The Bulwark Podcast - Josh Barro and Jonathan V. Last: The Patriotic Cowboys Wrecking Our Economy

Episode Date: October 1, 2026

Finally, some accountability in Washington: Sen. Eric Schmitt’s general counsel and poster-holder is in career limbo after the infamous basketball mix-up in the Jack Smith hearing. And Americans seem to be holding Trump responsible for their economic frustrations—he’s below the Bush Line. Josh Barro explains: We’re not in a recession, but people feel stuck because borrowing costs are higher. Big budget deficits are inflationary, the president’s war of choice is making things worse, and our leaders don’t have a plan to deal with any of it. Plus, JVL explains why the markets are finally pricing in the risk of Trump’s war, and he and Tim discuss the weirdos running our government, Hegseth’s obsession with masculinity, and the importance of shame in a liberal democracy.Josh Barro and Jonathan V. Last join Tim Miller.show notes: Part one and part two of Tim’s list of Democrats who can win Red America TIME’s interview of Trump Subscribe to JVL’s Triad JVL on oil risk premiums Jodi Kantor for The New York Times on the public shaming of John Roberts Closing Song: The War on Drugs - Suffering

Hey, everybody, adventurous podcast booking on this Thursday. We had one of our besties going to be here, how to travel issue. We got my buddy Josh Barrow, who's on the pod today. We're doing some econ talk. We're going to get into his terrible takes about daylight savings time and other issues. But before we could do that, his internet on fire island, just crapped out completely.

Apparently the whole island is without internet. I don't know if this is a homophobic attack from, you know, the Iranians or the Trump administration or AI, but that's what happened there. And luckily, JVL came in to save the day. So you have a half a pond with Josh Barrow and then some really high-level dark JVL. And so I think it turned out great for everybody. So thanks for bearing with me. Stick around.

Up next, Josh Barrow. Hello, and welcome to the Bullwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. One note yesterday, I put in the show notes the link to the Red District, Red State Democrats, that I think of a puncher's chance. And it was in JVL's Triad newsletter, which is always paywold. And I kind of forgot, you know,

some of you who aren't Buller Plus members, shame on you, you should join, but still wanted to see the candidates that you should support. So we've unpaywalled it. You can go check it out. The link to both lists,

I did one in June or July and one yesterday. Both are in the show notes. All right. On today's show, he's a co-host of a couple of podcasts, one serious trouble with Ken White, aka Popat. The other one's called Central Air

with Megan McArdle, my guy Ben Dreyfuss. He also writes on Substack and Very Serious. It's Josh Barrow with a very unsurious new haircut. I don't think this is unserious at all.

Well, actually, people keep asking me what crisis I'm experiencing. You bleached your hair. For the audio-only listeners, you've bleached your hair, like, yeah. Yeah, like Bieber, kind of.

I always wanted to be blonde, and now I am. I'm just trying to be self-actualized. I don't know if that's true. Maybe you're not experiencing a cute crisis, Josh. But I think somewhere deep down, you're exploring something.

You're dealing with a transition. You're kind of processing the linear nature of time in a way that is... I feel great. You know, a friend of mine who had also bleached his hair when he saw that I did this, he goes, do you feel dumber yet? And I was like, you know, actually I do. It feels like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I'm getting to experience what blondes get to experience of not being in charge.

It's quite nice. Okay. We'll do a like count on this podcast versus the last time you're on when you're in brown hair and see how much has changed. I look forward to it. We're to start with a little schadenfreude. You know, it's very rare that I open up Politico Playbook in the morning and get a little nugget that makes me joyful these days. But, you know, I still have to, you know, I read through the tip sheets.

I want to know what's happening for the listeners out there. This little alert, this one brought a smile across my face. One of Eric Schmidt's top aides, his general counsel, Ethan Harper, was supposed to leave his role tomorrow to join the White House staff secretary's office, very prime office. But his transition is now in doubt, given his role in the Jack Smith gotcha gone wrong. Harper was the staffer standing behind Schmidt holding up a board displaying the screenshots with the text messages. And I got to tell you, that's nice. That's nice to see a little accountability in Washington for once.

Yeah. I mean, you know, I assume that, you know, him being the one who held up the poster board that that's somehow indicative of this, you know, being at least in part his fault. But I mean, it's interesting because the staff secretary's office, what the staff secretary does in the White House is supposed to be sort of controlling the flow of paper and information toward the president, which I don't know exactly how that works in the Trump White House, but it's exactly the sort of role where, like, causing someone not to receive the embarrassing incorrect document.

Like, that's within the purview there. So it would make sense that they'd be like, maybe this is not the right guy for that role if he's here with that poster. It's pretty funny. Although I just feel bad for him if he just ended up being the guy holding up the poster. Like, maybe it's somewhere else's fault. And he was the general counsel. Yeah.

Why is the general counsel the poster holder? I don't know how that works. I never worked on the hill, but he's the general counsel slash poster holder. You would assume that it would have been his purview. I guess it also goes to the point where even if they had it right, they had nothing. Right. Even if Jack Smith had happened to go to C. Trey Young in the Atlanta Hawks game in 2024, that meant nothing. Yeah.

I mean, it's like they then infer from that that Fannie Willis was also there at the game. Right. And that they were plotting together against Trump? They had nothing. Yeah, you know, if you're having a secret meeting to plot against Trump, the thing you do is go to an extremely public arena to take in an NBA game. Yeah, row one. It's said on the text. Yeah.

It's like, yeah, just him and Nathan. They might have reviewed, I don't know, they might have reviewed the NBA League Pass archive. Anyway, Ethan Harper, tough titties for you. Speaking of Sean Ford of the Trump, this is an AP poll. it's a little bit of an outlier, but let's just tickle ourselves for a minute. The Trump approval rating has fallen below the Bush line, 31%, 69% disapproved, nice. On the economy, 26% approved, cost of living 17%. On Iran, 28%, trade, 38%, AI, 31%, which is down as well.

I mean, even if this is off 10 points, this is bad. Well, did they poll about superintelligence? Maybe people like the way he's handling superintelligence. That's true. S-I. Yeah. Yes. S-I.

Yeah. I mean, I feel like a lot of your listeners have been waiting for the shoot-a-drop about, like, when will people finally realize that Trump is full of it, that he wasn't a good businessman, that he doesn't know about the economy. And for a long time, the voters have given Trump a lot of credit because the economy performed quite well for the first three years of his first administration. And then COVID. And now, how many years was the first?

