The Chris Cuomo Project - Trump Picked The Wrong Fight With Canada

Episode Date: August 27, 2026

Kevin O’Leary (investor, entrepreneur, and Shark, ABC’s “Shark Tank”) joins Chris Cuomo for a wide-ranging conversation about Donald Trump’s economic challenges heading into the midterms, the escalating trade fight with Canada, and what America needs to compete in the AI and energy race. O’Leary argues that despite strong markets and corporate performance, Trump has a problem at the kitchen table: small-business owners and everyday Americans are still feeling the effects of high energy, food, and operating costs. He explains what he thinks Trump could change before November, including easing tariffs and focusing more directly on the economic pressures facing small businesses and the heartland. Chris and Kevin also dig into Trump’s increasingly contentious relationship with Canada and Prime Minister Mark Carney, whom O’Leary calls “smart as hell.” They debate whether Trump’s approach to tariffs and trade is ultimately hurting American interests, how Carney has benefited politically from standing up to Trump, and why the economic relationship between the U.S. and Canada makes a prolonged trade war difficult for both countries. Plus, O’Leary discusses his massive investments in energy and AI infrastructure and responds to the growing backlash against data centers over their use of water, power, and other community resources.  Join The Chris Cuomo Project on YouTube for ad-free episodes, early releases, exclusive access to Chris, and more: https://www.youtube.com/@chriscuomo/join Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Save 20% on your first online Lucy order at https://lucy.co/CUOMO with promo code CUOMO! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The midterms, if we're lucky, are going to be all about the economy. And I think that it's not just going to be about the economy with all the different metrics, like you pick this number, I pick that number, and all the normally frustrating things. It's going to be about who's going to help small business. Who's going to get the monkey off their back that is the tariffs, that is the price pressure, that is the affordability pressure? And that is then going to be the second tier of connective tissue to who? To you?

Because at the end of the day, you don't. don't care how many metrics there are. It's what's going on in your pocket when you walk into that polling booth. Okay? And I wanted to talk to somebody who gets this because they invest in it and they understand it. And look, is he a political conservative? Yeah, maybe. Does he like things about Trump? Is he supported him? Certainly. But I don't want to talk to him about the politics of it. I want to talk to him about the business realities that are underlying what's happening in our economy and what they mean for the prospects of change in our politics. Specifically, what's going on in Canada.

You have to look at what's going on in Canada. Why? I'll tell you. I'm Chris Cuomo. Welcome to the Chris Cuomo project. What's going on in Canada? This guy, Corny, he is the ultimate Trump foil. This guy's everything our president isn't.

He's super sophisticated when it comes to finance and economics. He ran the Bank of Canada. He's Canada through and through. He's got what they call the elbows up approach, which is, hey, I'm here. to make space for Canada. I'm here to fight for Canada. I don't give a fuck what Trump says. And he's not brash. He's not a populist. He's not a xenophobe. He's not a divider. He's none of those things. He's a sophisticated guy with an economics background who wants to do Canada right. And that's why he's causing such trouble to Trump. Because all Trump knows how to do is to shit on

somebody that isn't nice to him. So Carney's like, yeah, okay, I'm the guy with all the uranium. him. I'm the guy with all the raw materials. You need me. You want to have a fight. We'll have a fight. I got other places I can sell it. But I'm not just going to roll over for you. You're a jerk. And it's working for Carney at home. They have their own crises going on. They have their own culture of fear going on there and xenophobia and all these other things. I'm just saying he doesn't pitch it. Islamophobia is alive and well up there. They have all kinds of minority tensions going on. He just doesn't pitch that. That's not his thing. So why is he benefiting in, an environment like that. Oh, it's really interesting. Kevin O'Leary, Mr. Wonderful from Shark Tank,

is exactly tuned into this. He knows the guy. He knows the guys around him. He knows what they're about. He knows what the beef with Trump is about. And I'm also going to talk to him about the beef with beef. How is helping Argentina and lowering beef costs temporarily good for America when you're crushing our cattle industry? What happened to America first? Seems to me that more and more the politics of this administration, the policies of this administration are all about little micro-wins that they can sell for themselves at the cost of the many. And I wanted to talk to Kevin O'Leary because he invests in this space. He's not a guy who plays an investor on TV. He's an investor who plays a TV guy on TV. Kevin O'Leary, with what's going on with our economy and what it means for the midterms,

if you're a critical thinker, if you want to be different and not some mouth-breathing partisan, let's get after it. Kev, if we're lucky, if we're lucky, the midterms will be a blood battle about the economy, where it is, where it needs to be, how that meets with the expectations of the American people, and who sees it, gets it, connects to it, and has an answer for it. If we're lucky, okay? So let's pretend that we're going to be lucky. What do you think is the main line on the economy heading into the midterms?

Forget about for MAGA or for the disruptors or for whatever. Just if you're looking at it with clear eyes, what is the state of play? So I do have a pretty good lens on this from the context of how I invest in our portfolios. One of our portfolios, as you know, is venture investing. These are companies five to 500 employees in the U.S., but they end up accounting for over 50% of the jobs created in America, generally first and second generation family businesses, everything from farming right through to insecticides,

commercial kitchens for airlines, you name it. I'm an investor in this. And so I get to see the tear sheets every week. I see exactly what's going on and what's on their minds of the CEOs and the men who are running these businesses. So the trouble the current administration's having is tying these phenomenal earnings of the S&P 500, which have been spectacular. There is just no question about it.

86% of the companies this year so far, beating their earnings estimates at a time where we've got war, we've got tariffs, we've got all kinds of headwinds out there, you know, political instability, everything. And yet, why is this happening? And so it's been great. And the stock markets, you know, near. near all-time highs all of the time, but you don't feel it at the kitchen table. And the reason that's happening is input costs on energy, which is gasoline at four bucks,

caused by a whole bunch of reasons, but we know a lot of it has to do with what's going on in the Middle East. That's a real dinger, if you want to call it that, because every sector feels the pain of high energy, including all small businesses. And then you have this situation where food inflation is up 33%. And it's not just the cost of the protein. It's actually finding itself in distribution and warehousing fees. So because gasoline and diesel's up, when you truck something from a port in California over New York into the Midwest, costs a lot more money that it did two years ago, or you put it in a refrigerated storage facility. It's the little incremental things that have been picking away at affordability, that nasty word that both sides are using

against each other. And course, mortgages are now near 7%. So I can give you a whole host of things that make it more expensive. And so what Trump has to do, and he's started to do it, he's going out there and he's trying to tie the success of the economy and the policy to date to the benefit of everybody that's going to vote in the midterms. And that's... going to be his task. Trying to translate that because that's the narrative that matters.

It goes right back to, I can't remember which pollster who used this. He said, it's all about the economy, stupid. It was James Carville in a four-point bullet presentation. He had on a white board during the first Clinton campaign

and it was actually one of the lower points, but it's the one that stood the test of time and the not the genius behind it but the thought behind it was no one cares about the S&P 500

unless they're working in like three different cities it's an impressive number but the connection between Wall Street and Main Street is flimsy at best and I'll tell you who understood this very very well said it to me on national television during the 2008 financial crisis, when he said to me, these people are going to bail out the banks and the capital folks,

and they're going to screw the homeowners, and it's a shame, and it's what's wrong with government. And his name was Donald John Trump. And he said to me, you think Wall Street because you're in big media. Main Street is everything. You should bail out the homeowners, not the banks. Now, you can argue. whether or not he's forgotten that or now there's a better narrative for him. But in terms of the

politics of it, and I want to stick as much as we can to the economic realities of it, because I think that's most fair to you. But the idea that he's going to tie what's happening with the S&P 500, which, as you know, is overweighted to the AI space, to why that's good for you, who's not sure you can afford college, you know, you're one medical problem away from being broke and all the other things when he led into it saying affordability is fake. They made it up. It's not a real thing. Do you think he's on the winning side of that conversation right now? Not right now. And the reason, I deal with the kitchen table narrative. I deal with them every day when I talk to a woman running an insecticide business in Ohio.

