Will Cain Country - Mamdani Wants New Yorkers at War (ft. Tim Young, E.J. Antoni, & Todd Ricketts)

Episode Date: July 28, 2026

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani just announced a new “pied-à-terre” tax on the cities wealthiest residents, and followed up by doxxing everyone it would impact. Today’s Guest Host, Comedian & Heritage Foundation Media Fellow Tim Young is joined by Chief Economist for the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, E.J. Antoni and Co-Owner of The Chicago Cubs & Founder of Freespoke Todd Ricketts to break down Mamdani’s latest attack on the rich, before taking a look at the corporate aftermath of Cracker Barrel’s disastrous rebrand and Big Tech's protection of Dr. Anthony Fauci being recently exposed.Plus, E.J. explains why gas prices remain at painfully high levels, even though our country possesses vast fossil fuel reserves.Subscribe to ‘Will Cain Country’ on YouTube here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch Will Cain Country!⁠⁠⁠Follow ‘Will Cain Country’ on X (⁠⁠⁠@willcainshow⁠⁠⁠), Instagram (⁠⁠⁠@willcainshow⁠⁠⁠), TikTok (⁠⁠⁠@willcainshow⁠⁠⁠), and Facebook (⁠⁠⁠@WillCainNews)Follow Will on X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@WillCain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The pre-show to the Will Kane show when I'm here should be called defamation country, where I just talk about everybody that I don't like on a live microphone. Until the producers tell me, this is Tim Young, by the way, and for Will Kane today, until the producers tell me, hey, your microphone is live. Maybe you should cut out. Hello, Patrick and Dan. How are you doing? Good. Welcome again. The day of Paradise.

I'm so excited to be here. We're going to cover something in a second about you two. But my friend and chief economist of the Heritage Foundation, E.J. Antony, we got a lot to talk about with this guy. I can't wait to get into Zorro and Madami today with his doxing his daughter. Nothing more exciting than voting for a guy who then doxes you and says he's going to raise your taxes. So, hey, you get what you vote for. You know, I always say that as kind of like a little, little Mimi type thing on X. But you really do get what you vote for when you vote for Mom Donnie.

But before we get into that, Patrick, Dan, I brought this out, the BS cleaner, the Wilcane BS Eliminator. Because yesterday I was on the show with the wonderful Casey Smith, and she mentioned how you guys have long meetings, long preparation meetings. You guys are going through all of the time. Hours. And I get an email. You're like, here it is.

I'm like, oh, man, the thorough, Dan and Patrick are going to call to get just figuring out what you guys are going to talk about. about for an hour? You know, yeah. Working it out, figuring out what we're going to talk about? Patrick sends me an email. Like, here it is.

This is what you get. Best luck. To be fair. There it is. Yeah, get in there. Do your thing. Everybody gets to email. Just a, just a.

But then the follow-up phone call with the two of you, it's privilege that I don't have. No, no, no, no. It's just, that's a Casey thing. That's a Casey thing. Most, listen, you want to go, you want to go,

little inside baseball here. The comedians on the show, they don't really like prepping as much. So they just kind of hop on. I give them the list. He's lumping you in with a lot of other people. So how do you feel about that? Look, I'm kind of like a hybrid. And you know that I enjoy engaging in whiskey the night before I come to the show. And sometimes I just need a little bit more pushing, a little bit more lifting up. You know, just elevate each other together as I come in for the show. Unlike when you guys mocked me earlier, and I'm going to talk, of course, we've got the chief economist for the Heritage Foundation. I'm going through my backpack, and I happen to have a binder of Pokemon cards.

We're not going to get into it. Speaking of the economy. I mean, the economy for Pokemon cards is huge. This is my retirement right here. This is my retirement. Forget my career in broadcasting or media consulting or any of that stuff. This is my five years. Hello, ladies.

You know, yesterday I was talking about how terrible dating outs are. Hello, ladies. Did you know that I take a binder? your Pokemon cards with me. Who doesn't? Just in case you ever run into somebody who wants to buy them from you? I'm going to be in the alleyway.

If you're in downtown Dallas, I'm going to be in the alleyway out back, hustling my Pokemon cards straight out of the binder after the show. And I'm going to do so well selling it that Mom Donnie is going to actually docks where I live to try to get money out of me. That's what's going to...

