PBD Podcast - Trump's Credit Card CAP, Musk's Iran Move, 50% OnlyFans Tax + Efran Soltani Execution | PBD Podcast | Ep. 718

Episode Date: January 14, 2026

Patrick Bet-David, Tom Ellsworth, and Brandon Aceto are joined by Mark Moss as they break down Trump’s proposed 10% cap on credit card interest rates, Elon Musk’s Starlink actions amid Iran protests, a controversial 50% tax push on OnlyFans earnings, and the looming execution of Iranian protester Erfan Soltani.------👨‍💼 BET-DAVID CONSULTING: https://bit.ly/3YteHzu📺 SUBSCRIBE TO MARK MOSS' YOUTUBE CHANNEL: https://bit.ly/4qiakmR🎙️ FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON SPOTIFY: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4g57zR2⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ⓜ️ CONNECT ON MINNECT: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4kSVkso ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ⓜ️ PBD PODCAST CIRCLES: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4mAWQAP⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠🥃 BOARDROOM CIGAR LOUNGE: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4pzLEXj⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠👔 BET-DAVID CONSULTING: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4lzQph2 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠💬 TEXT US: Text “PODCAST” to 310-340-1132 to get the latest updates in real-time!ABOUT US:Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller “Your Next Five Moves” (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

Did you ever think you would make it? I feel I'm supposed to take sweet victory. I know this life man for me. Adam, what's your point? The future looks bright. My handshake is better than anything I ever signs, right? You are a 101? My son's drive, I don't think I've ever said this before.

Okay, gang, great to be with you guys. Business Wednesdays. Today, a lot of stories to cover. A number was dropped on BNPL. catastrophic it's looking right now for BMPL and specifically Gen Z. Tom's got an entire report on it. We got a special guest with us here. Mark, who has a YouTube channel himself. Mark, you got about what? You got a million subscribers. Almost. We're getting there. Million subscribers. Maybe this will help. Yeah, well, listen, you, you're helping yourself, you know, as a guy that's doing a great job,

we've been watching you for a while. Brandon always would rave about you. And we met at the Menect event at Soho House. So we're excited about Mark Moss's views today on different things. Thank you. But let's go through some of the stories, some of the stories that we got. So NPR reports yesterday, 2,500 people, Iranians, civilians, killed by the government. CBS says 12,500 will definitely get into that. Trump says any country doing business with Iran will face a 25% U.S. tariff. Last time they did this, Iran was suffocating.

They're already suffocating the government. It's about to get even worse. Google co-founder, Sergey Brin, joins California Exodus, and he's another one of those billionaires that left as well. And remember, Chamate said there's about a half a trillion dollars of net worth of business owners in the state of California that are leaving. So he's one of those half a trillion dollar guys that he was talking about. And then there's nothing we can do.

The great millennial career crisis has workers given up on ever owning homes or paying off their student loans. You know, this is Brandon's story. He wants to talk about this because, you know, he's not happy with affordability. We'll definitely cover that. Probably the best story that I have here is what Argentina did with the $2.5 billion. If you guys remember, America's going to bail out Argentina. I told you these capitalistic ideas are not going to work out.

It's a bunch of BS. Well, guess what? He just returned the $2.5 billion yesterday. I'm like, wait, what? He returned it. We'll cover that as well today on the Argentina story. This next one is. a little bit disappointed because I want to see this happen. Nissan cancels the Versa. America's

last new car for under $20,000 as automakers lean toward wealthier buyers. Trump vows to slash mortgage rates, revive American dream while blaming Biden housing failures in a truth post will address that. Trump to bring Musk in for key Iran mission. I believe they're starting to realize that Elon's got a tool that everybody needs. He's been. He's been. becoming a linchpin with his Starlink technology that he has. And then Trump floats one-year 10% credit card interest rate cap. What could that mean for your money? Last night we're having dinner, Tom and I,

with four investment bankers and advisors from J.P. Morgan Chase. And this was one of the topic of discussion of what happens if you cap credit card rates at 10%. Does it help the people you want to help, or does it hurt the people you want to help, and help the people that don't need help. I don't know if that makes sense. We're going to talk about this whole credit card situation. Bill Ackman didn't think it's a good idea.

He tweeted about it. Then apparently what Tom was sharing with me, he took the tweet down, nobody knows why. Wall Street on Edge after Trump takes aim at credit cards, home buying. And then how American high schools are teaching capitalism? This is a little bit of a serious issue to be talking about because if kids are coming out of high school,

spending all this time with their teachers last night, my health and guidance teacher from 14 years old wrote me a letter. Every three months I get a letter. We're pen pals today. She wrote me a letter, everything. Politically, if she only knew how complete opposite sides were in, but we absolutely love each other when we have this relationship. But how American high schools are teaching capitalism? Do you really think school teachers are sitting out there

teaching kids how awesome capitalism is? Or you think they're bashing it? This is the lowest percentage of support we've had from young Gen Z on capitalism ever. In the history of America, the percentage isn't high. You'll see the numbers there as we get into it. Canadian trips to U.S. plunge 28%. That's a real number in 2025 amid Trump's tariffs, 51st state jabs. I know, Mark, you talk about tariffs a lot, so we'll come to you on that as well. Americans just spent a record $20 billion with buy now, pay later. Here's what to do if you over did it. By the way, this is a real, real issue that we need to talk about. Because again, affordability, wait

until you see the numbers on what percentage of Gen Zs are making even the first payment after they bought something from the holiday season. The number is scary to say the least. Tom's got some charts to show you guys their escrow payments rising nationwide with homeownership less attainable. The dream of a Florida retirement is fading for the middle class. Paramount Plown's proxy fight to push hostile Warner bid, and it doesn't look like those guys want to sell to Paramount. I don't know if they want Ellison as a buyer. They keep lobbying for Netflix to buy them. Something's going on behind closed doors there.

We don't know about gold, silver hit record high as inflation data, cements, fed rate, cut bets. Mark, this is your specialty. We'll come to you with that as well. Mike Tomlin, I just put this out. We've got to say this. I mean, for a guy that loves Mike Tomlin, I think he's a phenomenal coach, hasn't won a playoff game in the last nine years, so he's being criticized.

ending 19-year run with the Steelers, which some are happy about it, some are not. I think the guy's going to pick up a job within half a second, whether he chooses to be a coach or goes and becomes one of these commentators, I think he's going to do a great job.

What the U.S. withdrawal from the 66 international bodies means for American business, and last but not least, meta cuts more than 1,000 in Bay Area Tech, first big tech layoff of 2026. For those of you that run small businesses, This is one thing that most people are not aware of. We run a consulting firm, ourself called Bed David Consulting,

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Go to bed david.com. Fill out your information. One of our consultants at the firm will get a hold of you. Having said that, Mark, if you don't mind taking a minute, share with the audience, your background. That'd be great. Yeah, thanks. I'm from Southern California like you, and I cut my teeth buying bank-owned repos right out of high school. In the mid-90s, the banks were sitting on a glut of repos after the housing crash in California from like 89 to 92.

And they were giving away zero down. And so I was fixing and flipping them up in a young white boy up in South Central, Compton-Wy. And yeah, that's what we did. That's what we did. Stayed out of Compton. I built up two different tech companies, a high-tech medical equipment company, internet company that I started in 2001 after the dot-com crash, got laughed out of the room. Two big exits, but then 2008 came.

And when I got knocked over the head, let's just say, right, I was all in Southern California real estate, which is one of the worst markets in the world. It made me go, shoot, I'm pretty good at business. I made a lot of money. I've had some big exits. I've built some big companies. but what is this global financial system that just has all this power over my life

and I'm not even paying attention to it. So after dusting myself off and vowing to my wife that this would never happen to us again, then I've spent the last, whatever, now 12, 15 years digging into macroeconomics and understand the financial system and I quickly understood that it's fiat currency and the over-leveraging the debt system and I became a gold bug and then I became a Bitcoin guy

and now I'm a sound money advocate. And I've been now talking about Bitcoin and macroeconomics you know, on YouTube, as you mentioned earlier, for about seven, eight years now, speaking on big conferences, I have a venture capital fund. We fund Bitcoin companies. I sit on the board of two publicly traded Bitcoin companies and just trying to spread wealth and, uh, yeah. And more importantly, married 22 years, had two beautiful daughters. Two beautiful girls. Respect. So all around winner. It's great to have you on, buddy. It's very good to have you on. Okay, let's get right into Argentina is the first one I want to get into. And Tom, I'm coming to you with this one.

folks has repaid U.S. for currency swap deal. If you remember when this was first taking place, everybody was saying, you guys got behind Miele, you thought this was a good idea. It's a horrible idea. There's no way this is going to work. Where Mille came out and repaid the United States for currency swap framework, it provided to the South American country last year to stabilize the economy,

the U.S. Treasury, Scott Bessent, and Argentina, Central Bank set on Friday, Rob, is that the tweet that you have? I am pleased to announce that reflecting its strengthened financial position, Argentina has both quickly and fully repaid its limit, limited draw on the swap facility with the U.S. such that the Exchange Stabilization Fund currently does not hold any pesos, Bessent said in a post on X. We look forward to continuing our enthusiastic support of President Millet and Argentina. it. Again, this is Scott Besant. In a separate post, Argentina Central Bank added that it had

settled the swap line in December two months after it was announced. According to local newspaper, La Nancione, two and a half billion dollars of a possible $20 billion had been used in that time. A source with knowledge of the matter told Reuters that the agreement remained in force under the agreed terms. Tom, what happened here? Why is it such a big deal? Well, this is a big deal because do you remember when all the banks were being asked? Oh, yeah. Would you like to do this deal with Argentina? and Trump opened it up to the U.S. banks. And all the U.S. bank says, well, we would want to backstop.

Well, what a backstop is, is someone's going to stand good for the loan. And so all these U.S. banks were really asking you, me, all of us, U.S. taxpayer in the form of the U.S. government, to be the backstop for this $20 billion for Argentina. Meanwhile, Miele was down there, got inflation under control. You remember him with the chainsaw and the whole thing running? Well, he went from the chainsaw to. the pen and it was Afwera, like I'm getting, which I think means I'll, kill it off. You know, take it off. And it was like, okay, Department of Nothingness and Trees. Afwera. Remember, he took all those, those labels off the board and said, this is the government

we need. We need defense. We need police. We need fire. We need pension for our people. We need a working government. All the rest of this stuff, Afwera. Well, then he went to the U.S. government and says, hey, getting this under control to float the peso, you know, we need. a little bit of liquidity. We need several billion dollars of liquidity. So this was a currency support line that the U.S. banks didn't want to do. And so instead, it got done through IMF and the U.S. government. And guess what? They only needed $2.5 billion of the $20 billion line, number one. And number two, they stabilize the peso with the IMF, International Monetary Fund. And now Bessent comes out and says, by the way, all of you who doubted, it's working. So what Besson is really saying,

it's working. Inflation is down. They've stabilized the peso. They want to make a fund where the peso will peg with the dollar on a more consistent basis. And Besson is saying, and by the way, ladies and gentlemen, the American taxpayer made tens of millions of dollars in interest on the two and a half billion over the amount of time that the loan was, uh, dating back to the, election they had end of last year in Argentina. So this is a big deal. Pat, this is the kind intervention that's good. You're not your intervention. Hey, I need a loan to help myself and I need this. And you find great leaders with a reliable risk and you do it. And then the taxpayer gets paid back. So this isn't just foreign aid going into a bucket somewhere and never to be seen

again. And so this is no less than Scott Bessent saying, hey, it worked. It worked for It worked for Malay and it's worked for the American taxpayer and we've been paid back. Let me tell you why I think this is a big deal. And, Mark, I'm going to come to you. I want to hear your thoughts on this. You know why this is a big deal when I looked into it is imagine you go to a guy. Do you have that one person that every time they borrow money from you, they've never paid? Think about that person.

Everybody has that friend, right? You may be that friend to somebody, but we all have somebody that never pays back the debt, right? You're watching the same, man, I'm kind of that person. Or it's Johnny, my cousin, my brother, whatever. Argentina was that person. They came, they got debt, 82, they never paid it back, they defaulted. 89 defaulted never paid back. 01, defaulted, didn't pay back.

And it happened two more times. So the entire world looks at Argentina and says, this is the one country that if you give them money, guess what? Never expect it back. And then all of a sudden, boom, here's your money back. Wait, what? To pay it back the $2.5 billion portion of it and to do it this fast, their credibility went to the roof.

If he gets in, inflation, I think, is at 200%. Now it's at 31.5%. He's telling the entire country we're not going to be printing money. I think as an operator, the world is now looking around, looking at countries that if you can lend them some money to make interest and expect that money to be back, I think Argentina officially moved from one bucket that nobody trusted to give money over here. And I think that's a very, very big thing that's happening to Miele. Mark, your thoughts on this.

