PBD Podcast - California's Election Shakeup + Microsoft's AI Spy Badge

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

Patrick Bet-David, Tom Ellsworth, Brandon Aceto, and Humberto Boellert are joined by economist Brian Wesbury as they cover the Los Angeles mayoral election results, California’s governor race, Bill Pulte’s appointment to lead the FHFA, Scott Pelley’s departure from CBS, President Trump’s decision to scrap a $1 billion weaponization fund, Microsoft’s new AI workplace monitoring technology, and the growing debate over remote work’s impact on young professionals.------⚽ FLB NATIONS COLLECTION: https://bit.ly/3PyKqORⓂ️ 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

Did you ever think you would make it? I feel I'm something like it takes sweet with the story. 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 a 101?

My son's right there. I think I've ever said this before. All right. I think it's fair to say there's some stories to cover today, especially California. California, you got some hope? California, you got some hope? got some hope, baby. There's some good stuff that's coming around California. Let's see if you guys will be able to finish it off. And can you imagine if both the mayor and the governor

of California, Spencer Pratt is right now second place? We'll talk about the numbers, the percentages that just came out from New York Times. And then you have for the governor race, Hilton's at the top ahead of the Sarah. So we'll talk about both. Tom made very, very good comments about the fact that nobody thought Rahman was going to be about 15%. She ended up above 12%. She ended up above 22 and they didn't think Spencer Proud was going to be above 30 he ended up above 30 which means what it means people do not like carambas which is very good if this ends now keep in mind there's still some things going on with California because you have to make sure they count the ballots and to count the ballots could take them seven years so hang tight till we figured out they have all the mail and then also from

forest lawn they got to count yeah that's right forest lawn there's two forest lawns the one Michael Jackson's and the one in Glendale and then the other one off the 170 freeway. You got you got a lot of opportunities there. Karen Bass is expected to carry both. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see what it happened. Well, we'll see what it happened. Aside from that AI, Bernie Sanders comes out and says any of these AI companies, 50% should be owned by the government. And the president came out and kind of put something out there as an executive order to seeking oversight of AI models. A couple people were chirping, a guy named Elon, you may or may not know, and another guy named David Sachs to that. We don't know if that's a good idea or not. So we'll see. We'll see what happened there. And then Bill Palti

is, Rob, this is not an onion story or Babylon B that Bill Paltes now the DNI. We like Bill Palti, but what does it have to do with D&I? I don't know. But we're definitely going to be talking about that. Maybe Tom has some insight for us. And then Jamie Diamond calls the Coinbase series. He says he's full of shit. What did he all of a sudden get upset about? We'll talk about that. Microsoft AI gadget badge. If you haven't seen that, this, they have these new AI badges that Humberto was sharing with us, that they record everything. Like literally they record everything. Good idea, bad idea. Who knows? We'll talk about it. Uber is now capping the number of tokens they're given to every one of their employees.

I think it's a limit, if I'm not mistaken, a $1,500 a month per employee per month, right, that you can do because the expenditure was going really high. A couple companies sound like a half a billion dollar bill. You're like, wait a minute, time out guys. We're not doing this much of it. remote work folks for the youth is worsening. A lot of people are saying, well, you know, AI is taking jobs away from the youth. Well, maybe it's because they want remote work and they don't want to work at an office. Maybe that's the reason why, Brian, you know, they're not, you know, getting the job. So we'll talk about that.

And then there is a drink that came out. We're not endorsing this. This is not a sponsorship, okay? We only have one sponsor. We're not doing an endorsement of this drink. but Vinny came in here doing backflips and we said what the hell is wrong with Vinny? And he talks about this drink

that's got 186 grams of sugar called Crazy Cousins 32 ounce dirty soda. Okay, why would they do something like that at a time where diabetes like? But anyways, apparently they want to sell that to kids and we'll talk about that. And then Trump abandons the $1.8 billion

out of slush fund. The story, Daily Mail, says, in a humiliating U-turn, as his own party turns on, and we'll address that. And he got 60 minutes. Guy that makes 5 to 7 million years. Good looking guy.

He's been with CBS since 89. Scott Pelly goes in there, apparently. This letter was public. I'm sure you read the letter. I mean, it was pretty nasty letter. Like, if you're going to get fired, this is the wrong way of getting fired. Apparently he went in there bitching

and was not very happy about it. And the CBS, if you don't like it, we got to kind of move on and that's exactly what they did. So we'll talk about that. Maybe we'll get into MLB salary caps. Good story. And then World Cup rule changes.

Couple of the rules, I don't know if you saw the rule changes or not. You don't like them? I'm cute because you like when people lay down for seven minutes after acting like they got hurt. Only a guy from Chile would say he likes that. It's a drama, all right? Yeah, you need that seven minutes of just... Until the trainer just lays down. The magic spray.

They're trying to speed up the game, but we'll see. We'll see what it happened. Today we have with us, Brian Westbury, who is a chief economist, as well as an economic editor for a member. I'm not mistaken. Done a lot of work. We've seen you on CNBC, Bloomberg, Fox. You've been all over.

It's great to have you're with us as well to give some insight. And so before we get into the podcast and cover the stories, folks, the big game is around the corner. They're already talking about the matchups. Who's playing against two? Different people are representing different countries. Obviously, I live in an interesting community where a lot of soccer players live. We knew when they left to go off to Kansas City.

Messies in Kansas City. This is going to be the most amazing thing. Everyone's, look, there was so many interesting stats. The most ever players, about 40 years old playing in the World Cup. The youngest player is a 17-year-old kid from, I think, from Mexico, if I'm not mistaken. There's going to be some interesting stories. But we had these hats that we made representing different countries, okay? And believe it or not, for Iran, we had the old Shahan Shahi, Mohammed Drozal Shah al-Shapal-Aviz flag right here, which is sick.

And I think there's a couple of those hats left. Rob, if you want to play this clip, go for it. It's Argentina, whether it's Brazil, whether it's U.S., which the U.S. hats look ridiculous, or whether it's Iran, any of them, go to VTemerch.com, place your order. Get the hat, get it for yourself, get it for your friends. But go to v.tmerch.com to place your order and represent your country for this summer.

With that being said, let's get right into the store. Again, go to VTmerch.merch.com to place your order. But let's get into the first story. First story I want to get into is the two big races we had yesterday, Brian. We had the L.A. mayoral race, and we had the gubernatorial race, right? The primaries. On the mayoral race, everybody was wondering what was going to happen. For me, I think the biggest superstar that made a big name for herself was Katie Porter.

Not for the right reasons, but I think she's got a job at the view. I think she can be a rock star. But if you look at for the governor race, that's where she was at. But for the mayoral race, Spencer Prant, 30.4%. This is within 63% the votes. Karimbas at the lead with 34.8, Nithya Rahman 22.3, then it's the rest of the camp. So if it goes like this, Karambas for sure is not getting to what she needs the 51% or something like that. So there won't be anything going on.

There is going to be a runoff and it's going to go till November. And yesterday she tweeted something. She said, I love L.A. And you would think the person that was in the lead would get hundreds of thousands of views and likes. Not really. It was a thousand likes. People could care less about the announcement. Look, you may love L.A., but we don't love you as much as you think we do. And so it'll be interesting to see what happens there. And Rob, if you have a clip of Spencer Pratt, there was a great picture of him and his wife.

Is this him at the end of it when they... Okay, go ahead, Rob. Well, obviously, God wanted five more months of me exposing all the failures of our mayor. So it's going to be a fun ride. I hope she's ready. Are you ready? I mean, I was born for this clearly. I was born for this clearly. Okay, what do you think, Brian?

What do you think are the chances that by the end of it, this guy's got a chance of winning, expensive prize? By the way, he's got the greatest commercials ever. He does, yes, he does. And he's been very creative. The best thing is that California has been a one-party state forever and ever. And so now that we have a Republican looking like he's going to be in the final two for governor and,

for mayor. This is fantastic. And that's what I think Republicans really need is a platform to be able to share their views rather than just being shut out in a one-party state. Tom, how do you feel about it? Well, mixed emotions. One, I'm really happy that now there's an alternative candidate, and Angelinos aren't going to get snowballed in a primary where someone wins 51. We declare victory, and that's it. Now there's going to be, as they say, the jungle primary where there's multiple candidates, that's their word for it. I'm not saying anything derogatory, is now down to two. Now we have a traditional election left, right, and I like that. What worries me is Rahman at 22 percent. Those socialist voters that are behind her are almost certainly going to get behind Bass. So right now,

Bass sits on about 53, 54, and it's going to take a decided effort by Spencer Pratt to expose things and to bring that down so that he can be sitting on, you know, 51% come election day. But I'm glad that now all the drama's over, Raman steps aside. We have two candidates. Let's debate and let's do many debates. And remember, she and Raman, did individual side-by-side debates that excluded Pratt. She can't run anymore, Pat.

She can't run. Who can't run anymore? Karen Bass. She can't run from... She and Rahman did a side-by-side debate and excluded Spencer Pratt. It's over, baby. The jungle primary is done. You've got to get on stage now and debate mano amato.

But here's a reality of it. If we look at it today, every one of these votes here on the bottom, pretty much 80% of it would go to Karen Bass. Right? Except maybe Adam Miller. He was a independent non-no-party. That's why I said 80% of it, right? So meaning Nithia is going to go to Karen.

So if you put those two together, she's at 57. And then you have the rest of the group. Say you give Spencer a couple points. Let's say Adam Miller's folks go to Spencer Pratt. He's got the lead. But the worst part about this is, the more this goes by, the more it hurts Karen Bass, period, the more. So if you thought he was due marketing,

You know what's happening now? Here's what's going to happen with Spencer Pratt now. When the market sees that you're a real player, now the bigger name players are going to come in that were kind of sitting this one out. Oh, so you have the fight? Oh, so you're really going in it? Now I'm willing to put some money behind it. Now I'm willing to do an additional event for you.

Now I'm willing to do this for you. So it'll be interesting as we're looking at this. And Humberto, do you have any thoughts on this? Oh, yeah, of course. First of all, we need to understand that these are not the full numbers, right? We have, yeah. It might take another 70 days. It might take a few days.

The mayoral race of LA is 63% counted. And then the governor race, I think it was 53% on the last update that I've seen. We need to think about that it's a primary. You have a 20-point delta, like 20 to 30 points of people that show up. If you look at the primary voters, usually the turnout is anywhere between 30 to 50%. If you look at the final election, election day, you get anywhere between 50 and 80% turnout in California. So the gap, because if you see the numbers now and you do a straight math of like how many votes are going to go to a certain candidate, like if everyone's leaning left and it's going to go all to Karen Bass, you have a lot of voters that haven't spoken yet. And I think especially Spencer Pat has a non-political common sense message that can get a lot of people out there voting.

You know what I mean? So I don't know. I'm very, I think the future looks bright for California. I lived there for a few years, one of the most wonderful states in the country. I had the best time in college there. So I'm very optimistic for what's going to happen. Yeah, it's a great point. And a lot of people think that you have to convert people who are voting Democrats to vote Republican.

Not the case. All you really have to do is activate people who have been dormant for years. Our Republicans have given up hope on the concept of a Republican in California. Like every single election there ever is, there's more than enough voters that sit out that probably could swing the election in the other direction. So now they could focus in on that, that he's gotten past the first phase of it. And I think that, yeah, the pendulum swung so far in one direction that I think there is hope for it. And I've said since, you know, Schwarzenegger got elected. I think he was the last Republican governor, if I'm not mistaken.