She's taken care of two families with that. She's successful. She has to distribute her product all over America. It's insecticide that's actually animals can eat. It's vitamin C and lime. And so it's a very in-demand product. She happens to have a family lime farm. I mean, you can't make this stuff up.

So I talk to her and say, what's on your mind? And she's telling me, look, my input costs on energy are through the roof here. I need diesel fuel. And I'm hurting. And this is eating my margins. And I didn't ever pay this much for diesel. So you got to think about, you know, everybody gives advice to Trump every day. He gets it in both ears.

I totally understand how that narrative comes at him. And he understands, you know, from way back, if you want to, to win those seven states, it's the people at the kitchen table. And he did it last time, and now he's got a real task ahead. Here's what's interesting about this. Let's say you wanted to fix this El Pronto before November, and you wanted to make those changes. You would try and figure out where do I take tariffs to zero between now and year end? What areas do you? Do you, we, do we? Do you, I actually turn off, I put a moratorium on any increased cost of distribution or any increased cost of food or protein or anything that's affecting the farmer or affecting the small business. And you just said,

my policy is going to give relief to small business in America where you're getting more than half the jobs and more than half the votes, I might add. And so if that narrative shifted and all of a sudden the policy starts coming out, yeah, we love AI and we love the big, compute story and all that, but I'm going to take care of Heartland America here for a few months. That might work because you have to win the trust of those people that in the back end, the next two years of your administration, if you want to hold the house, and I'm just thinking what every other, you know, investors thinking, because I look at it from a policy perspective of where I risk capital every day. So I care about politics only in

the sense that it influences policy. I don't care about politicians. I care about the policy they make. And so I'm thinking to myself in his inner circle that that's the narrative they're having right now. What are we going to do to take care of small business? And I bet you're going to start to hear a lot of that on these stump speeches as he cruises around the country. I think it's going to be a good thing. So I was telling Kevin before we started, I don't like that CNN Thunderdome for him. Look, I miss being at CNN. I wish them well. I'm not a hater. But that story is about professional yappers in a gotcha contest. And that's not what Kevin O'Leary is. I don't care what you think about him as a celebrity or whatever you think. I'm telling you, this is a depth guy. That is not a show for depth. That's not what rates. It's not what the real zealot partisans want.

They see it as a sport. It's not a sport. And I think that back to what matters to Americans, America doesn't feel first. The Iran war. what they're doing over there, this cattle thing with Argentina, the most recent spat with Canada, it seems that they are not the priority. And that even if they're being told they're the priority, it really isn't. Like, oh, I'm doing this cattle thing for you guys. Well, not if you're a cattle farmer, you know,

and they're now complaining the American people, and the American people are hearing it. And the Canadian tariffs, no matter how much Trump tries, we're not going to hate you people, Keev. You're not going to get Americans to hate Canadians. You're doing a great job doing that and dividing us when it comes to immigrants. You know, it's not going to work with Canadians. But they are in disruption and division mode.

What you're saying makes a lot of sense, Kiv, if you have the tolerance to be positive, to be productive, to be about what you're about. Donald Trump does not believe that's what works best in politics. He's got to be attacking the other side. You're making a great point. I get it. But let's just dissect those. These are three important topics.

Let's go through all three of them, okay? Let's go Argentina beef. Beef prices are high. Protein prices are high. They're up 30%. And that's a supply issue. So, yes, we want to take care of the farmers, but we've got to get protein prices down on beef by about 30%.

We need more beef. Now, tariffing beef, when you don't have enough of it domestically, from hamburgers on to a steak, it's not a good tariff. That doesn't work. So you take a moratorium on that. You say till December 31st of 2026, there's no tariffs on beef coming from Argentina. So that's a very vertical specific.

Yeah, you take some heat, but I bet you the market smells the anticipated new volume. prices come down. And that's how you win at the kitchen table. Except it depends what they're listening to at the kitchen table. Because the cattle farmers are all putting out videos. They're getting on TV. And they're saying, hey, hey, you want to lower the...

Take care of us, Kev. Put something in, not to help Argentina. Put something in. We have beef. Help our cost structure. Help us with what you did to us. and fix that. Do what Kevin O'Leary said on Cuomo's podcast.

Put us first. Not Argentina. That's the way it's playing. He might be balancing how fast he can affect protein prices, but that is what's in the balance. But I like your thinking on it. And again, it goes right to my point. It's policy that matters.

When you make a policy change, it's going to have a cause and effect somewhere else. You just don't know what it is till it manifests itself. In this case, was protein prices going through the roof. Now, let's go to the input cost of energy, which does affect food prices because of the transportation costs. You know, the U.S. has the most efficient food distribution network on Earth,

and it's been around a long time, but it runs on diesel. That's how it works, and it needs the lowest cost diesel it can get. And to some extent, it runs on jet fuel because a lot of foods, fresh foods, frozen foods are flown around the country. So that's what, they'll just be. people are complaining about, they're saying that's a big cost. And who puts out the most diesel? Well, I mean, that's the problem.

Diesel prices right now are some of it's imported from not friendly people. I mean, Russia puts out a lot of diesel, and those facilities have been blown up over the last six months by very low, sophisticated drones coming out of Ukraine. And that's the price of diesel in Europe is going through the really. That's the price of starting a war against a free people and killing a lot of civilians, which Vladimir Putin did. I get that. I get that. But let's talk about getting the price of gasoline down from four to three bucks. So is the best way to fix the input cost, which is the fancy way of saying gas for the protein industry, as you're calling it, to help Argentina? or why don't you just go right to the costs and America makes a ton of, you know,

puts out a ton of diesel, why don't you give those guys a preference on it? Well, the answer is both. The way you solve it in a short-term basis on a demand pricing, you know, a price discovery of a commodity like beef, like protein, is you provide more product very quickly into the market and prices come down.

That's what's best for Trump. That's not necessarily best for America Because you're hurting our industry. Trying to solve for, if you want to solve for stable policy, if you're an investor like I am, I don't see anything change. I don't want to see the House change. I don't want to see the Senate change. I'm pretty happy with this policy for the next two years.

I mean, look, you can debate, you know, Trump. I keep telling people, I get calls every day about this, particularly this morning. I spent my whole morning from 6 a.m. talking about the Canada trade war stuff and specifically how it's going to affect. import cost in 21 states, some of which where I do a lot of business. You know, I'm a good guy to talk about this because I have a big, big, big investment in Canada. I've got a huge investment in the U.S. in multiple jurisdictions. And I know all these players in this passion play. I know who's at the negotiating table. I know them personally. And I know the struggle they're having

with this whole thing. But, I mean, the issue is, and this is the 30,000 foot view. And I want to think about it this way, Chris. This is the way I think about it. Let's talk about North America in terms of the cost of the economy of being efficient. Long term, long term, okay? Let's just take two examples. And I think, let's see if I can get you to agree with me on this. Just let's take two simple things that are very important to farmers and every American and every Canadian and every Mexican. Just two commodities. Number one, potash. fertilizer, okay. Number two, uranium. Now, why is uranium so important? Because everybody's figured out recently in every sector of the economy, we ran out of power. It wasn't just the data center story.

