there's a test going on because Saylor is very astute about the crypto market. I think he's testing the supply price.

price drop. I think there's a test. If you're the biggest guy in the jungle and you jump in the pool, you make the biggest splash. I think he wants to see, okay, how much water comes out of the pool if I jump in? Hasn't moved anything yet. I think that's great. What I think that means people under there are saying, hey, if he's profit taking, maybe I'm going to be supply taking. Yeah, go to five days, Rob. Go to five days. Well, the other side of that, too, Tom, is that he also has to take into account the investment market.

Is he saying that the investment market for not just strategy, but maybe overall, has shifted so that it's not as friendly that he can continue to raise U.S. dollar funds from the investment market. And therefore, he has to at least explore other options to maintain his investment position. Yeah, you're going to be a Bitcoin balance sheet company. And then the market says, well, maybe I don't like those at 3% debt. Maybe I like them at 7% percent. Or even 8% or 9% that. Yeah, exactly. Well, no, no, we've, Pat and I experienced that.

You know, we've studied roll-ups. and we can identify a couple roll-ups that had like, what was it, Pat, $2 billion, $3 billion. And but there was a floating price on the debt, number one, and number two, they were coming up on five to seven-year windows on private equity investment. And every five to seven years, private equity wants to take a big chunk out. You've got to go find liquidity to do it. Yep. That's a tough place to be.

But that's where he's at. I mean, look, the good thing about him is his temperament is so cool. if there's a guy that you will look at him and he just lost $12 billion. He's like, yeah, Howard things, great. I just had great salad. Things are good. We're excited about where Bitcoin's going. Bitcoin's the greatest thing.

He knows how to keep it very smooth there. Brandon, where are you at the good? The loss is just a word at a point in time. That's all it is. That's good. No, I think, like Tom said, like the plan could work in theory if he wasn't buying so much at the top, like that chart that Rob showed, showed way more buying. at like high prices and low prices. But do you see how much the stock got hurt, the micro strategy

stock got hit with just like a sheer 120 to 80 dropping Bitcoin? It went from 400 down to 1 30. So it lost $6 billion. In how long? Yeah, from October 2025. Go to six months, right? In microse. Go to year to date? Yeah, one year. No, go one year, one year. There you go. So it was at 450 in October. or July last year. Down to 185 today. Yeah. So the market cap is a steep drop off.

Yeah, so the market cap is $64 billion. So what's lost like, what's that, 75% of it's $450 down to like 180? Yeah, it's a lot of money. So that means it used to be probably $150 billion market cap. And hit all time, quick, Rob. So look what happened to it, the dot-com bubbles. I mean, I think a similar thing's going to happen there. It's a little just like that.

You think he's going to have that big of a drop-off? Yeah, because, I mean, I think, I just, think that it's not sustainable with like the you know the average price of 77 like there's going to be bigger drops in bitcoin than this so i actually think he put himself in a delicate position with them being so reckless with it like it could have been a sound strategy if he just bought the dips more but he just like aggressively bought it like at the top it was almost like he took on just a ton of bitcoin leverage rate at the top or at least the recent top believing that the market was going to turn around really quickly and then the values would all look at being his favor and then you know

the market would still continue to give him a huge premium and he could leverage that to continue the cash flow. It was a tight strategy in a narrow window. Do you hold Bitcoin? I don't know. Do you hold Bitcoin? Yeah, a little bit of crypto. Tom, do you hold Bitcoin? Yes.

Are you going to sell or are you going to just stay on it? I'm on it. Yeah. Are you staying? Is it changing anything you're doing? No, because it's not, and like sell everything I haven't gone as much as possible to buy it the way. Like, I'd be stressed out if I did that.

Yeah. I mean, he took a very different position, but I think the people that are owning crypto and they're long on it. They're like, yeah, okay, great. You know, you chose to build your business model this way, not me. That's a lot of stress. Respect to you. If you make trillions,

awesome, if you don't. This guy's either going to be a trillion or he's going to go bust. That's going to be one of those two things. That's kind of what he's shooting for, right, on what's going to happen. Yeah, they're sitting there at their board meeting and it's like having Princess Leia there.