Well, I mean, COVID was this like Deiasex Machina that I think people mostly correctly treat as, you know, as an external force. The U.S. actually had a better economic recovery from it than most countries did. I mean, you know, one of the things I miss about this administration is Steve Mnuchin, who did quite a good job as Treasury Secretary, including, I think, on the economic aspect of the COVID response in 2020. Yeah. We were maybe a little unfair to Louis Linton in the Bullock podcast.

She's fabulous. That photo of her with the she. We didn't know how good we had it there with Steve Mnuchin at Treasury. It's so much worse this time around. But so, you know, there was this, that halo from like that. This is what happens when you put gays in charge of the money. You know? Yeah.

No, they're never going to let us run Treasury ever again. But so, you know, there was this halo from that. That's like the last period people remember when they felt like the economy was good. Yeah. And Trump got elected on people who were dissatisfied with Biden and inflation. And then he gets into office and doesn't contain the cost of living problem and demonstrably does a bunch of stupid things that cause the cost of living to go up. I mean, I think people see the price of gasoline, the price of diesel right now.

And they know that that's because of this war. that the president chose to fight that has gone very poorly. You know, the shine finally came off because he finally did something that was very clearly his fault that made the economy worse in a way that everybody feels. So it makes sense that he would go below the bushline. I'm sorry, I was on a plane. So I did something I do very rarely, which is I watched Scott Jennings hit on CNN. Yeah.

And he was saying that that's wrong, Josh, that the diesel prices are up. Yeah, because the liberals in California. California are not building enough diesel refinery plants. And had we built a couple more refinery plants, things would be just fine. So, I mean, were the liberals not doing that a year and a half ago when the price of diesel was a lot lower? I mean, that's a good question. I mean, there are actually some problems, I think, with emissions policy in California, but they're not new. Sure.

What's new. We're building them in Louisiana, though. Yeah. But what's new is the global disruption to the oil markets that the president caused. Yeah. This is a funny thing for Democrats who I think, people are so focused on immigration, crime, trans issues. I think they don't focus enough on energy costs and how Democrats have a track record of voting for things that make energy more expensive.

This is the big-ass truck thing that Senator Ruben Gallego likes to talk about. People want it to be affordable to have their big-ass truck. But it's very helpful to Democrats that the Republican president took a specific action that raises energy prices in a way that people might ordinarily associate with Democrats. It's neutralizing an issue that would normally be disadvantageous for the party. Yeah, stealing this from Iglesias, but it's true that, like, well, the Democrats have had, you know, policy platforms, white papers that would lead to higher marginal energy costs. Like, each Republican presidency now has caused an energy shock because of the mismanagement

of kind of geopolitics. Yeah. And so, you know, that does kind of offset the advantage there. Well, I mean, and Barack Obama presided over the fracking boom, but Democrats didn't like to talk about it very much, even though it was not bringing down. energy prices and making them more stable. Take some credit for that sometimes, Dems. Let's look at the

just kind of economy globally and then get into the interest rate stuff which you wrote about yesterday. Dow is still above 50,000. You know, shout out to Pam Bondi. Yeah. The AI stuff and the build out with data centers is propping things out.

Like unemployment is low. Right. Like we're kind of in a strange economic time, right? Where people are still very frustrated with the, you know, price increases. Yeah. But like we're not hearing as much, I don't know, I think probably the last time you're on, there were, I think, fears that, like, a recession was around the corner, and that is not as much in the analysis right now.

Like, what do you, how do you assess kind of what the macro situation is? Well, so, I mean, there's sort of, there's two stories about why interest rates are going up, and they're going up globally. This is not just in the United States. One is that not just our government, but major governments all over the world are running budget deficits that are too large and don't appear to have political will to shrink those. And so the government is going to go out there and demand to borrow more and more money in a way that is not easily met in the markets. You have to, interest rates have to go up so that people remain willing to lend. And that's a bearish story that should be bad for stocks. You know, it means in the future there's going to have to be tax increases and there's going to have to be cuts to government spending.

And it's likely to cause inflation to remain elevated because governments, you know, are unwilling to do the fiscal consolidation that would bring inflation down. So that's the bad story. The other story that's less bad is that there's tremendous demand for capital investment related to AI. And so as the AI firms go out there and try to raise capital to make investments that they think are very promising, they're competing with governments and with other companies more ordinary industries and with people who want to go get a mortgage. Everyone's trying to borrow money at the same time, and that pushes rates up. But that's a story about people want to get their hands on money because there are good things in the economic outlook. There are things that you can invest in that they think will be very profitable.

And so I think both of these stories are true. I think those are both factors that are pushing up interest rates around the world. But the fact that the second one is there, I think helps to explain, you know, why are stocks holding up so well? It's because there are these promising AI-related business investments that increase the outlook for future profits and make it tolerable to borrow money at a higher interest rate. So I think that's how you can square that. Yeah. So it's not that capitalism is fake, you know, you don't think. No.

Stock market's running on memes. like the stocks start running on vibes and memes. You know, investors could be wrong about exactly what the future profit outlook is with AI. It has happened before. We've had bubbles in the past. So if, you know, if that is a bubble and it pops, that's going to be quite negative for the economy, although that also might cause some downward pressure on interest rates, which would give some relief there.

Yeah, this was one of the big spoons from one of the Trump guys that was like, you don't know how quickly rates can fall. Just look at 2007, 2008. Huge stock of huge trumpet rates. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, careful what you wish for. Yeah. We're past the point where, you know, like a couple of years ago, people who were AI skeptics

sort of talked about it like it's the stochastic parrot and like this isn't actually that useful. We're past that point. This stuff is definitely useful. But it's still possible that it's useful and it's going to be very important going forward and the valuations of these companies are nonetheless too high. Yeah. So that could be the sort of bubble that we have.