It's the grid is maxed out. We don't have any more power. Where's it going to come from? Well, the cleanest, remember nuclear power used to be a swear word 20 years ago, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, all that stuff. That tech is ancient. Yep. small modular reactors. And we are so far behind. And we, as you know, Kev, but for you guys, we created, and I'm not talking about just the bomb, we created the energetic use of nuclear fission.

We started it and exported it and gave it to the rest of the world. We got spooked, NIMBY and all these other things. And let's be honest, Big Petrol was very happy to see nuclear die on the vine. and now the rest of the world is all using it, and we're not. And they have absolutely done what Kevin said. I did a deep, deep dive into this a couple years ago. I actually had a partnership on the podcast where I was talking to you guys about nuclear and the realities today.

And it's such a shame that we're not, not only do we need it, not only do we have to upgrade the infrastructure, nobody wants to pay for it. Guy told me the other day, Kev, and I'm sure you guys will hear this at home. Oh, I'm glad you got rid of your Tesla, this electrician who's in the firehouse with me. He said, oh, I heard you got rid of that Tesla. I said, yeah, it was his shitbox. And he said, good, because if, you know, a couple more of those were in your development, it would have shut down the transformer box.

Like, we wouldn't have been able to keep the power going there. We would have brownouts on a regular basis. And I was like, well, you would have fixed that, though, right? He's like, no, there's nothing else. It's not set up for that. We'd have to set up all new poles and all this. And I was like, really? And that's just a little problem.

So nuclear, yes. And we don't even talk about it. You never hear about it. Never. Nobody's pitching nuclear, Kev. No one. Well, they're talking about it now in every state I'm doing business because they figured out. Not politically, I mean. Nobody's running on. I want nuclear energy. American technology that powered nuclear submarines decades ago has been advanced so far now that these small reactors are very, very, very efficient. But there's one thing they need.

Uranium. Enriched uranium to fuel grade. Okay. So where is that commodity? So I'm just giving you an example to tie these dots together. This is the kind of stuff I do. Last week, I flew up to a place called Lalosh, Saskatchewan. You've never heard of it. It is so far north, the trees are only four feet high because there's no daylight.

I stood on top of the world's largest supply in the free world of uranium. 30,000 pounds per year is going to come out of that mine. Now, where is the demand for uranium? number one on earth, the United States. It needs 50,000 pounds of uranium right now per year, and it only makes one million pounds. So it needs 50 million pounds. It makes one million pounds. Those are the right numbers. Where's it going to come from? It's going to come from Saskatchewan. The only place it can come from, unless you want to do business with Nimbia and, you know, some other country that's controlled by a Chinese mine, like that's what's happened to uranium.

And so let's just think about the tariff on that. Do you think we're going to tariff? uranium coming out of Saskatchewan at 50%. I don't think so. How about potash out of the West Coast in Canada? Nah, that's not going to happen. These two countries are getting together 100% tariff free in the future for one reason. They have to economically defend off China. That's what's going to happen unless you want to speak Chinese in four years. So the way I look at it is, you know, there's a little tiff that happened this morning. That's what I told all the press. Yes, it's a little, it's a marriage and that we're having a fight. get over it. This thing will get fixed. It has to get fixed. I'm not worried about it, and I'm investing in uranium because I know it's a commodity that can only go one direction north.

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And look, here comes what you need to know, the fine print. Lucy products are only for adults of legal age, and every customer is age verified. Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. I agree with your analysis completely, and I have learned from it. But you are ignoring a factor that matters more than the analysis itself, which is regrettable, but politics is about perception, not always reality. And reality gets beaten by perception, probably eight out of ten times. the perception is, yeah, the reason we're having this tiff is because the husband and the marriage

is being a jerk and he's looking for fights and he's picking on his wife, even though he knows he needs her and he's going to even even more because they're going to have another kid soon. And he's being a jerk gratuitously because he thinks it makes him look tough. That's the problem going into the midterms for this president. It's not just which metric you want to pick to look at the economy, all right, which is the beauty. of economic political reckoning, which is there's always another factor, another factor, another way to look at it. It's the easiest issue to play with politically, toughest to reconcile with on the retail level

of the voter, except for one thing. At the end of the day, they simplify it too. And they go all the way down to just their pocket. They look in their pocket as they go into the poll and be like, yeah, I just know you gave me 50 different reasons. Here's mine. Uh-oh. I'm scared. I can't get another car this year. I'm not going to be able to get another car.

Fuck you. That's what it comes down to. And I think that that's the problem for Trump is that it's his choices that put us there. And that's what you should do. And so if you actually create a tariff war on aluminum potash uranium energy coming out of Alberta, for example, all kinds of rare earth. We're going to lose. Out of Canada that the American economy needs. The downside's bad. It's bad. Yeah, but nobody's asking for it. We never heard the word tariff in the campaigns. I can assure you this morning, there's 21 states in the U.S.

where their number one trading partner is Canada in both directions. They're not too happy. So why is he doing it? You know, I think my personal opinion about this is, you know, in listening, which I do, I go to Washington, I listen. I go, you know, I'm in Canada. I listen. I listened to the players at the negotiating table.

In the 60s, Canada played rough. They played tough. They said, look, we're going to put quotas on cars coming into Canada from the U.S. where they're all manufactured in Detroit. We want to manufacture the cars that are sold to Canadians. Let's set that up. And it was set up in the 60s. And big players like Ford and GM came to Canada.

Trump and commerce want to change that. They don't want so much of the American automotive industry in Canada. And a lot of the dispute in the last hours of this negotiation were around which cars, which trucks, which format, what tariffs. My personal opinion on how to resolve this would be simply to say, let's reduce. the amount of manufacturing of cars in Canada, except let's keep the manufacturing of the components in Canada. And the reason you have to do that is Canada has all the raw materials. It also has a lot of the IPs,

and that a lot of the intellectual property on those parts like suspensions and everything else are built in the supply chain now. So maybe the compromise is more about that than it is trying to erase the Canadian in automotive industry where hundreds of thousands of jobs are in a province like Ontario. Now, I'm not saying I know better on how to negotiate this at the table myself, but I talk to a lot of investor. Why not? Why wouldn't you know better, Kevin? We have seen absolutely no level of sophistication out of Besson and his guys. I mean, let's be honest, I'm not shitting on Besson, okay? I know his pedigree. I know there are people who are impressed with his acumen. I get it.

I'm just saying tariffs are a bust, okay? They are a bust in the American political marketplace right now, period. The Big Beautiful Bill is a bust, and I know that that's something that has so many different components, and it depends on how you look at it and when, and what I'm just telling you, the number that counters with the Big Beautiful Bill is $4 trillion in debt, the most ever bigger now than our GDP. That's what the critical thinker hears. That's the analysis for that voter. So I don't see they're savvy.

Why wouldn't you be better? This is what you do with your money. No, I get it. But let me walk you through how this happened, how we got here this morning or last night when Carney went on the air. It's not that complicated. Whether you like Trump or you don't,

you have to understand how he operates. There's the difference between what is noise and what is signal with Trump. I've learned that myself through both his mandates. and I respect how that works. It doesn't matter what I think or I like. It's irrelevant. It's understanding how the gears work.