Okay, I got to explain it. So this is New York Post, by the way. A-list New Yorkers named on Mom Donnie's potential. Is it Pita Ter tax? Pitaire, I believe. Pieditaire. You're the chief of Congress. Foot on the ground, I think, is what is the literal French translation?

Is it because of extra property? Is that what it is? Having your feet on the ground. His tax list includes supporters like Cynthia Nixon. Oh, wonderful things should happen to Cynthia Nixon. What a wonderful person. She's a very loving. She really supports anyone who doesn't agree with her.

And Anna Winter, that Anna Winter is the fashion one, right? Yes. She is the devil-worth Prada one. Ah, there we go. See, this is why I need the handholding, fellas, when it comes to, I knew Cynthia Nixon from sex in the city. She was sex in the city, right? I don't know. She's the one from sex.

Yeah. And? He knows. He knows. In the city? A veritable. A veritable who's who of the big apples upper crust from movie stars to billionaire philanthropists were named and had their addresses revealed on a list of New Yorkers who might be subject to the state's new P to tear tax. documents posted on the city

Department of Finance webpage identified hundreds of thousands of entities who could find themselves in the crosshairs of Mayor Mom Donnie backed tax on luxury second homes. Why would anyone continue to live in New York City? Well, they're not.

I mean, they're leaving, literally. The leftists are still living there, aren't they? Well, sure, yes. Obviously, it's hyperbole, right? There's plenty of people who are still there. But literally hundreds of thousands of people have left, and are continuing to leave now. I think we've talked about this before, Pat and Dan. Yeah.

People can't sell their houses in downtown New York, right? They're, like, having trouble getting rid of them. Yeah. That sounds right. I have a friend that's a real estate agent here in New York City, and she's having a hard time getting stuff filled. It's, again, why would you want the extra day? I don't understand why you would live in a city like that anyway.

Like, I very, I force myself. I would not live in Dallas. is the higher taxes. I lived in Washington, D.C., where I was getting double-taxed. I live out a little bit farther out. I think, you know, obviously everybody who works on the show here lives farther out from downtown in the cities to avoid that type of tax. But, like, New York, it's just not worth it at this point. I can't justify. Like, why would you want to live there? I mean, I understand if you're, I guess if you're working downtown, but even then you can commute in, you've got plenty of trains that can get you into the city. I'm surprised they don't.

Is that what you do? Yeah, I live in Westchester County right outside. It's about an hour commute, but it's much better. I get, you know, the suburbs I get, it's still expensive, but the day-to-day things aren't as expensive. Like going to the bar or going to a restaurant. It's not, it's still up there, but it's not, you know, midtown prices. But, like, what are the advantages of living in New York now? Because back in the day, you know, obviously the culture and whatever. Now, because they don't prosecute people for minor crimes or even, even we're getting into felonies now.

I mean, you walk outside, you like basically just get a contact high every day. I hate it. I hate it. So I go up to the Fox Studios all the time, right? Take the train in. No bragging, yeah. And as lit... Keep on.

Anyway, as I was saying, I was saying, walk out of the train station. I'm in the middle of an anecdote. Anyway, I know we're listening to it. It's definitely not a personal insult. Go ahead. Just keep going. And you just instantly get cropped dusted with marijuana smoke.

I don't understand it. I absolutely hate it. I absolutely hate it. worst part, actually. That's the worst part of the legalization. Yes. Yeah. And it's like, I think more people smoke that outside than ever smoked cigarettes outside. I don't see cigarettes a lot. Exactly. I really don't. You smell that far more than you smell cigarette or cigar smoke.

I think I'm only a couple of years away from walking around with a cigar in my mouth all the time. I think I am going to like old school Rush Limbaugh at some point here and just walk around with a cigar. So in the in the Panic of 1907, right? JP Morgan, I know you remember, you were there. J.P. Morgan's doctor extracted a pledge from him that he would cut back his cigar smoking to no more than 20 a day. Oh, my.

That was cutting it back. Like, you have to basically, you have to wake up, smoke a cigar. Like, you just have to instantly light your cigar. Cigar. Go fishing. More cigars. You have to basically be, like, smoking while you're eating. like to do 20 a day?