Help me, Obi-Wan, Kenobi, you're my only hope. Only has, help me, Kevin Walsh. You're my only hope. Yeah, Rob, do you have the Apple story? Do you have the Apple story on what happened about Apple and iPhones? So a story came out of this lawsuit with Apple where they promised certain AI features in their phone, that didn't deliver.

Okay? So Apple has now agreed to pay iPhone owners $250 million for not deliver an AI Siri. This proposed settlement in a class action lawsuit will get some cash back to people who bought the iPhone 16 lineup and the iPhone 15 Pro if you go a little bit lower. There's different numbers that they're saying under $250 million. People submit qualifying claims can receive $25 for each eligible device, which may decrease or increase up to $95 per device. the number you're looking at. Tom said there's some

places that are saying the average number is going to be around $81, Rob, if you want to go a little bit lower on this. And this settlement will resolve a lawsuit alleging Apple's advertisement created a clear and reasonable consumer expectation that Apple intelligence features would be available with the launch of iPhone 16. The lawsuit claimed Apple's product

offered a significantly limited or entirely absent version of the Apple intelligence misleading consumers about its actual utility and performance. Tom, thoughts? Well, first of all, marketing needs to come to the product management meetings. By the way, that's never happened to us. We have never seen any company that I've ever been in a row, that Pat's ever run, anything.

We've never had a miss hit like this. We have no idea. But what happened was marketing went out there with saying things, and somewhere in product, they were unable to have that feature. And then it's like, hey, we just sold five million upgrade phones. And, you know, we're talking about Siri. And this is one of the things that they were actually giving credit to Tim Cook about. Tim Cook is letting all the AI guys fight it out.

And then he's going to pick the winner and put that one on the Apple iPhone. Yeah, it was just like, you remember when Apple did Apple Maps? What was the Apple map debacle? Like iPhone 9, iPhone 10? Remember the Apple Map that didn't work? We have been working on it. We don't need Google. We will put the map here on the.

iOS 6 in 2012. So that's got to be like iPhone 8, something like that. So it says, you know, we don't need Google. We're going to put this on here. And then Tim Cook later cited it as his biggest mistake because they put the map on there. It didn't work. It didn't show you things. It wouldn't direct you to stuff.

Things would be completely, the streets would curve and they don't curve. And so suddenly it was, all right. I have to go do this press release. I know, and after that, Larry and Sergey are in the lobby with an agreement. And they basically Google Maps had to save the day. So look, you're a big company. You're going to make mistakes and everything. And this is now another one.

Just to put things in perspective, they have $46 billion on cash they're sitting on right now. $250 million on $46 billion is 0.005%. This is as if you have $100,000,000,000. the bank and you get fined for $540. That's what this is. Yeah, that's exactly right. So it's not like it's massive for them. They'll pay them, they'll move on.

What are your thoughts? You sound like you have something. I thought you were going in a different direction of that because I don't say the same thing. Like they're famous for sitting on a ton of cash, like a couple hundred million dollars at a time. And like it's another thing with Tim Cook. I mean, I'm not happy with Apple right now for a lot of reasons. But they haven't invested in AI at all.

They, yeah, I know. They haven't invested in AI. They won't buy you a house? No, worse. It's something else. Go ahead. Keep going. No, but I mean, I don't see any reason why they couldn't have invested to Toml how you get the best engineers in the world and said, you know, like I was excited when they, I almost even forgot this was happening, but I was excited about them integrating like chat GBT

with Siri because that would have been awesome, but like it goes back to Tim Cook not being bold and not being innovative. Like Steve Jobs set that company up pretty much primed and ready to take off like a rocket and he just sat there and then wrote on it and didn't do anything. Wow. I don't know about that. I give Cook a lot more credit than that. protected something that was already an immaculate product, I think. Maybe I'm being a little bit hard on them, but I don't know. How many iPhone versions and the Apple Watch and stuff? But how different are they? Well, they've successful, regardless of the difference, they've successfully sold more of them to all of us. So marketing rather than innovation? No, I think there was innovation in there. The last three, I would, I would agree with you.