So let me take you back just a few months. Carney won a landslide in terms of how he won in Canada. Nobody saw it coming with his elbows up strategy. And he won a minority government, but just a few months later, got a majority. as some of these seats moved over to his side in the Canadian parliamentary system. Now, Chris, I want to explain something to you about the parliamentary system

and a lot of people don't know in terms of policy. There's 343 seats in Canada. 78 of them are in Quebec. You don't mess with Quebec ever if you want to keep your majority. A majority government in Canada, this is the British parliamentary system, that person, the prime minister,

is more powerful than an American president in terms of control of policy in his jurisdiction. It's whatever he personally wants. Because of the coalition and the seats. Correct. Okay, so let's go back to why we're at where we're at this morning. World Series, Dodgers versus Toronto Blue Jays.

I was at the game. It was one of the greatest matchups ever. It was fantastic baseball. Carney had just arrived on the scene. He didn't have all his ducks in order. He couldn't have. He just got there. So he's working with the premiers of each province, and there's Doug Ford who's picking a fight with Trump.

It's a personal thing. That's what it looked like to the outside. Ford airs a commercial during the weekend of the Dodgers matchup with the Blue Jays. It airs in the United States. It has Reagan in it. This is now documented. Trump gets really pissed. Okay? Personally, pissed. The week before, Jameson, Greer, this is well known, had a deal on the table with Canadians, including aluminum at 10% tariff. Didn't get signed Thursday, didn't get signed Friday. And this is personal speculation on me, okay? This is all on me telling you what I think. It didn't get signed on Monday either because Trump was pissed.

I heard the same thing. Okay, so now where are we at? The only way this gets resolved. is the way to work with Trump, and he's made it known to every leader on earth, and whether you like it or you don't, it's the way it is. And by the way, Carney is one smart dude. He's used this fight to even become more popular in Canada. I think it's an all-time high rating for a prime nation. Yeah, and which is interesting because, you know, there's no reason for you guys to be following Canadian politics.

I do, not just because it's contiguous with New York, but it's just, it's a really important alliance, you know. And also I've always been a little jealous of their political system. I actually think the parliamentary system has certain benefits. There's chaos there. There's chaos in the UK. Nothing's perfect. But there's not gridlock the way we have here.

But that's for another day. So Canada is in a bad place. They've got a lot of, they got a lot of Islamophobia going on. They've got a lot of reckoning of who they are and who they're not. they're not in a nice phase. They're in a scared and an angry phase. And for Corny to be able to negotiate that as a guy who's not a populist firebrand is impressive. And I want your take on that as well.

But go ahead. No, no. I have been completely impressed by how Carney has operated. And he's got critics. I'm not one of them. I mean, I look at this and I say to myself, big picture as an investor, including sovereign wealth guys I deal with and pension and universities. and hedge and family office. Here's what I say.

The richest country on earth per capita is Canada. But it's all in the ground. Unfortunately, for the last decade, bad policy took it to the bottom of the G20 by every measurement, including debt per capita, whatever else you want to look at.

It's in the bottom quartile. Carney is going to change all that. And he's got the population behind him. Right now it's the TIF with the United States, but it makes no sense long. term. The largest consumer market on earth is the United States. The largest gathering of wealth that is going to be consumed by that consumer market is sitting in the ground or in the water or in the energy or in the gas, in the oil, in the uranium, in the potash of what Canada has.

These two countries are going to get together 100%. And what Carney is basically saying, and he's got, we'll see if it happens, but on the 14th and 15th in Toronto, during the Toronto Film Festival, he's invited every sovereign wealth firm on earth to Toronto to talk about investment opportunities in Canada. And those are people that look beyond 24 months. They think 10 years, they're infrastructure investors.

And they're saying themselves, wait a second, if I invest in Canada, I have the advantage of low cost of energy and a vicinity right beside a contiguous border with the largest market on earth and two countries that no matter what anybody says love each other anyways. And you talk to any veteran here that served in the Second World War

that's still alive in Canada. Look, they're brothers with their people. Yeah, I mean, look, that's why I started this with, we're never going to hate Canada. You did say something, though, that I think we need to re-examine. You're thinking as always, always is pollucid. I love listening to Kev. Not really a shark tank guy, but I love how he sees

the world because he's so plain as an investor that like here, here's what I do, here's why I do it, this is how I understand it. Very helpful to me. Look, you can hate Trump, but this is the way it is. I think that is going under a period of reexamination on the right because actually, no, that's not how it works. Politicians change how they are, Kev, because they have to meet the needs of the people who put them where they are. Oh, but you knew what you were getting. No, you knew what he was saying. That's what you bought. You bought the cell. You didn't buy the outcomes. And on immigration, it worked until it didn't, which is making ice the heat. And now that's a huge problem. I deal with that enough, not today. But I actually think that how Trump is doing it is the problem. It is the

Iran problem. It is the Canada problem. It is the cattle problem and the tariff problem. That it's not love them or hate him. This is the right policy. They're not the right policies and they're not the right ones because of how he does it. A fight with Canada right now, Carney is a real, just for you guys at home, Keb knows all this. He is a really, he is a really, really sophisticated economist and financial expert, okay? It is very rare to have someone like that running a country. And it's a really good argument about maybe that's what we need, not a governor, which usually is what you default to, but a real economist who comes in making a pitch about how he wants to use the economy and the people buy it or not. Carnie now has a great foil in Trump.

Carney now has a bad guy for his people. Carney, who is not a populist, okay, now has what populists look for, which is a bad guy, which is someone that scare you, someone to blame. I'll tell you, you're right about what's wrong. Look at him. That's what Trump gave Carney, and Carney is starting to use it more and more. And I think it's one of the reasons for his popularity. He didn't need to come in with some scary version of xenophobia.

He just points across the border and says, this guy's trying to fuck. every day. I'm not going to let it happen. I'm a tough guy too and I happen to be smart. And it's working for him. Yes, I would agree with that analogy, but let me put it back in the context of what makes all economies work. I don't get to have an opinion about whether I like or dislike any politician. It's useless information to everybody whether I like or dislike any politician. The only thing that matters to people like me is what's the policy because I have to make decisions and put people's money at risk, not about today or tomorrow, but returns for the next three to five years. That's about as far as I can see out there and talk

about in terms of what's going to happen. And I take that responsibility very seriously and have done that my whole life. And so I don't have any time, you know, when I'm on a call this morning with a team that we're discussing allocation of capital to various investments in various states and provinces. I don't want to hear about Trump's Arrangement Syndrome or I don't want to hear about, you know, you like Carney, you don't like Carney, you like Doug Ford. It doesn't matter.

It doesn't help make the investment decision. What's the policy? And so, you know, if Trump were to say to me, hey, hey, we're going to tariff oil coming in at Alberta. at 50%, which he's never going to do, because that's going right to Cushing, that would be a problem for investors. But I don't think that's going to happen. I think the fight is what, you know, Ludnik got involved in around the car thing. He's been very clear. He's been very, very clear about how he feels about the automotive industry. And I know the counterparts in Canada have been listening to

him. The idea that the administration would ever mess with the French language is impossible for because of the 78 seats, Chris. 343 seats, 78 in Quebec. He can't mess with that. Ever, ever. There's no choice. And I know that a smart guy like Jameson Greer, who speaks French, by the way,

understands that. And so that's not really what's going on there. There's a way to resolve this stuff. But from my point of view, it's going to be short-lived. It's political. You have done the exact right analogy about how Carney has

taken this energy and turned it into a remarkable force behind him. I have never seen anybody in the parliamentary system pull off what he's done ever. No one else has either. And this guy is smart. He's smart. But he's dealing with someone who also has the largest market on earth, just a few miles away from him. He can't ignore that. There has to be a resolution to this. There will be, and I tell every investor this morning that I've talked to, and it's been since, I don't know, 5.45 in the morning from Europe and the Middle East, guys, this is just a passion play. It's just a drama that makes politics interesting. And I mean, you've nailed that in what you just said. The problem is where politics and policy intersect is that the what is affected by the who. The problem with Trump isn't just his policy. A lot of the politics. or just regular Republican policies. It's the, what they'll say, oh, the chaos, people never know.