Yeah, I can see the initial pushback on this with it's just more government intervention. And so there's a knee-jerk reaction to that, and I understand that. But to the point that you made about Malay and what he's done in Argentina, I mean, a complete turnaround. I mean, what he's been able to do in a short period of time is nothing short of a miracle. But really what I think is when I look at this is I just look at the absolute competence in the Trump administration. Scott Besant is a complete surgeon. He understands rates. He understands currencies.

He understands swaps. And think about the competence that we have in the administration compared to previous administration. reasons that we've had. And for him to be able with his expertise, helping George Soros break currencies, he understands currencies, he was able to help a country out, a country that needs to help, benefit the United States taxpayer, the United States citizen. And so, you know, all in all, I think it's a really good deal. Yeah. And by the way, what a great hire, right? At first, when everybody heard Scott Besson, you're like, wait, what? Who is this guy? And the more

and more you listen to him, you're like, this is a very qualified guy. He's been the right guy on my list of guys the executives that's been hired he's probably number two or number one on the list of doing a great job so far brandon your thoughts on this yeah it's like the concept of um good debt versus bad debt it's not like we're just giving them money just because they need it like it's an emergency situation we don't know what they're going to do with it it's like a credit line for a business there's a reason that most businesses will take out a line of credit so they could operate and then pay their expenses and then they'll make you enough money to pay it back quickly so it's it's like the concept of taking out a line of credit to do something productive right

rather than taking out a loan where you don't know if it's going to be used for something productive. So, yeah, no, I'm all for it. That's what the swap lines are created for in the first place, I believe. Like, after 2008, we set up those swap lines so we could inject money into Europe or other places around the world, if need be. So, yeah, I think it's really important that we keep this anti or counter socialism movement going in South America. Like, so, you know, we got Argentina now. It's so important. It's so important.

It's so important. Yeah. Right. So one by one, hopefully we desocialize or desocialism, South America. Yeah, you know, you know what's crazy. When you think about this, taxes were supposed to be this way. In 1860 something, 1861, when civil war comes to an end, and Lincoln needs money. We're in debt.

We're in debt a lot. He goes to the American people and says, listen, guys, we need to create a tax. You guys got to pay us and help us out. So he creates a progressive tax. Rob, can you pull up? Was it a flat tax? I thought it was three tiers or something like that. 1861 tax was a flat tax, 3% on incomes over $800, and then the later modified,

okay, there you go, later modified to progressive tax. You know what happened with this? They said, we need to pay this off, and we're going to put this tax until we pay off the debt. How long do you think that tax lasted? Seven years. Seven years later, after it was paid off, they eliminated the taxes. This is how taxes were before. Today, God forbid, they launch a new tax.

It is never going away. They're just going to raise it. This is why a lot of billionaires from California are escaping, and knowing California just wants to tax people to death. Let me go to the next one here. Something that's happening that is not necessarily taxes, but it's really hurting a lot of different people, is this BNPL concept, buy now, pay later concept

that is hurting a lot of people. This one story I want to read to you, Rob, what pages that BNPL on? There it is. It's on page 11. Americans just spent. A record $20 billion with buy now pay later. Here's what to do if you overdid it yourself. Now, I'll read this story.

I'm going to give you the quick tips. He gives in the article, this is a market watch story. As 2026 gets underway, some consumers are facing overwhelming debt. This is especially true for those who took out multiple buy now pay later loans to cover their holiday shop in a move known as stacking. and more people are using the loans than ever before. Shoppers use the buy now, pay, later spend a record $20 billion from November 1st to December 31st. According to Adobe 2025 Holiday Shopping Trend reports, 9.8% increase from 2024.

BNPL typically comes in a form of pay in four loans that don't charge traditional interest. Although the late fees can be charged if a payment is missed, lenders say the option expands access to people who are underst served by traditional credit, but critics say it can lead to worrisome debt accumulation. Tom, why is this so concerning? I know you have some charts on how late people are on payments, but why is it so concerning to you? At Medcan, we know that life's greatest moments are built on a foundation of good health, from the big milestones to the quiet winds. That's why our annual health assessment offers a physician-led, full-body checkup that provides a clear picture of your

health today, and may uncover early signs of conditions like heart disease, disease and cancer. The healthier you means more moments to cherish. Take control of your well-being and book an assessment today. Medcan, live well for life. Visit medcan.com slash moments to get started. You have to go and kind of go upstream a minute and look at it. In the middle of the COVID crisis, I don't know if we have this chart, the credit card debt in America reached $777 billion as people paid off a lot of it. And I think that was right, Q2, there it is, Q2, 2021, we hit 777. The sharp drop down was because, A, we weren't shopping. We were locked in our homes. We had lockdowns and everything going. B, people took $1,500, $1,700 payments from the government, Pat, and paid down their

credit cards. So all of a sudden, here we are, Q1 to 2021. We are at $777 billion. That has gone up since we were all allowed to go back outside and play. We are now at an all-time high of $1.26 billion as we have the first... Trillion dollars. Trillion, $1.26 trillion as we are in the first week of 2026. So that's what's going on with credit card debt. Tom, that's a scary sight, just looking at that. Correct.

But now here's what happens. Along comes BNPL. And BNPL isn't on your credit report. Well, it wasn't on your credit report. Whenever you have your credit report run, the industry uses what's called FICO 8. That's how they look at your credit report. And if your parent paying life lock or somebody, they say, hey, there's been an inquiry on your credit report. Boom.

Meanwhile, over the same amount of time, while America is maxing out its credit card, Pat, look what happens to growth at BNPL. So people's credit cards were maxed out. This is a number of users because I can barely realize. It says number of users on the left, right? Correct. Okay. So this is basically the number of users of BMPL shoots up like a rocket. At the same time, credit card debt is going up to $1.26 trillion where it is today.

And there was calls in Washington that says, hey, BNPL needs to be put on people's credit reports because we want to kind of protect. Some consumers need to be protected from themselves. And the only one, a firm said, okay, I will let you know what my pay-in-for statistics are, pay-in-four months. A firm agreed to do it. FICO created what's called the FICO score 10, which includes BMPL. A firm was good.

Clarnah and After-Pay said, no, we don't want to report it. The reason they don't want to report it is because if there's a FICO score out there and there's a way to regulate it, then all of a sudden people wouldn't use it. And Clarna and After-Pay wanted people to keep using it. Well, what happens? Guess what? Credit cards are maxed. This isn't on your credit report.

You go into Best Buy. You want to buy that 4K TV for $1,000 bucks. They'll say, hey, just put on Klarna. Sign here. Do Klarna. Well, guess what? 63% of BNPO users over the last 24 months, Pat, now have multiple BNPL accounts.

Number one, 41% of BNPO users missed at least one on top. payment last year. Did you say 41%? 41% of all BNPL users. This is not the youth. This is anybody and everybody that uses. Everybody, everybody last year missed at least one payment. And it gets worse when we go to the youth. Gen Z,

the reporting on Gen Z is horrifying. 50% of Gen Z BMPO users missed one payment since holiday spending. That's three months ago, November, December, January. In the last 90s,

days, 50% of Gen Z have missed one payment. So now what is, there is a concept that when you miss a payment, doesn't it like the interest goes to the roof or the fee is an extremely high fee? You miss a payment. It's wham-bam. And this thing becomes your foot is in the bear trap. Yeah, but what does that mean wham-bam? I want to know exactly what wambam means.

My understanding is that suddenly you're on an equivalent of a 30% a year interest. That's exactly what I was thinking about. So I was thinking, Rob, can you pull up on ChadGBT? What happens to BMPLs when you miss the first payment? What happens to the results? They'll say, oh, it's just 2% of balance, but you got to multiply that times 24. Yeah, 12. It ends up being worse than credit cards if you miss a balance,

and they make it really sneaky. I remember we uncovered that before. You usually charge a late fee, okay? So after Peklarnas Zip, late fee kicks in quickly. after a few days, some cap total late fees per order, affirm no late fee, your account is often frozen instantly, block you from making new purchases, your credit profile may be impacted,

providers that report to credit bureaus, in many cases, affirm, oh, they're now reporting. No, Clarna affirming. Some plans they report. See, that affirm reports. Clarna is not reporting across the board and not reporting to all agencies. So why don't they, though?

Hey, if I'm Clarna, I don't really want on the credit report because I'm plan B. And I want people to take the risk on plan B of their own free will. Yeah, it's a funny business model. Mark, where are you at with this? Well, a couple things. So first of all, when we look at the credit card debt going up,

we have to take into account consideration of the inflation. And not just the CPI inflation, but the increase in the money supply. So I see here it's gone up by 9.87 or 9.8% since 2024 BMPL use. So 9.8 since 2024, but the money supply has increased faster than that. So when we look at sheer numbers, we have to take that in consideration, first of all. But what I would say to this is it sort of kind of goes back to two things. Number one, you referenced some of the news. We're going to talk about, one, Trump capping rates.

And so when lending restrictions get tightened, people return to options like this. So you cut rates at 10% on credit cards. People are going to go to loan sharks. Number one. Number two, the way I think about it is you also mention. What's that? Or they run out of credit balance. Or credit balance.

But the other thing I would go back to is you'd referenced earlier, a new story to get to later, is the education system and capitalism. And if people were taught how to use debt in a good way, you mentioned good debt versus bad debt. And so we are in a debt-based system. We're in a credit-based system. And so we use debt to grow. Donald Trump was the king of debt before becoming the president.

But if you don't learn how to use it properly, it can become extremely dangerous. If you use it properly, it's extremely powerful. So I just see a failure in the education system, first of all. I see a failure in the banking system and people are turning to this. But overall, yeah, it can end up bad. Brandon, what are you at with this? You know, it's amazing how it's so much more difficult a lot of times to get something as simple as a small business loan with a solid plan versus being able to have access to, you know, $20,000 to $50,000 worth of credit card debt to do frivolous shopping with.

I mean, I never really thought of it like that, but it's crazy. Like it is a much more complicated process to take out a small business loan than to get a few credit cards. But it's unfortunate like that, like I always complain about government regulation, but now here, this is an example of what happens like and why the government sometimes has to get involved and protect people because of the, I guess, like incompetence of some people and like the predatory nature of certain companies to put people in a situation like this. Because, yeah, these are credit cards or loan sharks. They're probably more expensive than paying off a credit card when you really boil it down. I remember the rates you have to like 50 percent sometimes if you miss a few payments. So, yeah, it's a disaster. But is it the government's job to protect people?

Are they smart enough to read the paperwork and understand what they're signing? I guess you could say that survival of the fist, too, to agree. But I agree with Mark. Yeah. I agree with Mark. Please, Mark, finish your thought. Because if they're not going to get this, they're not going to read the paperwork, and they're not going to read the fine print.

That's on them. And if they don't get it there, the government protects them from getting it. They'll go to the back alley and they're going to get it from the loan shark and they're going to get their legs broken. So it's like they're going to take the risk either way. At least it's disclosed and it's transparent.

And, like, again, it should be on them to be smart enough to understand what they're signing. They can take that contract and run through chat GPT today. I mean, there is no excuse for the ignorance of that. No, I agree with that. And I think that one of the good things of the Consumer Protection Bureau is to ensure that there is fine print. Right.

But I think fine print needs to be regulated because there's what's called plain talk fine print. And plain talk summaries, I believe in, where you have to pat right there at the top, the plane talk summary, like when you get a car loan, plane talk, you're getting this much loan. You will pay this much interest. The vehicle will ultimately cause this, and this will be your payment for these many months. Boom, and here's your interest rate. I believe in those plain talk summaries, but it should be on the consumer to read it, but I like the fact that we force companies to, hey, put the plane talk. the top and the consumer makes a choice. Make the decision for yourself.

Yeah, I like that part. But Tom, you know what's the weirdest thing I'm looking at? So, Rob, can you do me favor? Go on ChadGBT, ask this question. What is the market cap of top BMPL companies the last five years? Okay. Now, I want to know if they're going up or if they're going down because I want to know what patterns will notice.

To me, what it says here is a firm, which is one of them, they went public since January of 2021. Look at this. January 2021, $28 billion is early 2021 peak. Look at 2022. Post-pandemic drop. It drops to $2.8 billion market cap. Nobody was shopping.

Yeah, nobody was shopping. Then it goes to $14.8, then $20 billion, then $25 billion. It is still not back up to the $28 billion it was when they went out in 2021. So then if you go a little bit lower, that's a firm. Go to the next one. after pay 2025 block overall market cap

has been reported around $42 billion okay pre-2020 after pay market cap was initially $30 billion okay so it's gone up say 40% right exactly 40% from 30 billion

to $42 billion go a little bit lower Klarna went from $45 billion valuation in 2021 peak this is when they were private 22 is still private to go to 6.7

billion, IPO 2025, 15.1 billion, and now it's roughly $11 to $12 billion. Now here's what this makes me think about. Do I think this is something that's going to be around 20 years from now? Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. And the reason why I'm asking this is, remember when everybody was looking at how fast Groupon was blowing up and there was another company? Living social.