I don't even know because it takes me about 45 minutes to an hour per cigar. Right. And he smoked a really long, they called him Hercule. But they were, so I think they were thicker. I think they were a bigger ring gauge than Churchill's. They called them Hercules clubs at the time because they were so big and dark. And I mean, like, again, he had to cut it back to 20 a day. Something out there and you didn't work for me.

I won't fall for that trap. But again, You get what you vote for. Do you think, though, that the leftists will actually stop voting for people like Mom Donnie and these socialists? Do you think that they're like... No, they love it. Right?

Yeah. My friends were lefties. They love it. They're changing things. I don't get it. I don't get it. And he's showing up everywhere. He's supposed to be, let's go nerd talk because, again, three nerds here, actually four,

but you're not really a Marvel guy. Somebody's calling, by the way, on the screen, guys. Is Mom Donnie? Mom Donnie I saw is supposed to be in the new Spider-Man movie and if he is it's going to blow it for me. Oh, that would be horrible. Have you seen this? I haven't seen it. I think that was a joke.

Have you been bad? Was it? Yeah, I think that was fake. I hope so. I hope so because I could see them doing a cameo. I mean, they've done it before with current politicians. I think Giuliani was in a bunch. And obviously back when people like

Trump, Trump would show up in movies because he was Mr. New York. If Mom Donnie is in that new movie He was in Little Rascals? Yeah First posted a article about it Little Rascals, he played the bad guys dad I knew he was a Home Loan 2 one

Ironic I'm surprised they haven't used it against him He Trump also showed up and he fired Are you guys pro wrestling guys? Not particularly Yeah, yeah I am There was a joke character at one point The funny guy, Santino Morella, who dressed up as a woman to win the women's title.

He dressed up as Santina instead of Santino. And Trump fired him backstage. He ran into Santina. And he was like, what are you supposed to be? You're fired. And I'm surprised that the left hasn't pulled that out and been like, he hates trans people. See? He didn't want to allow a trans wrestler.

Keep men out at women sports. They really think they're changing. The socialists really do think. And the rich socialists who like don't mind that their taxes are through the roof, I guess. I, like, the more money I make, the less I want to go to the government. I want to pay the least amount ever now. Like, I used to work at a bingo hall. I hope to pay less this year than when I worked at the bingo hall.

But these, the leftists really think that they're making some sort of change by giving a little bit of their money up, a little bit more of their money up. And Cynthia Nixon in particular, again, a wonderful human being, very loving, very kind, has said nothing but negative and evil things about everyone on the on the right. So, you get. What's his reasoning for docksing people? What do you think the end game is with what he wants to do? I can't say what I really think. There's a word I'm not going to use, but I think he wants people harassed. I think he wants people afraid.

Why would you do that? That's the whole point of why doxing is so bad is that you're doing it so that someone shows up to your door and someone who doesn't like you shows up to your door. There's no other reason for that. What is the need for it? He could just say, you know, you have a second property. we can you know we're going to text you on your second property you make a lot of money we're coming for your extra money but he really he wants something done who was it the uh there was a billionaire that he

did a commercial he went late night and filmed a commercial out front of his house do you guys remember that a couple of months ago no he like showed up with a video of himself outside of a uh billionaire's condo to show where it was i don't i don't understand this but but this is the the modern day left, they want people showing up to your door to bother you if you, I guess, make too much money now before it was just like if you disagree with them, which you know is bad enough. But now it's to try

to take extra money from you. But they want you there, but they want you to pay for all their public buses and everything. So it's like, hey, you have all this money. Their utopia for New York City is everyone is just even. And if you aren't even, you have to fund everything

for the even people. I mean, it's... Thanks for vote. Yeah. Thanks for voting. We hate you. Give us all your money. People can have free buses. Yes. Pay for our roads. Not a good. I'm, maybe I'm crazy here. Maybe I've been in politics for 25 years as well. But not the best messaging to get reelected, but it gets them reelected.

With friends like these. Again, college kids who make no money, when you do these interviews, like yesterday on the show, we did the interview. We watched the man on the street where people didn't know cursive handwriting and couldn't pronounce the word zebra. They didn't know what zebra was from. What? Yeah. You should watch the product, E.J. Nobody knows what cursive is anymore.