He keeps him guessing. That's not always a good thing. And, you know, people got, you have to know your history. Donald Trump never ran anything. Yes, he was known for chaotic things and he was known for, you know, being way out over his skis and way underwater in a lot of things and needed to take money from bad people on bad terms and he would walk away from deals and there was chaos and there was destruction but he never ran anything over time and that's a big differentiator so i'm going to tariff you 50 percent you bastard

and i'm going to say a lot of bad things about you and how you dress and you're like yeah i'm going to wave it away he'll change yeah but you don't know how and you don't know if he will you don't know if he's going to see a commercial or that your wife is going to say something to him in a way that he doesn't like and he just won't deal with that country so that's why i think the who is under very specific analysis going into the midterms. There is no... Look, I can't disagree with you, but the thing about Trump, and I said it earlier,

I have to, I have to try and hear the signal. I have to try and hear the signal of where he's going. I totally get it, but the signal is best in. The signal is Besson. The signal is Lutnik, who, by the way, I know you don't want to talk about the who, but, because it doesn't matter. I think on Lutnik it does. I think Lutnik, it does. I think Lutnik no matter what happens in the midterms is going to have to go. And I'll tell you why. For Trump to survive the most obnoxious level of corruption we've ever seen in self-dealing in the American presidency.

We've never seen anything like it. For him to survive it, he's going to have to have somebody else go down for something. I'm not saying Lutnik should get prosecuted. But I'm saying, I'm not saying you shouldn't either. but he's got to go. The conflicts with his sons at Canter with the tariffs and buying the tariff repays and what's going on with the rare earth stuff,

the conflict is so obvious and ugly that it is no coincidence that Lutnik was pushing tariffs when a lot of other people around the president were not because of what's happening with his sons. I think he's going to have to go. I don't, I have not heard an explanation of how to make it okay what Cantor is doing with the tariffs,

what Cantor is doing with rare earth. Nobody has helped me understand how to make it okay the way, the way, and people are going to find this unpopular, especially with the 9-11 anniversary coming up, but I'm a known quantity when it comes to my respect for what happened on 9-11. The idea that Cantor screwed people after 9-11

is not accurate. It started that way, it did not finish that way. That's a fair read on it, do the homework for yourself. But on the tariffs, I think Lutnik's got a big problem. Someone's got to go down. And I know it doesn't matter to you because you've got to figure out where to put capital

and what the signal is. I'm with you. But turmoil in management matters to you, right? Because you don't know what's going to be the policy if you don't know who's the guy behind it. I don't think it's going to stay the guy who it is right now. I'm just saying that. Yeah, I mean, here's how I look at that.

Again, I go to 30,000 feet and say to myself, Where does 52 cents of every dollar on earth get invested in every morning at 10? America. Yeah. And so what, you know, I do business with Cantor. I mean, they're a known bank. There are certain sectors of the economy that they're very, very well known in. And I do business with other banks and all of them.

I mean, I syndicate debt and equity. That's what I do. And so, you know, there's also the reason 52 cents comes to America is we have. have laws and we have the appellate court system and we have litigation. And if you break the law, I don't care who you are, you'll eventually pay the price. That's how it works. Now, I don't want to penalize Trump's kids that they're not allowed to do business because he's the president. I wouldn't want that on any administration. That's not American. That's not the way it works. And so, So, look, if you do anything to anybody and someone's got a problem with it, they're going to pursue you with litigation and the facts will come out through discovery.

But that doesn't change how capital comes into the market. I mean, you're speculating when you say Cantor's done something wrong. I have no idea. I have no evidence of that. I'm not saying that I know they've done something wrong. I'm saying that the narrative, the narrative. Well, I understand the narrative issue. But the narrative and the tonality of something versus actually syndicating a debt issuance or an equity issuance in their part of a syndicate.

I mean, you know, there's proof of a potential conflict. That matters politically. I don't spend much time on this. I don't spend much time. I make the assumption that given a mandate, like I like Lutnik, has to deliver on the mandate. If he doesn't deliver on the mandate, he doesn't keep the job. I mean, that's kind of how it works. And for all of them, you get rotulch.

of these people in and out of the administration. I just happen to know his views on the automotive industry. So I think about that from a policy perspective on how the outcome is going to be in the Canadian narrative with Ontario. I know Ludnik, and it's well known, it's documented this morning. He was very engaged through commerce on the automotive stuff. And so, okay, we know that's a problem.

But there's also a solution. I mean, I keep saying to myself, that's the tension, the tension, makes sense politically, and I think you've nailed it, as I said that earlier. But this story's not over, Chris? No, I hope not. Look, I hope not, but I'm just saying that the risk appetite, the risk appetite for the bullshit that goes along with getting to the policy that may make sense, I think there's going to be a reckoning that in the midterms. You don't like the Trump's style. I can't have an opinion on that because it doesn't matter to my decisions every day.

It's not like or not like. I think that's not like. I think that's, That's the re-examination point. Because I think there's an excuse structure built into that, not by you and how you're using it, but on the political side. People will say, look, you can hate Trump, but this is, no, no, no, no, no. You're making an excuse for why you're against the policy. Why are you criticizing the methodology? Why you're criticizing the approach. Why you're criticizing the impact.

You just don't like him. That's what kids say when you tell them they can't go out tonight. You hate me. No, I don't hate you. You've blown curfew three times. No, I don't hate you. The kid's house that you want to go to is a piece of shit. No, I don't hate you.

I just don't want you driving with these kids because two of them got dewees. Oh, no, you hate me. That's what they're trying to do with Trump. Oh, you just hate him. No, I hate division. I hate that the fabric of the country is where it is. I hate that it's all getting sliced up for advantage. I get the sense you're putting into it.

But imagine how, how useless that is for me. For you, I get it. For you, I get it. I represent people that put, invest money to get returns for families down the road. Right, but how do you do down the road when you don't know where he'll be two weeks from now on the same thing that he is today? I make some pragmatic decisions about what's going to happen on policy. And for example, in Canada, I'm going to go along the Canadian dollar if it softens. Because I know that in the end, the value of the Canadian dollar is actually,

it's assets. Right. It's only got 40 million people. And it's got all this stuff under the ground that you know has to come out at some point. The question is where and when and for how much. Totally smart. It never got out under the last guy. The last prime minister wasn't very good, as people have figured out now.