Yeah, living social. Tom, we even had a meeting one time. in Woodland Hills, California in 2011, 2012, that we were gonna launch our own group on a living social. Do you remember the name of it? Let me see if you remember the name of it. Do you remember the name of it? If you remember the name of it, dinners on Meetown.

I do you not remember that. It was called Goody Squad. Oh, good guys. It's called Goody Squad. We had all these, you know, personalities and this stuff. Remember I had this meeting, I brought all of you guys in. It was like a seal of a massive insurance company. And Einstein, a little white dog.

Yes. Yes. So we had this thing, we're gonna do Goody Squad. And everybody's looking at me saying, yeah, I don't know about it. We never ended up doing anything with it. But the point is, is this a Groupon, you know, hype that it's coming out, it's going to be great, and then it's going to go away?

I don't know. All I can tell you is parents, wherever you are, okay, parents, talk to your kids. They're going off to college. They're 18 years old. They can apply to this stuff. It's horrible for them. Horrible. If you can't afford to buy it, do not buy it.

Sometimes the most basic principles are, making a comeback. Yeah, look at this. This is Groupon. Look what Groupon was at at one point. What is that date, Rob? November 2011. Oh, that's the date. I just said 11, 2012. November two, the guy's on the cover of Fortune magazine, Forbes magazine. Everybody, he was offered for someone to buy his company for $6 billion. He turned it down. Google offered it and they wanted the consumer data. Google offered it to buy it $6 billion. What is the market cap of right there? Look at that. Go back to that. article? Go back to that article.

Ten years ago, Groupon turned down Google $6 billion offer. Here's what happened ever since. They have a nice little conference room now. Go a little bit lower. Go a little bit low. What happened to them since? Zoom in. I think it's half a billion dollars right now, Pat. What is the market cap? The rejection came during head-eatheed times for Groupon, which launched in 08,

with a 24-1 pizza deal at Chicago Bar quickly became Chicago's Tech Darling. By 2010, it had grown to 1,500 Chicago-area employees. Go a little bit low, Rob. I want to know what the market cap of Groupon is today. What is the market cap? What is it say? $6.54. $6 billion opportunity to $6.54.

Rob, what is their revenue? Just type their revenue. What is Groupon's 2025 revenue is what I care about? I want to know actually what kind of numbers they're bringing in today. 2025 revenue. Can you? Can you do me a favor? Also run a poll.

Still not a bad revenue, by the way. Half a billion. It's not a bad revenue. They're still pulling in a half a billion dollars. Can you do me favor, Rob? Ask a question on, run this poll. Who still, who has used Groupon in the last 12 months? Asked a question in a poll.

Who has used Groupon? Grupon. Has anybody here used Groupon last 12 months? Have you used Groupon? Mike, have you touched Groupon? You have? Where was it at? massage party used coupon wow okay well i guess that makes sense by the way this is brought to you about

that massage parlor we're going to put the link to their website i know my wife used to use it all the time and i never hear a lot of people used it anymore and uh i think what i what i've heard is the retailers really found out that it wasn't really a way to get good long-term business so they were selling all the lost leaders but then they never recouped the difference of the lost leader the business owner the business owner. So I think the appetite went down from the business owners. And I think that was a big drawdown on that. So it benefited the customer, but it didn't benefit the business owner. But even from the customer, they didn't really establish relationships with the retail establishment. So for example, they went to the massage parlor or whatever.

They went to get the Botox. But they would just chase the best deal and they wouldn't actually develop a relationship with that provider. And so I don't think either party really benefited. It didn't turn into a long-term plan. But back to the BMPL, I think it will, have staying power because people are always going to need to borrow money. That's my worry. The need to borrow money will always be. There's always going to people who have money that want to loan it. And there's always going to be people that need to borrow it. I think you're right. I hate to say it, but I think you're right. But I think it's going to mess a lot of people up. And we got to get educated with it. Okay, so this leads me to the credit card,

10% that the president is proposing. Let's see what page is that on. Here we go. Trump floats one year 10% credit card interest rate cap what that could mean for your money. Rob, I think you got a clip on this one if you want to pull it up. I'll read the story and then I'll come to you. Here we go. Effective January 20th. Is this when he's saying that, by the way?

Or is that he wrote it on social? Okay. Go ahead. Play the clip. On game day, pain can hit hard and fast. Like the headache you get when your favorite team and your fantasy team both lose. When pain comes to play, call an audible with Advil plus acetaminopin and get long-lasting dual-action pain relief for up to eight hours. Tackle your tough pain two ways

with Advil plus acetaminopin. Adville, the official pain relief partner of the NFL. Ask your pharmacist at this product's rate for you. Always read and follow the label. Can you go back a little bit, Rob? We missed it. Well, then they're in violation of the law. Very severe things. No, I I want a cap or credit card interest rates because, you know, some of them are 28, almost 30%. And that people don't know they're paying 30%. The people out there, you know, they're working. They have no idea that they're paying 30%. No way.

We're putting a one-year cap at 10%. And that's it. They know it. They've really abused the public. The credit card companies have totally abused. I'm not going to let it happen. All right. So abuser, let me read this to effective.

January 20th, 2026, I, President Trump, this is on Trude Social, I'm calling for one-year cap on credit card rates at 10%. A credit card rate cap is enormously popular with Americans, said Matt Schultz, chief credit card analyst at Lending Tree. That's why we've seen big names on both sides of the aisle proposed credit card rate caps in recent years, including President Trump, who also floated the idea on the campaign trail 2024. Currently, about 175 million and people in the U.S. credit card, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, while some pay off the balance each month. Roughly 60% of credit card users have revolving debt.

The New York Fed said that means they pay interest changes, charges, on the balances they carry from month to month. About 61% of credit card holders with credit card balance have been in debt for at least one year, up from 53% of late 2024, according to bank rates, The average credit card interest rate in the U.S. fell to 23.79% in January, marketing the lowest levels since March of 2023. Mark, I'll come to you first. Thoughts on the story?

Yeah, I think when I hear this, I just think about the late-stage Fiat system that we're in. It's systemic to that. It's the same reason why Trump and Powell are openly fighting right now. We have inflation that's raging. People can't afford to live. And at the end, what the leaders always try to do is try to appease the people. by price fixing. It always comes down to that. We can't stop prices going up because we can't stop printing money. So how about we'll just cap prices? And so whether that's rent controls, Elizabeth Warren

wants to cap the price of turkeys for Thanksgiving or it's credit card rates. The problem with price controls is we have a thousand cases of it not working. And just from a philosophical level, you can understand why. So for example, credit cards, banks is a very competitive industry. Credit cards are very competitive. And they're trying to get as many customers as they can. And they're constantly trying to undercut each other. In order to get more customers, who cares what credit card you have, you think about the rate. And so it's very, very competitive. And so they want to get as many customers as they can without blowing themselves up. And so they're already trying to get rates down as low as possible. They understand that people can just change balances from

one card to the next. And so if they could lower rates, they certainly would. The problem is when you cap it at 10%. First of all, he said it's illegal. So there are already caps, right? There are usury laws. So there are already caps, but he wants to lower it to 10%. What is it right now, by the way, Mark? Do you know what it is right now? I was a California finance lender. I should know. It was in the high 20s.

It was in the high 20s. Yeah. Rob, can you pull up what the numbers are right now, what the current cap is right now? Mark, finish your thought. I just want to... So what I was saying is that it's already competitive. Credit card companies are already competing to bring the rates as low as possible. And what happens is if you cut the rate to 10% or 8% or 18%,

whatever that number is, everybody that wouldn't qualify for that rate, is then left without credit. And that will then drive people either to the B&PL or drive them to their back alley, you know, neighborhood loan shark. And so people need money, especially like I said, with this Fiat system as we have today, people are falling further behind. They're using credit to augment their lifestyle.

And yeah, if you cut them off at 18% or 15% or 10% as Trump is floating out, it just cuts off a huge segment of the population that needs it. It's an interesting, Rob. Is it really saying there's no existing cap right now on credit cards? no existing cap that that's really what it says so there's no cap right now on credit cards usury laws don't apply to credit cards is what it says is that what it's saying

what do you see that oh state usury laws generally don't apply to credit cards because made most major issuers locate themselves in states like delaware south dakota or missouri that exempt credit card debt from strict caps wow okay um tom go for thoughts on this so there's a couple things here that we can go back and look at real case studies. In 2000, late 2021, early 2022, credit card companies reduced people's credit limits across the board because the economy was tough. And so they were handicapping the fact that, you know, a lot of people are probably going to go for cash advances because money was tight, but they were going to have issues paying it back. So during the COVID crisis, credit card companies across the board

went in and adjusted down caps on the lowest third of consumers. It happened. And guess what? What that means is we've seen the playbook. We know how they respond to stress. So that wasn't the government telling them. That was all of us in the boardroom of Visa saying, hey, the lowest third is starting to take a lot of cash advances, guys. Should we lower?

I mean, these people have a $25,000 limit. Should we lower it to $20? Just send out the notice, lower it right now. Yes, let's do it. Because they were mitigating risk. So we've seen that happen. Point one. Point two is what you have right now is the credit card companies are competing with each other.

The reason the rates are coming down a little bit is because the federal rate was cut a little teeny bit. So the rates are coming down because they're trying to compete with each other. This is why Capital One has spent billions of dollars in the last five years on consumer advertising, what's in your wallet? They want it to be the Capital One card. So they're competing with each other very, very stridently. What's going to happen if you put the cap, it's just like COVID. They're going to lower the limits and people are going to turn to BNPL or other things. Now, this is well intended by the president during a time of affordability, but I think right now the credit card companies operate in states that are most favored to them, sure.

but also they're competing with each other. If one of them could get more customers by going to 19.99%, you'd see one of them do it tomorrow morning and be shouting from the rooftops. Hey, your alternative to capital one is me. Get Tom's credit card. Maximum 19%. They would be competing with each other.

There is a active market and it's working well, and I don't think it needs this control on top of them. Like they haven't discovered this as lead-based paint. I wonder whose idea this was. Like I wonder where Scott Besson lies with this idea. I really wonder what Scott said with this. Brandon, go ahead, because I got a bunch of, I got one number I just pulled up right now

that when I share it with you guys, you're going to be blown away when I share this number with you in a minute. But go ahead, Brandon. Yeah, it's funny you say, because I was just thinking, it's as if they're sitting in a room saying, right, this cost of living thing is becoming a problem. Everybody's still talking about it. what's something we could, what's a bone that we could throw out the public and appease them a little bit and make them feel like we're doing something.

And this is a good start to that. I think it's a good idea. I mean, I think maybe student loans would be a better place to either cap or remove interest rates because, like, they've already been paid back a lot of time in terms of, like, without the interest. Like, I think that just paying back the loan would be enough. But, yeah, like this, it's an example of lobbying. The reason that I don't think there's a limit on it. That's probably why, because it's like the same thing as loan sharking. It's just like legalized loan shark in a lot of cases.

But I think it's good for inflation because, you know, like more debt equals a higher cost of goods and services. So like it would create probably a crash type of situation. Like the Great Depression is like the biggest example of like deflation. But that's the thing that's unfortunate is like you have to like weigh like an economic downturn versus the cost of living. You can't really have both of them be ideal. Yeah. So affordability. Like there's a story that came out that the president reached out to Elizabeth.

Warren about the, did you see that story this morning, Rob? I thought I saw it correctly. Can you type up Trump Elizabeth Warren affordability? I may be wrong, but I thought I just saw it early this morning. Is that it? Yeah, there's stories today about the phone call. On affordability. Okay, so they had a conversation this morning. And keep in mind, this 10% idea, do you know whose idea this was? If I tell you right now, who proposed this idea last February 2025? Who do you think it was? Was it Warren? Nope, but a person like that. Who do you think it was? Bernie? Bernie Sanders. Bernie proposed this idea last year. He put this on the table.

I think, can you type in Bernie Sanders 10% credit card? There it is. Sanders, Holly, introduced bill cap and credit card interest rates at 10%. Now, both of those are heavyweights on each side. Holly is a heavyweight. Sanders is a heavy weight. For a socialist slash communist to agree with a capitalist conservative on the 10%, this is where the independent in the middle will look at the sense and say,

Well, if both of these guys are on it, I'm willing to entertain it. So libertarian and independent, we'll say maybe this is not a bad idea. But here's what you've got to be thinking about. So if you lower it to 10%, the banks are going to sit there and say, our profits got hit. This is what the gentleman was saying last night to us. And then they lend less. If they lend less, the small business owner takes a hit.