I think you needed somebody like this who's a celebrity who has that, you know, that edge when it comes to it to have a chance as a Republican. So, yeah, I think that it's exciting to see, like, what potential California could have if they run, like, a proper state. Yeah, totally agree with that. And at least it's a debate. Yeah. The jungle primary always ends up giving us two Democrats in California, and then there's no debate.

I mean, they debate, but they're saying the same thing. Right. This is good. This is good. This is good that this is taking place. And by the way, the part that makes it exciting, this is an interesting clip to watch. But the part that makes it exciting is this guy is fearless. He's annoying to them.

He's not backing down. He's doubling down. He's calling them out. You need somebody like that. Rob, go on and play this clip. Because remember, the final piece of the puzzle, that we won't know tonight, right, is the late arriving vote by mail. And we're talking about probably like a third of the vote in Los Angeles.

We're probably not going to be getting until tomorrow and maybe days to come after tomorrow. The mail can still come in after election day. And there's indications, and there's certainly a ton of precedent here, that that late arriving vote by mail is going to be significantly more democratic friendly than all of the other vote. Meaning that would be good news for Baxter. that would be good news for Rahman. If she's going to come out of tonight behind Pratt, it's a huge if,

but if she's going to come out of tonight behind Pratt, well, it's not a huge if at this point. She would then have an opportunity if she's close enough to catch him with that. But that is a 25,000 vote pad there. Eight percentage points that Pratt has managed to build with that vote by mail here. And if he can build that a little bit more with that election day vote, you know, when that comes in, that in-person polling place vote, if he's able to expand on that lead, it does take you into territory.

We start to say, look, even if that late arriving vote is much more democratic, has he succeeded in building the kind of pad he needs to finish above Rahman and to get into a runoff, you would say at this point, best. Those are if you're... So that's the mayoral race, right? Now, let's look at the gubernatorial race, because that's a complete different result as well that they have. Steve Hilton ends up taking first place.

As of right now, again, it's not fully in. The numbers I have is at 27.8. Is this from yesterday, Rob? Late last night. Go for it. Yeah, I mean, go for it. That's 46% in. So we have numbers that are 64% in.

Hilton's at 27.8, but Sarah's at 25.4. Steyer's at 196, so he would be out. And then Bianco 113 and then Katie Porter's at 4.5. And for some of you guys that are devoutes, well fans, he got 18,602 votes. 0.4%. We have to give some credit to the guy who was supposed to be

a Democratic candidate. And then all of a sudden he's out. So how different times? Do you think it is that for the Republican, for the gubernatorial race, than a mayoral race? It's hugely different because you go from 2020, 22, 24, and now we are 26. You look at how the counties vote in statewide elections. It has been moving. If you look last night, last night was amazing when you saw what Hilton got in Orange County.

He wasn't just red. He was bright red. He destroyed the competition in Orange County. and you take a look at Central. If there's any maps, Rob, the state-by-state county map that are out there, you can basically see, and if we were able to compare. So I happen to think, and I'll see what you think, but every two years we have seen a, I'm going to use the word progressive, and that's wrong. We have seen a structured move statistically of California going more independent conservative on their voting, especially statewide. and I think this is a good sign.

Now remember, the Steyer vote is going to Becerra. So we got to add that up. It's the same situation in L.A., like the mayor. You got to put Steyer-Bissara together. And now what that means, Xavier is probably sitting on 46 right now. I actually think 20% of Steyer will go to Hilton. I actually think 20% of Steyer will go to Hilton. Because what kind of a vote is a Steyer vote?

It's the... Protests. Yeah, it's the... business. He's more like climate. Well, you know, poor me. I'm a billionaire, but I feel so bad for everybody else. But then the average guy that's kind of like, you know what? I'll just kind of put money behind him. By the way, you know who had Steyer, which we know that guy's what's going to go to Bacera? Who's the actor, the Hulk? Incredible Hulk? Mark Ruffalo. Ruffalo had Steyer. He endorsed him, I think, two or three days ago. What are your thoughts? I know you've spent

some time with Hilton. He was with you guys at Fox. Yeah, he was. I'm going to repeat what Tom said. look at the center of that state all the way up other than those coastal, you know, liberal cities, they're turning redder and redder. And it's because the education system is falling apart. The standard of living is our, I mean, House prices in California are out of control. And it might in this case work against the Democrats and for Hilton. I'm going to have to be that guy. Go for it. No, no, but it's just a math.

like we have 57% of the votes the leads are two or three points amongst them we have a lot of votes of coming in I don't see a trend that is definitive so like it's really hard to speak on this numbers right now what do you think is more definitive Spencer being in it or Hilton being in it Hilton? I think it's too early to tell

for both of them for both of them okay because the thing is you still have like almost half of the votes coming in and then you have two three point leads like it could go anywhere yet like there's not a I don't know if Tom you agree there's not a definitive trend right now just being responsible with numbers. But the fact that the city is that close because the city is always the biggest spread between

Democrat and Republican. So it's like when Miami went to DeSantis in 2022, that was like a massive indicator, the whole state felt that way. So if L.A. is anywhere close to being a close race, that means the whole state has shifted that much. That's a good point. That's a good point because the city, the city is leading the state because it's such a liberal city.

Right. Very good. Do you agree with what I totally agree. but a water pipe hasn't broken yet. Yeah. And the mail-in ballots haven't come in there. The good news is it's not like people cheat in elections. It's not like they steal votes or they do stuff like that.

It's nothing like this happened. The previous president, previous to the president, the most popular motivational speaker of all time got 81 million votes, and we know that was, this kind of stuff would never happen. So I want to make sure the integrity of elections we have to keep there. One of the things, shout out to our guy, Chad Bianco, he did very well. you know, he's got fourth place right now with 11% of the vote. Good for Bianco. Good for him. Nice one guy. We had him over here. Good for Bianco. I think once this is going to become clear, I think him and Hilton will probably team up to do something together. I hope Hilton does because, you know, Bianco did play an important role and there's something that they can do collectively together.

To Humberto's point earlier, I read here, and I didn't send it to Rob, but it said that the gubernator election in California is now up to focus and turnout. so that it is the high focus. Steve Hilton needs to be high focus, and we've seen him kind of meander a little bit when he makes points. He needs to hit the points crisp and hard, and the angry voter will come out. By the way, the protest vote is higher in California, on the Republican side than the Democrat side, Pat.

And that's because for the last 20 years, oh, screw it, I'm not voting. This doesn't even matter. That attitude. And they say, so Hilton stays focused. He will now be up against Bacera. It looks like all summer. And then what will the turnout look like?

Can they overturn out San Bernardino County and the central counties and just move a percent or two in the cities? Hilton could win this thing. But it's going to be a long summer. And now all the confusion is over. You know, people are going to see A or B. Yeah, right. Is there any clips of Kerman?

and Bass that you have? Do you have anything on Bass? I don't, I have, I don't believe I have anything on Carlin. Because here it was Carlin Bass advances to November runoff. You had a video on it. I thought maybe had a clip of Get Bass speaking. Oh, it was Spencer Pratt. I had more Spencer Pratt. And then I also have Steve Hilton thanking his voters yesterday. Go for it. As a proud American, someone who loves this country so much, this is my first time running for

office. And when we just passed that number of one million people, and it's now over a million, voting for me. One million Californians and rising, putting their hopes in me to bring change and put our state back on track. It's an unbelievable honor, something I absolutely take so seriously. I won't let people down. Only the paranoid survive. Only the paranoid survive. We'll see what happens next. Next story comes out with a little bit of a weird story. Through a lot of people off. This isn't the addendum, I believe, page three. Bill Palti is announced as the DNI replacing a, Tulsi Gabbard, Rob, that's the story, right? I mean, literally when you first saw this, I thought it was a,

I thought the guys were joking around saying, hey, that's the announcement that was made. But let me read this to you. Donald Trump has named housing official to serve as acting director of national intelligence. D&I, the country's top spy chief overseeing 18 government intelligence agencies, Bill Pulte, part of a powerful home building dynasty, and a private equity financier has no known background in intelligence and its selection to temporarily fill the position is steering controversy amongst lawmakers and others. Palti has been accused of using his role as a director of federal housing

finance agency to target Trump's perceived enemies by making criminal referrals over claims of mortgage fraud. In an announcement on social media, Tuesday, Trump praised Palti for overseeing government-controlled mortgage company, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. William has deep experience managing the most sensitive matters in America, the safety of soundness of the markets and over $10 trillion at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a substantial increase from where it was just 12 months ago. During this period where it was just 12 months ago, he will remain director of the federal housing finance agency and chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Congratulations to Director Pulte. Tom, thoughts on this. So I noticed that he's staying at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, I mean, he's CEO of

the dual organization, the director. And what's interesting is he's acting. No one is in the chair. Trump needs someone in the chair. And there were a series of investigations that Tulsi had going on that can't just sit. So I am wondering, and the White House has got to confirm it, this guy is a pit bull and he's tough. So I'm curious as they're saying, listen, Bill, I need you to step into the seat and I need you to pick up these investigations that Tulsi had going. Go for it. Push them, keep them going.

But you're going to keep your job here. and then we're going to name somebody to the post. I'm wondering if that's it, because all of the announcements and the press secretary reiterating it have said, hey, he's going to stay as director of federal housing finance agency and chairman of Phanamy Freddie Mac. So if he's going to keep doing that, but he's acting over here, it kind of is one of those things like where we've seen it in business, Pat. The CFO will be the acting CEO, and he will make the announcement to the stock markets while we continue our search for a CEO. The only thing the White House didn't say is while we continue our search for a CEO. So my curiosity is this truly an acting role while they do a search so that he can

continue those prosecutions and investigations that Tulsa had going? Brian. You know, Trump has this one characteristic. I think he looks at Washington previous to him as being a joke in many respects. 51 former intelligence officers came out and said the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. I mean, that's a joke. It wasn't ever true. They knew it when they did it. And Trump has disdain for them. And so by appointing Palti, I think he gets to do two things.

He gets his own pit bull in place. And he kind of gets to show that, hey, maybe all these people in Washington, D.C., when they tell you, we need a. intelligence expert to do this job, maybe they're just, you know, joking around because all they're really doing is putting politicians in the places. They just call them intelligence officials.

Umberto. I mean, the main thing that are intelligence, you know, agencies in general need, they need to be audited. So having a business guy there, they can do hiring and firing. If he's an actual pit bull, as you say, I think that's the guy we need. You know what I mean? This is not the first time in history that we have people without any intelligence or military experience.

You have Mike McConnell. He took the position. Well, you know, like, so I think if he's going to have a business approach to how to run the agencies, like it might be a positive. I don't know. I'm just giving the president, you know, like some leeway and see what's going to talk. What are Chuck Schumer's? But look, the true criticism that people are going to give is where is the quality of the quality. for someone like him to run this.

Intelligence is different than mortgage and real estate. And Bill Pulte is a friend. It's not like I'm calling the guy out. Where is the, where is the, so here's what Chuck Schumer is saying about it. Let me just play this clip for a couple seconds and then we'll come back to it. Go ahead, Rob. Now on the Pulte appointment. This morning, Trump appointed Bill Pulte to serve as acting director of national intelligence,

something that should send a shiver down the spine of everyone. Bill Pulte has proven himself willing to act as a Trump political puppet, filing baseless, outrageous, politically motivated charges on Trump's behalf. And now Trump wants to put him in charge of intelligence. Americans need an intelligence, chief, to be loyal to the facts. If you're not loyal to the facts in intelligence, you're not protecting our security. he needs the intelligence and security teams. This guy speaks it.