It doesn't mean the AI companies would go away. It just means that their valuations would fall a lot and they probably invest less. And so I also want to talk about like how that is impacting kind of like regular people's view of the economy before we get into Fed stuff. Because I do think that, you know, that if you are somebody who's a consumer in this kind of like, how do you explain why approval rating is 26%, 17% on cost of living when like the unemployment rate is significantly lower than it was, you know, around a lot of the Obama administration, for example. And to me, it's like the answer is, well, the things you spend on every day are expensive gas and food that has been exacerbated by Trump's. policies on tariffs in the war. And then also people feel kind of stuck if they want to move houses, change cars, et cetera, like things that they are borrowing against are much more expensive than they're borrowing cars in the past. That's kind of how I assess why people think

the economy is so bad. Is that right to you or is there another factor? Yeah, I mean, I think those things are right. I think there's also a couple of additional things. I mean, some of this is a commonality going back to sort of mid-2020. It's been a similar situation in the economy where prices keep going up and people are mad about it, but people keep buying it. But people keep buying it. things, which is part of why inflation remains elevated. And they keep buying things because, you know, unemployment is low. People, I think, are dissatisfied with the economy, but they're not unusually concerned about losing their jobs. And they're able to pay these high prices. They just find it annoying and upsetting. And then the other thing that has gotten worse in recent months

and recalls a period that persisted for part of the later Biden administration is that because of the price spike that has happened since the war started, real wage growth. has gone negative again. So people, you know, they're still employed, but they feel like the money they're earning is not going as far as it used to, and they're actually correct about that. The inflation is high enough that it is outstripping the increase in their incomes. And so, of course, people are, people are mad, but it doesn't mean we're in a recession necessarily. I mean, I don't think we're in a recession. Have you ever thought I should really be doing more to protect myself from stalkers,

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www. www.J.com slash bulwark code bulwark. Let's go to the Fed. You have an article about this yesterday. Obviously, they increased rates a little bit. Why don't you just talk about kind of what the state of play is on that? So, I mean, you know, inflation has been above target since the recovery from the COVID pandemic. And the Fed was a little bit late raising rates on that in like 2022 eventually did and got inflation most of the way down, but it's never gotten quite all the way back down to 2% where it's supposed to be on a sustained basis. And then it's gotten worse in recent months because of the war. And so, you know, the Fed is supposed to balance stable prices and maximum employment. And as we discussed, the employment outlook doesn't look too bad.

And it doesn't really look like we're on the verge of, you know, the bottom falling out of the job market or anything like that. And so when inflation remains problematically high, and we're not having trouble getting people jobs, that's exactly when you would expect the Fed to raise interest rates. And they sort of argued over this through much of the year, the meeting in July when the Fed met, they didn't raise rates, but there were three dissents, which is an unusually large number. Three members of the 12-member Federal Open Market Committee said we should raise rates now. And then in September, they unanimously decided to raise by a core point. And so since the Fed meeting last month where they raised, there's been some relatively good economic data in the sense that

inflation came in a little bit lower than had been expected. I saw David Ballsaxe pushing that on X other day. Yes. Great news. We're 0.2% lower on inflation. And Kevin Hassett, who runs the National Economic Council inside the White House, one of the top economic advisors to the president, has also been pushing on, you know, hey, we've had three months now where core inflation using the measure of the Fed uses, which is called PCE, that that's run at 2%. That means inflation, it's not too high anymore. We don't need more rate hikes. If you want to raise rates again, it's because you're partisan against the president. Now, the obvious retort to that is, you know, three months is three months, but these things move around and there's some typical...

And core doesn't include energy. Right. Although the thing is that if you're trying to predict what inflation is going to do in the future, what core has been doing recently is actually more predictive of that than overall inflation. Because there are supply side things that move food and fuel prices around that don't necessarily have implications for future monetary policy. So I actually do think it's correct to look at that core measure. The problem is that it's only been stable there for three months. And for most of the, you know, preceding two years before that, it has been significantly over target. And so that's what members of the FOMC are arguing about right now. We've seen different speeches from them indicating different levels of hawkishness. I think the Fed is probably not going to

hike at the meeting this month, in part because of that better data. But even, you know, I mean, John Williams, who runs the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who has a permanent seat on the FOMC, he was saying, well, we don't need urgency about raising rates, but we still might need another rate increase this year, which would have to mean December if they don't do it this month. So I think it's likely that we're going to see some further interest rate hikes just because inflation has been persistent and the job market is strong enough that it can handle higher rates. But that expectation is pushing up mortgage rates today. I saw some people, you know, I get in trouble because I follow.

I follow like some econ bro accounts. Yep. You're in trouble because of that? Well, no, I just, I was getting in trouble because it makes me feel like I know a little more than I do. Yeah. You know enough to be dangerous. Yeah, I don't know. Exactly.

Yeah. And some of them were pointing out that, you know, what we're seeing in kind of the 10, 2030, particularly the 10-year yield and like how high it's gotten. Like the spike has been so great that like the Fed has lost control of it a little bit, right? Essentially, like there is a lack of trust. that the Fed is going to be able to keep things in control. And that's why, like, market rates are higher. I can see how much trouble I'm in just by your face.

No, I mean, that could be right. Although, I mean, you know, the Fed ultimately has control here. I mean, the, you know, the long rates are based on, you know, expectations of how the Fed is going to set short-term rates over the period of those longer bonds. And so, I mean, that is a story you can tell. But there's another story, which would be equally applicable. which is that there's no chance that Congress is going to get together and shrink the budget

deficit in an appropriate manner. And that's going to continue to be inflationary, those big budget deficits. And in order to contain the inflation, the Fed is going to have to raise rates more than it otherwise would. And so that's going to push the interest rate path up. And that's not a story about the Fed being out of control. It's a story about the Fed having to assert control because Congress and the president won't. Either version of that story is a story about how there are significant inflation risks out there and how rate hikes are likely to be necessary in the future to stop that from spiraling out. I mean, you know, if the Fed acts too slowly now and lets inflation get farther out of control, that can mean the Fed will have to raise rates in the future by more than it otherwise would have.

And that's why when the Fed hiked rates last month, long rates actually dipped a little bit immediately after the announcement that the short rates were going up. And the analysis that you tend to see that the Fed is being proactive and responding now. And so, So there are expectations about how much they would have to raise rates in the future may have actually gone down slightly. Of course, in the ensuing weeks, then long rates have, you know, spiked back up a lot more than that. And, you know, there's a number of factors that can be driving that. But, you know, I'm not ready to blame the Fed here yet. All right.

Let's turn to somebody who knows too little to be dangerous. This is the president. He was asked by Time magazine about all of this yesterday. I just want to read some of the questions here. The reporter asked him, he said that some of the Fed have suggested, as you mentioned, New York Fed. they may raise rates again by the end of the year. Trump, I don't think they should. Do you regret nominating Warsh since they raise rates?

