The Philip DeFranco Show - AOC Just Exposed Trump’s Real Motive Behind Shutdown Hurting MAGA, Epstein Updates, & Venezuela

Episode Date: October 16, 2025

Hey! Watch my new podcast with Ben Rhodes: https://youtu.be/VbsUA_GpGt0?si=3H7KENht5DvUL93G Go to http://zbiotics.com/DEFRANCO and use code DEFRANCO at checkout to get up to 15% off your first order. LISTEN TO THE SHOW iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-philip-defranco-show/id1278424954 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ESemquRbz6f8XLVywdZ2VWATCH CRASHING OUT w/ PHILIP & ALEX Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCergKLoy-Yv9zlPk3XQYK7Q?sub_confirmation=1 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2DkU87umhGH9mH1z24Bi9w?si=6sSdjhVNQjyVeBQDLiXcyg Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crashing-out-with-philip-defranco-and-alex-pearlman/id1843429519 WATCH/LISTEN TO MY NEW PODCAST w/ BEN RHODES Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2CePXwDrvdQTes844wflKp?si=55a6b6049c4841ed Youtube: https://youtube.com/acw?sub_confirmation=1 iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/in-good-faith-with-philip-defranco/id1827016835 JOIN OUR COMMUNITY 📸Instagram: https://instagram.com/PhillyDeFranco  🐦Twitter: https://twitter.com/phillyd  🎵TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@philipdefranco  TODAY’S STORIES 00:00 - Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump from Firing Gov. Workers During Shutdown  08:04 - Excerpts from Virginia Giuffre's Memoir Expose Epstein Trafficking Revelations 12:13 - Sponsored by ZBiotics 13:14 - Trump Says He Authorized CIA to Carry Out Covert Operations on Venezuelan Soil  17:55 - English-Proficiency Exam Sidelines 6,000 Truckers 20:11 - IGF Podcast Tease: Ben Rhodes Was Spied on By Mossad  THE TEAM Produced by: Cory Ray Edited by: James Girardier, Maxwell Enright, Julie Goldberg, Christian Meeks, Matthew Henry Art Department: William Crespo Writing/Research: Philip DeFranco, Brian Espinoza, Lili Stenn, Maddie Crichton, Chris Tolve, Star Pralle, Jared Paolino   ———————————— #DeFranco #AOC #BernieSanders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Did you lock the front door? Check. Close the garage door? Yep. Installed window sensors, smoke sensors, and HD cameras with night vision? No. And you set up credit card transaction alerts, a secure VPN for a private connection,

and continuous monitoring for our personal info on the dark web? Uh, I'm looking into it. Stress less about security. Choose security solutions from TELUS for peace of mind at home and online. Visit tellus.com slash total security to learn more. Conditions apply. So, you beautiful bastards. Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco show you daily dive into the news.

It is Thursday. And there is a lot to talk about. In fact, so much so, you're getting another daily dose today. You got this, and then I stole an hour of Ben Rhodes' time to just talk about a lot of really important stuff for the In Good Faith podcast. Link to that down below. But that said, we have a lot to talk about starting with this. We need to talk about what we're seeing with this government shutdown again. Because we're seeing a lot, starting with a federal judge blocking Trump from firing thousands of federal workers during the shutdown at least for now.

And that, because on the first day of the shutdown, labor, you're going. unions representing more than 800,000 federal workers sued the Trump administration over its plan to use the shutdown to conduct mass firings of government employees. And they argued that Trump's actions were illegal and exceeded his authority as president. So the unions, they asked the judge to temporarily block the layoffs that have already been announced and to stop Trump from making any future layoffs while the case plays out in court. And then you had the judge granting that request saying that she believed that the unions were likely to win their argument that Trump acted illegally and exceeded his authority in making those cuts. And actually in her ruling, she took aim at Trump's actions and claimed at one point that his administration has, quote, Take an advantage of the lapse in government spending and government functioning to assume that all bets are off, that the laws don't apply to them anymore, and they can impose the structures that they like.