It's a cure for insomnia. But I think a part of it where you're thinking, why would he get the job? Brandon, where are you at with this? Yeah, if I wanted to try as hard as I possibly can to make a positive spin on this, I don't think that I could. Because, one, Pulte, I think Pulte should be focused

100% on fixing the housing market and making sure that we're building as much possible because that's the biggest crisis in America. a lack of homes for the amount of people that need homes. So I didn't see him making a ton of progress on that. So I don't think we should put them in charge of the entire intelligence agency. Plus, it's not a job where you just, it's your brief intern in it and you can turn it over to somebody else. Like you have to be sworn in and briefed on all the confidential things that are going on. And what does he know about what's going on in the Middle East or what's

going on in Russia and with terrorism and this and that? I mean, not that a lot of people who have had that before are super impressive either. But he's not, he hasn't done anything remarkable. with the job he already has, so why are you going to double them up with this now? Like, is it going to be a Rubio thing where he's holding both these jobs at once? Like, it does create the question of like, oh, just Trump just wants somebody there who's a yes man? So, no, I don't like it. Tom, what do you say to that? You know, I, there's validity to the angle that Brandon is taking. And I think that there's an obvious opening here because of the lack of direct experience. And that's why my speculation is, is it just an active. role the same way CFOs are acting while they find a new CEO. Clearly, Pulte's background is not national intelligence. However, he was brought as an outsider to carve through crap, and he has done some of that. And the fact that the interest rates and other things are frustrating the progress of the housing market doesn't mean he's not pushing things.

And I know you're going to push on housing that if it's not cured tomorrow, somehow something things, you know, bad. So, you know, I see the criticism and I think it's valid. This is how I see it. The only way I see this is the following. I see it as sometimes you have a leader that's running a department and you're not that connected to the people that report to him or her. So, for instance, you got a guy that's got 100 people that are working with him.

And he's running it. He's a C-suite executive. And then all of a sudden you fire him or he quits. you don't know to bring somebody up. So if he's a C-suite, you bring the VP and say, you're the interim guy to run this department, whatever, the finance, whatever, you run it now. Or you bring the director up, you bring somebody up.

If you didn't believe in the guy that was running the entire department and you think that entire department is infested with people that are now against you, that's when you bring somebody in that you trust. That is the only reason where I see him putting something like this to say, look, give me 90 days. I'm going to go and see who's who, who's on whose side, and I'll study them very closely, and I'll come back to you, give you a report. Perfect. I trust you to go find who is on our side, who's not on our side. If it's a job to

go clean up, well, then maybe that makes sense. But if it's a long-term job, it doesn't make sense to have Bill Pulte at that position long-term. Maybe Bill is going to be somebody that's going to go out there and do some due diligence and take a bunch of guys to lunch and have meetings and have different kind of things. And they say, you know, we can trust this guy. That's part of Tulsi's team. That's part of Talc. This is part of Tolst.

This is part of this. This guy's part of you. This guy's neutral. That guy's an old timer that came from, you know, George Bush. That guy's with Biden. That guy was with Obama. And so you're kind of going to get where they're at. That is the only way I see something like this right now.

Can I make another counterpoint? Yeah, of course. The most qualified by, you know, like experience of all time is James Clapper. Where did that take us? You know what I mean? Yeah. had 40 years of military intelligence experience. Like, did he do any better than any other DNI?

Like, I don't know. Like, someone tell me. Well, it's the same thing as George H.W. Bush. He was supposedly the most qualified president we've had in, you know, 100 years. I compare him to Ronald Reagan, an actor or Donald Trump. And yet he was a one-term president. And most people didn't vote for him because he failed. And then I just, I would say one overall.

marching thing. One of the things that has always bothered me about government, and I was the chief economist, the Joint Economic Committee of Congress back in the 90s. And they keep telling us we need experts. We need experts. We need an expert here, an expert there, and you've got to know what you're doing, and you have to have experience in government, and look where we are. Everything just keeps getting worse, not better, and that's with, and we just keep hiring experts. And I'm like, it's time to not. It's time to reshuffle the whole board and bring in people that actually can run a business or manage people. And maybe it'll make a big difference. I'm not saying he's an intelligence expert. And I think intelligence is important. Really? Right. I mean,

and but the thing is that that job's a labyrinth. Like, think about all, like, there's not a single person in the world who knows every single thing that's going on in the intelligence agencies, right? Like, even if it's the director of the CIA, he doesn't know everything that's going on in the CIA. So how would he even go about, like, learning everything that's going on and what each person's about? I mean, I think that's an, you know, unrealistic task for him to do if that is the initiative. A good manager will know. What do you mean? It's classified.

No, no, no, no. But you just walk around, see what this guy's about, who he's having lunch with, what meetings he's taking. I don't know. That's giving him a lot of credit. If, like, directors of the CIA can't know who they could trust. Like, was it John Rackliff, the director of the CIA said they just came in and installed, like, things on his computer that he didn't want them to install day one, right? So it's a crazy position to be in and everybody's trying to stab you in the back. It is a crazy position.

And by the way, remember, CIA has been around for a minute, but DNI hasn't. I think DNI has only been around for 19 years, 17 years, 20 years. I don't know what the numbers. It's not been around for that long of a time. Can you see when it got started, DNI? In CIA reports to them. Yeah, 21 years, I got started. So it's a recent thing that they got started.

So, and CIA reports to DNI. So we'll see. A little bit slipper slope. The only thing for me is it is a reflection of whether he trusts, Tulsi or not and what happened to that team? How deep it's been infiltrated. That would be the only reason for me that he assigns a position like this

because you know he trusts Paul T immensely with the way their relationship is. Let me get to the next story. Next door I want to get into is what happened with 60 minutes. So we heard rumblings that the 60 Minutes host or reporter Scott Pelly who has been with CBS since 89 was not too happy with some of the things

that was taking place. And apparently if you look at the online numbers, you will see him making between $5 to $7 million a year. And so story comes out that all of a sudden, Rob, do you have the letter that CBS gave to him? And then after giving the letter, you know, they're like, look, you come in here, you're not happy,

you're making some noise, you're screaming at us, you're telling us what we're doing wrong, you're not following our vision of what we want to go next? Let's just make it easier for you. Guess what? You're fired and, you know, go do something else. You don't have to be here. Go choose to do something else.

Rob, while you're looking for the letter, maybe go back to that first video that you had. Go ahead, Rob. This is about Scott Pelly, one of the best-known stars on 60 Minutes, really one of the best-known journalists in America, and he's very directly challenging his bosses at CBS News today, creating a bit of a crisis internally. Right now, it's about an overhaul at 60 Minutes, the highest-rated news magazine in the country. Pelley's been a part of that program for decades, and he's claiming that CBS News, editor-in-chief Barry Weiss, is trying to kill the show. In a staff meeting earlier today, Pelley said, quote,

she was brought in to kill it and she's been doing exactly that. Now, Weiss thinks that's ridiculous and some of Weiss's deputies believe Pelley was being unprofessional and rude in this staff meeting. But here's what's going on. Last fall, Weiss was brought in by Paramount CEO David Ellison to remodel and renovate CBS News. Okay, so Tom, what's going on there with Scott Pelley? So, first of all, that guy there on CNN,

it's just pushing party line. What was going on inside is that people are responding positively to the change that Barry Weiss is putting there, and then you have long-timers that are not. There are quotes from people that was covered. I'm reading two different articles I put quotes from. Most people in this building are perplexed.

They have jobs. They want to keep those jobs, and they have thought 60 minutes has been an arrogant group in the corner for a while. You could see that. You can see Leslie Stahl. This is 60 minutes. minutes, Donald Trump.

Also, coming back, the arrogance is beyond reproach. But at the same time, the CBS people understand they'll be affected by Barry Wise as she changed in plans. Remember, if you're third place in a three-network race, people that are hired are here to change

and move it forward. You hear that? So there are people in there that understand that, hey, we're third place, and the 60 Minutes people were arrogant. You can't go off. Our leadership needs to be given the chance. You can't lead a place

where you're told you're not welcome and you allowed old timers to stand up on a soapbox. This was a setup. This was Scott going off for the show. That was just for show. He wants to stand up for journalism and maybe get fired, but does he really care? And what does

it change for all of us that are here? The grandstanding thing is in stain. It's third grade playground bullying stuff. This is not the way you conduct yourself. And what about all of us that are still working. There's the big one. What about the rest of us that are still here working? What did you accomplish?

You're not taking down a dictator or someone committed war crimes. You're not interviewing Saddam Hussein. It's amazing. These are comments coming from the inside. And by the way, Nick Billton, how long has Nick been there? Can you pull up how long Nick's been there? Because that's not coming from very

white. So how long has Nick been with CBS? Maybe. For a minute, I'm assuming. Right? Yeah. Very short. very short. Yeah, May 28th to 2026. And so where was he at before? So Billton worked at New York Times, 2003 to 2016, which is kind of the same time Barry Weiss worked there, right? So they're coming. So they both came. Didn't they meet at New York Times? So he wrote the article to him, to him. Brian, how are you processing this yourself on what happened here?

Well, it's kind of interesting. We just talked about Pulte. If you're looking for somebody to fire, the CIA, it would be Scott, it would be Pellie. So, so, I mean, when there's change coming in, people react. And Pellie obviously reacted poorly, and he needed to be fired. And I think Pulte coming in is looking to do the same thing. We need to change these entities. California is changing. I think all of these things we've talked about today have a similarity.

and that is that the progressives went too far and and the political machinery went too far and so it's being pushed back on in multiple ways Barry Weiss, Pulte now, the Republicans doing well in California elections and I think all of it is a reaction that they the pendulum went too far and the people that pushed the pendulum that far are mad that it's now coming back.

And by the way, keep this in mind. So David Ellison, we know where he's at, the role he's playing. He brought Barry Weiss and Barry Weiss at our strategy until now has been to cling to the audience that remains on broadcast television. She said at CBS at a town hall earlier this year, I'm here to tell you that if we stick to that strategy, we're toast.

And then she said CBS News is still in a linear mentality and we need to shift to a streaming mentality immediately. Humberto. There's a couple of points here. First of all, we play, sometimes we play a few, clips from 60 minutes on the podcast and we get stricken immediately. They do not understand the internet.

Like if you want your show to do well, you've got to have your clips, you know, like go out. The second thing, like these people are at 60 minutes. They're not the best people, Pat. Like if we start, like remember the Camelah editing kerfuffle that they had? They had a problem with big tobacco. You know, they didn't want to, this was

around the 90s. They didn't want to publish one of the interviews because it made big tobacco look bad. What else? The Benghassi report that they had to pull back. you know, there's a bunch of things that they've been towing party lines and misleading the American public. So, like, they're treating this like as a holier-than-Dow institution

that can never do wrong, you know, the apex of journalism. And it's just, you know, I'm not with it, you know, at all. Like, I'm glad that they're cleaning house and they need to change the format and they need to be honest for a little bit, Pat. Brandon. Yeah, how delusional is this guy?

If he thinks that, like, you see what Fox did with Tucker and, you know, without even thinking twice about it. And, you know, that's something that's always happened where big companies have gotten rid of their star, if the star acts up and actually he's bigger than the company. And, you know, things move on without them. So the lack of self-awareness for him to think that he was that big to that degree. Like, to be honest, I haven't even heard the guy's, I recognize his face now, but I don't even, didn't even recognize his name before the story came out. So he's no, he's known. This guy's known. He's done some of the biggest work for 60 minutes.