Because who will they always lend to? They're always going to lend to the guy that doesn't need money. How much you need? 100 million dollars, 50 years. Take it, take it, whatever you want, right? Because they know that guy's going to pay the money back. But this is the number where I do believe there's an argument there, and some people may say, well, Pat, if you really believe in free market capitalism, what's wrong with this? Here's a question for you. What is an average business as EBTA? Restaurants EBITA is what? What's a restaurant's EBIT? 10%. Yeah. Lucky if you're there,

five to 10%. Five percent. They get their at the average business. has handed to them, restaurants, right? Okay. What is a healthy business as EBTA? What do you think it is? 10 to 20. 10 to 20 would say pretty healthy, right? Now, if you're running a software, technology difference, so let's set those aside, the 30, 40 percent, like I'm talking Salesforce. What do you think is the, what do you think is the profit margin of what these credit card companies are making? What do you think it is? If you, don't pull it up yet because, Rob, I want to see what they're going to say before you. Ask the question, What are profit margins at credit card companies such as Visa, MasterCard, and American Express?

But don't press enter yet. What do you think the number is? 30%. That's a lot. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to go more in line with restaurants. Five to 10 percent.

Where are you going to be, Tom? Well, they're charging interest rates on one hand at the rates we're seeing. But on the other hand, they're only making 2.5% on the actual transaction. So I'm going to blend it and go four. You're about to be shell-shocked. Go ahead, Rob. Ask the question and show them what it is. Net profits for Visa is 47 to 52%. MasterCard is 45%. Amex is 14 to 20%. So to me, are you flipping kidding me? Yeah. They're printing money. Like every single year, I remember I bought Visa stock like 10 years ago. And all you have to do was keep it.

But are you getting a credit card with Visa or are you getting with Capital One? So are we looking at the wrong number? Because Visa's making the money for processing transactions, so their net profits very high. American Express is the card issuer, and so see how much lower their rates. 14 to 20%. So I think really we have to look at Capital One, not Visa, right? You're thinking more, but you think they're targeting Capital One.

I don't think they're targeting Capital One. Visa's making all the money from processing the transactions. They don't have the cost overhead the risk. They're not making the slim margins on the spread. So I think you'd have to go to the actual card issuer like a Capital One. That is given the debt to the clients. giving the debt because they're the ones that are making the spread. They're using the Visa network.

So why don't we do this then? Let's ask the question with those guys. What is the profit margin? What are the five credit card companies we want to put? We saw AMX 14 to 20 percent. If you were going to scroll back up a second where it said Amex. So we'll see where it said 14 to 20 percent. Yeah, but see what it says right there.

Amex also acts as a credit issuer and bears credit risk. He makes a slightly different though. So MasterCard and Visa don't, they're not issuers. They don't hire credit risk. Well, why don't you give the companies? What are the top five credit card companies? Give the names. Capital One.

Okay, so let's say what are the profit margin? Perfect. So why don't we do Discover City, Capital One. Maybe let's ask the question this way. What are the top five credit card companies in America? What are the top five credit card companies in America? So to me it says the top five credit card companies in America are, it says visa, global payment system 55.

It says MasterCard. So I'm trying to see what are the credit card companies? Citibank, you see, goes back to Chase B of A. So why don't you ask? I would exclude the banks because obviously they're going to have profits from other areas, but I think Amex, I think Capital One.

City's also a bank toll, right? So if you put City. Right, that's why I said Capital One. So let's look at Capital One, Rob, if you want to do this. Maybe Discover that you call it. Why don't you do that? Do Capital One, do Discover, And what was the other one you said? Capital One, Discover and add one more. Was there one other one that we wanted to add?

I thought Capital One swallowed Discover. Okay. Let's just see what is their profit margins. What kind of money they're making? What is their margins here? Well, we're waiting for that to come up. I mean, just price is 101. 19% for Amex.

We saw that one. Look at Capital One right there. Barely making any. Negative 8.8. What is Discover? 25. minus 25% based on recent trade out. But it's not a minus.

That's an approximate. But again, Discover. So Discover makes 25%. Capital One makes 5%. Amex makes 14%. More traditional bank with significant loan book. Margin varies with credit cycle. Discover pre-merger performance showed solid profitability,

stronger than many. What does that say, Rob? Banks. Bank issuers. Bank issuers. Okay. How do you process this? If you go up and read Discover, if you scroll up just a tad right there, you'll see Discover also has additional income that's sort of like a Visa MasterCard network. So really the best proxies for this, I think, are American Express and Capital One because they're like the credit issuers.

They don't benefit from people using the network. So then let me ask you, if they're doing this and if they remove the interest rate from what it is to 10%, how did these guys make money if that's the case? Because Visa and MasterCard, they're printing money. They'll make money on the top half, you and me, and they'll start to bleed on the bottom half, and they will have to reduce, you know, credit available balances, credit limits. They'll have to reduce them. This is what he was saying last night. They'll go, wham, and stop everything at the bottom, and then leave everything at the top.

Well, what they'll do is they're going to call you and they're going to triple your credit line, because you're going to pay it back, and then everyone else are going to cut theirs. How do you make money off me, though? Well, because you'll use your credit card and you'll pay it back. Transaction fees. Transaction fees. But how much is that, though, Tom? I'm going to pay back.

And I pay back on a monthly basis. So it's really the 3% of usage. Correct. You now want to lower it to 10 points? I don't know. What I like the fact that Holly and Sanders are both entertaining it. Do you think this is a net, net good thing for low middle-income families? Yeah.

Does the product market need scrutiny? Yes. Does it need to maybe tighten some things up, plain talk disclosures and things like that? Sure, it can always benefit. Does it need the government to put a cap on how much profit it can make? No. Business 101, if there is a fat margin to be made,

competition will come and eat the margin. That's just the way it works. How is Visa and MasterCard not had anybody else that comes? Well, that's because they own the network. They're making 45 to 55 percent. But they did have Amex come in. They did have Discover come in. But now they've also had PayPal, BMPLs.

They are having lots of competition. And now we're seeing stable coins that will start taking over. So I think they do have some competition. But they have the benefit of owning the network. And you know, owning the network is where you... Make the big money. It has to flow through you. The network effects.

What you say, Tom. The toll booths. They own the toll booths. What a business to be in though if you think about it, right? Well, yeah. What is the biggest... crypto credit card. Is there a Bitcoin, is there anything like that right now

where it's a competitor of what a Visa and a Master card would be? I mean, there are, but they're through the banks. So they're credit card banks because the credit card bank is still issued. So they still need them. Yeah, it's still a credit product. So like Gemini, for example, released one, right? Or Coinbase released

one, but it's with a major issuer. I think Coinbase is through Amex, I believe. So they use a credit issuer for that. Rob, can you do me a favor? Just go to Visa, go to Visa, market cap, go max. Go Visa market cap, go max. Yeah, go max all the way to the right. Look at that. Zoom in. Look at that. It's like, how do you lose money with this? Yeah. This is one of those things, $625 billion market cap. What was it in 2011? Go to 2011 market cap, 2011 Rob? This is a Warren Buffett efficient capital business. It really is if you're looking at it.

They just own the network. They own the they own the they own the they own the, there's like Coca-Cola, right? They own the patent on the syrup, but they don't even make the bottles. Look at this market cap in 2011, 67 billion. Market cap today 650 billion. It's you know this is not a recommendation to you guys but if some of you guys are conservative and you want something long-term, you almost have to go through this network. Visa mask or okay, let's, let's, Let's go to the next story. Trump says any country doing business with Iran will face a 25% U.S. tariff. 25% U.S. tariff.

President Trump said on Monday, any country doing business with Iran will face a 25% tariff on any and all business being done in the U.S. That new turf on imports from Iran's trading partner is effective. Immediately, Trump said, in a truth, social, the disorder, disorder is final and conclusive. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Further details about the tariff announcement were not immediately clear a White House official declined to answer. This apparent effort by Trump to economically isolate Iran comes as in as the, that was good. As the oil rich Middle Eastern country struggles to suppress an ongoing swell of massive anti-government protest.

Dozens of those protesters have been, well, it's not dozens anymore. The report was 2,500 and CBS reported allegedly 12,500. killed. Tom, 25% tariff on people doing business with Iran, as if they're not already suffocating, with inflation being 55% water issues, right, unemployment issues, the average worker making less than a gram of a gold per month, $110 a month. How bad is this when he puts this on them? Okay, so it goes like this. My dad got really upset with me and grounded me. So I have to go to my room when I get home from school, and I'm sitting in my room. then he gets home the next night

and my mom says, hey, the report card just came in the mail. The report card sucks too. He knocks on the door to my room and he says, you're not grounded for one week, you're grounded for two weeks. Well, I'm already grounded. So really, I looked at this when it came out

and I said, really, what's he saying? He's saying anybody that's doing business with people that I'm already punishing, and remember India's part of this, he said, then, okay, we'll put another 25% on anybody doing business. So in other words, I already have China tariff. I've already got sanctions on Russia.

And I've already got sanctioned on Iran. But if anybody wants to even look like they're doing a backdoor deal with Iran for, I mean, Russia's buying drones. There's some black market oil being sold. So anybody caught doing that, now it's another 25%. So really, I think that what really happens here is that he wants to. to cause what few customers that Iran has to even lower what they're buying

which points to China because China's trying to buy they buy black market oil. So he's like saying, okay, we're going to put another 25 percent on China. So this is really like hitting again a dog you've already been hitting for a month.

Brandon, your thoughts on this? Yeah, no, it's I think they're at the breaking point where something could happen here like where the, you know, leadership change could happen and uh this is a you know you just got to keep like piling like layers on top of it to see what breaks and i don't think uh organic revolution that leadership changes ever happened without the assistance of an outside powerful force so you know i think he's in favor of leadership change i think he's trying to do whatever he can without putting boots on the ground to make that happen i think

it's close to happening but um yeah it's interestingly we were talking about last week how china's real power or their edge and um geopolitics is getting cheap oil from russia and iran so you know we're kind of putting them in a situation too where it's more difficult to get that cheap oil from Russian and Iran. So maybe China could be helpful here. I don't know. And do what? And, you know, like go somewhere else for oil in the meantime and instead of around. Why would they? They're getting it at a massively discounted rate. Yeah, well, that's where negotiation comes in.

Like, it's like, what do we care about more? For U.S. to say stop doing business with them? Yeah, take a pause to do it. You realize this 25% is really, who's he talking to with the 25%? I think China. Yeah, China and India. Yeah. So China is going to sit there and say, yeah, I'm pretty much getting it for free.

I'm not paying anything for it. And you think he's really going to come through with this 25 percent? No, I think it's a good threat. But now we have Venezuela oil that we get put on the table. You just imagine if you're the accountant. Like you're the Comptroller General of the U.S. Who the hell is the Comptroller General of U.S. right now, Rob? He used to be a guy named David Walker 20 years ago, whom I interviewed one time.

who is the Comptroller General of the U.S. today? We're not even talking about this guy. This poor CFO must be having, there's no way this person is sleeping. This is the CFO of America, folks. Let's give him some credit. Can you pull up his picture, Rob? Who are you?

And no one's even talking about you. Yeah, she's the Comptroller General of the U.S. Okay, go to her. Is she really the Comptroller General of U.S.? I think there's a better picture than that one on the American flag there. She looks kind of crazy, doesn't she? No, no, but I'm actually being serious. Is this truly the Comptroller General of the U.S. today?

Is she the Comptroller General of the U.S. or in state? Began December 2025? She's the acting comptroller who sat in the chair following the retirement of Gene Dorado, who retired just a couple weeks ago on December 29th. So who's the new one? She's the acting and it hasn't been named. So they haven't announced a new one yet.

Right. And this is just a couple weeks ago. Well, go to Gene Dodaro. So Gene Dodaro was the one that was doing all the stuff in 2025? Correct. Can you go to Gene, please? He was official. Who is Gene Dodaro?

Funny that we don't even know who this person is. This guy is probably aged more in the last 12 months than the last 40 years. The amount of every day, 25%. It's like working for a sales company and the CEO keeps changing a comp plan every day. Change it here. Change the commissions to this year. Change a commission to theirs. It's like this constant.

You know what I'm saying? Like that's what it is working in that environment. But the threat is you're suffocating Iran to have no choice, but for everybody to stop doing business to eventually give up. He's trying to get these guys to quit and give up. Do you think it'll happen, Mark? Iran. I think there's a bigger problem at play here.

And so while I certainly hate what's happening there, and I hate to see the people getting. slaughtered. I mean, it's just absolutely insane. To think that people still live like that in today's day and age is insane to me. But the bigger problem that we have is, is China. And so what China is doing is they're setting up a new parallel financial system. The dollar is the reserve currency of the world. The US dollar is the payment network of the world back to Visa and Mastercard. The US dollar is the payment network of the world. And so the US is able to sanctions, sanctions, sanctions, but eventually you kick so many out of that payment network, that financial system, and they go find

new one and China is setting up a parallel system through Hong Kong that's being settled in gold and the and they've now set up swap lines with 32 countries almost every country except the United States and so now all of these countries can do business with themselves using the R&B being settled in gold in real time and they don't have to use the dollar network and so this is happening and it's happening very very quickly and the more that we weaponize the dollar and the more that we slap sanctions the more it drives people to that network. And so what happens is this has diminishing returns. And so while I certainly would love to help the people in Iran,

and I would love to see the United States somehow changes. You said it needs an outside power to affect this. The problem is that it's accelerating the demise of the dollar. Very good point. Because behind closed doors, this is getting people to say, well, I want to independently do it. So let me lean on China to help me out with this. if that ends up actually happening.