You mean, the judge also explicitly pointing out the fact that Trump has repeatedly said that the federal layoffs will target Democrats. With that, arguing that his threats indicate that his actions are just driven by politics. But of course, that brings us to the question of, well, will Trump actually obey this court order? Which really, I mean, what a time. I mean, it used to be unthinkable that a president would just go, the law? Did you forget who you're dealing with? But now, right, that's a sentence I end up saying every time a judge issues any kind of decision against Trump. And already, the administration has indicated that they're just going to violate the court order.

I mean, literally, right after the ruling came down, you had OMB director Russell Vaude going on the Charlie Kirk show and saying that the administration could lay off around 10,000 workers in total during a shutdown. Which, I mean, that alone is a standout update because that's way more than the roughly 4,000 employees at the White House announced that it was firing late last week. And then, you know, all the while, this is playing out, nothing's really changed in Congress. Republicans and Democrats are still locked in this fierce stalemate. Both parties, they're still locked in a battle to pin the blame on one another. And actually, regarding the argument and debate, you had Bernie Sanders and AOC holding a CNN town hall yesterday. One of the things you saw when they were taking questions from the audience is that they continue to point fingers at Republicans. We were both accusing Republican leadership of just refusing to even get on the phone and have negotiations with Democrats.

At one point, I mean, you saw this interaction between Bernie and a Republican college student who had been selected to ask a question. How do you think this shutdown reflects on Chuck Schumer's leadership? Well, I think it reflects more on Mike Johnson's leadership. and President Trump's leadership. This is a leadership which said it's okay to give a... Well, how do you feel? You tell me, I think it's a good idea to give a trillion dollars in tax breaks

to the richest people in the country and then make massive cuts to health care for working class people? I think Chuck Schumer has voted for continuing resolutions 13 times in the last four years, and he has the opportunity to vote for one again, but he's refusing to come to the table. Well, I think, look, as I have said, There are 53 Republicans in the Senate, correct?

Yes. They need 60. What does that mean? It means you have to talk to the other side. Mike Johnson is not talking. John Thune is not talking. President Trump is not talking. That is the problem.

And actually right after that, you had the town hall host, CNN anchor Caitlin Collins, talking another Schumer-related question over to AOC. Can I ask you, Representative Ocasio-Cortez on that? because we actually heard from House Speaker Mike Johnson today on Chuck Schumer. He said he's supporting the shutdown to prevent a primary challenge from his left wing. Do you think that's what's driving Senator Schumer here? No, absolutely not.

That is, it is so, it's such an insane suggestion. And in fact, it speaks to how desperate they are. And then also with this topic, you had Bernie Sanders kind of jumping in going, like, what are we talking about? But are you saying that Senator Schumer should not be worried about a primary challenge? from you? I mean, no. Let me jump in on this one. This is what we're talking about.

This is what we're talking about. This is what we're talking about. You have a country that is falling apart. We had a housing crisis, a healthcare crisis, an education crisis, massive income and wealth and inequality. A corrupt campaign finances them. And the media says, oh, you're going to run. What is going to run for?

Nobody cares. So one more towards you want. Nobody cares. There it's the House Speaker and President Trump and the Vice President saying it. Right. Pardon? saying it to deflect attention away from the real issues. And then regarding the actual issues at hand here,

there was this very interesting interaction around healthcare and how things are going to affect Trump voters and how we should think about it. On the issue of healthcare, a lot of the clinics and hospitals that are negatively affected the most under the one big beautiful bill are located in rural, mostly Republican areas.

A lot of the increases in affordable care act premiums that Democrats are fighting to prevent are concentrated in more rural, Republican areas. If the Republicans are so insistent on sticking it to their own voters on this issue, why don't the Democrats just let them? I think Alexandria touched on this before. And that is, we are, you know, one of the things, and this really annoys me about Trump, is dividing this country. Why would I not? You know, when we hit the road, we were in Idaho, right? It's the most conservative state in America, I think. We had many thousands of people coming out. We are Americans.

What? You think I would feel okay if somebody in a Republican state died because they couldn't get health care? I would hope not. I hope nobody feels that way. And I think it also speaks to a big difference between someone like Trump and someone like me or someone like Bernie, which is that Trump believes that if you don't vote for him, he doesn't have to be your leader. that if you didn't vote for him that you don't deserve good things to happen to you I don't care if someone voted for me or not

I don't care if someone is a Republican or an independent or a Democrat I don't care if someone likes me or not that will never change the fact that I'm going to fight for them to have health care I want MAGA to have health care I want MAGA to be paid a living wage.