But not on Tucker's level, though. No, but 60 minutes, if you think about a show that people would never miss, you know, at the same time, you know, you're sitting there, you would watch, they would format it with two or three stories. It's actually very good system, and it was a good product. That's actually a very good product. Now, they could adjust and they can do something to it. But this guy's a household name. Every president knows who this guy is, just so you know that. Every governor in America knows who this guy is.

you know most billionaires in the media space they know who disguised but the question now becomes a following yesterday we had mehri asan here we had a good conversation with him and he had an issue with msnbc he left he was able to make it and made he build a good business for himself he's now proud capitalist we had a nice friendly fight yesterday which you'll see when it comes out i kept calling him capitalists and he kept calling me other things but we had a good time to get it's made for tv but he had the capabilities of doing it independently now he makes more money than he's ever made in his life. And he's doing very well.

Tucker left. Probably making more money than he's ever made in his life. He's doing well, right? This guy can't go do a podcast. He needs CBS. See, there's different kind of talent. There's a kind of a talent that you're a one that you can go and do anything you want and you're going to have people coming for your opinion.

No one in the world wakes up and says, I wonder what Pelly thinks. Yeah. I wonder what Pelly thinks about Iran. I wonder what Pelly thinks about economy. I wonder what. They don't do that. So where does he go to next? Does MSNBC go pick him up?

MSN, does CNN go pick him up? Does he go to ABC? Do these guys bring him in and try to like one of the old timers that they used to work at CBS, that they left to a different place? Hey, let's bring Pali. He'll bring the audience. Is he an audience polar? No.

Like, is he somebody that's going to, or did this guy have a job of a lifetime that one day he woke up and got so arrogant that he lost it? He's going to say, how to hell am I ever going to make five to seven million bucks a year? There's different types of guys that you work with. I don't think he's the guy that's going to go anywhere and get that kind of money. I don't think he is. There's a plum job, like a wheel of fortune type of job, like where you just get lucky and get one of those jobs.

It's a cable TV and you're the face of it and you make millions per year. But yeah, no, that's a once-in-a-lifetime type of situation. In his statement, he was talking crap about podcasters. Now he's going to be one. Yeah, now he's not going to be one. The thing is I get a lot of me next talking about content creation and everything. And when they first asked me about what equipment to buy, I immediately know they're not going to make it.

You know what I mean? Because creating content, and Pat does this all the time. Like sometimes I will go on my feet and see a Pat video where he recorded by himself in his house on a Sunday. And it does great. Like content creation is something that it needs to come from you. Like if you are able to do it with your own phone, your own script, in your own house,

and I don't think this generation of guys has it in them to create content all the time. Tom does it all the time as well. You will go on your walks, you know, record yourself and make some great points, you know? So I don't think, I don't think it's a genuine burning desire to talk about something, not the desire for attention. You know what the challenge is. Here's a challenge. When you lack self-awareness and other people in your ear tell you how important you are and you buy it. You buy it.

You have to be so careful. There were guys that run for president in 2020, and I told them you're making the biggest, Now, 2024, you're making the biggest mistake of your life, not making a phone call to the president, governor, self-awareness, why? Who's telling you what in your ear? Hey, you got it. Hey, you're better. Hey, he's not going to, hey, it's you. You have to know the power of positions in every business structure. I think this guy really screwed up. Good news is he's worth $13 million, as of right now, to $15 million. Where's Matt Lauer, by the way? What's Matt Lauer doing lately? Where is he at. Yeah, he has a $47 million house in Watermill, I think. He has a beautiful home that

it's one of the most beautiful homes in Watermill in the Hampton area. Is he trying to sell his house? What happens next? Hopefully this guy also bought a house that he bought it for $5 million, that he's now sitting on $25 million and he needs to sell the house for $25 million and go a small little place in Hamptons or something for $3, $4, $5 million. I'm not talking about Matt Lauer, Rob. You can type of Matt Lauer's house. I'm talking about Scott Kim. Matt Lauer has ridiculous house. So some of these guys, if they invested properly, they have some money. Is that the house? He's got a ridiculous out. I remember 47 million. Yeah, 44 million bucks. There you go. So is once trying to channel, Hampton, something, it's sang over the price of 43 minutes? Is this the one

who was trying to list? Yeah, it's been listed since 2019. So, you know, again, self-awareness, be careful who's in your ear telling you all of these podcasters that they make fun of, they could never be able to do podcasting. They could never be able to do the podcasting. Podcasting requires strong opinions, being willing to get in there, get your ass handed to you, being wrong, being in the ring. Some can do it. It ain't for everybody, especially to replace $5 to $7 million. Replace $5 to $7 million of revenue and sponsorship dollars. See, that's not easy to do. So anyways, we'll see what happened with them. I'm sure we'll follow the story closely. Let's go to the next story. Next story I want to get to is the $1.8 billion dollar slush fund that they were talking about.

The president was talking about story comes out Daily Mail. Trump abandons the $1.8 billion fund in humiliating U-turn as his own party turns against them. Of course, that's Daily Mail. I'll read this to Donald Trump, abandoned the $1.8 billion. The fund was created as part of a settlement of Trump's $10 billion dollar lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over leaking the 2019 tax return to the media. lawmakers from both parties have criticized the president and labeled its slush fund. It's now being killed after Speaker to House Mike Johnson raised objections to the White House fund during a private meeting with the president on Monday afternoon. It's dead for now.

One senior administration told, Axios Republicans have opposed the fund over fears. It would provide monetary compensation to J6 capital riders who assaulted police. John Thune is holding hostage a bill Trump wanted to fund immigration. enforcement. The GOP leader said he would not advance the legislation until Republicans received assurance that the fund would not be used to pay the president's allies. Tom. 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, please contact Connects Ontario at 1. 866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGEM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. AI is moving fast across the enterprise. But without visibility, it's just chaos. Different tools, different models, different teams using AI in completely different ways. Service Now turns that chaos into control. With the AI control tower, you see all your AI across the business in one place.

What it's doing, what it's done, and what it's about to do. So you stay in control. To put AI to work for people, visit servicenav.com. It's been too long, cowboy, from Disney and Pixar. Hi there, I'm Lily Pat. Let's play. So that's the device. Me and the toys have been working to try and get Bonnie to make friends. Voila, friend made.

What just happened? Lily Pad made Bonnie a friend in life. Fifteen seconds. I was counting. On June 19th. Our time ain't over yet. Bonnie still needs us. Come on, Bullseye. Way for us.

Disney and Pixar's Toy Story 5. Only in theaters June 19th. Tickets available now. Two things going on in this thing. First of all, there are people that didn't like it because they don't like who's getting paid. Because if the J6 people, Pat, let's say some person, J6, is given $200,000 to help cancel out all those legal bills that they had, that they were illicitly, you know, illegitimately prosecuted. Okay, fine. But what's deeper in there is the enemies of this bill, and I think John Thune is one of them, which is why he's holding hostage immigration bill. They didn't like the fact that they claim inside this bill is also a Trump amnesty clause on taxes and tax-related matters.

So as it goes in Washington, if you don't have a single-purpose bill, you never know exactly what everybody's upset with. Remember where we covered the Biden inflation bill? And we peeled that back and we proved there was money going to Ukraine and other things. We're like, wait a minute. The Inflation Reduction Act domestic, more than half of the dollars in it, we're going internationally, specifically to the Ukraine war. Stop. And there's an example of the other side.

People didn't like that Biden bill because they said, no, no, no. There's a bunch of bad stuff in it. So here what you have is this isn't just a single purpose bill. and it's got the amnesty thing in there allegedly. And people are concerned that it's only going to go to Friends of the President. If this was an independent commission, like the, you and I talked about this six months ago, the asbestos decision commission where we were trying to find all of the victims that legitimately suffered from asbestos from U.S. Navy shipyards.

Find the legitimate victims, and let's see that their families are, paid. This people thought this was a little one-sided and that's why they were all flipping out and even John Thune said, stop it. I'm holding this immigration hostage unless you, Mr. President, drop that. Berto.

I mean, we can't forget what's behind this, all right? These people that, they literally thought that the vote was stolen and not all of them, some of them committed crime. They were treated unfairly. Like, we saw law for... I agree. We saw law for against the president.

against Americans, you know, they were sitting there and they have the constitutional right of freedom of speech. So this is a shame. And then again, this goes into a deeper problem, Pat, that needs to be fixed immediately. I mean, not immediately, but we need to start thinking about it. Bills are getting too big. Like, nobody knows what this package is mean anymore. Right. Like, nobody reads them.

They come in, they put in a hundred issues on these bills. Nobody's fully happy with them. they negotiate like, okay, I get this, you get that, I get this, you get that. And this things happen. Like some people get treated unfairly, some things that the American public doesn't want, they get passed under a bill. So I don't know, I think I'm a single subject bill guy, and it will fix a lot of problems in America if we had, like, clear bills.

Right. Yeah, you know, I'm kind of glad this thing is gone because it was such a hot-button issue. I mean, giving money. to people that potentially beat up cops on January 6th. I do not believe everybody there was wrong. And I believe many of those people were wrongly imprisoned, not taking care of well.

They deserve compensation somehow. I don't know what to do. But here's the problem. To government, it doesn't matter. It's just another, I mean, they have a $7.5 trillion budget. $1.8 billion is a rounding error. It's not even a rounding error. It's less than a rounding error.

And so they're just kind of getting away. You pay him some money and you get away with wronging people. And the thing that bothers me the most about lawfare and people breaking the law and government is that most of them go scot-free. And it seems like Trump and his and his first, year, his first term staffers, and I can think of a bunch of them who, who have massive legal bills were thrown in jail, Steve Bannon, like, like, and that should have never happened. And whoever did that to him, they need to be punished. And so Trump, for some reason,

they're not getting punished. So we came up with this idea of, well, let's pay them. And I think we need to do is punish the wrongdoers. And, um, and the, people who use lawfare rather than just compensating people who have been wrong. Yeah, and I mean, that was the thing I was the most upset about when he first got into office because he had maximum political capital, like probably the most political capital I've ever seen in my life of somebody coming into office and just having the backing of the public to do whatever he wanted, right? You know, he had enough of that to really go extreme and root off that stuff out, the people that did what you're describing there. And rather than that, yeah, it's like a little bit of a

payoff and at this time, like timing's everything. And with the Iran war stuff going on with inflation going on, it's a, you know, it's not a politically palatable time to try to push this and, you know, down the public's throat. So I wish he came out like hot and heavy, clearing all those people out in the first place. Because that's something that's going to persist. You know, now the president's been set, if he didn't root, if he hasn't rooted out, then it's going to like keep going on it for anybody who tries to run the same way that he ran. Rob, do you have that story, Rob? You were talking about where he is talking to an ABC report. And do you have that?

Yep, that's it. No, go ahead, Rob. Trump told ABC News he will abide by recent court rulings, temporarily blocking his $1.8 billion weaponization fund. We are subject to the courts, the president said, at this moment, that's what it is. Trump said the fund, which could grant payments to people. Because isn't he trying to be a king? Like, Rob, you made a point earlier, would a king be okay with the court not saying yes to him?