You know who behind closed doors is celebrating right now? With Iran getting hit left and right and they're hoping Iran doesn't have a revolution? You know what's the one country that is hoping Iran doesn't have a revolution, Iranian people don't become free. Iran doesn't become a democracy.

Humberto said it in the back, and you know who it is. Saudi Arabia. Saudi is sitting there saying, no, man, like let him stay like this. Let the sanctions stay on. Let people not do business. People like this, this is more business for us.

Saudi is quietly sitting there saying, please stay chaotic. Please don't get rid of IRGC. There's no other country in the world that is probably quietly supportive of IRGC than Saudi. Quietly. In their own way, not in a way that they're helping them out in their own way. Brando, you look like you want to say something. Yeah, no, I do agree with the same with the demise of the dollar, but the rem and B, I've never thought of that as like something.

the rest of the world would rely on, like, they're not relying on it. They're not relying on it. It's only used as liquidity, and it's all settled in gold. They're relying on gold. Held in China, though? It's not, they're, they're settling it. And so it's not fully functional yet, but it's rapidly accelerating. It's all happening through Hong Kong. So the Shanghai Gold Exchange is working or partnering with the Hong Kong board. And so it's all being used only as liquidity, but again, settled in gold. And so we're seeing the reserve currency of the world, the U.S. Treasury, has been dropping right from 60% down to just under 50% in just like the last decade but we've seen gold now rise to about 30% it's happening very very quickly and behind clones doors isn't it isn't it if you

if you rob type up what country has been buying up the most gold the last five years or four years i think china's at the time well china doesn't report it all so we don't really know but to answer your question nobody's going to trust chinese currency it is not a free uh oh it's not an open capital market nobody will trust it. They don't have to. All they're using it is for the liquidity, and then the gold is what's settling it. Yeah. So you're not saying that the China's a threat to be the next reserve

currency at all, right? No, gold. That's why gold's $4,600 an ounce right now. Really? Interesting. That's a whole conversation, but yes. I mean, that's what's happening. We've seen, like I said, U.S. Treasuries have dropped below 50, gold's up over 30% in reserves

right now. Let me get to the next story. Next story here is Trump to bring Elon Musk in for key Iran mission. Rob, I think you have a clip on this one, Rob. I'm gonna read it, then I'll come to you. So President Trump indicated on Sunday that he planned to reach out to Musk to speak about Starlink, asking, ask during a Sunday gaggle, aboard Air Force One,

whether he is going to send Starlink service to Iran amid the internet blockade imposed by the Islamic regime. President Trump indicated that he planned to reach out to Elon Musk. We may get the internet going if that's possible. We may... Do you have that clip, Rob? I have Caroline Levitt. Let me look for the Trump clip as well.

We may speak to Elon because, as you know, he's very good at that kind of thing. He's got a very good company, so we may speak to Elon. I'm going to call him as soon as I'm finished with you. There has been an internet blockout in Iran, the regime brutally cracked down. Emmett protest Starlink is apparently providing some connectivity in the region. Brandon. Yeah, so for Starlink, yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, this is a game changer.

I mean, like, the fact that Elon said what he said about Trump, and Trump is, like, publicly comfortable reaching out to him and asking for help, it shows the power of Starlink. And, you know, it's literally going to, like, change the way that everything works in terms of, like, telecom networks and cell phone networks. Like, when you're in a plane right now, you can literally connect to Starlink. So, like, I think this could single-handedly cause in aid revolutions and get information out that was formerly incapable of getting out.

Like, imagine what we could learn from what's happening inside Iran right now. like if they hook up to Starlink versus what we were able to have access to before that. So I think it's a total game changer in the revolution space and like helping countries that try to cut off their population from the world to have access to the rest of the world. Who else is a competitor to Starlink? Nobody. Rob, is there another Starlink? Like, who else is building a Starlink outside of Elon?

What a lynchpin? Big barrier to entry to like put a bunch of satellites in outer space. I mean, I get it's a big barrier to entry, but it's got to be somebody. Because the reason for it is if only one person controls it and says, no, I don't want to turn it on, what are you going to do? Yeah. How much control does that individual have? I don't like the fact that there's only, so there is. Yeah, there's somebody that's building another competitor.

Major current and emerging competitor, Starlink, Amazon, how do you pronounce that? Cooper, Amazon Leo, is one of the biggest direct competitors to Starlink. I'm deployed thousands of Leo satellites to provide broadband internet globally. Okay, that's good. one web is a UK-based Leo satellite No one's going to trust the UK one Chinese mega mega-stellion inches Guangin Q-Fans

That's Firewolds, no one's going to use that So no one's going to use that Go a little bit lower rob to see if there's any one of them And then Iris is European Union, satellite internet, secure communications Constellation planned with hundreds of satellites and Leo in medium earth orbit Is there any other ones that they're doing?

Okay, I like the fact that there's some competition here because I don't like the fact that only one person has to start. Don't you still have the HuesNet? You still have like DirecTV, right? You can still get that. Those are older. When you see the Leo's, that's the modern technology. That's where they can launch 16 of those in a single rocket.

Leo stands for low Earth orbit. And baby Arthur C. Clark, remember him, wrote 2001. He defined the Clark belt, which is, I think, 23,200 miles above Earth, where if you throw a baseball, it stays there. Gravity won't pull it to Earth, but it can't get away. from Earth, it'll just spin forever. So that's the Clark Belt where all the major satellites, the big TV satellites, high power go.

Leo's are the small satellites that are up there lower. And there's not very many. UtilSat came out of Europe. They had one that was built, but it never got commercial viability. Via Sat build one. It gave you very moderate, as you recall, internet on aircraft. And then HughesNet, that was the one you would see the girl advertising to get you internet in the middle of nowhere, right?

But it wasn't very, very fast. Starlink is newest, fastest in Leo, and then Amazon's building a Leo. The Leo networks are what it's important, and we need three of them. You've got to have three competitors in my view. Otherwise, you do have the problem of, what if, what if Elon's not in a good mood?

I don't like that at all. I don't like that at all. I don't like the fact that I only have one phone call to make because you have a monopoly. You're begging the individual. Sorry for a lesson on all this, but I used to live in here. I will do it if you give that $7,500 thing back on the table, and you're like, no,

well, then I'm not giving it. He doesn't, I don't like only one option. Mark, thoughts. Yeah, well, I mean, first of all, I think Elon is not the controlling interest. I think he has a minority shareholder of Starlink. So it's not like he's a dictator of the company. So can he can, can, can Starlink be approved without needing to call Elon? I don't know.

Can you see that? I don't know the corporate board governance, but I believe Elon, because I remember when in Brazil, they went to sanction Starlink and thinking about how can they sanction an American company, an American, but he is a minority owner of Starlink, I believe. So I don't think he runs it like a dictator at the top of the board.

I think there's a board there, number one. It's not a separate division of SpaceX. Oh, okay. Short answer, yes, most of them. Most of the caveat is how Starlink's structured. Not as separate public company. It is a division of SpaceX, which is privately held controlled by Elon.

40% of voting control. 40% of voting control and even more through super vote. Oh, then it's over. It's 90%, 80%. He's probably got a setup in Delaware where 2x is it. You know which one I'm talking about, Tom. So then that means Elon has de facto control over SpaceX and therefore Starlink. So yes.

I stand corrected. And I absolutely agree with you. I mean, I'm all for competition. And to your point, we need competition always brings better products, better services, better prices. but it also prevents somebody running array, getting crazy, and trying to do something that could be detrimental. I don't know about some like this, Mark, you know, like if you think about for you to have that kind of control,

but the president has to say, I'm going to call Elon to get it. He's more powerful than the president, especially and wait until the robots come online with the robots. Wait to the what? The robots come out and they're actually... But at least the robots were going to have competition. There's a difference between the robot and Internet.

internet is people don't know how many people are being massacred in Iran right now yeah we don't know it's off right so for us to not be able to see yeah the media CNN is reported oh you know it's you know nothing's really going on and they're given their own reporting and so the mainstream media is not covering it what is the great equalizer to mainstream media what what does the mainstream media hate the most what completely disrupted mainstream media so podcasting you independent, like right now. Just think about today's conversation.

Democraticization of the conversation in news. How many people here have been held stand corrected? How many people here? Me, Visa, MasterCard, him, just right now. So that is where it keeps you honest. Before, if this was CNN, Fox, just three or four NBC, guess what? People are going to be like, well, that's what the truth is. That's what the truth is.

No, we need more Starlink. I'm glad a couple of these other guys are doing it as well. As much as I love innovators at the highest level, I like competition more than I love innovators. Yeah. Because an innovator without competition is control. Right. It's to be tough to compete with those rockets with how good he is.

The rockets are the thing that allows him to put some A Starlink's up there. Yeah, yeah, no question about it. Okay, let's get to the next story. Next story I want to get to is, let me see which one of these I want to go to because we got quite a few good ones here. Let me go, boom, boom, boom, boom. Let's go to this. Where's the house and what they're doing with the loan, Tom?

What page is that on? You know which one I'm talking about, Rob? Page three. There it is. Trump vows to slash mortgage rates to revive the American dream while blaming Biden housing failures in truth social. This is a Fox story. So let's go to this. President Trump said he is directing representatives to buy $200 billion in mortgage bonds to drive down rates,

blaming former President Biden for what he called a broken economy, marked by inflation, crime in an American dream, he says. His administration is restoring Biden ignored the housing market and instead was immersed with high crime, open borders, runaway inflation, the Afghanistan disaster and military that he left in chaos and confusion. Trump wrote on social, everything was broken. But I, as the president of the United States, have already fixed it. Now I'm giving special attention to the housing market

because I choose not to sell Fannie Mae. May and Freddie Mac in my first term a truly great decision. And against the advice of the experts, it is now worth many times that amount an absolute fortune. And as $200 billion in cash, he continued, because of this, I'm instructing my representative is to buy $200 billion dollars of mortgage bonds. This will drive mortgage rates down, monthly payments down, and make the cost of owning a home affordable again, Tom. This is only one part of the puzzle. So he's obviously working with Bill Pulte, Fannie and Freddie, we assume that. Bill Pulte isn't mentioned, but Bill Pulte runs Fannie and Freddie. And so they're going to put $200 billion in mortgage bonds. That is available liquidity for FHA compliant mortgages, basically, right? So it's a stack of money. However, those houses still costs the same if housing prices don't moderate. And we have a limited supply of new building because building from Toll Brothers, Pulte, Leneer, there's like four of them that they're

the majority, haven't had a chance to catch up with building yet. So you need supply to catch up so the price of the houses will come down a little bit. And then, yes, you've got a mortgage that's a more affordable rate. However, a related story is escrow balances are going up. And that's where people are being asked to have set aside your payment plus a small escrow balance. That balance is like a little savings account to pay your property tax at the end of the year. And escrow balance have been going up. Why? Because the value of the home went up. We crossed 1231 and certain municipalities, depending where you live, reassess you based on 1231 and give you a new property tax. So this is a little bit artificial to take all that cash to go put the bonds out there so there's

money available to lend. The bigger issue is still that the homes are expensive. There's not a big supply of new homes as alternative to purchase and the insurance and property tax are linked to the current value of the home, which is still high. So this is a good start, but it's not a magic elixir to fix the whole market. Brandon. Yeah, I think it's just another name for QE. So, you know, if you're artificially pushing down the price of interest rate or the, yeah, the level of interest rates, then that's quantity of easing. And it's going to, you know, make it more appealing for people with extra money to buy houses because the rates lower. So it's going to ultimately push up the price of houses. Like that's when housing prices went up like crazy is when we dropped rates to zero.

It went up from like an average of 350,000 to an average of 475 nationally from 2020 to today. So yeah, I don't think it's a long-term good idea. Like maybe it's a short-term, sounds good, looks good type of thing. But no, it's not a good long-term strategic plan. The only thing that's going to fix it is if we build a ton of housing. is a much more rapid pace than ever. Like maybe if the government subsidizes or like if they're going to drop rates or anything, it should be loans for home builders so they could build houses faster. Mark.