These are the people who want handouts. And they believe because they have not earned money. Until you get older and you've actually earned that money, they want the free handouts. They don't understand the difference. It's really, it's sad. Other people who don't want money, remember Cracker Barrel changed their logo. See, it's called a seamless segue.

Cracker Barrel changed their logo and they took the old white guy out on the rocker, which is like it's emblematic of Cracker Barrow, but the Cracker Barrel CEO, Julie Feist, Messino, stepped down after that woke rebrand. Yeah, nobody liked it. Hey, which one of you guys hasn't been to a Cracker Barrel? It is all American. It is where Freddie, the soccer guy probably should have been.

Is that Dan? Really? No, I don't think so. Who provides your rock candy then? I've never had rock candy Because that's the only place you can get rock candy Where would you play? Where would you learn to play the triangle game with the pegs on it

Other than Cracker Barrel? Probably my grandmother's house Probably never played the peg game I don't know what peg game you're referring to We do things like fish and eat lobsters and play lacrosse This is a much more Oh I don't know this triangle game is people

I was talking to the upper crust Yeah so down down where I came from in Baltimore all the way down in the southern town of Baltimore I've heard of that we you go to

you have you came down I've heard of a place there I hear it's good in industry and yeah hey are you looking to get murdered we love Baltimore you want your property stolen

get your property stolen in New York and overtaxed And you... Was he? It was one of them. Yeah, it was top five, at least. I loved him.

Iron Man. I have the lineup card from his last baseball game, actually. I have the one from the... I have one of the two. What don't you have? Yeah, that's a great question. No, seriously, if you guys have ever been to his house, it's like a museum. The collectibles that this guy has is just unbelievable.

I would nerd out for sure on that. I love that stuff. It's insane. You're listening to Wilcane Country. Coming up next, Todd Ricketts. Cheers to America's 250th birthday. Get 20% off your first purchase at Fox Newswineshop.com with code FNRadio 20. 20% discount excludes wine club offers and cannot be combined with any other promotion.

Expires July 31st, 2026. Must be 21 order to order. Please drink responsibly. Patrick's seeing this up. Yeah, I do have an action figure room. I have the whiskey room. I have a bunch of stuff. But I have Coworkins, the lineup card from Crowlercans' last game.

Let's go back. Let's focus up. I don't want to talk about me. This is the Will Kane Country, not the Tim Young. sadness round up. Craig or Merrill. So, no, I mean, what a terrible move. I don't understand why they thought to do it.

Cracker Barrel, really, if you put an American flag there, which obviously, when you take a look, number one, when you take a look at these CEOs, when you see this woman in particular, not to stereotype, but if you take a look at what she looks like, you know her politics, just look at her.

And a lot of these marketing departments are that way. That's what happened with Bud Light. You take a look at these kids who are fresh out of college who do this marketing stuff, and they come out and they've got this woke ideal, and they're like, hey, let's put Dylan Mulvaney on a can of Bud Light. That makes sense. We need to do DEI.

We need to play the game. This is, I think it's a bad trend in modern business. Obviously, it's a bad trend. People are losing money on it. There's this new push to go back to, like, you know, they're redoing Pizza Hutts. Apparently now they're also redoing Chili's, because people want to have that old school vibe

and they want to feel like when America it's like there was a guy once right not to sound totally non-sequitur there was a guy who wore this red hat that said make America great again as if to say like the recent past or the past was pretty cool in America I don't know if you heard of yeah I don't know if you guys know the guy or not

he's got a hat it said make America great again and it really seems like these brands like Pizza Hut like Chili's now like Cracker Barrow learned, like Bud Light learned, realized that like the old school stuff that was pro America and Americana, it worked. And it was, dare I say, great.

And so they're going back and making these restaurants great again. That was from a time when America really was. I mean, like, the 90s were pretty damn awesome, especially economically. It's a good time. Is that true? The 90s were booming economically? Like as much they say?

Were the 90s moving economically? Sure. Yeah. So what's interesting, though, is I think there's a real good parallel between that and today. In the same way that you had the internet really coming into its own. And yes, it gave us the dot-com bubble, but that was largely because of bad Fed policy. That kept rates artificially low, and then it caused all these bad loans to be made. Do you get a crash?