I mean, just that statement alone destroyed an entire march that people are doing that's devastating to a community, Rob. This is horrible news to the no king's protesters. Did this man that's trying to be a king just said, well, if the court says, no, we can't do nothing? Tom, how do you feel about that? I know, you're deeply concerned about the no king's protest, but... I think you're absolutely correct. And I like what Brandon just said. With all the political capital on day one, he should have said, I am appointing a nine

a 9-11 commission for J-Sex. And I'm going to have a commission. I want to know, did Pelosi call down the Capitol Police? Did she back them off? Did she refuse them? And for all the people that were incarcerated, let's re-review the cases one by one. And so you could have had a commission that did both. You're guilty.

You're guilty. You're corrupt. And you five guys were sorry you had to spend time. Here is a settlement from the United States. of America, and you could have put the whole thing at a commission that looks even handed on both sides, because I wanted justice. I didn't like just the sweeping pardons. I wanted to see both sides brought to it so that we could say as a country, okay, bad day, bad people, bad decisions, corrupt motives, here they are, bright light of day, here's the commission,

this is what we're doing. I wanted to see that. And then to do it this way, and also you've got the the immunity thing in their pat, then that just becomes just another Washington bill where you're packing stuff in there that people didn't know about and then people pointed out and then it looks bad. You know what? It's a perfect point because if they would have done it individually, how many cities have given money

to the families of victims of the police or that were wrongly committed? So why wouldn't that be okay? So do it individually instead of like collective everybody together. You do $1.8 billion, you sound like that's too far. Yeah. Can they now go back and readjust or it's too late? Can they readjust? I think with this money. Yeah. I don't think, I think they have to do a whole new process. For sure, but some of these individuals, dude, they went to jail for no reason. They're sitting there and families like, what do you talk? Imagine your husband and wife, kids don't see the father for a couple years you're away. Yeah. So he was

standing next to the building. Yeah, because he was standing there. So can they go back and individually go through each one of these or no? They could do a commission right now, Pat. They could restart right now. My point about Brandon was, on day one with all that political capital, you could have got it done at a heartbeat. What I'm saying is that was a screw up.

Let's just say that's a fumble that they made. Now, what do you do now? I'm not doing this less fun. I want to appoint a commission and I want to know the people that were corrupt, the cops. I want to do everything. He could turn that and do it right now.

I hope he does that. I hope he does that because there were some people that were unfairly accused of things and it disrupted their lives in a major way. Okay, let's go to the next story. Next story I'm going to get into is a business story. Microsoft introduces these new AI badges. I don't know, folks, if you've seen this or not,

Umberto was shown to us this morning. Microsoft's big new idea for AI gadgets is a badge with a camera. Did you say camera? Yes, a camera. If you want to go a little bit lower, Rob. AI gadgets weren't on my Bill Bingo car, but Microsoft had other plans during the unveiling of Project Solora,

a new platform AI agents launched by Microsoft during its annual developer conference. The company also unveiled two new concept devices. One of them is here to revolutionize the form factor. We've been all eager and anticipating next generation. The humble badge, go a little bit lower, Rob. Our old badges are so flat and small screenless, which is fine. And so outdated, which is why Microsoft's next-gen concept badge

has loads of bells and whistles like a touchscreen, a fingerprint sensor, Wi-Fi, 5G-connected, and microphone for voice inputs and recording, and I'm not joking, a side camera facing camera. Okay. So in other words, it's watching everything you do to demonstrate this last part of Microsoft Technical Fellow. Steven Batchie gave a brief demo using a prototype

on a stage by uttering the phrase, co-pilot. Rob, do you have the video? Can you go pull that up? Yeah, if you want to pull that up for the video, because I, so what do you do? Imagine you're going to the bathroom with your friend, and you're like, hey, can you hold my card? I'm going to go inside, use the bathroom and I'll be out.

Why? I don't know what they're recording when I go to the bathroom, right? You know what I'm saying? Umberto, you saw the story. What are your thoughts on this story? Do you like it if we used it here at the company? He wouldn't be here anymore. That's a good point.

We would learn. Yes. What a great person. What Brandon does. I like it. I like it. Oh, no, I will be sent to a hey. But anyhow, look, it's good and bad if you're a business owner.

Like, for example, sometimes we have meetings. We obviously, because Florida is a two, like recording, you need to have two party consent here, but we'll say, hey, we're going to be recording this so we can have a transcript, and then we put the transcript through AI, and then we get action items, we get all the notes, and we get everything.

So having a constant transcript of everything, I'm going to get hated for this, of everything that is going on, it's very useful if you're thinking about productivity, and then you have the privacy concerns. Like, you have this illusion of privacy everywhere, but there's cameras everywhere. Your phone is into you,

everywhere, you post things on Facebook. So I'm a little bit split. And then the other thing, big corporations, they want to get more data on how and what their employees are doing to train models to probably replace them down the line. So there's three roads, three concerns. I'm very split on this one. Tom, where are you at? Is there something we should do as a company or not?

No, I think, well, I think we should have to conquer us. You can wink if you want them. Just give me a wink or something, Tom. No, I think, look, at a time where everybody's complaining, you know, employees that were complaining, oh, AI is going to take part of my job. Maybe it's true. Maybe it's not. And companies are complaining. I hated 2022.

Everybody walked across the street, got a job offer at lunch and held me hostage for a raise. I want to work from home for a 20% raise. And my dog is my admin assistant. And you get the salary of 15 grand. You know, by the way, Pat knows, I'm not making a lot of that up. In 2022, you know, and what do companies have to do? They said, well, you're a bully. And they did it for certain employees.

Now the pendulum goes the other way. And, you know, the Microsoft comes out with the German management program, you know, VC, what you're doing. And with the badge. And so I think this doesn't build. trust and everybody's been talking about trust. Why doesn't my company trust me to work from home? I happen to think that if you're working from home, it's hard to build mentor people. You're supposed to be mentoring. That's my opinion. So I don't really believe in work from home. Rob, I found the video I'm sending it to you. Except for rare contracts. And this, I think it doesn't add

to trust. If you want trust with your employees, then this validation takes it to the point, Pat where it's like, well, the company doesn't trust me. Everything's got to be proven. And if you want to build a culture around trust and mutual, you know, collaboration, this just makes people, I think, more mercenary. I want to show this video and then, Brian, I'm going to come to you. Watch this clip. Go to 30 seconds, Rob. Go to 30 seconds. Go to the bottom. Yeah, you press play and just move it up to 30 seconds. Can you do that or no? And I agree with you. It's allowing you. It's not letting you do it. Okay. He's a digital bag with a lightweight form factor designed for agent interactions on the go.

And that's going to work. He's about to take it out and you'll see how it works. All right. I have here early prototype of the bags. And using my fingerprint, I tapped on lock the device and I've accessed now to all my agents in a secured manner. And when you look at that, I already have a task. And it says, that will content for your social media post,

social media post for today. So why not to do it right now, right? So I'm going to hit record, and then now the device's camera is recording, and I'm going to pan across. I don't mind, I'm going to take your shot. Yes, thank you. Co-part, like, find some good shots from this, clean them up, and then send them to me,

so for me and my team to review. And then there you have it. Now my agent is off, ready through multiple tasks, to clean this off, and send them to me in the team. That's pretty cool. How can working at your local Tims take you further? Sure, you can level up your teamwork skills. You also get a chance to receive a Tim Hortons Scholarship Award.

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Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home. It would be interesting. Did you see what it did? It's pretty crazy. Brian, what do you think about it? I mean, to the extent that it can improve productivity and build teams and have them work together, I think that's fine.

You know, meta, I think it's meta, right? Came out with glasses. And I remember talking to somebody one day. I had no idea they had meta glasses on. And our whole conversation was recorded. Now, it was a friend, and they said, look at what I just did. And you don't know. And I think what it's going to do is make people not trust other people even more.

And you'll just have people zip in their mouth and not having conversations. I worked in D.C., as I said, and the line that they told me the first day is, don't say anything that you don't want on the front page of the Washington Post, ever. And now that means even more because not only can you record it on your phone, but you can record it on. on this badge and you can record it on these glasses and nobody knows you got it. Yeah, I mean, it's incredibly valuable for the company. I mean, imagine how you could hold people accountable and call people out. You're like, oh yeah, were you doing this project from the center of this time? Yeah, I was. And then you just look at their badge and see exactly what they were doing the entire day. And then like the, you know, remember the term data is the new oil.

So I've spoken to companies in the past couple of weeks. There's companies that are paying millions of dollars to companies to get the data of their Slack channel just to put it in their AI algorithm. So the amount of data that you could get from walking around the badge, every employee, what they do, how they walk around, how they spend their day, the type of tasks they do, that yeah, that's invaluable data. But from the humanity standpoint, you know, with the amounts of litigiousness and HR violations and lawsuits in the society, I mean, how much does that grow?

Like that goes exponentially. Imagine the things you say throughout the day that could be taken the wrong way and you could be sued for or investigate. by HR for? Yeah. So I think about it from a couple different places. So one of the ways I think about right now, you can leave a company. Who is more protected today?

Companies or employees? Think about it. Who's more protected today? Companies, corporations, or employees? Probably employees. Probably employees. Okay. So if you leave a company, what do you go to to write a negative review about a company?

Last door. Plenty of different places, right? Okay, what if the employee's a bad employee? What does the employer go to and report the bad employee? Nowhere. Why not? What if that were to happen? Then it's what?

Then it's fair. So, employees will hold companies hostage. I'm going to go and say this, if this, right? What do employees care about? When you leave, just look. Leave, go do your thing. We're good. You know, but don't steal, don't do this, don't do that.

We've had a couple of instances where a guy literally stole, you know, literally stole from us, and he's getting a felony right now. And we had another guy that stole clients. And that happens in business when you go through it. We have plenty of guys that leave who leave on good note. And what do you do? Recommendation. Anybody can call us.

We want to make sure we recommend it. Why? Do you really think employer wants a bad relationship with previous employees? No. Who does it benefit? Nobody. It's expensive. But I do think there's an element right now of the fact that employees need to be held accountable.

I just don't know if this is one of the ways of doing it. Like when you hire engineers and coders, nowadays they have the system to be able to track how much your coding today. And you know, nowadays engineers can find out like one of the things that this big consulting firms are going through is the following. For many years, say I'm a Fortune 1000 company. I'm the CMO. I want to come to the CEO and say, hey, we need to green light this $15 million marketing campaign that I want to do with this commercial. Before I go to him, I say, look, my last meeting will be Brian. I use a million dollar budget.

I go to McKinsey. I give him this. I say, hey, McKinsey, can you write me a report of my idea here if it's a good idea or not? Then I go to him and say, hey, Brian, I have an idea on what I think we need to do. The budget is going to be $15 million. Brian's going to be like $15 million. Yes, $15 million. But before you jump to conclusion, here's a report I did with McKinsey to see how they felt about it.

felt about it. And here's a 20-20-page report. I have the summary. That's 13 pages if you want to read it, but I got both them for you. They scored at 8.3 that this is a good idea. Then what does Brian say? If he doesn't trust me as a CMO, he goes and says, well, guess what? I trust McKinsey because I've used McKinsey the last 17 years. I'm going to go through him. You know what's going on with McKinsey right now? Yeah. So McKinsey, if you did a project with them, you pay two to five million bucks and they hire six to 12 people and you're paying them $300 to $500 in and they tell you it's going to cost you this much money. They have, they created a software that they have that does that,

but it does it in a couple hours instead of it taking six weeks. And today, for $10,000 on Claude, you can have that same report being done for $10,000, save the $2 to $5 million. So the relationship now with these consulting firms, the problem is what? Hey, I don't want to pay you a fee for a report anymore that Claude can write for me. I'm not good with that. So there's now accountability, what side? Both sides.