The last three, I don't think have been spectacular steps forward, but they corrected the battery I agree with you. They made their missteps, but I have a hard time, you know, being hypercritical of a $3 trillion company that's kind of changed history. I mean, maybe this is a crazy thing to say. I think you could have put... You're pissed him off. He's taking his personal. It's a good conversation. By the way, but Tom, to be to be honest with you, a lot of people agree with Brandon on the fact that this guy was just trading on the dollar and not creating anything new. Now, I'm a Tim Cook guy. I like him. He took the company from $100 billion, give or take, once Jobs died to, I don't know what it is today, $4 trillion, $4.5 trillion. So 40x, so he's done pretty okay for him. And you know this cash thing that they're always sitting on cash? You know, it was a Steve Jobs thing, right? Steve Jobs has always been, you have $4.2 trillion today. You know, he wasn't a guy that gave money to charity. He didn't believe in giving money to charity. It was like, hey, we're going to stay tight and we're going to take our money and reinvest it into the company, put him in a nice place. But let's see what the new guy's going to do. Tom made a very good point about how Tim Cook came. Tim Cook

went from being the director of operations to VP of operations to C-O to them becoming the CEO, right? Where the recent guy they put up is a senior developer at Apple, back to product. So this next phase of Apple could be very spicy, exciting

and interesting because Apple is choosing to go back to product instead of just op. So we'll see. We'll see. We'll see what happened. Are you going to continue buying Apple products or no? You're going to droid. I'm stuck, yeah. I'm worried you may even go all the way to Huawei. And Huawei's not even legal here.

So I just don't want to see you go that side. Bootleg. Yeah, it's too good of a product. I'll still do it. He walks around with the old mega-scale one of these things. Anyways, all right, so let's go to maybe one last story, and then we'll wrap up. Marco Rubio, the guy's just a stud, man. And, you know, he gets a lot.

People are like, well, you know, because there's two camps right now. You got the JD camp and you got the Rubio camp. And the JD camp cannot stay. stand Rubio. They, for whatever reason, cannot stand this guy. And then Rubio does things like this. Okay. Go ahead, Rob.

Let's play one of the two clips. Is this him doing Caroline Levitt's job because she's on leave of a, how dare she choose to have a baby, by the way? I mean, you have this tough of a job, and you choose to have a baby. And what respect to her for doing that. May all of it be great, healthy baby. And I'm sure we'll see the pictures when it's. What's this video here, Rob?

This is where Marco Rubio talks about Cuba. Go for it. Here's Marco Rubio talking about Cuba. There's no oil blockade on Cuba per se. Here's what's happening with Cuba. Cuba used to get free oil from Venezuela. I used to give them a bunch of free oil. They would take like 60% of that oil and resell it for cash. It wouldn't even go to benefit the people.

So the only blockade that's happened is the Cubans have decided, I mean, the Venezuelans have decided we're not giving you free oil anymore. Their economic model doesn't work. And the people who are in charge can't fix it. Including Phil Lieberwood's the CIA guy who's sitting behind the desk. That also happens to be friendly territory for some of our adversaries. Go back five seconds. So it's an unacceptable status quo.

We're not giving you free oil anymore. Their economic model doesn't work. Doesn't work. And the people who are in charge can't fix it. And we have 90 miles from our shores, a failed state. That also happens to be friendly territory for some of our adversaries. So it's an unacceptable status quo. I will be addressing it, but not today.

How long before we take over Cuba? He said something. He says, when this is over, all we're going to have to do is bring a big ship and put it right in front of Cuba, and then they're going to say, here you go, take it over right, when Trump said that. And then what's the other clip?

Rubio's asking, he sells America. Is this the one where, you know, he's asking him a question, and he talks about how amazing America is? No, I can find that. This is where he talks about Operation Fury being over and the next part of the war in Iraq.

Go for it. I think you're linking it. The operation is over. Epic Fury is the President, notified Congress. We're done with that stage of it. We're now on to this project of freedom. As far as a negotiation is concerned, I think the President's been clear that part of the negotiation process has to be not just the enrichment, but what happens to this material that's buried deep somewhere that they still have access to if they ever wanted to dig it out.

That has to be addressed, and that's being addressed in the negotiation. I'm not going to go further on what progress has been made on that topic because I don't want to endanger the negotiations, but suffice it to say that the President and this entire team is aware of the centrality of that question, and that will have to be addressed one way or the other. Thoughts, Rubio. Sharp, clean, crisp, authoritative. You feel confident. You feel like he's going to leave and he's going to do something.