No, no, I did not. That's a deep cut. Did you guys, you remember pets.com? That was like a huge, they dumped a bunch of money into it and it crashed immediately. I have the puppet from the commercial. Of course you do. Of course he has that, right? Anyway, the point is you had that in the 90s.

Today you have AI. It's a huge productivity increaseer. It's greatly increasing economic output. So you would expect similar effects there. Yeah. So for me, I mean, I don't want to go to a restaurant. Like, number one, fast food, not my favorite. But I don't want to go to a fast food restaurant that looks like a just empty box.

With a couple of, like McDonald's really has, I remember when McDonald's had those, like, play places in them, and you would go and, and children would just end up missing. And you get, like in Baltimore, you'd get just. Great. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I had my birthday party. Like, my fourth or fifth birthday party was at McDonald's. And we would stack, this is before you guys, because you're both youngens. We used to stack the styrofoam, like, Big Mac containers.

That was one of the party things that you would do to, like, see how tall you could stack the, you know. And then they would take those same containers. back and then you know sell burgers in them after kids had their grubbing hands all over the the standards used to be quite lower and using styrofoam not great but yeah the star and we didn't have enough uh it was made america great that make styrofoam great again i think at one point they even had like this expanded uh like b lt thing where everything was separated in a styrofoam container and you would put it together yourself i think was one of the items that really you know you know Who made you do the work?

Who did the commercial? Who did the commercial for that? Jason Alexander. That's right. Bingo. That's just saying. George from Seinfeld did that. Yeah, the BLT came separate and you put it together.

Yeah. But it was all styrofoam. I don't doubt that we start going back to stuff like that. And not necessarily styrofoam, but some sort of like fill in. Because again, when you take a look at like all the classic things, when they sell these kind of like novelty classic items like that. So there's like a backpack now that's going crazy for women, like a lounge fly backpack, which is a whole other brand of thing.

of nerdiness and collecting and whatever. Launcherly backpacks look like McDonald's bags with receipts on them now. They have a couple of those, and they're selling off the shelves. What? Yes. That's crazy. There was a purse that looked like a bucket of chicken a couple years ago, KFC chicken. It was branded.

That's sold out immediately. People like this stuff. People actually want to feel... It's the same way. I mean, that's why it's just cyclical. Well, the problem is now with collectibles. But not like this. It did go away.

There was a down. There was a dip. but what's happening now is that the people who were my age who grew up and thought everything was collectible because at 1980s to 1990s it was like a real downside in yeah and they were they're all worthless from that generation yeah they are and there are so many items that are just junk from that generation I've thrown them away I've given away stuff that just I know is not worth anything I actually do I'm not a hoarder I throw things away but uh that same generation of people are now adults with real adult money that's why adult men about my age are the it's not children that are the number one consumers with action figures anymore. It's adult men. Yeah. And it's the same thing with cards and the card markets and everything is going crazy because it's the people who thought things were valuable back in the day and wanted to invest in it are now adults with money.

So it's like you took those children, now they make decent money and they're throwing it into this market, and it's going nuts for, I wouldn't get into it. Again, I open a couple of packs once in a while, and I have something to put the nice cards in, but I am not throwing tons of money into it. It's one of those things. Again, throwing things back, going to an old Pizza Hut, going to an old Chili's.

I mean, we've got a guess I'm going to bring in now with us, Todd Ricketts, who used to be the finance chair for the RNC talking about places that used to be great. No, it's great now, too. But also part owner of the Cubs, he knows about throwing things back. Would you ever consider Todd? Like we're talking about Cracker Barrel changing their design or their logo design and all these brands who have gone away from what they were. I mean, alongside that and taking a look at how like Bud Light went and woke and all that kind of stuff,

you're one of the owners of one of the longest standing incredible brands in this country in the Chicago Cubs. You would never consider changing that, right? Well, you know, we always kick around ideas, but generally when we can put those in front of our fans, they resist it. So, but you know, I think

our bark is pretty well known, so we hesitate to change anything about. it just because it does get recognized kind of everywhere around the world. Well, and you've got Wrigley Field. I mean, that's like when you take a look at people who want to go to and why there's this retro push for pizza huts and why they didn't want to change Cracker Barrel and they didn't want to change. It's the same reason you would never change Riggly Field. There's this just feeling of Americana and it's like a war.