I want you to give me a report because I can do this on my own. I still want to work with you, but I want it to be 50% I pay the fees, 50% on the growth of my company. All right, now they don't have a choice, doubt too just. So I think this next phase, if I'm introducing a badge like this, there's going to be a lot of other accountability badges like this that are going to come out. Do you know how I would introduce it? I'm going to put this introduction to you.

And in return, for those of you guys that fully committed it's, I'm going to double your PTO. I'm going to double your whatever. I'm going to give that, what do you call it, the incentive to be willing to be accountable. You get this? I get this. Guys, I'm happy.

If we're all going to be more productive and you're able to do your job and half the time, guess what? In return, I'll give you X, Y, Z. I don't know where it's going to go, but I think there's a relationship with the employer and the employee. I think I have a fair trade for this.

No, no, no, it's an idea. If the batch is the only communication with the company. So you're there, you're monitored, you're working the eight hours, but once you hang your badge walking out, that's the only way to communicate. So you get your eight hours of uncontacted, you know, like...

Well, there's no way the badge leaves this place. That's the thing. There's no way the badge. I would never allow that to happen. I don't care what you do once you leave that place. That's none of my business. The badge you hang it up. There's a security card to come into the building, and there's a badge you put on when you go to work. You come, you put the badge on the moment you're in here,

and then when you leave, you know, key card, boom, and get up, go back. And then I have another idea. You mentioned glass door to hold companies accountable. We should have Concretewall.com stopping your career. So that's where companies review their employees. You know what I mean? Just so you know, we went down the rabbit hole.

We went down the rabbit hole of that product. I'm being serious with you. We went because, you know, you know who would like something like that? Who do you think would be frightened with something like that? Employees. What types of, no, not employees. Bad employees. Exactly.

Yeah. Guess who would love. something like that. High performer. Exactly. So imagine I go online and I'm like, Umberto's got a 92

and these are the recommendations he got from its previous bosses and this is what he's done. We were going to offer him $82,000 give him $120. This is a guy we want. No, but do you understand like a place that it does

to reference for you? FYF or some of the people that are saying, let me go on cloud and try to create this. You know what your number one challenge is going to be and the hurdle is going to be? Many, many states and countries you can't do that in.

Just so you know that you can't. You can only do it privately. You can't do it public. You can't score employees public and put it out there, Tom. Lawyers. Personal injury lawyers will be all over this. Oh, it only takes, you say it only takes one rogue employee to create a reputation challenge for a company. I say it only takes one rogue boss to destroy a man's career forever.

And the lawyers would come out on this. And because one, so tell me the definition. Humberto, the word nice. Good. I'm not. I'm sorry. By the way, you can take this up. Never heard that word before. There is a transcript of a famous trial where the lawyer attempted to get someone to say, Patrick, as I ask you today, define the word nice.

Well, he couldn't. What is nice? Right. So nice to you is not nice to me. So also, the lawyers would be all over the place that there's no standard. There's like no standard. And so, unfortunately, bad employees can put whatever they want on Glass Door. You've got to overwhelm it with good reviews.

And then, you know, HR has got to be on the ball and on top of responding to Glass Door because it's just disgruntled people that didn't work out. And if you had companies saying this about people, it would just be in court forever because people would say two things. Discrimination, retaliation. Yeah, I know. By the way, it's a phenomenal product,

phenomenal, phenomenal product. And can you imagine if you got badges? Like, imagine if that report showed. Like, let's just say we made you an employee the month right now. And you go in the report and he say, hey, Pat, you know, since I got employed a month, can I get that badge on XYZ.com? For sure.

Yeah, matter of fact, he signed off by my CEO. Great. It stays permanently. I can never remove it, even if I'm a month. upset at you. Hey, if I got outstanding on my report this year for calibration, can I put that on there and you prove it? Absolutely. This is my fourth outstanding. And then all of a sudden say, we get upset at you. That's permanent. I can't change it. I thought you used to love this guy. What happened all of a sudden? You know what I'm saying? So there's an element of protection

for the people that are working. But again, if you want to take that idea and build it, come back to us, we would actually be a customer. I mean, one thing technology does is make it in small town America, small town world, everybody knew everybody's business. They knew whether they were a good employee. They knew whether they were bad. They knew whether they were drunk. They knew whether they were cheating.

They knew everything. And in a way, that's what technology is doing. We just have to be careful how we're doing it. Yeah. And I'm with it. I think there is opportunities for this to be a positive, positive impact for it. But we'll see. We'll see what it happens.

Some places it's too much. I do think it's got to be a collaborative conversation with the employees and the team to see how to introduce some life. like this. By the way, Rob, you ran a poll. Seventy-four percent said they would never you allow to use a dispatch. 26 percent agreed. Seventy-four percent said they're not with it, just so you know that. Okay, so let's go to the next story here. Next story, similar thing, but different. Remote work is worsening youth unemployment, New York Fed fines. This is a CNBC story. So a lot of times we're saying AI is the reason

why they're losing their jobs. But apparently, it has to do with the desire to want to work from home. Go ahead, Rob. New research from the Federal Reserve of New York finds that the biggest obstacle for recent college graduates to get a job and to move up is not artificial intelligence. It is remote work. Among the findings, the unemployment rate for younger college graduates from 2022 to 2025 was 3.7 percent, up 20 percent from before the pandemic. But older college grads were more likely to not only be employed, but stay employed. This This report writes as follows. Our analysis suggests that these trends are related with remote work making it more difficult

for managers to train and mentor new employees. Okay, so parents, if you got a kid that wants to have a remote job, discourage them from doing it. The easiest way to be competing against all the other kids that are trying to get jobs is be present in the office. By the way, that 3.7% he just quoted from 2022 to 2025. You know what that number is right now? 5.6% unemployment for college grads. And if you go

a little bit deeper with these numbers, very few Gen Z workers, 6% prefer fully on site work. A Gallup survey from May 2025, I found that most 71% said they would prefer a hybrid arrangement working from home as well as from the office. Tom.

So there is adjustment from college to work. And this is something having a college student I can talk about. So you work from the library. You go to work from your dorm. But your dorm mates there, her sister is in from out of town, little noisy, so you'll go to the study hall. And so you're always in a hybrid situation in college. And then you go to get a real job and they point to the cubicle. And a lot of

these Gen Zs are like, oh my gosh, I can't do that. This is like those episodes of the office. So there's a cultural shift. But the other side of it is what was in there, was, quote, employers may not want to hire first graduates onto distributed teams because it's more difficult to teach them the skills from afar. So I have two openings on my team, Pat. I want to go hire two students. I need them to be in the office. I got to teach them. We got to mentor them. We got to bring them into our culture. And from afar, you can't do that. Maybe you could do your modeling, but how do we bring you into our culture? How do we do? all that. You can't. And so

moving from college, which is inherently hybrid off-site and getting your head around full-time in a place is difficult enough for college students, but now they need to understand. And remember, in college, once you listen to

the professor's lecture, who's responsible for you? You have to go study. You have to do your project. You have to write your paper. It's all on you individually. And so there's a mental mindset they have to get over, but then once they're there, they need to understand how do I mentor you from your bedroom in Passaic, New Jersey? Yeah, I mean, it's like the dumbest idea

to want to be able to have some like this. And you know what's a big part of it, Tom, is when you're first coming up, if you don't think it's on you to earn the right to dot, dot, dot, what does that mean? You have to earn the right to have certain, you know, advantages. You You don't just say, well, no, this is what I want or else I'm not going to work for your company. Great, don't. Go make it on your own or go to a different company. You won't be culturally vested into that company. That company, when they're going through a list of people that you look at, you know, and say,

well, let me see my top 15 to 20 people that are the most valuable people in a company. You will never be on that list because you're not a cultural hire. You're just a person that's doing what an anybody can do. unless if you are so amazing at what you do that you can go out there, but that typically takes a few years of having reputation. To say, for instance, you bring a guy who's in sales, and sales guys like, look, I'm hitting my numbers, here's what I got going on, and I'm working a certain job, and it's, let you say, it's 1099 type of a thing.

Well, you have a lot of flexibility. You've earned the right to do it. But a new kid coming out of college saying, well, this is what I need, or else you're hurting your chances of having a landing a good job, and it doesn't mean you won't get it. You may get it. But the moment that company goes through troubled times, they're like, look, who's that guy?

While we paint him, he works from home. Let's just move on with everybody that's working from. We're just going to work with people that are internally. Humberto. I find this insane. Like, hiring entry-level job people as a remote start is, I can't, it's crazy. Like, this is my opinion, but I think you earn the right to work remote sometimes, all right? Oh, boy.

No, no, it's true. You earn their right to work remote sometimes when you have a system. Like the only reason I can be here in the morning is because I build a system and I mentor people enough so I know they're doing what they have to do. And I can just text them. Same with Pat. Pat will travel, whatever. He will get his job done on the airplane, on the tarmac anywhere because he has a system built.

So I think you earn your way into a remote work. The second thing is the youth is shooting themselves in the food. I can name so many of my mentors. Since I started, they taught me like business lessons that you can't get anywhere else, no business school. Like one of my first job, I worked in a big media company. I was right under the VP. He was my professor in school, and he brought me right under him. I learned the ropes have to move myself in the C-suite environment.

You know what I mean? Most kids, when they're 22, they're not even close to C-suite. Like, I have that lesson. Then I work for another guy. He told me the value of saying no to clients if they don't fit your bill. And all these things, you just pick up, and I try to give back to the youth with all my guys. I sit at least for an hour with them, show them new things, guide them. So I think any young person that wants to work straight remote is just absolutely insane.

And people that are paying for this and hiring like entry level guys to do remote. And the other thing is the replacement level. Like if your physical presence, that's the only difference between us and AI, your physical human presence in place is not necessary. Buddy, you have another thing coming. They're going to replace you offshore or AI immediately. That's what it is. Brian.

I hated COVID for 50 million reasons. And this may be one of the biggest ones, because it convinced all these people that remote work was an option. And Tom, you're absolutely right. School is hybrid, but they turned school into remote. Everything became remote. And these kids would learn how to turn on their computer in the morning, go back to sleep and not lose a grade. And then let me just tell a quick story about an employee high school. had one day I showed up my office there's an intern sitting in the ante room and I'm like who are you

what the heck are you doing here and he's like I'm an intern I'm like I do not have enough time for you I'm really busy and I'm running off in all these meetings I come back the next day he's sitting there again I'm like who are you what are you doing here and like the third day I'm like oh he goes I just want something to do and I'm like okay go get me coffee I'm like seriously and and I swear four seconds later he's back with a cup of coffee. And I'm like, okay, you know those file drawers in there? Go file him an alphabetical order.

18 seconds later he's back. I'm like, okay, now I need an analysis of Social Security data from going back to 1960. This one took him a couple hours, but he came back and it was brilliant. And at the end of his internship, I said, you cannot go back to college. I'm hiring you. But if he was remote, there is no way that. would have ever happened ever like he he was in my face every day what is he do now by the way where where's he went and traded options for a major firm who his name i see on this next sheet

and he's probably way wealthier than me are you being serious i am dead serious so he's a multimillioner oh yeah by multi-millionaire and and i'm not kidding you that kid would not leave me what what age is he right now how old are i'm going to say he's 40 years old 40 years old. Isn't that awesome? Don't you just love those stories? Yeah. Don't you just love those stories where a guy goes from there to being where he's at right now?