Yeah, I think that sort of misses what's happening here. I think building more homes isn't necessarily the answer because it's not just more homes. We have supply and demand in key areas. People need to live near city centers. They need to live by airports. They need to live by business centers. And so we can build more homes in the middle of America, but what good does that do? We can't build more homes.

where we actually need the homes. I think on top of that, the mortgage payment is only one piece of it. So we've seen insurance rates. I mean, you're in the insurance business. In California, in some areas, it's impossible to get insurance on homes. I have a place in Texas and Austin and rates are up like five times. Rates are up five times. Yeah. I mean, my insurance went, we have a ranch property there and my insurance rates went up like crazy. And so that's really affecting the home building market. On top of that, you have all the regulations that have piled up. So the cost to build a home, not just the hard cost of lumber and steel, et cetera, but the regulatory costs and stuff have gone up so much. So there's a lot of problems that are holding the price of

homes up as well. If you look at the U.S. median average of homes, it's like a perfect proxy for inflation. It rises with M2, rises with the Fed balance sheet. So I think inflation is in the seat here. Sure, we can lower rates a little bit, and that helps a little bit. But at the end of the day, the last thing I'll say is that nobody really buys the price of the home. They buy the payment. Correct. Right. And so even if I can bring the rate down, I'm still going to buy the max amount I can afford to buy based off of my income. And so the price of homes is just going to go up when rates come back down. Rob, go back to the store you had just a second ago so we can see the the escrow effect and what it said is the property tax. You were just there 30 seconds ago.

And if and if we could look at the insurance rates. Yeah, they were right together. You had them right together just. Is that a change of BT? One screen ago. Close it out. Hang on one second. No, it was anyway.

It showed that since 2019 how much the property tax rates were up in the escrow. And then right below it, it had the insurance. You were, you were just on one of the other tabs, it was like only one. There we go. 45 to 62 yeah escrow payment for homes in the U.S. has increased approximately 45 to 60 percent he had it a minute ago it was just one page back on one of those

what was it saying it was saying that over five years that the pressure on property taxes had gone up 27 percent over five years just property taxes go to each page you're on and just go back one page on each of those pages you're up I already closed I had closed it out that's why so when I go back That's what I'm saying. If you go back, that could, okay, I got it. And then it also talked to exactly what Mark was talking about. The insurance costs, because the insurance costs chases rebuild cost, number one, and then changes lost costs.

So if your house becomes more valuable, then your insurance goes up in a static market because of rebuild costs. However, then you have lost costs, disasters and insurance raising cost of capital and loss risk, suddenly it all goes up and you end up even in Austin, Texas, 5X. But then it gets worse because then you have the state of California. We had the wildfires. And then you have regulatory problems where they've driven the insurance companies out of California. So now many homeowners in my area, you know where I live in Orange County, I'm considered a high fire zone.

I live on the beach, but I'm a high fire zone. And many of the people I know in my area, they can't get insurance. So now they have to buy into like a state funded insurance. It's the only way they can get it. And the rates are enormous. There's competition. And the state-funded insurance is only covers the $20.5 million or something like.

Friends of mine that are in the insurance business, many times they have customers, and they can't get them insurance. They're not even able to get them. This is the historically named Fair Plan. Fair plan. A lot of the brokers have been driven out because insurance companies had to cut brokers

because they can't even afford to pay the brokers. Are you at a point that you guys are talking about leaving or not yet? No, not yet. You're not yet. Mike Tyson told me it's expensive to live in heaven. Is that what it is? That's what it is. So can anything ever happen that you would leave the state?

Sure. What's the turning point that you would say? I mean, sure. I mean, during the pandemic, Newsom wanted to be, you know, the most strict state as far as lockdowns. I won't live lockdown for sure. I left the state in 2021. That's why I bought my ranch in Texas.

But, you know, I don't eat top ramen in McDonald's every day either. I pay a little bit more for food. I could pay a little bit more for a quality of life. But yeah, what would change would be something that would restrict my daily life, like restrict my freedoms. That would be something. The other thing is back to this billionaire tax that are seeing this mass exodus. I do have friends that are now working on moving out of the state. And so at some point that could potentially drive me out.

We'll see. Well, if it gets passed, remember, they only have to move one letter, change the B to an M. Yeah. And now it comes after the rest of you. No, I know. I know. And then, you know, they floated the idea of having it retroactive. Right.

So January 1st, 2006 right now. Right. So, you know, but they floated ideas in the years past of it even going back longer than that. This is a scam. We've talked about it before, but people need to hear this. You know, Roe Kana says, oh, you know, this is a ballot initiative. You know, Gavin Newsom says, oh, this is a ballot initiative. Wait a minute.

SEIU Service Employees International Union, which is a giant union in Nevada, that happens to have a very high membership in the state of California with government employees is the sponsor of the ballot initiative. So all the politicians are saying, oh, this isn't a bill, this isn't a tax that we're putting in. It's a ballot initiative, and the people are putting it up. The union, blue-collar workers are putting it up. Yeah, but who's putting the union up to do this? And the answer is the politicians are.

And at the end of the day, people believe and accusations have been made that at the end of end of the day, we're going to find Gavin Newsom and Rokane's fingerprints on this somewhere. But right now, it's a ballot initiative, which means that the emotion of the voter, driven by half a million of these union workers, and then the lower half, it's going to pass by 55. It can't, you can't get less than 55% of the vote on this. And so it's going to pass, which is why everybody, Pat, is handicapping saying, well, this a ballot initiative, it's going to pass because there's no way for it not to pass. How do you find 51% of the people in California that don't, are not in favor of, hey, you make 50 grand a year, tax

are rich. Yeah, okay, Proposition X, I'm in. That's what's going to happen. And so people are out. You read the bill and you got to go in and build. You read the ballot initiative and there's a scary part at the bottom of it. They call it the billionaire tax, but it's like giving the government a knob. And what do they do with a knob? They just turn it. And it's going to extend to others. With one click that's inside the ballot initiative, you can go down to half a billion net worth. So what does this mean?

Every homeowner in California. The more, which means the more in trouble California is, this becomes a tool they're going to use. Oh, Tom, let me tell you how, let me tell you how I view it. It's not a billionaire tax. It's an asset seizure, progressive over time for bankrupt California. Let me tell you how I view this. Sorry. No, I appreciate that.

I appreciate the color on that. Somebody sends me in Monk this morning about decision making, developing, you know, building people, all this other stuff. And this one guy, hey, you know, what if I don't want to do this because of this? I said, listen, the way I make decisions is long term, okay? Parenting, long term, you know, finance, long term, business investments. We're going on a 40-year run. We've got 38 and a half more years left on a 40-year run. Long-term, right?

So if you sit there and you're playing the long-term game, you have to ask yourself, do you think California is more likely to be more business-friendly? Do you think they're going to be more likely to be less woke or more woke? Do you think they're going to be a safer environment for your kids? Do you think they're going to make better decisions for fires, for earthquakes? How do you think they're going to manage crisis? If your level of confidence and optimism says, I think long-term they're going to be fine, go for it. If it's not, you have to start really thinking about long term.

This guy who is running for governor, I met him a couple years ago at a debate. He was, I believe, working with Vivek, young guy, I want to say he's 31 years old, this guy right here. He proposed a crazy idea for a state of Florida governor that he's running for. I'll let you listen to it. And then I want you to see who got pissed off at him. A girl named Sophie, Sophie Rain, Brandon, am I saying it correctly? Yes. So, Rayne responds to him.

I'm asking Brandon because, yeah. So if you want to. Why, Brandon? Play. Rob, go ahead and play this clip. You can tell me later. Here's a guy who's running for governor. Look what he wants to do with OnlyFans.

Go ahead, Rob. And so if I'm governor of Florida, if I'm elected on August 18th, 2026, as the Republican candidate to succeed Ron DeSantis, we're passing a 50% tax on all Onlyfans income. And guess what? For Sophie Rain, who is a proud resident of Florida, that means she's going to have to pay $42 million, $42 million, Charles, to the state of Florida, which I'm going to use for two purposes. We're going to increase public school teacher pay, and we're going to improve school lunches, something that Michelle Obama promised and never got around to.

And so if I'm governor- So guess what? This gets out there, and guess who responds to it, Rob? I send you to tweet. So she responds, go to the next one. She responds on the top right, go a little bit closer to their top right. Sounds like you subscribed and got buyers remorse after dropping your annual salary. on an only fan's girl.

He responds. Sophie, pay your taxes or quit only fans. Those are your choices. I'm running for Governor of Florida to stop smart and capable woman like you from being exploited by that disgusting platform. What do you think about smart? How do you process this?

Well, as a father of two daughters, it makes me sad to think that these girls, that's the only value they can provide to the world. That's what I think. Like, they have so much more capability. Why is that all you can provide to the world? But that's how I feel as a father. If I zoom out, OnlyFans is a platform for content creators.

Now, I'm big in the action sports world. We were just at Anaheim One, the big Supercross kickoff. And OnlyFans is sponsoring Supercross riders where they're having sponsors come on and help them offset their costs of their motorcross racing. And they have subscribers that way. So there are other people than just girls that get naked or whatever they're doing on there, right? So I don't like that girls do this. I think it's sad. I think it's also systemic for the end of a fiat currency

where people can't afford to live anymore and they turn to, unfortunately, whatever they call it, the oldest job in the world. But I don't like that. This is a Bernie Sanders type. This is a socialist type. I'm going to take 50% of your incomes. I don't like what you're doing.

And that's wrong. Got it. By the way, apparently the Sophie Rain Girl made $95 million plus gross earnings through late 2020. That's why he says 50%. you would pay 40-some million bucks. She's shown, allegedly, that her annual profits, annual earnings is around $40 to $50 million per year

based on one of her own screenshots, okay, one of her own screenshots. Tom, your thoughts on this story, this idea of 50% tax on OnlyFense? So I believe the government should step into markets when lead-based paint is discovered to cause birth defects and cancer and young kids. so we can't have lead-based paint in households, when tobacco was discovered for what it is, carcinogenic. However, if free markets are operating with services that are legal and are operating legally, I am deeply against the federal government interfering with those markets.

Or even state government. Huh? Or state governments as well. Or state government. I'm against that. Now, if we don't like what a business is, and we don't. discover what we discover about lead-based paint, we discover what we discover about dioxin, we discover what we discover about round-up weed killer. And we scientifically come back and we say,

hey, this is no good. This is no good. We can't, we can't, you know, we can't be doing this. Then now for the greater good, we're doing it. But if this is a legal industry, then the problem that we have basically is the morality of the populace. And we need a better moral compass. And if you're upset about the moral compass, then let's work on that. But if it is legal, and you're going out there and you're attacking a market, I'm against it. Because remember, one man's demon is another man's saint. So one governor says, I want to take 50% of Sophie Rand's only tax earnings. The next governor says, you know what's even worse than only fans?

Social media, creating cutting and depression in young girls. I want 50% of Mark Zuckerberg's earnings. You can't do it. If you want to go out and you want to, that's the wrong way to do it. And I'm against it and I'll defend it. But if we come together and say, this industry has a problem, it's here, it's here, hold congressional hearings and then put regulation, right? Then do that. And don't let paint factories dump, you know, byproduct of slurries into the river.

That's good government coming out saying we can't do this. This is populist positions. And the only difference between him on this position and the ballot industry in California is two different states. You're going after something, you know, in the name. of something else and you're interfering with the market that's operating on businesses that are legal, even if you don't like those businesses, said the father of two girls. I might say this is worse because at least in California, they're bankrupt and they need the money and let's get it from the billionaires. Here, he says it right in that last line,

I refuse to let smart and capable young women like Sophie Rain be exploited. So this is a moral framing. This is not like we're bankrupt, we need the money, let's get it from the billionaires. This is like, I'm going to use lawfare or I'm going to use tax. taxes to try to change the moral compass of the people. I mean, it's a terrible take. It's a terrible take. By the way, this is James Fishback. Brandon, where are you at with this?

Yeah, I think it'd be... You look like you're 50-50. No, no. No, I respect the hustle, I guess, in one sense. Like, it is reflective of where society is, like, for both men and women. Like, it's sad that you see situations like this with, like, the outliers where somebody like her can make $90 million. Then probably a couple thousand girls try, don't make. make any money but ruin the reputation. So that is sad. But also this guy, I'm calling BS. I think he's just

trying to act like Trump and be outrageous and say like a big, you know, audacious claim and get some attention that way. But no, it's ridiculous. You can't just like weaponize the government against things or ways people are making money that you don't like. And by the way, it would be a massive waste of money, probably even more of a waste of money than spending money on only offense to give it to public school teachers because, you know, no offense to public school teachers. I'm sure there are some great ones, but, you know, they're a part of society. That's a big problem, too, with, like, the unions and everything. So, yeah, that's a bad idea.

Well, listen, according to what Adam tells us, if this were to pass, Miami would change. Yeah. The nightlife of Miami would change. You would see a lot of schoolteachers at nightclubs instead of a – it'd be a very, very different climate. And, you know, he would definitely not support this. He'd be very disappointed with this. Parting shot, you make a good point about the moral compass. Remember, if we as a country just valued life above all else,

Roe v. Wade wouldn't matter because we would ignore that. Because we would say, no, no, no, we value life. That law doesn't matter. The moral compass trumps laws because people will behave by their moral compass. You cannot regulate morality. Exactly. No, you cannot. You cannot. I will tell you, though.