But Carney is a smart guy. Yes. And he knows what he's talking about. And he knows what he's talking about. And he's accelerating the permitting process. So guys like me get the signal from him. Go. I mean, that's all I mean.

going to happen in the next two years because if Carney says, which again, he's an interesting guy. I haven't gotten a full feel for him yet. I like how you called that his elbows, his elbows up strategy. Elbows up. Yeah. I think I think that's good because I think Carney is a sneaky tough guy. Like I think that like, you know, he doesn't present that way. He presents as a sophisticated guy. He's open and pragmatic. I think he's smart as hell. I think he's very smart, but I think he's tough, and I think he's capable of saying, oh, look what Trump just did. How you like that? And I think that Trump can't take a punch. So you don't know that in the next two years, if Carney's feeling that time's on his side and what's going on with him with other

dynamics, he may just play Trump as a bad guy and let Trump have his little stupid vengeance that only hurts me. And Trump could say, yeah, I'm not trading with Canada. I'm tariffing everything they have 100%. Karnie's going to be around for the next nine years. That's what they say. Yep. Well, I know that's going to be the case because right now he's got a roaring majority. Right. And so, and his policies will be whatever he decides they're going to be. So as an investor, I only need to hear from him and his administration, can I invest in this province on this project? Yes or no. Is it going to get a permit? If it's not going to get a permit, it won't attract any investment capital. Right. But he's giving you.

nods of stability and signal. Yes, and that's all I need to hear. But I do hear people saying to him, I've heard this from two guys who I'll talk to you about later if you want, who said to me, I used to speak up there a lot, you know, when I got fired from CNN, that all dried up. But I went up there recently for something. And I've been in touch with guys again,

and they said to me, you know, Carney has been told how to handle Trump, because he's a little bit of a different animal than Carney's familiar with from more sophisticated levels of finance. You don't have a guy who's a bullshit guy in a lot of those circles. You know, people won't do deal with them over time. He creates scared money, right? And that Carney has said consistently, yeah, no, no, I get it.

I don't give a shit. I'm not doing that. I'm not doing it his way. I'm not going to talk to him the way he wants. I'm going to fight for Canada, and I'm going to be tough. And I'll go with other allies. I'll fight him if he wants to fight. I'm not giving him what he wants because of how he is.

is. And that is unusual, right? Him and I, ironically, you were talking North America and you do have to see it that way. NAFTA, you know, North America free is now a problem because Trump made it one. But Canada and Mexico both have leaders who say fuck Trump, which is really interesting, you know, who needs us more than they do? No one. But both of them have a posture that their people have validated, which is, yeah, I'm not going to let this guy bully me. No, I really mean it. I know people say that and then they kind of defer, you know, like Sarkozy, you know, and all these other guys. I'm not going to do that. And neither has. Yeah, but, you know, let me add some patina to what you just said. Please. Let's just talk pragmatically, okay? Let's take the players underneath

Trump and Carney, one level down, okay? They're very rational people. So let's take Mark Wiseman, the Canadian ambassador to Washington. The guy comes out, he was one of the guys running, or he actually ran the Canadian pension plan, one of the largest on earth. This guy's a private equity guy. He's been around a long time. You know, we're for Black Rock, Blackstone. These are the guys he worked with for a long time. Then he took this mandate.

Most governors I talk to know Wiseman. They know him personally from investing in their state or their province. This guy's a global investor. Who better to have at the table in terms of, you know, discussing these issues than a guy like that. He's very rational. Jameson Greer was running the narratives back in the first Trump mandate, the first presidency. When he was dealing with NAFTA, 2, and all the rest of that, the guy knows the book inside out. And so you've got Pete Hooster up in Ottawa in trouble right now because he was supporting Trump's narrative.

on the, you know, buying Canada, 51st state. None of that, that's noise. That's never going to happen. That's never going to happen. And by keeping that narrative up, it's great for, you know, it's noise, but it's not stable. What is signal is these two economies are going to unify either in the next two years or in the third year, whatever.

So everybody like me knows that. We know that. But this part, yeah, it's volatile. I get it. But I live through volatility every day. I mean, it's like every day. I know. I know.

But I'm saying the politics of it are going to matter because of these midterms. Because what is your forecast for what the house looks like after the midterms? Because if it's, if he loses the house, it's just gridlock. I'll tell you what I want and I'll tell you what I think. Ordinarily, I would agree with you. Okay. I do something that is really unpopular, hence the shirt. that gets me shit all the time.

I change my mind. As I see things developing, I change my mind. Ordinarily, I would agree that when you have divided Congress, all they do is opposed, that opposition becomes their position, and nothing happens. I don't believe that anymore. I believe that the fringe aspecting of the partisans is so accelerated that,

you need shared power. You need shared power. You need some lever of accountability so that both sides have skin in the game and where there's some pressure on both to have something that they've done while they've been there instead of just saying, well, I don't, I don't, I'm not in power. They are and they suck. So I'm going to complain about them. I'm going to attack them, but I don't have any accountability. I believe that the fairest reading is that this is going to be closer than people expect. It's not going to be a landslide. I think it's the downside of the upside of the division, of the fringe and the extreme. I think that it creates smaller and smaller margins because you're not really dealing with a collective, with consensus. You're dealing with slices.

So I think that the Democrats are going to get the House. They are not going to get the Senate. I don't know what's going to happen in the Senate. There are too many things that I can't, I can't prognosticate. I can't take any analysis. There are too many seats that could go different ways. I don't see how the Democrats take it. Is it possible? Anything's possible. Is it probable? Low probability. Mid to high probability on the House. A big margin? No. So does it create a potential problem? Yes, I think that there's an offsetting benefit to the political dynamic, which is, well, you are in charge of the House. What are you putting on the floor? What are you doing? Are you making people aware of the conflicts of interest with ICE or with canter and the rare earth?

And you're putting it out there. You having hearings on this stuff that matters. You're staying consistent on it. There's some accountability there that the Democrats don't have right now. So I want that. Not because I'm a Democrat. I'm not. Okay?

Why? Because I think the parties are equal? No. I've never seen an American political party devoured by its fringe the way the Republicans got absorbed into MAGA. I've never seen anything like it. I think it's toxic. The Democrats, what about the DSA? I don't know. We'll see.

We'll see. But I'm not going to be scared by it by MAGA guys. I'll tell you that right now. Why? Because that's noise. There's almost no signal in the discussion about the DSA. Why? In politics, if you are right about what's wrong, Kev, and look, I'm not a socialist.

I don't understand it as a remedy for what's happening in this country politically. I don't see how you get to success. But if you're right. about what's wrong with the majority of people that you're asking for their votes. The solution is highly secondary to them, okay? So these folks on the left are right about what's wrong. People 70, 80 percent agree with what they're saying. What to do about it is something that most voters don't really pay as much attention to.

Because they're like, who knows if it's going to happen? Who knows if it's going to change? They don't ever really do anything, but at least they're right about what's wrong. And the biggest thing that people are angry about in America right now that matters is that there's something about the choices we make in our system that skews the capitalistic process in favor of the top. And it has to change. That's where they are.

What that means, what it looks like? I don't know. But that's where those DSA guys are. And that's a good place to be going into the midterms. So I'm not scared by the S because the S gets to a secondary concern that people don't care about and you see that. Two out of three Democrats say, yeah, I don't care about socialism. They don't say they're socialists.

They say, I don't care. And by the way, if I'm smart enough to have ever done a Google search, social democracy is not a scary thing to an American who wants to see things that seem more equitable. So that's my read on the state of play. I think the Democrats get the House. I think divided power is good in the space that we're in right now. now. And I think Trump is under heavy examination. And I think he's a very different guy after the midterms. I think he will be, even though he keeps saying I'm not on the ballot, he knows he's

on the ballot. And I think it's going to really change and demoralize his pace. That's what I think is going to happen. I think that he is not going to be the guy he is now after the midterms. Okay. So let me crystallize that. I gave you a lot. You can take any of it and discard the rest. Now, what that tells me, let's say, because I'm always interested in opinions, and I listen to them all the time, I'm a very, very lucky guy. I get to go to the hill, see any senator or governor I want because I represent the American dream. I create jobs through the whole shark tank persona. Most senators, kids want shark tank pictures. And so I go there, I walk in, and I meet the left and the right, the red and the blue.