Trump, well, he's controlled to a certain extent by the board. You know, you have Obama and Biden picks on there. You're too late on that. Too late. We have Lisa on there. So that's the first part. I've got more. But what do you make of the president's take?

Well, I mean, this is, you know, this is a convenient story for people in the White House to believe about Kevin Warsh for Kevin Warsh, right? I mean, the people talk about it like the Fed share controls interest rates. He doesn't. It's the Federal Open Market Committee, which has 12 members. He only has one of the votes. And so he's correct there that, like, the personnel at the Fed is mostly not turned over. And they have conventional views about monetary policy that suggests that rate hikes are appropriate right now.

And certainly. Maybe incorrect on the people that are still on there would love for the country to do badly. Yeah. I just mean that he's right that Kevin Warsh can't set interest rates wherever he wants. Like, you know, he is, he does have to come to a consensus with, this board. And, you know, the president is out there saying interest rates should be 1%. Even if Kevin Warsh was willing to do that, the other people on this board are not going to be willing to do that. And so I don't know when the last time is that the FOMC took a rate action

that the chair dissented from. So, you know, Warsh certainly wouldn't want to be in a position where he's refusing to vote for a rate hike, but it's so obviously necessary that he gets outvoted by the board. And there's a culture of trying to find consensus there. So you could imagine that Kevin Warsh is being dragged around by the board. But I think the likelier thing based on the way that Kevin Warsh has talked about monetary policy through most of his career is that Kevin Warsh, like everyone else on the FOMC, understands that a rate hike was necessary. I mean, he's, you know, he said some stuff in the last few years that seemed to be positioning himself for trying to get Donald Trump to make him the Fed chair. And he talked about why lower rates would

be appropriate. But it was this kind of idiosyncratic thing where he was saying, well, the Fed should lower rates. And then it should also do this stuff with its battle. And sheet where it sells off a lot of assets. And that makes most people's eyes glaze over. But what that would do is like selling off the assets is sort of similar to raising rates in terms of the effect on the economy. And if the Fed had a very aggressive program to sell lots of its assets, then it could lower rates without actually further stimulating the economy. The Fed hasn't been able to do that yet. And there's a lot of technical reasons why it would be challenging. But I think what the president heard was Kevin Warsh says rates can be lower. Whereas what it really is

is Kevin Worse says rates could be lower if we do a specific thing that we haven't done. And then also the economic situation changed. The president started this war. I think that Warsh knows that they had to raise rates and that they're likely to have to raise rates again. But it's better for him if the president just assumes that that's only because his hands are tied and he wishes he could do whatever Trump wants. Let's take a little bit of a deeper look at how while the president understands this. There was a follow-up question about Warsh. A reporter asked, does he still have your confidence?

Yeah. Trump starts by saying, you know, it's become very political. I don't blame you, Kevin. As if he's talking to Kevin, Kevin's not there, actually. I think it's not too bad. It's not fair. And then he goes on, and I just, I need people to kind of buckle up here. It's hard for me to tell exactly what's happening.

You study this stuff better than I do. Some of you and the president are closer to the same page. He says this, for the most part, I don't need these. I can turn it off and I have the absolute right, according to the tariff decision, which was a terrible decision by the Supreme court, but basically they said you can get it otherwise. But it's tougher that they also said, I don't have to trade with countries, so they're willing to stop a tariff, maybe a small one, but they're willing, just think of it. They tell you to stop tariffing, even small numbers,

but you have the right to stop trading with the country. Think of that. It's ridiculous. It's a terrible decision for our country. Do you know if they would have written one clause, any money paid does not have to be paid? I took in hundreds of billions of dollars. We have to write it back, giving it back to people that were enemies of ours. You would have thought they would have done something about that. Give back hundreds of billions of dollars. I have other forms of tariffs I can have. I just got a tariff from Lindsay Graham,

Lindsey Graham, first time in 50 years. But I think it's a shame. I think that what the Supreme Court did is an absolute crying shame. Again, that was all part of the answer to. Does Kevin Warsh have your confidence still? So I think I know what things he was talking about. there? I mean, so one of the key things in the Supreme Court decision on the tariffs was there's this law AEPA, the International Economic Something Protection Act, from the 70s. And it allows the president

to act in certain ways to regulate international trade. And so one of the questions was like, does that include the ability to impose a tariff? And what the court decided was that no, that was not within the scope of the law. And so one of the arguments that came from the president's side is, well, if he can ban the imports, how is it that he doesn't have the authority to do something less extreme like levia tariff. And the answer is, well, that's just what the law says. Like, it's in the same way that a fire marshal can close a theater but can't impose a tax on tickets to the theater.

It's because it's for, you know, it's, the power is for a specific purpose. So he's complaining about that. Does he think Lindsey Graham is still alive? What's he talking about there? So there's that Russia sanctions bill that passed that was Lindsay Graham's signature piece of legislation that passed posthumously. Yeah. And it includes new tariff authorities for the president to try to, you know, for people.

for countries that are doing things that we think are bad on the Russia relationship. And a reason that a lot of Democrats in the House did not want to pass that law is that they're concerned that the president would do exactly what he seems to be hinting it here, which is take the new tariff authorities that are supposed to be about Russia and Ukraine and just try to impose them all over the world pretextually because he wants to impose tariffs. So we'll see what he tries to do there and what the courts allow about it. But that's what he's referring to. And how about the part about we have to give the money back, give it back to people that

were enemies of ours. So that's that, you know, when the Supreme Court throughout the tariffs, they said you have to refund the money. Right. But who it's, but that went back to companies, American companies. Are they the enemies? The woke companies are the enemies there? He's insistent on talking about tariffs like they are paid by the country where the goods are imported from, even though they are in fact paid by the, by the importers. So, I mean, that he's just wrong about. I think the other thing to tie this together, like the, why is he talking about tariffs at all in response to this question. Yeah.

Is a threat that he made a few weeks ago was that, you know, if the Fed doesn't cut rates, then I'm going to impose new tariffs. And it wasn't clear exactly how they were supposed to be connected. Yeah. Or, you know, why he thought that the Federal Open Market Committee would be swayed by a threat to impose tariffs. But I think that's what he's getting at here. He's like, well, if I can't get control over monetary policy, I'm going to do new

tariff things that somehow... That'll be great for people. Yeah, their interest rates are going up. And they get a bonus tax on goods. New tariffs are not going to make capital more available to consumers and businesses who want to borrow in a high interest rate environment. So, I mean, it doesn't make sense. I'm not making sense of what he said here. But I think that that is the reason that he even is rambling about this topic.