I like that a person like him is running, proposing wild ideas, and allowing the market to agree or disagree. You as a candidate have to be willing to put some crazy things out there and then see how the market reacts to it. Last night I was saying this to the folks we were with at Casa DiAngelo is look at how Trump works. Here's how Trump works. Yeah, we're going to cap credit cards at 10%.

Let the market hash it out debate. No, we're not going to do it. We'll move on. Yeah, we're probably going to be. We're thinking about coming out with a 50-year loan mortgage loan. mortgage loans, what we're going to be doing. Yeah, yeah. And then Bill Palti comes out this week.

Yeah, we're not doing it. Why? Market. You know, you have to almost like pressure test the idea with the market and see. And it's such a great way because, you know, James is going to watch it. James and I were talking last night on X and I, you know, this is a smart guy. But you've got to be willing to test out ideas like this and have smart, fair, reasonable people rip it apart or support it based on their reasoning.

And they say, all right, good. Let's move on to the next idea. I don't mind Canada being risky and coming up with some crazy ideas every once in a while. All right, next one here. There's nothing we can do. The great millennial career crisis has given, has workers given up on ever owning homes or paying off their student loan. This is a market watch story. Rob, I don't think you have a video on this one here, but I will go to the store.

If you got the article you want to bring up, there you go. Christopher Drake 39 has made a nice career for himself as a pre-year-old. process engineer, but he isn't where he'd like to be at this point in his life and career, due to what he says are broken promises from growing up as a millennial. It sucks. There's nothing we can do. Drake from Corning, New York, told MarketWatch, our age bracket was told you have to go to college, get a degree to be successful, but he found out that even those who worked hard instead of party during their college years got a serious reality check after graduation, and in the years since then, the jobs aren't there.

Drake left college a decade ago with $120,000 in student loan debt, which he says sits at around $150 today despite years of payments due to high interest rates on his loans. A lot of my friends and I discuss how there are a lot of people who are age that have just given up. Drake is going through what many of his peers online are calling the great millennial career crisis, a generational struggle defined by burnout, financial insecurity, and a lack of stability by adults, ages 29 to 44 videos of these frustrated 30, 40-something Americans discussing their personal traits have garnered hundreds of thousands of views on social media, particularly on TikTok. Brandon, your thoughts on this? Yeah, so, I mean, it's a victim mindset for him to say this, but it is true that you definitely have to approach life differently today, I think, than you did 20, 30 years ago because of the way that things are going with inflation, the devaluation of money.

I do think that it is like a bad situation for you if you just rely on a salary if you're starting your career off now. Like I don't think that 100 or 200,000 is going to, you know, take care of yourself and a family. So I think that if you don't start a business or if you're not like in a commission-based job where there is like uncapped upside for you, you're in a tough situation. But it's a victim mindset to say that it's helpless and you're giving up. And I think you just have to be more exceptional than ever today as a young person. And that doesn't happen overnight. You know, it's a rigorous thing that you have to be as obsessed. about not everybody's going to do it because it's probably like an 80-20 thing with people who are

willing to do what it takes be exceptional but uh that's my opinion on it how do you feel about it mark because you know you you have two daughters married 22 years so this is something where you know you probably talk to your girls about you know their friends probably come over and say hey mark what do you think i should all this other stuff how does this language make you feel and do you agree with them yeah so he says here that uh due to broken promises the broken promises are that he went to university and the problem is that the university gave him and he was went to a industrial era university that gave him an industrial era lens and equipped him for an industrial era world and he's now graduated and find out that he's no longer in an industrial era and we've left the information age and

we're now in the intelligence age so they're unequipped they don't have the right tools they don't know how to look at the world and so now the broken promise is that the world that they were equipped for and trained for no longer exists that's the problem the paradox is this it's not never been harder to survive right now with a college degree because wages haven't kept up with prices. Which is true. But the paradox is that it's never been easier to make money than this today. We have $20 trillion that was printed in the last five years that's sloshing around in the economy. And with a laptop and some AI, you could go make $100,000 or a million or $10 million very quickly. So it's never been harder with industrial air lens. It's never been easier if you could

realize that the world has changed. So how do I? I answer this as a father of two, neither of my daughters are going to college. Really? No, no way, no way. The number one... What grade are they in right now? I have a 21-year-old daughter and a 16-year-old daughter, so one's a junior, one's out. So the one that's out, what does she do? She's learning how to make money. Is she having a hard time doing it? No, she's making money. She's making money very easily. So she went, she went to a trade school. She went to a trade school. She became a holistic health coach. So she spent $10,000.

5,000 plus another 5,000, a trade school, right? She's an holistic health coach. She's doing holistic sheffing. She just got her Pilate certification. She has built up a decent audience. She's selling diet plans and, like, she's making money. She's not looking for a job. My kids never look for a job.

They just learned how to make money. How was she in school? Like, what was her GPA? Was she high, 4.0? Yeah, she was, yeah, 4.0 all the way across. So no problem was great. Sort of like me. She was, didn't have to try.

She did very well, but there was no university for her. I believe in the intelligence age, even the information age, the single most important skill is creativity. Because now we have technical workers at our disposal. So now I have to see a problem, have a creative way to solve the problem, and I have to organize the orchestra to play the song that I want, right? And so school is specifically designed to remove creativity. That is the intended purpose to remove creativity and keep people in a box.

The number one thing we need today. That's why people like this get out. and they can't see all the opportunity because they have zero creativity. Okay, so this is a great, folks. This is phenomenal for you. Let me explain to you why. You have two girls, 21 and 16.

Neither one of them you're saying are going to college. Tom, you have two girls, 19 and 14, right? Am I saying it correctly? That's exactly right. That means exactly your girls are two years apart. The oldest, they're five years apart, five years apart, right? So he's behind you by two. Your oldest goes to a very well-known source.

school, she got a 1560 on her SATs, and she's going to the college route. How different is your position than the one Mark just gave? Well, my oldest is majoring in two STEM. She's a double major, statistics and analytics. And she is spending herself looking over my shoulder at startups and the engine of new business. So I would not have sent her simply to be a chemical engineer and come back with your degree. Or a liberal arts degree. Oh yeah, well, that's off the table. We had a joke at our house and went like this. If you want to go study European art history at the Sorbonne in France, I hope your boyfriend has wealthy parents that love you more than I do that are willing to pay that bill. So that was always up the table. So she has a mentality of right now she's coding an

R. She's coding in Python. She's in statistics. And in five years, she will have a double major and a masters of stats. Amazing. However, our focus on this is that weaponizes you to do what you want or to engage with a startup. Last year, her freshman to sophomore summer break, she did six weeks with a startup working with them. And before that, her break between senior year and freshman year, she did nine weeks

with a startup. That one was remote. But I'm putting her in the river. of creativity of people are doing things for the future. But if that wasn't available, she wouldn't. Her, funny we bring this up, her little sister, we often talk now because I talk more to the little one than the older one, because the little one's now

an only child. Right. Because her five-year-old or sister is at school. And so we've had these conversations recently. You know, if you think of something, maybe you're Mark Zuckerberg. Maybe you don't go to college. But I want to put you in the river

of creativity so you can see what new businesses are doing and what they're thinking. Yeah. Because she has a non-blood uncle that's sitting right over here, and she knows his educational background on what he built and where he went and what he did. And she has seen the conventions and the result of it. So we're a split household right now. Here's where we align. I believe that college is an important path for many people.

I certainly want my heart surgeon to have gone to college if I were to have heart surgery. But college was never meant for the masses. So college was for elite people to get elite training to get elite jobs. It was never for the masses. Not cardiologists or nuclear physicists. Right. And now you have the masses that are in there and it's a supply demand thing. There's not enough elite level jobs.

So the old days was go to school, get a good job. But that's past. It's not mass. Number two, what I would say to that is that if you need that specialty training like the STEM and follow her dad, that's great. Most people don't. A trade school like my daughter went to, I think, is good enough. And I would just also reframe what I think trade schools are today.

So I think trades, if you break it down, is a specialty skill. So we typically think of it as like a blue collar skill, welding, plumbing, framing, something like that. And if I wanted to build a house or a building, I would call in trades, right? But today we have digital trades. We have soft trades. So if I want to build a business, I also call in trades, a social media person, an accountant, a bookkeeper, a video editor. And those are also trades as well today. And so I think a lot of people could just go to school or learn how to be a video editor or learn how to be a social media manager or learn how to be a copywriter and they could make a lot of money applying those trades to multiple businesses.

I think the world's changed and most people just need to capture it. I like what both of you guys said because the way I judge people's kids is in the following way. And I'll test them all the time and they don't even know I'm doing it. We'll go to dinner and I'll just ask pointed questions. So Bailey, what do you think about this? What do you think about that? Brooke, what do you think about it? What happens with kids with this?

What are kids in school right now saying about what happened with Charlie Kirk? What are they saying about what's going on with Iran? What are they saying about this person that's a content creator? What do they think about this? And I'll do this with Grace. I'll do this for my niece. You know, she asked me questions about Israel. She'll ask me questions about Iran.

Like controversial topics, I want to ask them to see if their brain is creative enough to process the issue. And then I'll ask someone, I'm like, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, who? No, I don't know. I don't care. I don't know. That's a lazy way of thinking, and your parents made you think that way.

Yeah. So you can have two parents. One goes to university route. One goes to, you know, no college route, and they can both end up being successful because the parents are teaching critical thinking. There's too many empty conversations. Like yesterday, Dylan and I are sitting and he's doing homework.

It's another one of those nights' time to 1130 is doing homework. Now, here's a part. He had basketball game. in practice yesterday. And he had a three-hour soccer practice. So the guy leaves school at 3 o'clock, basketball till 4.30, soccer till 9.30. He comes home. Shows, 10, 15, sitting with me. We're there till midnight doing homework together. And, you know, I'm stuck on this thing. Why are you stuck on it? Well, if the area of the triangle is 15.3 and the base is four and a half, I'm giving the exact numbers, four and a half. And the formula is area equals half times base versus height. What is the height?

Well, okay, what is half of, you know, 4.5, 2.25. Okay, what is 15.3 divided by 2.25? I don't know how to do that. Yes, you do. What's 1530 divided by 225? Well, I can do that. Well, then just move a couple decimal points. Go ahead and do it.

And what's the number? Comes out with 6.8. That's exactly the number. I run to what happened here? I got the number right. Yeah, you know how to do this stuff. Like, you've got to push critical thinking. You got to push for them to come up with a solution.

And sometimes I think we waste too much. time talking nonsense. Like even if you're watching football, ask the question, do you think that was a right play? Do you think they did the right thing? Do you think they should have the timeout? You think the timeout was at the right time? Should you have, you know, what do you call, intentional grounding? Or should they have done that to save the time? That would have taken six seconds. Why did they call a time out? These are moments to use the brain to do critical thinking. I don't know what percentage of parents do that. If you're in our environment and I bet it's probably the same with you as well, we're always asking stuff like this. And it's strange.

strategic. Tom, I think you want to say something. What you just said was so funny because Bailey and I spent time watching NFL playoff game that had teams that we didn't really care one way or the other about. We're just waiting for the Niner game so Mom can go crazy. None of us are Niner fans.

And we were talking about coaching decision making. And Bailey came to conclusion at the end and says, well, no wonder they're talking about firing that guy, even if they win this game. Because we're talking about decision making. We weren't talking about football. What a great play. What a No, it's like, why would he make that decision like that?

Why would he risk that? Why would they do that? And I said, well, maybe the guy's hurt. Maybe he's here. Well, it certainly didn't turn out well, and he owns a decision, doesn't he? I said, he sure does. Well, no wonder people want to fire him. Yeah.

Yeah, and I just think that's the muscle that if parents are watching this and they're kind of like, well, I'm part of Mark's camp. Now, I'm part of Tom's camp. As long as you're part of the critical thinking camp, you kids are going to be fine long term. If you're not having these types of questions you're posing to them, you're going to have your kids that don't know how to think for themselves and make arguments. Present your argument why you believe this is the case. If I could just add on to that just real quickly, I would just frame this is that I am not against education. I'm 100% pro-veracious education.

But education is something that you're interested in that helps you solve the problem to take you to the path that you want to go down. I agree. Brandon, you're going to say something or can we move on? You can move on. Okay, let's get to the next story. Brandon, when you have two girls that are five years apart, I'll come back to you. Okay. Until then, we're going to. Hurry up.

Hurry up. All right. Next story, which I have some opinions on and some creativity. I want to know what you guys think about this. Nissan cancels the Versa. Rob, can you pull up what the Versa was supposed to look like, Nissan Versa? America's last new car for under $20,000 as automakers lean towards wealthier buyers. Okay.