But he doesn't want people who are Democrats, or he doesn't want people based on their political affiliation, to benefit. And that is the difference between a strong man and an authoritarian and a leader of a democracy. Right, you also had AOC hitting on similar themes throughout the entire town hall. The problem is that this administration,

the Trump administration, folks like Russ vote, they think that destroying our health care, making sure that housing is too expensive to live in, that jacking up the costs of our groceries, they think all of this is about hurting Democrats. What they are doing is hurting Americans, and they are hurting this country. And if Mike Johnson wants to say that this shutdown

is going to last a long time, it is because he is choosing, to punish the American people and we cannot stand for it and we cannot allow it. And we also cannot enable it by acquiescing and enabling the behavior of bullies.

So it ends today. But then also on the other side of this as the town hall was taking place, you had the White House's rapid response account live tweeting the whole thing. The account slamming and mocking both AOC and Bernie while also pushing the same Republican talking points that we've seen over and over again

trying to blame the Democrats for the shutdown. But ultimately for right now, still in this waiting cycle. The government is shut down. You have tons of Americans wondering when or if they're going to get a paycheck. Of course, there's the health care of it all. You know, a lot of it ends up feeling like as people feel more pain points, like, where does the polling go on this? Does it? Apply political pressure. We'll have to wait to see. But the next up in the news, Jeffrey Epstein's inner circle knew about his crimes and just didn't care. That is easily one of the biggest claims we just got from Virginia Juffray's memoir,

which comes out next week. Right in Virginia, she was one of the most prominent Epstein victims or family announced that she had died by suicide back in April. And now we're seeing this excerpt from her new memoir that was just published in The Guardian. And there, she discusses how she got a job at Maralago where her father worked when she was 16 years old. Right. And that is where she says she met Galane Maxwell, who apparently saw her from the car and then got out to follow her and Virginia describing her as an apex predator closing in. But they're saying Maxwell then invited Virginia to Epstein's home to see if she wanted to work for him as well. And according to this piece, when she arrived, Maxwell brought her to a bedroom where Epstein was fully nude and

instructed her on how to massage him and then forced her to engage in sex acts with them. And then from there, she claims that Epstein eventually asked her to quit her job at Mar-a-Lago to work with him full-time. And as for why she and many other young girls that he is accused of trafficking said yes, Virginia claimed two things. One, Epstein was, quote, good at spotting girls whose wounds made them vulnerable, and she claimed that many had been abused as children and they felt he was throwing a lifeline to help them from drowning. Then, in Virginia's case, she claims that he showed her a photo taken of her brother at a distance and said, we know where your brother goes to school. You must never tell a soul what goes on in this house.

And I own the Palm Beach Police Department, so they won't do anything about it. And from there, Virginia says that she was trafficked to an unnamed billionaire, academics, a gubernatorial candidate, former U.S. Senator, and Prince Andrew. And if Andrew, she specifically called him entitled, as if he believed having sex with me was his birthright. Right. And then this piece from the book closes with Virginia calling for more to be done to address Epstein's crimes, claiming. Some people still think Epstein was an anomaly, an outlier, and those people are wrong. Well, the sheer number of victims Epstein prayed upon may put him in a class by himself, he was no outlier. The way he viewed women and girls as playthings to be used and discarded is not uncommon among certain powerful

men who believe they are above the law. And many of those men are still going about their daily lives enjoying the benefits of their power. With Virginia then adding, don't be fooled by those in Epstein circle who say they didn't know what he was doing. Epstein not only didn't hide what was happening, he took a certain glee in making people watch. And people did watch. They They watched and they didn't care. And so this book, it's titled Nobody's Girl and it was reportedly completed before Virginia died. And you know, it's a book that understandably

is making a ton of headlines, especially with those who have read advanced copies calling it utterly devastating. Right, and obviously all of this comes as Epstein and the push to release the files. They've been all over the headlines as well. And actually, there are some updates regarding that effort today. And specifically regarding House Speaker Mike Johnson

and Arizona's representative elect Adelita Griehalva. Because as we've talked about, you know, she was elected back in September and once sworn in, she'll be the final signature needed to force a vote on whether or not to demand the Epstein files be released. She'd be the 218th vote, but Johnson is yet to swear her in,

and Griehalva believes that he's intentionally putting this off because he wants to avoid this specific vote. Now, for his part, Johnson's been claiming that he cannot seat her while Congress is not in session, but there's actually no rule mandating that, and he actually previously swore into Republicans who won special elections during a recess. So Johnson, he's been facing a lot of heat,

especially from Democrats to finally swear her in. I mean, even had Arizona's Attorney General threatening legal actions sending a letter to Johnson saying, You and your staff have provided ever-shifting, unsatisfactory, and sometimes absurd stories as to why Ms. Griehalva has not been sworn in. We thus demand that Ms. Rehava be immediately sworn into office and admitted to her rightful seat. Should you fail to provide such assurance, we will be forced to seek judicial relief to protect Arizona and the residents of its seventh congressional district. Though you also had Senator Ruben Gallego, slamming Johnson, and not mincing words. Let's cut to it.

Speaker Johnson is protecting you pedophiles. That's what this is all about. The only reason Adelita Khalva is not being sworn in right now is because he wants to protect whatever is in those files, all the pedophiles that would be revealed. Right, and then also others accusing Johnson of helping a White House cover up. Right, and all of this, it comes as there are also

pushes for accountability outside of the government. I mean, just yesterday, Bank of America and Bank of New York, Mellon, were sued for allegedly enabling Epstein's trafficking schemes. And according to reports, both are class action suits from Epstein accusers who claim at the banks gave Epstein and his associate's special treatment and didn't report suspicious activity until,

after his death. Where it's big updates across the board on a story and situation that will not be leaving the news anytime soon, regardless of what Johnson and this White House try to do. And then there's more we've gotta dive into in just a minute, but first let me say, you know, long time viewers know that

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Presale tickets for future events subject to availability and vary by race. Turns and conditions apply. Learn more at amex.com.ca slash Yannex. This episode is brought to you by A new era of fitness is here. Introducing the new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus, powered by Peloton IQ, built for breakthroughs with personalized workout plans, real-time insights, and endless ways to move. Lift with confidence, while Peloton IQ counts reps, corrects form, and tracks your progress. Let yourself run, lift, flow, and go.

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The substance. This balance is not working. And the naked gun. That was awesome. Now that's a mountain of entertainment. Paramount Wolf. The next up in the news, Trump just gave the CIA the green light to conduct covert action in Venezuela and we need to talk about it.

Right, even though I know a lot of you are like, but Phil, what do you think it? When has the CIA meddling in Latin America not been a good thing? Now with that said, right now, it's not known whether the agency is planning any specific operations in Venezuela. Right, and you've got places like the Washington Post reporting that people familiar with the matter had said that CIA personnel were sent to the region to collect intelligence, not conduct armed operations. And actually, one source claiming that a lack of solid intelligence during Trump's first term, that that contributed to the failure of a number of indirect attempts to foment military rebellion or cause Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to step down. And you also had the man in charge of Venezuela policy at the State Department during Trump's first term,

who also happened to be involved in a failed 2002 coup attempt against former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, noting, to say that there might be something covert is not to say that it has to involve shooting. And so he suggested that the agency might attempt to infiltrate the Venezuelan military or launch psychological operations that might cause Maduro to flee into exile. But, of course, we also know that the use of force is absolutely on the table. Right, literally, right now, there are thousands of troops, Navy warships, and a submarine all stationed in the region. In our military, they've already launched at least five strikes against boats that the administration claimed were carrying drugs to the U.S., killing at least 27. With the latest of these actually taking place earlier in the week, and you had Trump announcing it on truth social saying the strike was, quote,

conducted in international waters, and six male narco-terrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike. And adding, intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking, narcotics, was associated with illicit narco-terrorist networks, and was transiting, along a known drug trafficking organization route. But of course, with that, you have people asking questions like what intelligence, what narcotics, what networks, and ultimately, what evidence? And then you've got people saying, even if he did provide that,