And the difference is, without naming names, obviously, some politicians have executional skills, and others don't. Right. And it matters now to the voter. Who gets it done and who doesn't? Because that's measurable down at the city, municipal, state level. And I think you're going to see, in my interpretation of what's going to happen, And maybe more and more of this occurs in every election is,

show me what you've done for me and what you're going to do for me. And that proof in the pudding is that you actually pulled something off before, that you have executional skills. You just awarded that to Carney because he actually has a track record in England. He ran the Bank of Canada. I mean, he knows, you know. So we're going to be, we're looking for more men and women like that to lead in America from the mayor on up.

That's what we need. And I've learned in meeting all these people. I'm just so fortunate to be able to do this and go to 54 countries now where I'm known because of a television show. That's incredible how it helps me in business. But I meet the good ones and the bad ones. And I can tell the difference

between executional skills and a lack thereof. And if I just listen to you and say to myself, okay, the house rolls over and the Senate remains, you know, with Trump, that's gridlock. That doesn't change anything. It's business as usual for me, because the policy that was in place before the midterms is going to stay there with practically no changes for the next 24 months. That's the way I read that, and I'll go back to Washington and do what I do, because if I want to build something in a state, I got to go see the governor,

and I got to find out how are they pro? Can I get a permit? All that stuff. My whole investment theme for the next five years is energy. That's what I'm doing. I'm just doing energy. I can't find anywhere where they don't want more energy. And so I got what it takes. I have the right team. I've got the capital. I'm going to do energy. That's my next thing. So, hey, I got energy, which state wants it. You know, it's kind of like, that's how I think about it. Hey, y'all. It's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder, what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust.

Visit wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home. Let me ask you about one other thing, and I appreciate your time, Keev, and your perspective. Data centers are now seen as the new nuclear reactors. Not because people think they're going to fry your brain. Some do. But that's not as strong as it is with nuclear. But they have become a metaphor for corporate overreach and communities

paying the price. And what do you think of that as someone who invests in the space? I 100% agree with you. And I would, as a participant in the industry, and there's not that many of us that build these incredibly complex projects. The amount of complexity in this is unbelievable. And so it's very expensive. The permitting is very hard to get, the water use and everything else. So 22 years ago, when these things first went up in Virginia, not West Virginia, Virginia, nobody cared about water, nobody cared about heat, nobody cared about emission, nobody cared about air quality, nobody cared about light, nobody cared about anything. That's not the industry today.

And so I think what's happened is the industry itself, and I'm to blame as well, didn't communicate properly the merits of these projects and what they bring in terms of supporting the community, creating really high-end jobs and the technology that's so much farther advanced and the water usage, but mostly the taxes that we bring to these places in rural communities. You know, I think in the case of what I'm doing in Utah, within three years, I might be 80% of the operating budget of the entire county. That's what I'll be contributing through one project. In the first year, I'll be 30% of their operating budget.

I don't think you can ignore that. So you get the jobs to build it, artisan, AI-proof jobs, ironically, because they're helping to build something that will motivate AI. But you need them. For each gigawatts, you're going to hire 2,000 to 3,000 people to construct it, you know. Right. And so then you're going to have 800 to 1,000 high-paying engineering jobs. And the buildings themselves, the renderings of the new, remember, we're all building

new data centers now, the ones that have, just like your car radiators, it's an internal cooling system for the chips. And now the turbines, if you're using natural gas, they're half air cooled. So you're not using as much water anymore. Basically, analogy is a golf course is equal to one gigawatt of compute power. Whatever you're putting on a golf course in Utah,

you're probably going to put into the first gigawatt at Wonder Valley or Stratos. That's what you have to deal with, is that why do these people get to come in here and steal the water that we need for our communities? Why don't they have to pay for it? Why don't they have to make sure it's clean? Why is it all set up for their advantage and not ours?

What do you do with that? They should ask that question, The answer is we're not doing any of that. We have to get a water permit. That's a public process. We have to show exactly how much we're going to use. In our case, we're not using any electricity in Utah. We're building our own generation.

So we have every opportunity to give back to the state. Remember, there's FERC, so you have to go through a federal agency to attach to the grid. But I think they're going to modify the FERC requirements too, so you can expedite that. And if we have excess water, we're happy to give it back. I mean, you know, it's kind of interesting when, and I took a lot of heat on this, obviously, a national story, but it's not, Utah is not the only story. It's in every state, the litigation and everything else. And I say to people pragmatically, do you really think that I want to leave a legacy of destruction?

I'm the only guy in this industry that actually graduated from environmental studies. I know the inversion problem in the air in Utah. I studied it in school. I know all about it. And so to me, going through EPA and all of the processes and the applications is the discovery and the transparency that the people of Utah need and they're going to get it. And I think the rhetoric, when they start to see the amount of capital we're going to give back to the community is going to change. That's what I'm betting on because I don't think there's anybody else bringing as much capital to Utah than, I know, but you know what the devil in the details is?

One, they don't trust the government. So, yeah, you'll get your permits because you're Mr. Wonderful, and it's all rigged, especially with Trump, who's the most corrupt guy they've ever heard of. And the other thing that they have is, you know, you're going to give us money, but you're going to kill us. You're going to take what can't be replaced. It's like a silkwood thing.

That it's good, but there's this sneaky, terrible aspect to this that we're not going to find out for years later. You're sensitive to that because of your legacy, so what do you do with it? No, but I'm going to be there for decades, too. That's the whole point. These projects don't get built overnight. They're a very long cycle. For each gigawatt is $15 to $16 billion.

And so these are massive, massive infrastructure projects, and they create a lot of jobs as we spoke of. But there's something else at play that I think hasn't. The narrative's just starting. Do you want China to lead an AI? No. Do you want them to have? Do you want them to have? No, I want all the chips to come back out of Taiwan. We should have never had them there. It should never be that close to China. This is a nightmare. It's got to come back here. The Chips Act was something I didn't understand when they first did it. I didn't criticize it. I just didn't understand it. But now I understand why they were so, you know, preferential to a Taiwanese chip maker because you got to get it back in here. You got to start somewhere. I'm totally in favor of anything that does anything like that. Okay. Well, then you're in favor of data. centers on. You're more in favor of power. You can't power the amount of chips. I'm in favor of

nuclear power. I'm in favor of updating the grid. I'm in favor of the bond acts. I'm in favor of having as much infrastructure and the aspects of AI here as possible in America. I'm also in favor of treating AI unlike any other technology that we've ever had. And I think it should be more akin to what Saskatchewan will do with uranium. In all likelihood, what Norway did with. oil, which is this isn't a development. This is a resource. And it belongs to the people. Private sector can run it. Need private sector. They do it better. But this is going to work different. And, you know, the Trump guys are like, whoa, socialism. Hey, you just took equity positions in 30 different tech companies. Don't talk to me about socialism. You didn't even tell the American

people. You just did it. So I don't want to hear it. This is different. And if we let these guys who do the social media companies just have free reign with how they use AI, we're going to have catastrophes, Kevin. We're having catastrophes now. They're just quiet ones. Social media, the censorship, the lies, the algorithms and what they promote in our feeds. It's already going on in a way that I could never get away with anywhere I've ever worked in media. And they're completely protected from litigation. It's got to change.