That helps, actually. Yeah. Because I gave it a few reads. And I was like, who is he talking about? And the thing about the refunds, he kept saying, well, shouldn't the court have just said, like, we can keep the money that came in already? Yeah. And there's other areas of law where sometimes things. work like that. Like, you know, there's a new rule about what the police can do, but it doesn't

mean everybody who's in prison who has to be let out where that happened. It's only going forward. But ordinarily with things to do with money, because it's, you know. Yeah, if you've stolen somebody's money illegally, then the court rules that you stole it illegally, generally you have to pay it back. You don't get to keep it. Yeah, I mean, it's created this sort of funny situation where, you know, the importer may have been able to pass the tariff costs through to the retailer and then to the consumer. Then the importer gets the tariff refund. That doesn't mean they have to pass that through to the retailer and then to the consumer.

So there's windfalls that happened here, which... Look at you. You're sounding like a populist lefty there for a second. This is greed. Greedflation. A little greedflation on the tariffs. Well, I mean, this is a reason not to impose illegal taxes because weird things might happen. But, you know, I don't know how you would force people to, like, find where the economic

incidence of the tax was and give the money to that person. The solution is don't do illegal tariffs. I agree with that. While we're nerding out, just really quick, on permitting reform. Yeah. Everybody, we're going to get to fun stuff. We have a masculinity section with newly blonde, Josh Barrow, coming up soon. Permitting reform is fun.

I agree. It's fun for me, but maybe not everybody listening is here for permanent reform. There was a big bipartisan deal yesterday. There's getting rave reviews from all the wonks. Yeah. Okay, rave reviews from the Twitter wongs about, you know, where what's kind of the pro-environment, lefties are on board because they want to build more, you know, green energy stuff faster. The neoliberal abundance crowd is very,

permitting reform pilled. Some Republicans are on board with it. Give us a pit. Is something working right in Washington? I mean, it's a long way to go. It looks like they have an agreement on a deal, which is very likely to pass after the election. And I think this is a good thing. For people who aren't following, you know, the Searchlight Institute, maybe give them a basic breakdown of us. Yeah. I mean, there's been this conversation for a few years now about can we get a bipartisan permitting reform done? And it's because Democrats and Republicans have a set of different but related priorities here. What Democrats see is that if you want to install new renewable energy, you have to be able to have high voltage transmission lines to take the energy where it needs

to be used. There are all sorts of regulations that can make it difficult to build those lines, especially if they cross multiple states. So they want reforms of that. And then also, you know, as the Trump administration has been engaging in hijinks trying to cancel solar and wind projects, they want rules that give more clarity to basically say once something has been approved, you can't go, go back and cancel it. So there are things that they want to get the government out of the way of deployment of electrification and renewable generation. Republicans see that it is too difficult to build oil and gas pipelines in the country. For example, the price of heating oil is up a lot this year along with gasoline and diesel. And homes in the Northeast, especially very dependent on heating

oil, in part because there's lots of places that have no natural gas service. Normally, you would be more likely to have a natural gas powered furnace in your house. And so it's a problem that there aren't natural gas pipelines to a lot of places that we should want them in the Northeast. There was just a big fight where I am in New York about approving one to Long Island that will significantly lower energy costs here. So Republicans want to be able to build more of that kind of infrastructure. And so the idea is, hey, well, maybe we can have a bill that says, we'll make it easier to build a pipeline and we'll make it easier to build an electrical transmission line. And we will, you know, reduce opportunities for people to sue and shorten

deadlines and promote these investments. All right. So the Internet just fritzed on Fire Island. I don't know if it was the fumes coming off of Josh Barrow's bleached hair or whether it was some kind of cyber attack on us. But luckily, I'm bringing the big gun out of the bullpen.

We've got Lee Smith walking towards the mound. I haven't watched a baseball game in 25 years, so I don't know who the better reference is there. But for us at the bulwark, it's Jonathan V. Last. Out of the pen. That's right. High heat.

Like Mariana Rivera, baby. high heat 102 plus from you okay yeah it's a little bit of kismet here because we've just been doing economy and yield rates and all that nonsense with josh barrow right and your triad today is is on a related topic that we that we didn't really cover that much in depth which is the energy price spike yes and you wrote about how there is basically this built-in risk premium right now on oil prices which kind of explains why prices did not go as high high as some of us were thinking they would over the summer, but why they've remained high, even though the straight has somewhat opened up. So why don't you talk about that?

So there, I mean, there are, there are essentially two questions and they're related, and they are, why didn't oil ever get as expensive as many people feared it might? So we peaked in the spring at about just under $113 a barrel. And a lot of people thought like, crap, we could go to 125, we go to 150, there are zero ships moving through the straight today back in spring. Why isn't this going higher? And the answer was a bunch of things. First of all, the world's strategic reserves were drawn down to about zero. And I mean, not quite zero, but down real far. In America, we are at the lowest levels in our strategic petroleum reserves since the early 1980s following the oil shock of the late 70s. So quite bad. This is happening worldwide. And we don't know what's going on with

China. So China had all by itself, we think about half, half of the world strategic reserves. But that's a closely held secret. And we don't know what they actually had. We think they had about 1.3 billion barrels, which would be like 3x what America's strategic reserves were. And we don't know what their consumption went to. But we do know that they do know that they cut their imports by 40%, which is stunning, right? And this suggests that either they were able to cut consumption because they've electrified everything, or they were just like pumping out of the ground where they had their strategic reserves. Maybe it feels like something that Trump could have like pressed on or found out a little more about during the summit, but instead he

is focusing on showing she, the autopen picture. And he got us two pandas. We got two new pandas. Well, and also it's hard when your mouth is full. Yeah, that's true. So. Well, not quite. I mean, she. That's part of it. Another, I mean, I just assume that he is. I don't think he's back. I don't know. I have a sense for these things.

Okay. You know, I trust you more than me. Yeah. Another part of the picture is that Trump really did manipulate the markets pretty well. And it drove people like me crazy because I would be sitting there going, why don't the markets understand all the risk? And the reason was because he would declare war on Friday at 4 o'clock. and then on Sunday night at 7 p.m., he would say,

we're so close to a peace deal. Never been closer. They want it really bad. It's going to be strong, so strong. You can't even believe it. And that basically worked with the markets. And the reason it worked was because the markets all thought, this war is completely batshit.