I just absolutely love it. Brandon. 100%. And yeah, it's sad. I mean, the age group that's in this situation, like, think about it. So when you're graduating college, you're on 22, 23, so those people would have been the Gen Z people. So right as they're getting out of college age 22, 23, that's the year 2020. So they're getting accustomed to this remote work, remote school thing.

So that's their, like the first impression of the job market, right? So their expectations are being managed for that to be the norm. But, yeah, it snapped them out of the proper mindset, which is to, like, want to bet on yourself and make a good impression like you guys are saying. I mean, you know, like people who end up going places, they're very confident about what will happen. I mean, when I first came here, I was offered, like, a 30-day contract three years ago, and then I had to move from Connecticut here.

And I said, yeah, no problem. I'm very confident what will happen from there for 30 days and get the chance to make an impression and show people what I could do. but people want guarantees and promises before they go to places these days. I'd love that. Got to love that. Came here 30 days later. What were you doing when you first came here?

What was your job? Mario literally said to me, quote, I don't know what you will do for us, but let's see what happens. Literally that was it. And then 30 days, what are you doing 30 days later? Well, so the first week, it was a good coincidence of that Silicon Valley bank crash happened, and we did the banking webinar together. And that's where we first talked. And, you know, you saw that, I know finance and banking pretty well.

And then, you know, from there, progressed well. Yeah, it's crazy to tell that story because just two days ago, we had a guy in town, and he wanted to meet with me. So he flew him from Nashville. We're having a meeting, pretty well-known guy in his space. And then he's with another guy who's a billionaire, who is one of our neighbors, and he comes to the office. And I'm giving a tour this place.

It's like 6.37 o'clock. He says, this place is humming. Well, what are these people doing at 6.37 o'clock? And we're walking around. He's just everywhere. What the hell do you guys do here? What is the energy here? Well, I mean, if the opportunity is right for a person to want to change their lives positively,

people perform in an incredible way. The incentives are there. And I explained to them the equity structure when you're here 13 months plus, the stock options that everybody has in every business unit. And then the L-tip that we offer for executive team directors and up. And it's like, well, this is the right way of doing this. Well, of course it is. This is the same exactly with the insurance. If you find a company that's going places and you have an opportunity to be,

in that team, having a job, making a direct impact, being a leader, do whatever you can to make that. You don't even know what's going to end up happening later on for you with your job. It can go like this, and then all of a sudden you have a story like this or a story like yours or any type of this story. But that's great to hear that that guy now is a multimillioner. I love hearing stories like that from getting coffee in four seconds. If you're not being a multimillioner.

Let's go to the next story. Major League Baseball Salary Cap. This has to do with business. Stick around. Major League Baseball salary cap. Owners just proposed a salary cap. It could cost them an entire season, and the entire market is talking about.

I'm about to come to Tom here, and by the way, one day we will all hear about a girl named Bailey that will be a GM of a baseball team, and that's Tom's daughter, but hang tight until that happens. So for the first time in 32 years, MLB owners have formally proposed a salary cap, setting the stage for what could become the sports's most serious labor conflict,

since 1994 strike that canceled the World Series with the current collective bargaining agreement expiring shortly after the 2026 World Series. Many expect the lockout in a potentially ugly showdown over baseball's economic future owners say competitive balance is broken. MLB argues that the gap between the rich and the poor teams have become too large. The Dodgers are spending roughly $420 million on payroll

while the Marlins are spending $80 million. The league's proposal would cap payrolls at $242,000. million and create a salary floor of 172 million, which means the 80 goes up 90, the 420 would need to come down 180, give or take. Eight teams would need to reduce spending by combined 578 million, while 12 lower spending teams would need to increase payroll by around $617 million. League spokesperson Glenn Kaplan said too many fans and too many markets have too little hope. Their teams have a fair chance.

Player's seat as a money grab the MLB Players Association as opposed to the post. salary cap for generations and views. The proposal has an attempt to suppress player salaries rather than improve competition. Our union has never been broken, never will be the MLBPA director Bruce Myers said the union argues that successful small market teams like Brewers, Guardians,

and Rays prove that their spending is not the only path to winning while wealthy clubs like the Mets and the Angels have often underperformed. Tom. So I believe in a salary floor. I do. People say that's socialism. Well, not really.

because the modern contracts for digital transmission, digital rights, and television have given small markets, almost like owning the team is a free ticket to a multi-million dollar payday every year. And that, if you look at the history of the stadium, there was a tax incentive somewhere. And that was paid for by the people. So that medallion, that franchise in some city. And let's just use Miami as an example because we're sitting here. You have a stadium down there. You've got people down there and the city has made tax concessions. And I like the salary floor which says you have to spend the money on it.

Now, why do I like the floor? In days gone by, people would say, I'm a small market team. I can't put $40,000 a night in my stadium the way Yankees, Cubs, and Dodgers do. I don't have those markets. And that used to be a fair statement. but now sharing in the digital distribution and the TV contracts, it's the great equalizer. So everybody's got money.

So I believe in the floor. Now, in terms of a cap, I don't believe in a cap, but I do believe in a tax and an equalization payment, which is what they have now. Because otherwise you could have the Uber wealthy, like the Dodgers or the Yankees, and even the Mets, Steve Cohen knows how to do this too, you know, that are going to just overspend and take up all the good players.

There needs to be an equalization payment because the equalization payment says, oh, you want to overpay for Shohei Otani? Great. Now you spend the money around and now everybody else has the ability to compete for the other free agents. So I agree with that. I also think they need to take a cue from other sports where the negotiation was what percent of revenue goes to the players. and that that's been negotiated in other sports. So I think now, that's all my opinions.

But you know what's about to happen, Pat? We're about to have a lockout, and we're about to have an arm wrestling match, and we're all going to go tumbling down a flight of stairs on this. And I hate it. I think that's what's going to happen. It's going to lead to a work stoppage. There's going to be fire and brimstone.

You know what happened to baseball? You know what's so dumb for this? Because in 94, when the strike took place, baseball was dead. No World Series. No, forget about World Series. It was just dead. The fans were annoyed.

They were not coming back. And you know when baseball came back up? 1998, when Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire went through the home run to 61 to 60 to, you know, punching each other in the stomach. And it was everybody was watching the Cubs and what was the St. Louis Cardinals he was with at the time when he hit that 78 home run. It was a beautiful two years. They saved baseball. FYI, in my opinion, since I've been watching baseball. I have to be very honest with everybody.

I didn't watch a lot of baseball in Iran. We didn't. When I lived in Iran, it wasn't baseball. You don't give Middle Easterns baseball bats and say, here's the ball, go ahead. They don't hit the ball. They kind of played the game in a different way. But when I came here, I fell in love with Major League Baseball. From 1990, as a diehard Juan Gonzalez fan, Texas Rangers, till today,

the greatest world series I ever watched in my life was last year. not a Dodgers fan. I'm not a Toronto Blue Jays fan. What an incredible World Series. Fans, people who don't follow baseball were like, damn, this is exciting. This is it. And then now you want to do something like this

after the incredible momentum that you had. I hope they figure it out. I've been on multiple calls. I can disclose some of the conversations that we had. They prepped us for this, that this is coming, and there are certain decisions

that are being made on what's happening with this. I hope they fully figure this thing out. I understand the argument they're making. Because players want to make as much money as possible, and owners don't want to be forced to have to pay more. If you've ever seen a movie Moneyball, Billy Bean, who goes to the owner and says, hey, man, I just need a little bit of more money. He says, you're going to do fine. I got a $67 million budget I'm dealing with. Give me a break.

Give me a little bit more money. You're going to be fine. But we're going to lose Giambi. We're going to lose. You'll figure it out. Stop saying I'm going to be fine. I need more. So this changes that because they had that 21.

game win streak that the A's went through. So it would be interesting to see what happens here. Brian, where are you at with this yourself? Yeah, well, just talk about last year's World Series Toronto versus the Dodgers. I mean, that's a pretty big difference in payroll. Great point. I mean, and that's almost the proof. I was going to, I wrote down Moneyball.

I was going to bring it up. The Oakland A's did it with a different kind of way. In college football, the University of Indiana did it this year. If they do this, they're going to kill it. And I was a Chicago Cubs fan in 1994, and that's kind of when I stopped. Are you serious? You're saying that's when you stopped after the strike? I did.

It broke my heart. I don't like that. And I loved baseball. And I can guarantee you, I used to go to 30 games a year, like literally 30 games a year. And I bet I've been to one or two a year since then. Wow. And I'm – Baseball's God's favorite sport.

I'm telling me right now in heaven. I'm willing to bet they watch baseball. I'm telling you they're watching baseball now. Shulis Joe Jackson is going to be somewhere up there playing baseball. But go ahead. No, no. Brandon and I were, you know, bigger into the NFL, you know. I like baseball too.

You like baseball, but you like football much better. Yeah, it's the best. Of course, it's the best. You guys don't know what you're doing. No, no, no. If you look at the different leagues, all right, you have the MLB with no hard cap, no floor, all right? And then you see, what are we solving for here? This is one of the biggest problems in the economy, like, in,

general right now that the money is not making sense with the actual objectives that people want, right? What are we solving for in any sports league? We want to see competition, right? So in the MLB, you have all this very rich teams, you know, that get all the awards, all the playoffs, and they just outspend every other team. Then you have the NFL, they have a hard cap, all right? And that's an exciting thing at the beginning of the year, like who's going where, you know,

the draft and any team could, you know, make it to a Super Bowl. except the Jets. I'm sorry. Yeah. Worse to first happens all the time. Yeah. And then you have the NBA. Or the Raiders.

Or the Raiders. I live in pain. But then you have the NBA that also it doesn't have a hard cap on top. They have a luxury tax of sorts. Tom, you can always fact check me. And then you have the NHL that also like the NFL has a hard cap and a floor. All right. And we were talking before the show started about about hockey.

Like how did the Panthers get two titles and then they're not even the payoff this year. All right? So if we're solving for an entertaining product that is competitive and anything can happen, I'm for the cap. I'm sorry, Top. And I have another perspective, too. So I think it incentivizes the right types of people to own the teams because I think if this does go through, you'll see a lot of MLB teams sell their franchise because there are a lot of owners, like you said, that just want to take the money instead invest in the money back into the team. So get this, since 1995, 48% of World Series championships have one to a top five payroll. 93% of championships have gone to a top 15 out of 30 payroll.

Only two teams have won the World Series since 1995 that have had a bottom half payroll. It was the 2003 Marlins and 2002 Angels. Yeah, I think the Marlins have a few things they need to do. I think the Marlins have a few things they need to do. But that's a great example of a few different things. I just hope they don't get into this whole mess. I really do. I really hope they don't get into this mess.

I hope they figure it out. Baseball's exciting right now. Baseball's viewership's going up. Baseball's got a lot of good things going on. I hope the reasonable people in the room are going to be like, guys, we're making a lot of money. Let's kind of figure this thing out. Let's not lag this out where it continues just because of the money.

You have the fan base today. You have the fan base today. You can make so much money through sponsorship and other different ways, but we'll see. We'll see what it happened there. Next story I want to get into is a story of 180, 6 gram of sugar drink that Crazy Cousins came out. 32 ounce dirty soda is what they're calling you.

Rob, I don't know if you have this video or not. The guy's kind of going through it right there. Watch this. Play this clip, Rob. Go for it. Crumble cookie is now selling you a drink that is 186 grams of sugar. That's almost half a pound of sugar or a five can of cold. They call this crazy cousins.