Okay, but I'm asking a more important question. The Chinese have built 400 gigawatts of power in the last two years. Way ahead. We built basically nothing. Yeah. They're now attaching them to data centers so they can start doing compute capacity way past hours. Yes. They haven't got there yet, but it's a warning sign.

But I would also ask everybody to think about this. This war that's been going on, this whatever the hell you want to call it in the Middle East, this is the first AI war ever. that boat when it went out there and picked up those two helicopter pilots was driven probably by some young kid in Jacksonville, Florida off an American AI server. That's how that thing worked. The ordinance that are very high precision that are taking out targets with practically no miss and the frequency of success in just taking out single and people, I don't like war,

I don't like anybody getting hurt, I don't like it at all. But this war is being driven from satellites and AI compute and predictive analysis. I don't want the Chinese to have a better platform than we do on any of this. So what about medicine? What about discovering cures for cancerism? I think you're totally right. I think you're totally right. You have to be in favor of data centers.

I am in favor of data centers. It's about how we do it and how we balance the equities. I agree with all that. But I think this whole thing that's come out of the narrative of all these governors putting moratoriums on data centers with one simple mandate, you bring. your own power, you build it, you pay for it, and you give back. I get it. I heard it. I hear it. I got it. I'm not tapping to the grid on any of my projects. That's fine. I think that's a fine accommodation. And I think that the more of America building and managing and resourcing what it needs

to grow, the better. And that's what Trump said he was going to do. It's just not happening. But I'll tell you what is happening. Kevin, any time I can have you on any platform, anywhere I am, you are welcome. I appreciate the conversation and the depth. You know, you and I have known each other a long time. I'm happy to get in the narrative because I like your no BS approach and transparency. I think it's great and we can have this debate. But, you know, I live these decisions every day from the very, very myopic focus of being an investor. And I've had to learn. And I've gotten better at it because I can really hear the signal now and I totally ignore the noise. And it It took a long time to develop that skill.

And so nothing freaks me out anymore. It just doesn't. I've seen it all. That's a good posture, period. Unfortunately, politics, you know, I don't know what the numbers are. My friend has a funny joke. He says 85% of statistics are made up on the spot. It took me like three times, three times him telling me that joke for me to get it.

But I don't know what the ratio is. But noise beats signal in politics. Campaigns are way more noise than they are signal and messaging. But we're also in a really important place in America right now. The outrage is off anybody's scale. And there's going to be change. I just hope it's manifested in a way that makes things better, not worse. And I have a good feeling that there will be.

I'm going to guarantee something right now to everybody listening. This two will pass. Yes. I 100% guarantee it. Yes. The remarkable flexibility of the U.S. economy through the decades and the centuries is well noted. And what's never left is the American dream. Every couple of decades, somebody says the American dream is dead.

And I say bullshit. I invest in it every day. And I see it springing from young men and women every day. And I am their advocate. And I know it's alive and well, no matter how bad. politics get. Yeah, and look, I think you're in the right space because I think one of the things that's going to change is that like right now our capitalist system is set up through a preference structure with the government. And most of the preferences go to big C-Corps. And I think there's

going to be a move. You know, Kevin keeps talking to you about the companies that he's 50 to 500 and that they're 50% of the hiring. It's true. They're also 50% of the GDP. It's true. There are also 99, plus percent of the overall number of businesses in America. They just don't have the scale. But I think there's going to be a political shift to them and say, by the way, you should have a preferential tax rate also, not just the Seacorp's because they don't even pay their people enough to really warrant the preference. They're still, they've got disproportionate a number of their workers are on the public dole. I want to take care of the small businesses. These other guys have taken care of the big businesses. I think that's going to be really

I'm one advocate that Marx, you know, goes to Washington with this exact message you're putting out there. And I'm very lucky to be able to go on a bipartisan basis to deliver it. But I'm not the only one. People are figuring out what you just said. This is the core of the American dream. This is the first, second, third generation, American family that's building a business and supporting itself and creating more jobs. And so we should give them the save advantages behemoths have, including the force of lobbying that a lot of people spend money on. So it's something that will change because more and more.

men and women in both sides of, you know, on the Hill are listening to this. I hear it every day. They actually give a poop about it now. Listen, I do things I've never done before. I do videos for a friend who has a small business who just got crushed with the tariffs because she imports the technology she developed and it gets manufactured in China and she comes. She does stim stuff to help you with muscle recovery and all the other benefits that electro stem has, which has been science for decades. She got killed by this. She just got killed.

And now she's running around scared because of the heat or ice because she's a green card. You know, she's not a full citizen. You never know when they're going to yank it. So she's got fear. She's got the tariffs. And all she was doing was hiring people and living the American dream and making her community better. So like I do videos for her.

As she says, I pay Cuomo what he's worth for the videos. nothing. But I do them because I believe in her business and I believe in what she's about. And that's why I like your advocacy, Kev. I know you're investing in it, but I like that you put your money where your mouth is. So thank you for spending time with me.

Yeah, no, I do because I have been successful helping reduce their customer acquisition costs and representing them in Washington and everything else. And I enjoy doing the work and I think it's important. And I do large projects as well. I just think this is an interesting time and you've definitely detailed why. and we'll see what happens next time we talk.

Yes, sir. Thank you. Stay safe until then. God bless. Thank you for being with me. Take care. Bye-bye. I do believe we need balanced power. I understand the arguments against it.

And no, I don't know what's going to happen. I'm not a prognosticator. But I do know that you can't have just one side, not this side, not MAGA. No. They're too toxic. They're too much about division. They're too much about what's wrong and not about making anything right. You need balanced power.

give us an arm on accountability with the Democrats and say, okay, now you got some power. What are you doing with it? How often are you holding hearings and creating accountability, even if it doesn't become law? At least you're keeping it out there about what ICE is doing, which I believe we should call the heat. As long as they're behaving the way goon squads did in the 60s, what a field day for the heat. Thousand people in the street. Buffalo Springfield. for what it's worth, I think it's the name of the song. That's what these ice guys are like. And no, I'm not shitting on law enforcement. No, I'm not shitting on first responders. I respect them. I appreciate them. I need them.

And that's why to protect them, we cannot have a goon squad out there consistently doing things the wrong way, saying things the wrong way, acting the wrong way. Why? Because it bleeds into all law enforcement. Creates tension. It creates fear and it's fucked up. So that matters, okay?

Now, what does it have to do with the economy? Nothing. But it's why you need balanced power. You need accountability. You got to call those guys out for what they're doing. They're not making a safer by pulling mothers and kids apart. Okay? That's not making me safer.

And no, they're not creating your housing costs. Supply chains are creating your housing costs, okay? Banks being pigs, all right? Venture capital guys and private equity guys, buying up a lot of single residence families. That's changing our cost structure. All right? The price of construction is changing our cost structure. Okay? It's not illegal immigrants. Yeah, in some places where they're right on the border, maybe there's some impact. But come on, man, this is a boogeyman. This is bullshit. We want to talk about the realities of the economy, the real problems that are a function

more and more of the real policies of this administration. That's what Kevin O'Leary gives us. Be a critical thinker. Be a free agent. Be different. Okay? That's why I want to sell the swag. Crowdsource the money will give it to people who need it and they're more and more who need it all the time. The problems are real. We will only get through it if we get through it together. And that is not what the people in power want. They want you looking at me and me looking at you as though we are each right about one thing. The other one is the problem. And I disagree. We are stronger together. Diversity is our strength. We are a nation of immigrants and people who say otherwise are scary. Let's get after it.