It's almost like a warmth of Americana when you go in and you just feel like you're somewhere classic that makes you feel comfortable and kind of makes you want to spend money, to be honest with. you, right? Yeah, there's no question. There's no question. Rigley is actually a cozy place where I always say it's like going to a picnic with 40,000 of your best friends you've never met before. Yeah, yeah, no, I love it. I've been there a bunch. I, uh, one of the earlier topics we were talking about, Todd, that I'd love to get your take on because you're a long-time Chicagoan, um, the, and you obviously have to deal in the city regularly. Um, mom, Donnie now proposing tax hikes, not just on people who have second houses,

but then exposing the addresses of the people in the city, like people who even voted for him. Has anything like that happened in Chicago? Do you deal with that kind of stuff there? You know, we haven't had that sort of issue in Chicago. I think that, you know, Mayor Johnson and Mamdani are not the same, and they're really not cut from the same ilk as people might want to put them in that spot. And so we haven't had anything like that talking about exposing or doxing people just for where they live

and how much property tax they pay. Yeah, I guess you're fortunate there, but the crime thing has kind of become a little bit similar. One of the topics that we talked about yesterday that I wanted to cover with you is how big tech was protecting Anthony Fauci. His diary came out yesterday. I think it's phenomenal.

Have you had a chance to read any of Fauci's diary, Todd? Just the very brief overviews of it. Just the very brief. I'm not going to claim to be an expert on anything. Yeah. He, this guy, he was so obsessed with fame

and everyone around him that had a little bit of a name and every bit of like attention that he was getting that he would write down like timestamps of like when he talked to Barbara Streisand and what he would say to her

which is amazing to me. He shouted out anybody who was a critic of him is in there. My buddy Steve Deis is in there actually. He wrote a book about how terrible foul she was. us and Fauci like wrote in his diary about how he didn't like Steve, a bunch of social media

people. I didn't make the cut for the Fauci thing. I kind of feel bad about it. But in the middle of everything that was going on with Fauci, you know, big tech, if you disagreed with what he ended up later on saying that were complete lies, by the way. He literally admitted to lying and he knew the numbers were different what he was saying in public and what he actually knew to be true. If you went counter that, social media companies would just ban you. And they would write you off and they would de-platform you and they did the worst. One of the things I like that you're working on is Freespoke that kind of, it doesn't kind of. It absolutely helps prevent that stuff from happening, doesn't it?

Well, I mean, you know, this Fauci is a great example of Free Spokes' reason for being. One of the things that we saw during Fauci is that the mainstream media was so quick to defend everything he said and not challenge and get through that thinking of like, okay, is it actually? from the lab, is it actually from the market? It's like, you know, these were questions that we should have just been able to have open conversations about to get to the bottom of and said there was like, nope, there's this company line of this is what you have to say, and if you don't say, you're a heretic. And it's really where Freespo kind of comes in to say, like,

what we're trying to do is we've created a totally different search engine that has, we have our own index, we look at information differently, and we try to take all that bias out and bring in all the questions, that allow people to kind of go deep and kind of see what people are saying on both sides and really try to help people get as best informed as they can be. Yeah, I like that it shows, by the way, both sides of the aisle when you, I mean, shocker, it'll be like, you know, MS Now or whatever, it says it's got a little donkey next to Ms. Now.

Ms. Now. Ms. Now, yeah. But the cool thing, too, by the way, that I really like, and it comes into play here, if people then search Free Spoke or talk about Fauci and like news about Fauci, I'm looking at the timestamp behind you. It'll say it'll actually have the Wilcane Country podcast pulled up and it'll go to the, it'll pinpoint exactly when they talked about it. Wow. Yeah. It's amazing, actually. I use it. Production guys use it all the time because it's so great for that. That was, you know, that was just how you go up in there. That was something that kind of came out of user research and finding that a lot of our consumers and a lot of our users of Free Spoke specifically, they're not watching a,