can you still just go around killing people without a trial? Well, the answer, at least, according to legal scholars and human rights groups, is absolutely not. In fact, just last month, you had UN experts condemning Trump's actions in the Caribbean writing, international law does not allow governments to simply murder alleged drug traffickers. Criminal activities should be disrupted,

investigated, and prosecuted in accordance with the rule of law, including through international cooperation. But big thing is that Trump, he says that drug smuggling, it's not just a criminal activity. Right, you've got Trump basically arguing that it's actually an act of war and these were enemy soldiers. Right, at first, when the military killed 11 people in its initial strike on September 2nd, Trump signed a letter to Congress telling lawmakers that the action had been taken in self-defense. But then what you saw is that later in the month after another two strikes killed several more people, his administration sent a different kind of notice to Congress.

Right, here you had Trump saying that he had determined that the U.S. was now in a non-international armed conflict with various Latin American cartels and gangs that his team had designated terrorists. And saying that suspected drug smugglers for these organizations that could be lawfully targeted as unlawful combatants. And then with his latest strike, he had Trump simply claiming that he had ordered the strike under his standing authorities as commander-in-chief. And at least as of recording this, the administration hasn't actually released any sort of detailed legal analysis to support its thin arguments. Right, possibly because the logic, the law, and the basic facts, they don't seem to be on Trump's side. And I say that because besides the legal criticism, you have experts saying that blowing up Venezuelan boats, it's not actually going to stop the flow of drugs into the United States.

And that's because, one, in the case of fentanyl, for example, which is the deadliest drug, the U.S., Venezuela plays essentially no role in its production or trafficking, until the vast majority of cocaine that's produced in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, and smuggled via the Pacific ocean. And then also, with all of this, we've already seen reports that drug smugglers, they're adapting to the changing situation, finding new ways to move product. And in fact, you even have some saying that these strikes may ultimately make it harder to limit the movement of drugs in the region. With, for example, a former U.S. ambassador who served during Trump's first term and under Joe Biden telling the Associated Press that upsetting the U.S.'s long-time allies in the region might

hurt our ability to gather intelligence. you had him pointing to Colombia as an example because their president said last week that a boat recently bombed by the U.S. was Colombian with Colombian citizens inside. Though that said, I will say, no one is more pissed off than the Venezuelan government right now. And in response to Trump confirming the CIA authorization, you had Maduro's government saying that it would raise the issue at the U.N. Security Council today, blasting Trump's words as a gray violation of the U.N. Charter. Right. And accusing Trump of seeking to legitimize regime change with the ultimate goal of appropriating Venezuela's petroleum resources. And with that, you know, I will say that the Trump

administration actually reportedly turned down an offer from Maduro for a dominant stake in Venezuela's oil and other mineral well. But also, it may just seem like there's more to gain from someone else being in power there. And in fact, several American officials, they've reportedly been very, very clear in private that their end goal is in fact driving Maduro from power. With this primarily, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, but also CIA director John Ratcliffe, who notably said during his confirmation hearing that he would make the agency less risk averse and more willing to conduct covert action when ordered by the president. But then, you know, with all of that said, it's also been reported that Trump has made no.

final decision on using force to overthrow Maduro. But also, in addition to confirming the authorization granted the CIA yesterday, you had him acknowledging again that he's considering strikes on Venezuelan soil. And so, you know, ultimately we're gonna have to wait to see what our no wars president does next. But at least for right now, the situation continues to escalate. It's definitely seeming more and more of a powder keg. But then next up in the news, we should talk about why thousands of truckers are getting pulled off the road right now. Especially as we're now seeing Republicans doubling down and actually cutting cash to states that won't play along. And specifically, we're talking about drivers being sidelined for failing

English proficiency exams. Because you see, according to an analysis of federal motor carrier safety administration data, there have been 6,000 truckers pulled off the road since June 1st for failing to demonstrate enough understanding of the English language. And that notably, it puts them in violation of rules that were laid out earlier this year by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. Nah, because you had Trump saying that truckers who aren't able to read, understand, and converse in English to a certain standard would be declared unfit for service. Meaning that they wouldn't be able to drive a commercial truck again until the problem was addressed. And with that, you had Duffy saying, Americans are a lot safer on roads alongside truckers who can understand

and interpret our traffic signs. A driver who can't understand English will not drive a commercial vehicle in this country, period. Now with that, a big thing is that English proficiency requirements for truckers have actually been around for years. But in the Obama era of 2016, the penalty for those failing to meet those requirements, it was kind of more relaxed. It gave drivers who failed roadside English exams a ticket instead of yanking them off the job entirely. Now, of course, with this, one of the big questions is, okay, well, how big of a deal is it? Well, at least According to experts and analysts, they say that there's actually no data showing a connection between English proficiency and accidents involving commercial truck drivers.

In fact, according to the FM CSA, most commercial crashes are caused by drivers falling asleep or some other impairment. And then there's also the fact that proficiency or whatever that is, it's totally subjective with Brandon Wiseman, for example, a president of truck safe consulting saying, one officer might think is proficient, another officer down the road might think is not proficient. That makes it tough. And then likely making this even harder, we don't know exactly what questions are included in the roadside exam that's administered by the state.

police. Though you do have industry experts saying it's probably questions like, where are you going and what was your starting point. But then also on top of that, and it's one of the reason we're talking about this today. There is a serious concern that yanking truckers off the job, it's going to impact the industry and if too many are pulled, the wider U.S. supply chain. And of course, that concerns in addition to concern from advocates saying that Latino drivers who make up more than 15% of truckers are going to be unfairly targeted by those administering the test. And with all this, you had one advocate saying, a truck driver who does speak English sufficiently to comply with federal standards, but maybe they speak with an accent or maybe they use a different vocabulary. that the inspector isn't used to hearing, is that person then going to be subject to an English language violation? But again, this is just sharing the concerns here, and it doesn't appear to have stopped the current administration from moving forward. But then from that, finally today,

I wanna end with a little self promo and one more thing. So for the self promo, people have been asking if we're gonna do anything for Halloween. We are doing a beautiful bastard drop for Halloween. And in fact, it launched just today. And I know a good number of y'all are gonna be excited because we are relaunching the ghouls just wanna have fun gear, emotionally gothic.

Our one days will all be Skeleton Skelly. And that Coltit, my body, hurts and I hate the government. Can we cuddle and watch spooky movies? With the number of these being bigger, fuller prints and new colorways, to definitely grab everything you want over a beautiful bastard.com right now, especially because even though we're launching this now, we're going to be resetting the site somewhat soon. That's going to include a reset of a lot of our graphic here. But then finally today, I wanted to include a little bit of my conversation with Ben Rhodes, of course, link to the full podcast, the In Good Faith podcast in the description. It was

something that it felt like it made sense to share here. Well, when I left government, you know, I was not in the best terms, you know, with Israeli government. It was after the whole whole Rondial fight. And it was about a year and change later that the Guardian had this report that a group called Black Cube, which is a collection of former Mossade agents, had been contracted to kind of dig up dirt, spy on me, right? Now, Black Cube was also the same private intelligence outfit that had done this to like Harvey Weinstein's accusers. Like, they've been around the block. And actually, I could go back and see that they had conducted my wife. And what was the interesting is they had contacted my wife and said that they were movie producers from a group

called Shell Productions, which is kind of aptly named. And they wanted to talk to her about the private lives of people that had negotiated nuclear deals and normalization of relations with an adversary. So it was suspicious on its face. And then I talked to some journalists who'd seen this file and they had like pictures of my car or they had my parents' phone number and things like this. Now, what I found interesting about this whole thing when it happened is First of all, they weren't exactly trying to cover their tracks that much. So I actually think, in kind of looking at this question of private intelligence and how it harasses people, that the intimidation was as much the point.

But then my friend is the end of this video, but of course there's more just a click away. You've got my brand new podcast from today with Ben Rhodes. We dove into a lot. I highly recommend you watch it, subscribe, all the good stuff. And or you've got the newest Philip DeFranco show that you might not have seen yet. And I've got links to that and even more that I do if you want to consume it on Apple Podcasts. Spotify or YouTube in the links below. But that said, thank you for watching. I love yo faces and I'll see you right back here on Monday.

But for now, I got a big drive ahead of me. Wish me luck.