It is fundamentally irrational. And so, of course, he'll stop. Yeah, right. Think about this as like an inverse bubble, right? And so, you know, when you have a mania in economics, when you have a bubble, it is inflated by people expecting irrational returns on an investment. And this is like that, but without the investment part, it's expecting that, you know, well, this thing over here is irrational, this thing being the war. And so we're going to bet against the war, basically. And we're going to bet that this whole thing is going to have the plug pulled on it soon.

And this is like the old Keynes saying that the market can stay. irrational longer than you can stay solvent. And markets have basically decided fuck, we don't actually see an exit anymore. We don't see how he can get out of this.

So they've just decided, well, I guess here's the risk premium we should have had all along. And so they have bundled that in and this is then the second half of that question. Why is it still so expensive now? Even if, and we think the straight is doing somewhere

between like 50 and 80% of pre-war levels of traffic. So why is oil still expensive? And so it's all of those things in reverse. We now have the risk premium baked in because people have no idea when this is actually going to finish. China is importing oil again. People are refilling their strategic reserves again. And then on top of it, you have a huge structural cost shift upwards.

And the industry group Argus, which does freight logistics, this is going to be your mind. It cost about $3 a barrel to move a barrel of oil from the Gulf East into Asia before the war. Okay. Today it's $34 a barrel. 11x. And what does that mean? It means that you are paying a lot more for the ships themselves because of the demand. You are paying more to operate the ships because they run on diesel and diesel is so expensive. You're paying a shitload more of insurance. And they are also now starting to price in tolls because everybody knows that you're eventually going to get tolls in the Strait of Hormuz. So if the rules on the Strait of Hormuz have changed, why shouldn't the rules on the

Strait of Bob Al Mendeb change as well? That's where the Houthis are camped out. And so you have everybody suddenly realizing shit. Cost structure for moving oil out of the Middle East is about to be shifted upwards permanently. and it's not going to stay at $34 a barrel, but when it floats down, it ain't going back to three again. This has everybody kind of freaked out

as well they should be. Yeah, you end the newsletter. By the way, if you haven't signed up for the Triad newsletter, what in the fuck are you doing the best daily newsletter in the market? The bulwark.com. You end it with this.

The economy's gone from bad to worse and worse is here to stay. And that's kind of the point, right? That the risk is here to stay both in the energy market but also with the high interest rates. Yeah. So the interest rates are all, like, these things are bound together.

Like the war and the bond market and interest rates, they're all actually the same story. And a big part of it is, well, we're leaving the American-led world order, right? Like, that's over now. That is in retreat. We can see that sinking down beneath the horizon. And nobody knows what comes next. But it isn't going to be better with whatever. is not going to be more stable, more efficient, cheaper.

Who knows? I mean, with all the things we're robbing Venezuela. I thought that's what Trump said. We're robbing Venezuela. And that's going to offset it. We're going to get so much liquid gold out of Venezuela. And gold gold. And that's going to be so easy, right?

Like just creating infrastructure and unstable, you know, environment. To the victors go to the spoils, right? Can you believe he said that in front of the UN? We haven't really adequately excavated that, that rape and pillage is now the stated policy. of the United States. Great. Okay. Cool.

You would think that it would concern people. There's a little bit of a relationship between that and the markets, right? Yeah. We're just this lack of taking him seriously. Yeah. Right. It's like, are you sure? I don't know.

Two years left. I think maybe you might rape and pillage a couple other countries. So he might and we don't know. Do you see the AI story today where Elon showed him Grock and he was asking Gronk about Venezuela, the Venezuela operation? Yeah. And Grock told him that they. the Venezuelan people would be thrilled because they hate the, you know, they hate Maduro.

And so then when he did it, and then his advisors told him that the people of Venezuela were cheering in the streets, he was like, Grock was a genius. So, so that was part of the advisory effort there. I got an Elon question for you. So you saw Pete Hagef, who I'm convinced. Oh, we're getting to that. Can we just let me handle it? Let me handle it. Sure. We'll get to Elon. Let's go. Let's move on to Pete Hegseth for a minute because we have a few clips for you. boy he gave a he gave kind of a um what was the tom cruise character in magnolia uh oh god what is he j t something come on god we're gonna get it we're gonna get it we're doing it live this is fcruz magnolia tom cruise magnolia tom cruise magnolia is frank t j mackey frank t j mackey yes frank tj macky i got

my guns i got my lasers i got my i c bms trained on you a little speech We'd be tough. Be a man. Yeah. Let's take a look at the first club of Pete yesterday. The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in with testosterone testing on top. Just some gender affirming care.

He was just reading this fantastic book. It's one of the key texts of the Trump era. It's by a guy who's a psychologist and analysis. a therapist and an analyst. His name is Tobias Fungke. Oh, yeah. Dr. Tobias Fungke. And it's called The Man Inside Me.

Okay. And Pete has just been studying it up. And he's ready to really affirm his gender and test everybody's testosterone. He might even go and do a little dick measuring himself for scientific purposes. Just get in there on the physicals and just a check, make sure everything is five by five. More bigger. I got to tell you, man, the patriotic. Cowboys are in.

A lot to criticize about that line, right? Like the ideologues are out. The patriotic cowboys are in. Is that really true? And it feels like the ideologs are in. Was Jim Mattis an ideologue? Yeah. I don't believe so.

He was sect deaf under President Trump the first time, wasn't it? Yeah. So I don't think it's quite correct, just on the technical terms. But just like as a matter of rhetoric, it's like we've brought, even if he was accurate, even if they really have brought in these great patriotic cowboys with testosterone testing on top. It's like, why? Why is that necessary to get your tea tested on top?

If you just brought in a bunch of patriotic cowboys, it feels like... It feels like... Got to make sure they're super hard every morning when they wake up. The fact that he's talking like this while losing the most strategically significant war that America has lost in generations. And that this is happening while there is a revolution in military affairs,

which is basically pushing robots into the center of the battlefield. And so the most important thing is having a defense industrial base, which can manufacture and modify quickly and on the fly and then distribute drones that are low cost that will be operated by people sitting miles away working on an iPad or on their phones to drive these killer drones. Ain't nobody needs to be doing push-ups here. It's insane. It is insane.

And America has become like a third-rank power now in the age of drone warfare. And Pete Hankseth is walking around like, look at me doing pull-ups. Got my low-tee. I want to make sure you have a firm wrist. You know, you need a lot of wrist exercises. You have a strong risk for all the drone management. Okay. So ideological clowns like Jim Mattis are.

out. Also didn't love his country at all. He wasn't patriotic. None of these guys. Lloyd Austin. No. He didn't love his country. Just like served.

That guy's soft. Dedicated his entire career to it. It's black. Black. Let's see what else we're doing with, you know, our readiness and our war fighters. Let's just see kind of who else we're bringing in, who else we're kicking out. But it's worth saying, again, that the fake news understands it. That's us.

We are no longer the woke department. Mm-mm. Or the weak department. Simple translation of that. No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. No fatties or trannies. I mean, I don't, I don't, I do, I mean, I don't know. I think that there have been some people.

That his list of can'ts or his list of wants. It's very, very hard snows. I mean, like the fact that like the head of the defense. Defense Department, amidst this moment where, like, he started one war, lost it to a bunch of guys in caves, is how they described it. And where he has, supposedly, like, the most advanced technology and the best technologists ever, and you have all these guys, like Palmer Lucky and Alex Carp at Palantir, talking about how great, you know, all of the technology that provided. Have you seen what those guys look like, by the way? Yeah, not tough. I mean, not tough. Do you have, do you have an image of

Palmer Lucky that you could throw up on screen. Actually, why don't we do that? I think this is an important point. Let's throw up an image of Palmer Lucky, and then let's play one more clip from the Pete Higgisat speech, and then we'll get to it on the other side. Let's watch. See who we're bringing in.

Project Meridian will be co-led by three of our nation's best minds. Elon Musk, Paul Merlucky, and Newt Gingrich, all of whom are up in the United. audience with us today. Please stand if you would. Let's go ahead and pull all of them up on screen. We've seen Palmer Lucky. He is very interesting facial hair. I don't know if it counts as a beardo. Is he a beardo? He's certainly a weirdo. He's certainly a weirdo. That guy is super weird. I had lunch with Palmer Lucky one time. He ate his boogers at the table. I ate his boogers. Picked his nose, put his finger in his nose, looked at it,

into the mouth, ate it. And then took another sip of his foe. Fah. Excuse me. Took another sip of the fah after eating the bugger. He was adding a little taste to it. So I think he would count as a weirdo. Definitely a fatty. I mean, not, I don't know. I haven't seen him.

Gingrich. Gingrich, Musk. There was a picture of Musk from the weekend. He is the weirdest formed body I've ever seen in my life. It's very off-putting. I don't understand what it is, but he has like double Ds and like just a protruding belly, but like kind of a very thin of like lower back and waist. And like strangely, it's almost like looks like he has a jet pack on his back. I don't know what it's even happening.

He looks very unnatural. Impossible to imagine him doing a pull-up. I mean, Newt Gingrich, I'm surprised he's not in a wheelchair. It's hard to imagine how he gets his belly around. This is who we've turned to. So it's no faddies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps. And let me introduced to you, Elon Musk, Falmerlock, and Newt Gingrich. A bunch of weird fatties with beardos and wimps. And by the way, isn't Elon into like polycule lifestyle and running around? I mean, that's as weird and radical as anything you'll ever see. Newt called himself a radical.

Rules for radicals, right? Yeah, no. The radical Republican Revolution of 94. So, like, this whole thing is preposterous. And it is just like a performative nonsense and it's happening amidst a time. I just, I keep like, I was watching some Palmer Lucky interview this morning where he's talking about how the next frontier is going to be the core, the melting core of the earth. Yeah, how we're going to be fighting through. Which might even be hollow.

According to the documentary on Godzilla versus King Kong, it's very possible to all hollow down there. And there's unto... He's working on a subterranean submarine that goes through. We're going to dominate the Earth's magma core. Yeah. So he's talking about doing magma core domination. Like the Palantir guy is standing in front of the White House, talking about how he's saving Western civilization,

being very, very weird, by the way, extremely weird. Trim. Trim. So I don't know if that counts, but like strange, like his hands. And again, talking about all these advancements. And it's like, meanwhile, like they can't even... let ships through a body of water. Because a bunch of guys are mining the water. I could not all of the technological advancements

from Andrel and Palantir have figured out a way to stop a handful of mullis? Like, why are they getting the fucking circles run around them by some mulles if they're so technologically skilled? Because Iran is a second-rate drone power, right, behind Ukraine and Russians and the Chinese, and we are a third rate.

drone power and drone warfare is the future. This is why. I mean, it's asymmetric economic warfare. I want to say something, though. So what you are seeing happening to the American military is what often happens in corrupt autocratic regimes, right? Their military becomes hollowed out in a paper tiger because the guys who are able to succeed politically are the ones who run it. And then they loot it for themselves, right? And they, this is what, this is what we saw in Russia. And this is why Russia got pantsed by the Ukrainians in the first year of the war. And it was because it turned out the Russian military had been totally turned inside out by Putin's cronies.

Putin was never getting reliable information. The people were there were, again, fourth and fifth rate people. And they were looting the military for their own purposes. And it was only once they started losing a real big war that the fat started getting, you know, cooked away and the Russians got their act together. And they're pretty formidable. right now. In America, we're losing that war right now. And instead of having the, you know, getting leaner and having, you know, the people who are ridiculous getting fired and grown-ups

being put back in charge, we're going further and deeper into this nonsense, like, totalitarian bullshit. And I mean, I just, I can't imagine what Xi thinks of America looking at us. And honestly, if I was Taiwan, I'd surrender sooner rather than later. Like get whatever the best terms you can Because ain't no cavalry riding to protect you I was just got to say one thing on the tranny thing It's like the idea that like a cabinet level secretary Is just repeatedly using this law

And he uses it so often that he has to preempt it By being like hey guys I've said it before But I just want I just want you to know I'm about to say it again tranny You know it's like an eight year old And it's literally like my child And like they learn a new bad word You know, and it's like, they get a little Cheshire cat grin.

They're like, I'm going to say stupid. Yeah. And it's like, what? I'm going to say ass. It's like, great, great. Great. Great work, Pete. Congrats. You can slur people that tried to serve the country and we're trying to do their best and be

themselves and add value to our military. Great job. Can a tranny operate a drone? Feels like it. Feels like they could probably do that. I don't know. Do you think it's psychologically weird that a man of Hegseth's age? So obsessed with us?

He's so obsessed with this stuff. I do. And think about all the makeup. He's putting on way more makeup than the transgender members of the military. I'll tell you that. Significantly more. Yeah. I don't know what it's a tell on,

but it's a tell on something. Something. We got some feedback on the Reddit page. I was flagged for me about you. And I want to share that with you and give you a chance to reply. The post said this. The problem is JVL is unrealistically positive these days. Europe is what I'm known for.

Europe is more or less at war with Russia. America is too busy looting itself. An AI bio weapon is possible. Today, none of them care. Two years more of this. Do we make it out without a nuclear escalation? or global event. Too positive, JVL. Do you feel like you've been too positive about the state of affairs? I mean, the only thing I've been positive about is the potential for 56 Democratic senators.

Yeah. Which, again, it's potential, not likely. It's not where I would put my money, except to say, like, if you could get great odds, if you could get 56 Democratic senators on 100 to one shot, then that would be a great, great bet. If it was 20 to 1, not so much, right? I need better odds than that. I don't know. I'm the one who says,

we're never going to recover from this. What am I too positive about? I got a piece coming tomorrow about AI and Stuxnet and my concern about AI is going rogue and building Stuxnet-like viruses that they insert into like industrial PLC systems. That doesn't sound like an upper. It's not. it's not so uh i don't know i i feel like i'm pretty pretty bearish i concur with you i think

i disagreed with the feedback but i just wanted to give you a chance to react to it thank you i do think that there is i you know the bulwark i mean if we're about anything it's trump derangement syndrome right sure and so i think that over a period of time where trump is continuing to just step on his own dick over and over again like he has over the past few months months, you know, our coverage of that is going to be, might at times yield an average listener to think, man, we really think things are going well. I don't feel that way at all in the media. I think that I'm very, very concerned. I said that any time it comes up, like, I think that from right now, October 1 through January of 29, the risks that we face are unimaginable.

So much danger. So much danger. I mean, here's a very real question. I know you guys like to make fun of me. But just from a pure probability out. It's all love, JVL. What do you think the odds are that somebody with the last name, Trump, is on the general election ballot? Do you think they are any worse than one in three? I think probably a little worse than one in three. Because I think, yeah, probably a little worse than one in three.

But sure. I mean, I don't know. Do you think it's one in ten? Yeah, probably. Yeah, 10%. Okay. I think it's sizably more than that, my sense. myself. Like I just, I don't know, man.

Do you wait, does a VP count? If it's, if the VP does it count? Like if it's J.D. Ivanka, does that count? J.D. Don Jr. Does that count in the 10%? Yeah, I would, I would count that. Okay. I'm having a Trump family as a constitutionally elected member of the executive branch. I'd say a little higher than 10% then. Yeah. Yeah. I just think it's possible. Not great, Bob. I want to close to something to make everybody's belly warm. And that is GVL. It's been a couple of years ago now. Time flies when you're having fun. I don't remember exactly what it was.

But you got into a little bit of a tiff. We were screaming about, I believe it was no labels at the time. I believe it was Nancy Jacobson. And I don't even remember what the offense was anymore. There was so many offenses by all these people sidling up to Trump over the years. But you were ranting about how they should be shunned. They should never be able to have a table at Spago again. and that really upset everybody.

And I got to tell you, I read a story this morning in the New York Times, Jody Cantor, I've had on the show, great journalist. She was writing about John Roberts' summer life in Maine. And it seems like the people in his community have taken on kind of a JVLish spirit. And a Spago shunning is happening on the coast of Maine. And my favorite anecdote from the story was this, calling themselves kayaktivists, because they're in kayaks. The locals form flotillas facing John Roberts's island home, holding waterproof signs conveying their disappointment. John used to go to, you know, whatever, what do people do? In Maine, I'm not really a Maine person.

They, you know, have lobster. They have lobster. They go to the Rocky shore. They take their boat out, right? Yeah, but that's people who have some lobster rolls. Pick some blueberries. In season. Sure.

And he used to be invited to these sorts of things. And it seems like now he's not getting invited anymore to the backyard lobster roll picnic. And he's being ceased at home. He has to have more security. So shunning is happening of the Chief Justice. This is important. I was wondering. Does it?

Yeah. The security stuff. doesn't. I don't think people should face physical threats. But here's the thing. If you don't have shame, then everything in a society has to be regulated by a law. That's just not possible. And if it were possible, we wouldn't want it. Right. I mean, nobody wants to live in a world where all good behavior and societal norms are carried out by law, which means at the barrel of a gun. And so if you're going to have a society in which civic virtue plays a part in which there are a bunch of shared norms. Like, for instance, you shouldn't make your son-in-law the guy settling peace talks during a war

you've started. Or you shouldn't threaten to demolish the Kennedy Center. Or you shouldn't accept a $300 million plane. Or your son-in-law shouldn't get $2 billion. If you want to live in a world where those things don't have to have to have to. No one is above the law, so to speak. No one is above the law, right? You can't legislate all those things, so there has to be a sense of shame so that people don't do those things, not because it's illegal, but because they realize, A, this is wrong and bad, and B, there would be social consequences for me if I did. And I am happy that John Roberts is getting some social consequences. Some people might say that, like, you know, he's not the worst on the court and they've

bucked Trump on a few things. That's true. He does buck Trump on a few things. On the other hand, he did create presidential immunity. Yeah. Seems like it's kind of a big deal. I just, I don't know, man. I mean, to say that Roberts isn't Alito, it's like, I guess.

Yeah. Sure. But I'm sure he could hang out over there. I'm sure Martha Ann would have them over. I mean, nobody wants to hang out with Martha Anilito. But unfortunately, that's kind of the consequences of your actions. All right. Jonathan.

Mariano. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Everybody, go reward Jonathan, by subscribing to the triad newsletter and reading it and sharing it with a friend. Share it with a friend that you think might be interested in the oil price shock. Or if you have a friend who's more into kind of dystopia, maybe wait until tomorrow's triad and share the Stuxnet AI one. We'd appreciate that very much. And I'll be back tomorrow with one of the pod bros.

You guys can guess which one. We'll see you all that. Peace. The Bullwark Daily is brought to you thanks for the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, Associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DeChico and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brow.