ABC News. They're not even watching cable news. They're listening to podcasts to get their information. And so what we were trying to do is incorporate as many podcasts as we could and then make it as convenient to use as possible by taking you specifically to that snid bit, you know, where they're talking about the thing you're interested in. We'll be right back on Wilcane Country. I want to go back to the conversation that we had when I brought you in about Cracker Barrel and like these logos and stuff like that. I just, have you ever been to a Cracker Barrel, Todd? one of the guys here has never been to a cracker barrel. I, you know what? I have been

to Cracker Barrel a fair bit in my life. You know, when my grandmas were still alive, I would say I was almost a regular. That's a grandma place, right? It's where you go with your grandparents all the time. 100%. To Cracker Barrel. I'm getting knocked by these Northeastern

elite producers on this show. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We just don't know it. We just don't have it. I'm sure it's a great place. You mocked the triangle peg game. I don't know what that is. I learned most of my life skills from the triangle peg game. That used to be on the tables.

I don't know where I'd be right now. Actually, Tim, I don't know if they even have them anymore on the tables because I went last week with my wife and I don't remember seeing them on the table. And this is after the change back. Was that part of the rebrand? It's part of the rebrand. They're like no more, you know what it is? It's probably theft, theft because everybody's like, we need, we could do so much with this. We could play golf with it with the pegs because it's just golf tees.

It's just golf tees. Yeah. We could use this triangle as a tool to dig in our backyards. It's cracker barrel. I don't know. That's what you do with it. I think that's what you do with that. I don't know.

But, no, I mean, I just, I don't understand. What do you think? And again, Todd, you run a major business and you run many major business. and you've been very successful. Like, why would anybody even sit down with, and listen to these, like, younger marketing people who are coming in with these, like, DEI ideas and these woke ideas that are like, hey, let's erase every, remember what got us successful? Let's erase all of it and just move forward.

And I think that'll work. Let's have very bland buildings with nothing in them. Let's eliminate the word chilies because it's too hard for people to read and just put a picture of a chili on the wall, which is what they did, by the way, and they're bringing back the word chilies. And the title, which is unbelievable to me that that actually has to be done. But are you noticed, do you notice this in like the corporate and corporate boardrooms and things like that? Like the C-suite, these marketing people are coming in straight out of college with woke ideas?

No, I think you just run into it every now and again. I'm sure the Cracker Barrel was looking at some stagnant sales. They're like, how do we kind of put a little goose up our sales and get people coming in again? So they come up with these ideas. And, you know, oftentimes they're just a miss. I mean, I think the biggest one ever was, you know, Coke 2, right? back in the late 80s when Coke redid their

whole formula trying to keep up with a new soda and it almost like it was almost something like that was intended to fail to just get people talking about Coke again. Like let's put something out there that's just so terrible and everyone will

hate it and then we'll go back to the original and people will just be so happy we have original Coke again. Maybe that's what Cracker Barrel is thinking here. I don't remember what it tasted like but had a theory about that. that. So he, Norm MacDonald thought that they did it so that they could change it over from sugar to

high-futosed corn syrup without anybody noticing when they introduced it. That's, I bet he's right. I bet he's right. Gosh. I and then Pepsi Clear. Wasn't it Pepsi Clear that came out that I, I remember what that sort of tasted like back in the day, but it's, it's horrifying. It was, it was not good. As a kid who consumed, consumed all the sugar as well as like, I mean, I was eating those Ninja Turtle pies. Do you remember Ninja Turtle pies? Are you guys old enough? The green ninja I am, but I don't remember them. I don't remember that.

Your family kept you healthy, but I came up in a... We didn't get that health education in South West Baltimore. We were always little Debbie. I'm a little Debbie Star Crunch. Little Debbie Star Crunches all day. Oh.

See, we had Entomens in our part of the country. You guys have Entomens, right? You northeastern elites. Yeah, yeah. We protect. That's my... We had tasty cake in Philly. Oh, yeah.

Tasty cake. That's the crimpettes butter. scotch crimpettes. Oh, those are so good. I don't even know what the, I can't describe what that flavor is. It tastes like nothing else on the planet, but it's delightful. I imagine that's what cocaine tastes like. Can't say that.