You don't feel like Superman. You don't feel like Incredible Hulk. You feel like that guy knows what he's doing and he's going to go out and get something done. That's the feeling you get. This is the clip I wanted to show you guys. This is the dream. Watch himself the dream.

Go ahead, Rob. You've had a deep faith for God and country. At the end of the day, with all that you've involved in. You've been extremely busy. Go ahead, I'm sorry. As we all know, I've got to ask you, what is your hope for America at a time such as this? My hope for America? And how do you personally deal with that?

Yeah, look, I mean, my hope for America is what it's always been. I think it's the hope I hope we all share. We wanted to continue to be the place where anyone from anywhere can achieve anything, where you're not limited by the circumstances of your birth, by the color of your skin, by your ethnicity, but frankly, it's a place where you are able to overcome challenges and achieve your full potential. I think that should be the goal of every country in the world, frankly, but I think in the U.S., we're not perfect. Our history is not one of perfection, but it's still better than anybody else's history. And ours is a story of perpetual improvement.

Each generation has left the next generation of Americans freer, more prosperous, safer, and that is our goal as well. But it is a unique and exceptional country, and as we come upon this 250-year anniversary, I think we have a lot to learn and be proud of in our history. It is one of perpetual and continuous improvement where each generation has done its part to bring us closer to fulfilling the vision. that the founders of this country had upon its founding. But you just love that. How do you feel about to listen to it? I mean, he's transformed since 2016. I remember he was like the sweaty, nervous guy,

that little Marco would lean out into the picture and sip the water. And I'm like reading off his cell phone when he was giving speeches. So yeah, transformed into a different guy. Very impressive. Yeah. Straight from the heart. And it's exactly what I want to hear. I want someone to say, we are still the best place and we are still the best history.

No, we're not perfect. But we got to wake up and work on it every. day. Guess what? That's the whole message. That's why I'm here. That's why I'm working hard. And that's why it matters. That's it, the improvement. When he said we continuously try to improve. And what's different about the United States, I mean, there are other countries too, but different about the United States is that's actually possible. Yeah, it is. This is the greatest country in the world, hands down, and it's our job to make sure we maintain it and we fight for it. And if you have a way of positively influenced and protecting this, I think we should do

what we do. This is one of the reasons why we started at Valuetainments, one of the reasons why we do what we do with our companies. Because we think every day somebody wakes up, you know, wanting to destroy America, wanting to destroy what we built, and every day a group of people wake up, wanting to protect and take it to the next level. I think there's more of group one than group two. And I think group two needs to unify, come together and keep fighting. And we don't have to be 100% agreeing on every single thing. But as long as you are on the position of capitalism is the best economical system. America is the greatest country in the world.

As long as we rely on that and we're doing whatever we can to make it better for kids, I think we're going to be on the same page. And this is why when I run into people, especially when we go to our conferences or event or cigar lounge or people to come up that follow the content, you speak to them, we share common values and principles. And I love running into you, especially when you got the gear on.

By the way, for some of you guys that are commenting below, you're like, my God, is it too late for me to do it? Here's what we're due. I just told the guys, we're going to keep it open for the survey for one more hour before we close the survey. It's going to end up costing us a million bucks. Do you run that by the accountant first? No, to be honest with you, but we're going to keep it. I'll talk to the guys green light.

Don't worry about it. So this is what, 1110 right now. We will keep it open until 12, 15 Eastern Standard Time. If you haven't done the survey and you want to participate in it and answer thoroughly, go to survey.vt.com. survey.v.v.v.v.com. It'll be up for one more hour. The $25 gift card applies to you guys as well. If some of you guys are saying, I still haven't seen the gift card that came in for us. Added the 12,000 emails, we've already sent that 4,000. The other 8,000 is in the process. So it's coming. You're going to get it today. But with that being said, you already know,

would Jeff Snyder go to Eurodollar University YouTube channel, support the man. He's got some very interesting things to say about what's going on with the economy. but we know specifically economy. Don't ask the question that Tom's brink up with California. He's not interested in that. He just wants to talk about business. Again, go to Eurodollar University. With that being said, we have a show coming out tomorrow.

We'll see you guys on Friday as well. God bless everybody. Take care. Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye.