The Chaser Report - Charles Explains Trump Economics While Drunk

Episode Date: April 2, 2024

Donald Trump has figured out a way to make himself infinite money, as Charles drunkenly explains. Please leave a 5 Star review so that we tell Charles to record at this blood alcohol content level more often. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Hello, Charles. It's so nice to see you after the long weekend. We didn't bother to do one for Easter Tuesday. It's a public holiday in Tasmania. That's my excuse.

Oh, yeah, exactly. What a good idea, by the way. Why don't we have that? Oh, we've got to have five-day long weekend. Tasmania is much better. But Charles, you look cheerful, you look jolly, and I'm hoping it's because you've got an idea. to unleash upon us today. So I am drunk with enthusiasm, Don.

I see. You've been celebrating a family birthday, I understand. Yeah, that's right. But what I am drunk on is the idea of taking the chaser public. Right. Dear God. Because it's a, by which I mean listing it on the stock market, right? Right.

And the reason is because in the past week, Donald Trump has taken truth social public in a sort of reverse. takeover. It's known as a SPAC. Right. And it is the greatest fraud in the history of humanity, right? So what has happened is a company that did $1.3 million of revenue, like a year and a half ago. And then last year did $4 million in revenue. Lost $58 million in the same period is now worth $6 billion. So that's basically about $10 billion Australian dollars. So to summarize, it made extremely little revenue. It talked up massive losses. It's not a business.

It is less business than your average milk bar in Australia. Right. So it lost money, huge debt, but they've managed to somehow float it and make billions. I want to hear more after this. Is it, are you for real? Yes. How stupid are people? This is the genius of Donald Trump.

And, no, you're not listening to the Joe Rogan experience. Although that makes my one in a video as well. So maybe we should become the job. Can we make this last three hours, by the way? So the whole thing is that the genius of Donald Trump is taking something shit. Like, it's called having followers, right? So it's like Christianity or something. Like, it doesn't have to have anything at the centre that's true.

It just has to surround itself with followers and suddenly it becomes worth something quite valuable. I mean, look, I've just been writing an entry for my forthcoming book, the Dictionary of Terrible Ideas. Oh, that's a great title. Thank you. Yeah. I'm writing the entry on the church. I didn't know that was your title.

Yeah, the Dictionary of Terrible Ideas. Oh, what a great idea. Coming out later this year, but maybe a terrible idea, we'll say, but I've just literally come from writing the entry on the Church of Scientology. And it's a, I've forgotten all weird things they believe. It's so good. And it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how insane it is.

It doesn't understand. It's not the people believe it. You're worth a lot of money. Yeah. So what, I mean, it's sort of, it's such genius, right? Because it's a revolution in everything. It's a revolution in campaign finance. It's a revolution in treason.

It's a revolution in funneling money to foreign entity. So Donald Trump, he's a presidential candidate. He's going to be the next president. And you're looking at all these laws that prevent you from giving money to Donald Trump. Yeah. Or you can just become a capitalist entity, which is what he's done. The ticker is called G-D-JT. Seriously.

It's his initials. It's his initials. So he's floated himself. He's floated himself. Having looked at Trump's body, he would float extremely well. And Charles, can I just note as well, this is the day on which we're recording this shortly after it's become official that he has managed to find the $175 million he needs to get his bomb. Oh, what a coincidence.

Where did he find it? So this is the case from New York State about defrauding his estimates and getting the bank loans and so on. He was supposed to pay $455. They knocked it down to 175 and he sorted it out. So he's not going to lose Trump Tower, apparently. Although it sounds, though, even if he did, he'd just sell it to, what, DJT Limited. And so the whole point is, it's now a legal way to give Donald Trump money regardless of anything, right?

How extraordinary. And so what on the is, and the whole point is he's got fools as followers, and they just will buy anything he tells us to her. So let me say, so he did the sneakers. He did the Bibles, the Trump branded Bibles, which by the way. So the Bibles is brilliant. And that's a whole different thing, which is what it allows all the far-right Christian churches in the entire South of America. If you've been to their America, you're talking like there's about 80 million people in the southern states of America who all have to go to church if they want any level of security around health care or job security. Because if you're not seen at your local church and you get cancer, you die.

Like, because it's all about go-fund this for your church. All right. And if you, if you're not seen at your church and you work for like local general dollar store or chip fillet or whatever, they'll kick you out. Yeah. And you'll lose your health insurance. Yeah, exactly. You lose everything. So you have to go to church in those, you know, lower, what is it, 27 states or whatever.

So what the churches can't do is they can't donate directly to Donald Trump's election campaign because they're charities. Like, you can't be seen to be political. Of course not. You can buy $60. per piece Bibles. Apparently printed on incredibly thin and shit paper. Yeah, yeah, which would cost like six cents to make.

And that is a way of campaign financing. What I love about the Bibles as well, just to slightly diversify on this, is that it's not like, as when he grew up in the church, generally Charles, the Bible has the Old Testament and the New Testament. These ones just seamlessly include the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Constitution, Declaration, Independence,

all this stuff. Well, I think that that is the new Bible. Church and state together as one. Yes. No separation whatsoever. And I mean, what is the U.S. Constitution, but the Third Testament? It's the handed down word. The newer testament from the founding fathers.

We're just strange, Charles. Why did they need to amend the perfect constitution so many times to add the guns up? Anyway, we digress. Shut up, Dom. Well, that's brilliant. So he's selling the Bibles. But this, I've heard this describe Charles as a meme stock. Oh, yeah.

So there's a couple of theories on it. The first one is that it's just there to funnel money by foreign governments to Donald Trump. Sure. I mean, that seems plausible. Much easier than running a hotel, I would have thought, in Washington, D.C. There's also the belief that it's a meme stock or at least a pump and dump scheme. And I think that's true of all stocks, though, in America now. Yeah, that's just legal.

That's just capitalism. Yeah, which is what you do is the insiders go, oh, this is worth a billion dollars. This is worth a trillion dollars. This is worth six, seven, seven, seven, hundred. billion, and then everyone, all the retail investors buy in at this enormous price, all the insiders then exit as soon as that's been pumped up enough. And I think that that's what's happening at the moment. So, I mean, why can't it be both?

You know, like, look at, it's brilliant. Hegel had this whole idea of dialectics. Like, you don't need, you know, like, two things. You weren't expecting the pivot to Hegel either, were you? Two things can be true at once. Yeah. You know, like, you can actually hold things in tension. And why not be both the pump and dump stock as well as a way to money laundering campaign funds to Donald Trump?

Well, you can at the same time be someone who a court has found raped a woman and also the beloved Republican candidate who the Christian writer is backing. You can be two things at once. That is literally Hagellian dialectics right there. I've got an update on the stock, by the way, right after this. The Chaser Report, news you know you can't trust. So, Charles, I don't know if you're across the US stock market right now, but as we record... Is it being dumped? Donald Trump's social media company, DJT, is it as it trades on it?

I am. The Trump Media and Technology Group, it's fallen by more than 20%. Well, it's a mere blip, Dom. So Trump's net worth is now down by a billion. It was valued at 11 billion initially, which meant that he had far more money than he needed. So everyone was hoping that he'd be bankrupt. up than have to sell often or whatever. Not at all. But the fascinating question is, was it Trump who dumped his shares to get cash? I mean, I would have if I was him. I think that unfortunately

there's rules around him. Well, not that rules particularly affect him. So he owns 60% of this thing. Yes. But the thing is he wasn't allowed to sell it for the first 90 days. Yeah, I should say, I should say, there's a six month waiver on that. But presumably he just got Eric to buy a bunch of them And then, dumb out of... How extraordinary. So what an amazing way of... Hey, son, I've got a great stock tip for you. I'll give you a hard.

What an amazing way to just bounce back. It's crazy. But Dom, we haven't even got to the thought starter of this episode, which is, I think Chaser should do the same thing. Like, we've got a whole series of suckers out there who follow us regardless of whatever we're doing. How are the five? How are the $5 a month's description

is going, by the way? We promise bonus episodes. Sorry, we will do some. We really will. We're just busy. No, but what I'm saying is all those suckers out there who listen to the Chaser every day.

Thank you. What we do is we get them to buy the Chaser. To buy the whole of the Chaser. Yeah, the whole of the Chaser. That'd be great. It's for sale. The whole thing. Yes.

What's your valuation? No, 10 billion. 10 billion. 10 billion. Are you putting it on the ASX? or are you going to float it in NASDAQ? Well, it's got to be one of those corrupt SPAC reverse takeover things. Because it wouldn't meet any regulatory levels of...

So it's a SPAC is a special purpose acquisition company? Is that what it is? Yeah, and so the whole thing about SPACs, right, is that... I mean, they're a complete fraud anyway, but what they're supposed to not do. In fact, by law, what they're not allowed to do is know what they're going to buy before they set it up. Oh, okay. So you buy into an entity and it, suppose, supposedly with a veil of ignorance, like a John Rawls-style veil of ignorance,

that just sort of goes, I don't know what I'm going to buy. I'm going to go shopping. I'm going to look for something good value, right? Oh, the Trump Meter and Technology Company. And this one has all the hallmarks of a completely, you know, criminal enterprise where they didn't do that. They knew exactly what they were going to buy. everyone bought it knowing that it was a spec set up to buy the Donald Trump company,

and then they bought it, right? And that's just not allowed by securities law. Luckily, who you're going to appeal to? I don't know. The Trump appointed Supreme Court? What a laws matter anymore? It doesn't matter. Oh, I think laws are so 2019.

They're lame. They're boring. What a drag. No. Like, you know, there was a law, Charles. The whole time Trump was president, there was, I can't remember the name of it now. Was it, emoluments? I can't remember the word.

Oh, yeah, monuments. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A word, there was a law that was stopped people such as a president from getting any money from foreign regimes. But he just set up a hotel and everyone bought rooms and expensive services and whatever. But also he did like $13 million worth of trade with China during that period. Sure. With Chinese Communist Government Party controlled entity.

I mean, his company set up new hotel deals all around the world and this kind of stuff. Nothing was stopped. His daughter got huge deals out of China during that period. Remember, she set up a whole handbag factory in China? All the things of the various Eastern European politicians, too. So, no, it doesn't matter. Well, this is good. If you can help us, if you can help advise us on floating the Chaser,

podcast atchaser.com.com. Send us an email. It reminds me of my idea of Charles to start a hedge fund, the satirical hedge fund. Well, why can't Chaser diversify into hedge funds as, but that's our growth story. Oh my God, that's how great. That's the reason why you should invest in Chaser because so far it's been a failed media. Yeah, it's been a failed video, right.

And with some nice moments. There's some nice moments on the way, that's right. Great brand. As a business shocking. Great brand except that no one ever wants to hire it because it's too toxic. But as a hedge fund, the possibilities are endless. So the idea with the hedge fund was to raise all this money and use it to sort of intervene in the market in an amusing way.

No, no, I think in a profitable for us way. Yeah, totally. I think the way it should work now is not so much out of, like it's not a comedic hedge fund. I think it's a self-enrichment headhead. Oh, yeah, it was supposed to make money and then use that to do fun stunts and stuff. Oh, I see. But also I thought we could tamper with the market. So, for instance, wouldn't it be hilarious if suddenly everyone switched to Vodafone?

Stuff like that. Yeah. Just turn things upside down. Wouldn't it be amazing if suddenly Channel 10 became a value done. Because what you could do is, what you would do is you get everyone to switch to Vodafone, then no one would be able to be contacted. That's right. And you'd trade on that.

You trade on that as well. Get them silence. Digital detox. That's fantastic. Also, I wanted us to buy Southern Cross Austereo, which I think we could have afforded to do. Oh, we easily could afford that.

That's like our old employer. Yeah, that's right. So we buy that. I have to pull out of the deal with A. And we finally get to have a radio show. But who wants to be in business with Kyle and Jackie? No, we don't. When you can be in business with Dom and Charles.

With Dom and Charles. That's right. Absolutely right. So look, this is, if you know how to do this stuff and have many millions of dollars lying around, we will help you spend it on fun stuff. Promise. I'm thinking at least $10 billion.

So, Charles, I like your vision. I like the fact that this was all come up with when you're drunk. Does that mean that if people sue you for... Drunk on enthusiasm. Later, that you can say you're intoxicated. Is that how it works? Oh, yeah. I have no criminal responsibility for this podcast.

So the other thing we could do, Charles, is set up a social network, like Truth Social. Apparently, they're claiming it has 9 million newsers, and apparently it's got nothing like that. So all we need to do is set up a social network where people, what about a social network where people just share stuff that they find fun? Well, we own the URL. Back in the day, Cam, the former editor of the chaser,

wrote a social network called Chasebook. Chasebook? Yes. And... Well, Facebook's about to stop sharing news. For a little while, Chasebook was open to, you know, invitees and stuff of that. And we started to go...

It was very computer intensive. Like, it was surprising how much computer power you need to fuel the social network. This is a great idea. But the thing is, the other day, Chasebook got infected by bots and started. Well, they're users we can market to take to market. Not about our server company was pointing out that we were being used by Russian bots to, I don't know, do some bot invasion into Japan or something. It was like part of a DDoS attack.

And I had to not just shut down that server. because they shut it down, and they went, Chasebook is still being used. And then they went, you need to destroy the server. And there's a button on the, on our server website called Destroy. That's great. So I backed it up first and then I destroyed it. I think we should spin offchasebook.com.

What a great idea. Chasebook.com. Have we got the dot com? Yeah. Oh, fantastic. All right, if you can help us with that as well, we'll need people to actually run it, to build it and run it. But I think, like, if it sounds so boring.

Right, but all the other social networks. Who wants the run a social network? No, not me, but the people we pay with the money we get from floating the chaser. Oh, yeah, and it'll be like, it'll be psychopaths, weren't it? It'll be Mark Zuckerberg-style people to go, oh, what I want to do is manipulate people. No, but the premise of it is unlike all of the other ones. Oh, yeah, what's the premise? It's stupid shit to waste time.

That's right. Actually, I'll tell you what the premise of Facebook was. It's the anti-social network. So you could only downforce things. And Cam, very early on when there's actually a fundamental problem with this, which is sort of anti-viral. Like, it's just depressing to be on it. But I just saw it's such a great idea.

The only thing you do is such an Aussie social network. Is that you say, nah, nah, nah. That's very funny. Yeah, not sure about that. Nah, not, don't like that. Well, maybe we should do the opposite of. I reckon Craig. Craig would have loved that.

back in the day. Oh, yeah. My psychological scars tell me that he would have. But there's also bullshit social, the opposite of truth social. Oh, but yeah, that would be quite... Bullshit social, that would be very good. And every time Donald Trump posts, we could just basically post a parody of it. And I think what we do is we link it in.

Do you know the new phenomenon? You know how there's a theory of Facebook death? Have you heard about this? No. Just in the last couple of weeks. So there's a set of memes that are taking over Facebook. an alarming clip. Yeah.

And they're all of Jesus. Have you seen this? No. AI generated images of Jesus. Hallelujah. And so what is happening is these very, very large Facebook pages are gathering steam and they're sort of starting to take over the whole of Facebook. And they started out with these sort of AI generated images of Jesus, which sort of seemed

a little bit plausible. Like he's a Jesus buying a burger or something like that. And they've got increasingly weird. Like, there was one the other day, which was Jesus as a crab, holding a crab. At last. Yeah, with two sets of legs, right. And then there's another one of an African child who made a Jesus out of cans, but he's also part of the sculpture that he's made.

This is getting weird. I presume that the African child turned up when you used Google. Google's AI to look for a white child. Well, no, but the whole thing is. So what has happened is, that's right, exactly. But the thing is, there's a theory that actually AI is going to take over Facebook, because what is clearly happening is a whole lot of stolen boomer accounts, are liking all these accounts.

Oh, the boomers have died and the bots have taken over. And so they're increasingly expanding across the footprint. And because the AIs are both in control of what is liked on Facebook and what trends on Facebook and what is generated on Facebook, It's creating this self-generating loop of content. It's getting weirder and weirder and weirder and weirder. And Facebook is going to collapse in on itself in this AI-generated boom in AI-generated content. Charles, the content you're talking about sounds dramatically better than all the Facebook content I've seen in a very long time.

Especially Chase's stuff. Yeah, I mean, my God. That sounds brilliant. All right. So we're going to float. We're going to start a hedge fund and Chase Book is going to go live. Honestly, we will do this. We have nothing to do with our lives.

Yeah. Just get involved. If you want to help us fund it. Okay. All right. Our gear is from Road. We're a part of the O'Connorclist Network. Jiles, we'll be back tomorrow.

Slightly more sober. Sober in judgment. In judgment. Yeah. Okay. Catch you then.