And indeed, you would have to be crazy or completely ignorant to drink 840 calories of liquid Garbage. Crumble is calling this the viral dirty soda, but the only thing that's dirty here is convincing kids and teenagers that any of this is cool or high crumbull cookies. Go to the tweet, Rob, if you could. Just let me see what it says up here. So 100, that's almost how good one drink. This could be illegal. That's more than five times American Heart Association's daily recommend a max for added sugar.

We need to make America healthy. Again, I looked into this. And if you drink this regularly, you can cause extreme harm to yourself. Rapid weight gain, fatty liver disease, huge increased diabetes risk. tooth decay and gum disease and mood swings. By the way, who sent a tweet out yesterday on how much is recommended to take sugar intake? Rob, there was a text that somebody sent in the chat. It could have been Vinny.

That was me. Okay, can you pull that up, Rob? Can you pull that up? We'll send last night, and I don't know which one it was. I saw the numbers of how much sugar intake is healthy for the average person to take. I don't know if it was this one or a different one. But 186 gram, when you see something like this, do you have that? If you have it, Rob.

Is that right there? Right there. Right there if you have it. Is that in the story? No, Rob. If you go to the bottom of that text exchange, you just had it. If you go back to the bottom of that text exchange right there, make that a little bit. That's the one right there.

What does it say? American Heart Association recommends for men no more than 36 grams of added sugar per day for women, it's no more than 25 grams, 6 teaspoons per day, and for children less than 25 grams. And then you want to launch a drink that's 186 grams of sugar? That's insane. It, Humberto, how do you process that? I mean, it is America.

If there's a marker for it, they will make it, all right? Who's the market for some like this? I don't know if you guys remember. They tried to pass that out. They did pass in New York. People that look like it's the market for them. But they did pass the sugar tax or the soda tax in New York, remember? Like if drinks had too much sugar, you had to pay an extra tax on top.

This applies to like very sugar drinks like this. It applies to cigarettes. It applies to anything that could be harmful, alcohol and everything. Marwan is also, they're going to make a lot of money on taxes. Big gulps. Big gulps. And I think the way they're going to go around, I don't think anyone should drink this, just for the record.

You know? Have you tried it? But I believe in America and I believe in freedom. And if they want to put this drink out there and people want to drink it, I'm all for it. I'm looking at this right now. And Tom, I'll come to you. Monster Energy drink has 81 grams of sugar. Mountain Dew 77.

Coca-Cola 65. Pepsi 69. Dr. Pepper 64. Starbucks Frappuccino, large flavored versions, 70 plus grams. Duncan frozen coffee, 60 to 70 plus. Minute made lemonade, 67 grams. Arizona Arnold Palmer, half and half, 59 grams of sugar. Large sweet tea from some fast food chains,

food chains, 80 to 100 plus grams. Large frozen coffee drinks, 120 plus grams, large milkshakes. Your favorite, Brandon, your family. 100 to 150. large movie theater sodas, 150 plus grams of sugar. Convenience store fountain drink, 150 plus grams of sugar. Tom, where are you at with this? I am looking back at Pictures of America in 1950.

Go look at New York picture. Show me 1955, street corner in New York. Find a black and white picture. Any specific corner like you focused on? No, no, no, we're not 42nd Street, but just, You know, and then you go and you take a look at the preponderance of them. You look at a ballpark. If you bend to Fenway Park, the seats are small.

If you sit in the first six rows and Kim and I went there opening day, 2006, and we noticed how small the seats were, and we were front row, watching David Ortiz and Manny and they said yeah it's because this is how big people were in 1934 the seats were adequate and what has happened in this country

and by the way those that you're being quoted Pat those sugar that's the 20 ounce Coke just a little 12 ounce can you know the can and the sick pack 39 grams of Coke which is more than 39 grams of sugar, which is more than what we just read, would be the daily amount for men or women. And I just think this is what's happened. This is why we have five things in this country.

Number one, obesity. Number two, lifestyle diabetes. Number three, heart disease. Number four, we have early onset behavioral issues with kids that are directly related. to the hyper-inflex of sugar on their moods and on what's called an insulin response, we would call it the sugar crash. Six-year-old kid, seven-year-old kid, eight-year-old kid in school, done called sugar crash.

He has a Coke for lunch, and he's bouncing around for the first, for story time right after lunch. It says, and the last one, cost of health care in America. So you can take sugar, Pat, and the amount of sugar we consume, and you can go back on

all of those five things, and we could do a big case study on it. It's horrifying. Lobbyists pushed to prevent the categorization a certain way. The manufacturers, by the way, you know the nice people, Novo Disc, that make the injectable GLP, you know, the European company, Novo, No Disc, or whatever it's called. Do you know they have 50% market share of insulin, in the world. Oh, wow. They sell both. They sell both.

They have 50% market share of the insulin, Novo Nordisk, and they also have GLP1. So we got you going big, and we're going to get you small, but we make a buck either way. Flywheel. That's a flywheel.

Brian. More like the snowball, and you're the snowball. You know, I have raised kids, and I could, I mean, when sugar got it too much in their diet, it was horrible for their, for their, for their, for their well-being. I'm going to, I'm going to make, I'm going to change this into a little bit of an economic point, if you will. And so what we do, and it's what Tom just said, is that we, we, Maha, the, the basic argument is there's something wrong with our food supply and how we eat. and then what we do is we treat the symptoms.

And what I believe with our economy is that we spend way too much, we redistribute way too much, and we redistribute that to people who spend, and then we tax and regulate people who produce. And so what happens is we overproduce and we overconsume and we underproduce. And then what we do is we go in and treat the symptom. The symptom is the trade deficit. When you over-consume and under-produce, you import stuff, and then what we do is we treat the symptom by putting tariffs on.

And tariffs are attacks. It's just like using insulin to fix a bad food problem. It's just like trying to fix obesity, diabetes, and inflammation with drugs rather than fixing the food supply. And our biggest problem as an economy is our government is too big, and we tax savers and we subsidize consumers and in a sense

it's the same thing we're treating the symptoms not the causes and that's the problem with this drink as someone came to America and put on 90 pounds Pat saw me getting bigger throughout the time

the quality of the food in this country it's not a first world country food when it comes to food it makes me so angry that one of like the richest country to ever exist right next to my parents they had a boat show for Christmas, all right?

They have enough time and money to decorate their boats to go around, you know. We need to import Mexican Coke because it has real sugar. Like, that makes me mad. Why can't we have the best Coke in this country, all right? The soda. I'm not so that you went a very different direction. The music industry has been asking that for decades. Yeah, can we have that?

But sit aside. You remember a third time? You go. You go, whatever. What do you know about sugar? No, let's go. Okay. No, so last time people got mad at me when I said I have a hard time trusting fat people to have the same energy as everybody else went like within the company and whatnot. And I meant that in the nicest way possible. Now, I mean this in a nice way too. I got a lot of fat people that. I did. I was getting messages and left and right. But when it comes to that, like you could say, oh, the government should regulate this and that. I don't really like that either. I don't like the government getting involved with what businesses do. So I think it's best solved through the court of public opinion, you know.

If we politely fat shame and hold people accountable and say, like, hey, this is not good for you, you know, and call it out. But like we have this culture where it's, you know, taboo to say like, hey, you should lose some weight. Like, hey, it's not healthy to be that. I'll tell you this. I'll tell you something here. It's very important. Humberto, you brought it up and then I'll address it. I'll give you two examples of a story.

One of my friends who I went to school with in Iran, who I went to junior high school with and high school with, joined the military with, worked that Bally's would, got into financial services with everything we did together. He had an incredible body. He would run better than me. He was always running. He was in shape. And then we started doing business together, insurance. He put on 90 pounds. When he put on 90 pounds, he blamed the business. And he said it's because of the company and the job that we have that I've gained so much weight. So eventually quit. After he quit, he put on even more weight. So today, he's not in good shape, health-wise. I haven't seen it for many, many years. But no matter where he went, it was either this, it was either that, it was either this.

I wish him nothing but the very best. Let me give you another story. We're at Hampton's last summer, and I'm playing Pidel. And we're playing with a few different guys. And one of the guys that there is Tikran, whom I love. You know who Tikran is. And when we were competing, the people that were there, Vinny was there, Mario was there. I don't know if Tom was there.

Tom was inside doing a lot of sit-ups. So Tom was just like nonstop. We were outside playing Padel. And then shit talking started. You this and you this and da-da-da-da-da-da. And it was just like, hey, you want to go on a run? You really want to go on a run with me? How are you going to go on to run?

You put on some weight. Look at you right now. How much weight you put on? And it got like that. Okay? You know what he weighed at that event? This is a big shout out to Tikram. He weighed 235 pounds.

Do you know what he weighs right now? He weighs 180. I'm in Dallas last week. I tell him while we're in Dallas, we're at dinner, while we're at lunch, guess what he tells me? He says, you know I haven't had Arnold Palmer for over a year. I said, you've got to be kidding me. He says, I haven't had Arnold. And I drink Arnold Palmer. When you go out with me, you know what I drink. I do 80, 20 Arnold Palmer, right? He got me thinking. Then he bought the scale, $300, $300 that he bought. Every morning he gets up there, you know, you've seen this, and it tells you what your body fat is. He's brought his body fat down to, 18%. He was at 30 plus percent. He brought it down to 18 percent. Exercising routine. He had this watch on his wristband that is given to Tom as well. Tom, I don't know if you have the same thing or not. He looks at the data. He looks at the stats. He's going through everything. But the biggest part is he became serious about his health.

He became serious about his health. We can joke about stuff like this as much as we want. And then we have to realize sometimes the biggest thing, like if you really want, if you really love your family, you have to take care of your health, not only for you, but also for the people around you. Yeah. You know, if you really want to move up with your career, they're going to offer stuff like this for the rest of their lives. Guess what?

Everybody has access to drugs, alcohol, food, cheesecake, ice cream. We have access to all of it. But we have to get more serious about our health because no matter where you go, you can always find an alibi to say, that's the reason why this didn't work out for me. I don't subscribe to that mindset. I don't think it's going to work out for any one of those guys. So no matter what this product is,

There's going to be plenty more products like this that we can take that could destroy our lives. And I hope we don't do that. And we make the decision to make better decisions for our health. So anyways, this was a good podcast. I just wanted to go through one more story, but I have a max 7 to go to. Again, for some of you guys, just so you know, the moment we launched the merch today with the different country had merch, Shopify's been down for an hour and a half. Okay?

I tweeted at the moment we started a podcast, people from Shopify contact. us. The entire Shopify worldwide was down. It's backup. So for some of you guys that went and you couldn't place your order, you can officially go to VTmerch.com to place your order. Shopify's backup. It wasn't our store. It was Shopify that was having the issue. You can go on Twitter

and read some of the stories. I was reading it while we were on. But get your order, especially with the big tournament that's coming up here in the summer. You'll be able to represent your country and with a hat and that it says future looks bright and start a conversation. Brian, it was great having you on. That story was phenomenal that you shared. Wherever this,

billionaires at that I believe is what Goldman Sachs bit for you, buddy. That you have success. And great commentary. With that being said, Rob, tomorrow, Mady Hassan's podcast goes live. It is absolutely heated. By the way, everything you wanted us to talk about, we talked about. Everything. It's all in it.

And we had a good time together, actually afterwards. Anyways, take care, everybody. God bless. Bye, bye, bye, bye.