So the sub-20,000 car is debt. Nissan has canceled the last new car for sale that was supposed to be under 20K. And a statement the company said, in line with Nissan's product strategy, the Nissan Versa ended production in December for 2025 for the U.S. market. Versa sedans under $20,000 were already a near myth. Only the bare bones base model, the Versa S qualified and few dealers stocked them trim, stocked that trim. It's formal cancellation, however, means you can't order a new car under warranty for less than $20,000.

The Versa joins a long list of compact model cars that were canceled in the recent years. The Chevy Spark, can we see what the Chevy Spark looks like, Rob? The Chevy Spark, America's latest least expensive new car for several years, left the market in 22. So did the Hyundai, wow, so did the Hyundai accent. Let's see what the Hyundai accent looks like. These all look like European city cars, don't they? Right. Then the Kia Rio and the Mitsubishi Mirage followed in 22. That looks like a good car. It could start a car. And then the Mitsubishi Mirage, if you want to pull it up, KBB research showed that the Versa S virtually impossible to find the last sub-20,000 car. In 2017, they built 61 models, priced at $60,000 or more. By the end of 2025, they built 114. At the other end of the market, in 2017, they offered 36 models priced at $20,000. 25K or less. So is this a good move? Is this just a new reality? Mark, your thoughts on this?

Well, again, we kind of have been talking quite a bit about free markets. And so if there was a demand for that and they could produce that car at a good profit, they would obviously they would continue to do that. The profit margins of automobile manufacturers are extremely thin. We've talked about this. I believe they're single digits, right? So they're extremely thin. Most of the cars, a lot of the cars that they sell, specifically around the hybrid and EVs are losses for them, right? And so they're, They're dealing with governments forcing them to build certain types of cars. They take losses on those.

Ford makes money back on their F-150s. They can even it out. But, yeah, I would say back to the free market, right? If they could produce these cars at a good profit, they probably would. The reason why they can't is, again, because of the regulations. On Twitter, maybe in my echo chamber, I see quite a bit. In other countries, they have these, like, Toyota trucks that are, like, everybody wishes they could get in the U.S. They're like $15,000, and they're really cool.

Is this the one Huberto talks about? Can we pull up which ones you're talking? Toyota trucks. Yeah, it's like a Toyota truck. It's sort of like a military vehicle. Yeah, like $15,000, the HIL-LX. And these are in other countries and people are like, why can't we get this in the United States for 15 grand or whatever, right?

But they don't pass safety, they don't pass EPA, they'll pass whatever, whatever, whatever, right? And so unfortunately, because of the regulations that we have here, just like we talked about with homes earlier, the cost to produce a car in the United States is just too expensive. And so it cuts out this bottom part of the market. not because I'm sure there's demand for a cheap car, but they can't produce it at a good margin. Tom, thoughts.

Yeah, I agree with that, and I won't repeat it, but I'll bring something else up, is that the modern generation is increasingly getting to be a rental generation on vehicles. That too. You see kids are getting trained. I'll give you an example of where Bailey goes to college. The campus is in a large U.S. city. However, there's not enough parking. So until you're a junior, you can't get a parking permit on campus.

because there's simply not enough space. Yeah. And so what most of the students do is there, they go Uber. And Bailey's got a credit card. I can see what's going on on there. She's very good, keeps a very tight allowance, very responsible. But I see where she goes. Oh, they went down and saw the Astros.

Why the hell would you go to the Astros? But okay. Obviously, she went with some friends, and guess what? Then I see her checking account, and I see, oh, $20 from this person, $15 for this person. Looks like Bailey paid but got paid back. Okay. And I'm seeing the way, Pat, the youth and the new generation consumes automobiles.

And they are increasingly permanent renters. We had a highly compensated woman that was here that was leading a technology project. She didn't own a car. And she had a high-end degree from a high-end school and was a high-end performer. But she was Uber. Uber here, Uber back, Uber to lunch. And so you also have the increasing with cost of insurance and need a garage, need a place to store it, people turning to the Waymo's, which are going to be more rather than less, and Uber and Lyft. And they will just pay for the portion of the car they need, which is a trip to work, trip back.

And so that takes demand also away from the low-end cars. I live in a rural beach community, so not in a city. and I'm also seeing the same thing. So my friends or my daughter's friends who are teenagers, a lot of them are delaying getting their license. They're 18, they're 19, they're 20 because they're just using Uber and Lyft. Yeah, that's becoming a norm. A lot of people are talking about that.

We got a 46-year-old that's going through that right now. I don't want to give them any shout-ups right now. But, Brandon, go ahead. That's funny. Who still lives at home, sits on the couch. Something's deeply wrong here. where like normally the laws of business or manufacturing or creating a product is that it gets cheaper and easier to make over a time. So, you know, something's fundamentally wrong here with like the structure of things or something, like one piece of it where it's somehow getting more and more expensive to manufacture because you're supposed to be able to make it cheaper and then have better margins on it.

So like you said, the fact that there's all these regulations involved, you know, it also goes down to the cost of materials. and like those are like a whole other thing why that's expensive like steel and components and copper and all that but yeah like this is a core function of the cost of living like the food housing transportation always say those three things like that's what creates poverty or non-poverty like if people could afford those things and reasonably with an average salary then becomes what do you do

I mean to me like when I'm thinking about if if we we put a room together of 10 people to debate maybe seven people to debate this on cars what to do to bring affordability would we leave it to free market or if there's a place for the government to intervene remember when when uh evy companies were getting the $7,500 rebate and it was kind of a thing that drove it the rebate went away it's kind of like maybe I'm not doing it right what if you gave a $5,000 rebate for a company that produces a car less than $20,000 what if you put that there what if you create that incentive now want you We can get the Toyota truck in here for $15 grand right now.

But the part of it is you know why the cars, the average truck size 40 years ago was 14 feet. You know, now the average truck size is 22 feet. We have 22 foot trucks. You know what 22 feet is, by the way? 22 feet. That's not the average truck size, but that's the big ones that they make. 22 feet is three of me plus three more feet. That's insane for a truck to be that big.

So they created regulations for trucks to be bigger. But what I'm saying is they sit in a room. They limited some of this nonsense regulation that they have in place. And then the automaker problem that they have, Mark, is there is federal regulation. There is state regulation. So these automakers are sitting there saying, I'm not going to produce this car. Why? Forget about federal, whatever your laws are.

California is the one that screw me over. Right. So, yeah, I'll produce the car before what? Kansas? For what? Idaho? I need to be in LA. I need to be in New York. I need to be in Illinois. And these are the places that are over-regulating. So then does the president come over, executive order, and no state can do this? So it's a little bit complicated. But if they were able to sit down, kind of like the Sanders and Holly, and they're trying to figure out this 10% thing and debate it out if we created incentives for companies to create, you know, less than $20,000 cars. Now I'm going buying a $19,000 car, say, the, company gets a $5,000 bonus on the back end for producing a car like that. Now, kids coming out of college can buy a $19,000 car. I don't know. I think there's creative ways of doing it.

The problem with automakers is not federal regulation, it's state by state. That's preventing a lot of guys from getting involved. Should it be like the AI thing where they did the federal AI bill? And I'm not saying that's a good idea. I'm just tossing it out there. You think that'd be helpful if there was like a federal emissions standard, like in Connecticut and in California, New York, you have to pass the. emissions test every year. They have to build a car to a certain amount of emissions or

limited to a certain amount of emissions. Would it be beneficial, do you think, from a like regulatory standpoint if we had had a federal laws like that? No. No? The reason why I'd say is we need less laws. We need less regulations. So the problem is we just continue to add more and more and more and more and more and it gets too many. So I believe in Trump's first term for every new regulation. I think three were removed. I think he's way outpacing that right now. And so really it's not more laws. It's reducing the laws that we have. take away the ability for a state to put an emission mandate maybe then? I mean, I'm not an auto expert, so I don't know all the different costs, but like, we can

certainly understand a lot of those. Why Toyota can't sell that truck in the United States? Yeah. Like that would be the, that would be the question. But it's states. Why can't Toyota who sells cars in the U.S.? Why can't Toyota sell that car here? I agree. But it's truly, we've done this.

You and I put this case study to you. It's purely regulation by state, not federal. He controls federal. He doesn't control state. So even if he deregulates federal regulation, he can't deregulate state regulation. Newsom's going to sit in front of him and says, no, I want to keep this regulation here. If Newsom was okay losing Musk, you think he gives a shit about losing a couple of days? No, he doesn't care about that kind of stuff.

Tom, I'll give you final thoughts and I'll do one story and we'll wrap up. No, I agree with that. I mean, you take a look at what's happening with AI. The states are coming out with AI regulations on their own, which are complicating it. But some of the AI regulation has got nothing to do with AI. It has to do with data centers increasing the cost of electricity for average communities. Because they put a data center here that sucked all the... Oh, Tom, can you talk about what Trump did with Microsoft?

Oh, I love that. Just real quick, give that one minute on the way he managed that project with Microsoft. Microsoft, he negotiated with Microsoft, and Microsoft has agreed that they will not build data centers that put the burden of energy demand in. to a price increase on the consumer, that if they're building the data center, that they will figure out power. Either they'll self-subsidize or they will build their small nuke, generation five, generation six, I believe they're called, small nuclear reactor that's there to provide electricity for the data center. So that what happens is good expansion and creation of jobs,

a data center, people say, well, it only creates so many jobs. Yeah, I've heard it creates 300 jobs to build it and then 30 jobs to live there. Okay, but it's jobs. But data centers use a lot of power. And when you use too much power, the surrounding area, the price of power go up because there's a shortage. So Trump negotiated with Microsoft and said, hey, I want you to pay for the electricity so that you don't impact the affordability of the community. And guess what? They agreed. So this is good leadership without regulation because they came to an agreement on this without a law, without a regulation. I agree.

What I would say, though, is they would love to do that, but the regulations prohibit them from building the smart nuclear reactors. I think of a quote from Einran, she said that when you have to ask permission to produce from men who produce nothing. That's where we're at. Man, where's Ein Rand? We need her today going back and watching her interview with Phil Donnell and all the other stuff. But anyways, let me wrap up with the story here.

FYI, you guys heard the second company that just crossed $4 trillion in valuation is officially Google. Not Apple, not Microsoft. It's officially Google is not the number two, four trillion dollar company. And the two founders both moved to Florida. One bought $174 million. He bought two homes at $174, and I think the other one's buying something as well. I don't know what it is. I think the other one moved to Florida.

And I think one of the guys moved 46 LLCs, which is really the big one that Tom was talking about. But let me tell you story, Rob, if you want to pull this up. This is why Iranians around the world are talking about bringing back freedom to Iran. Look at the story here. This is Erfhan Sultani. The Islamic Republic is set to execute Erfant Sultani today. He was arrested last week during Iran's 2026 uprising. His only crime is calling for freedom for Iran.

And while you go a little bit deeper into under. You're sending how Iran works. All this guy did is, he says, hey, I just don't want this current regime. I don't want the IRGC. Okay? And so Iranian authorities have charged them with waging war against God. Can you imagine if you can have that in a country you're living? You choose that God is not happy with you.

Did God text you? That God email you? Did your God send a notice? Did you get a package from him that came from heaven? How did you know that God, or did you just decide who your God is and what you? your God thinks about it. It's kind of like pastors that they'll read scripture and they'll say, based on the scripture, I have a feeling what God was telling me last night that you need to give 40%, you know, these preachers that they're doing all these interviews, the guys that are using

their scripture to get money out of people. That's what Iran is doing today. So we're praying for Erfhan Solani, this 26-year-old man, for the people that are out there that the mainstream media maybe is not covering this enough. These are stories that need to be out there because this 26-year-old boy, All he's saying is he's saying, let us be free, and we are hoping this noise of the people that they're making around the world gets to Iran, gets to them realizing what's going on with the fear that President Trump is imposing on them to realize it leave these people alone. This is why people don't want your regime anymore in Iran or praying for them.

I'm about to jump on, I think I'm about to jump on. The truck is outside. I'm about to jump on one of the shows, and I'll be talking about what's going on with Iran here in a minute. but Mark actually really enjoyed having you all, man. This was great. Really? I like your very, the way you process issues and the way you answered

is in a very structured way of me being able to consume what you're thinking about. No wonder your YouTube channel is blowing up and you're growing the way you have in six or seven years of doing what you're doing. Folks, if you're watching this, you like what Mark had to say. Here's his channel.

He's not only smart, but he's also kind of Hollywood. He's got that Hollywood look. Can he just tell him when you look at it? He's a Hollywood look. Listen, maybe Mike Tyson was right with Mark. I don't know. It's expensive to live in heaven. I can't live into heaven.

He lives in California. But aside from that, we'll forgive him with the California stuff. Everything else, go support this man. His channel is right there. Wealth is not earned. It's engineered. Go to Mark Moss. Rob, let's put the link below so people can subscribe to his channel.

With that being said, we have a podcast on Friday. We may do a couple other things the next couple days, but we definitely have a podcast on Friday. Take care, everybody. God bless. Bye bye, bye, bye, bye.