Can't say that this is a family program. We're not talking about that on this. You're going to have to believe that. Maybe that's what they put into the thing that we can't say in order to make it addictive. Maybe it's really the tasty cake that's the addictive part. Yeah. That's a sugar. Right?

Have you noticed that that we hate chief economist. Have you noticed that when businesses start to kind of like drift off a little bit, that's when they try these drastic brand shifts. And then half the time does it work? No. No, it doesn't. I think a big reason is because like we get stuck into this mindset of, you know, doing something different is always going to be better. Like we let the perfect be the enemy of the good. And, you know, whether it goes far.

beyond marketing the other areas of life, but just sticking with marketing for a second, just because you make a change doesn't mean it's always going to be a change for the better, right? Yeah. Just because you think, okay, we're not optimizing sales or whatever the case may be right now, doesn't mean there's a better way to do it necessarily. Gotcha. Gotcha.

If I Google, sorry, if I Google, mm-mm, nope, if I freespoke. You pre-spoke it, though. Yeah, Google. If we freespoke squirrel right now, rogue squirrel. I think we'd have a very interesting, overlapping, seamless segue topic for Todd to talk about here. Can you guys show this video of Todd? Will Todd be able to see this video? He won't be able to see this video, but he may have. We can describe it to him.

We'll do some flip-up. Even if I've seen it, don't worry. This game's been a zoo. This is the Tigers versus the Orioles. There's a pigeon, and then there was a squirrel that they could not catch at, uh, they just could not. they couldn't get a hold of the squirrel. For how long did the squirrel go for? I don't know exactly how long, but it was there for a little while.

Must have been more often than not. The ump had to stop the game for a second. Yeah. Is that MLB's response to the Banana Ball? Yeah. They're like, look, Banana Ball's got musical numbers. It's a little much for me. And people on stilts.

Yeah, and people, it's a little much for me. I'm not a kid, so I don't get it. But I like the series. I like guys who are going for records and trying to win. It was never a Globetrotters guy either. No? No. No.

But I think that's a good idea. MLB can just have wild animals, wild animals in the sixth, and just throw them out there to keep the game moving. You know, it's not new. We've had a few in the past. If you go back, there's a lot of more bird incidents and squirrels and some cats and things. But I think we've even had some iguanas and snakes in different parts of the country. Todd, how many times has a pitcher hit a bird that just ends up like flying in that like one in a million chance and it goes right into the path of the ball and whack?

I think it's one time. I think I've only seen one the shit. But then who was the Yankee when they were in Toronto that hit the bird from the outfield? There was another incident where he hit a pigeon from the outfield with a throw. So it's happened more than once, but the one where I, I feel. forget which game that was where the pitcher actually just hit the bird flying across and the bird just like it evaporated the bird was gone it was randy johnson it was randy johnson feathers go everywhere dwindfield in 1983 through a uh hit a seagull with a with a baseball from the outfit

ready to go thanks yeah that's it no that that randy johnson pitch is that's he he still talks about it to this day it's like i mean that's like remarkable that that bird all it was a pile of feathers. Yeah, like, just literally, there's a bird, and then there's just a cloud of feathers. It evaporated, and we'll return in Avengers Doomsday. But, yeah, that's a... It's a, they evaporated that bird very, very quick. I can't, man, that's wild.

What is... It's why we need those open stadium concepts still, like Wrigley Field, right? All the NFL stadiums are going to closed, you know, closed off, domed. I think we're not going to get nearly as many animal interactions in that way. Wasn't there a black cat at Wrigley one time? Yeah, that was back in the 60s. That was back in the 60s, and I think it was actually at Shea Stadium when we were playing the Mets that came across at the beginning of September, and then the Cubs plummeted and the Mets rose up, and that was the team that was supposed to go to the World Series for the Cubs back in the day.

I was going to say, Shea Stadium. You're sure it wasn't just full of rats? Like, that's just the dirty. Like, I mean, next to the Oakland A's, whatever, their Oakland Coliseum, that's about the worst stadium I think I've ever been in in my adult life was Shea Stadium. Terrible. The northeastern elites. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, I've got a brick at City Field, actually. I went in on the Mets at some point, and they've disappointed me from that point forward.

Yeah, man, it's wild to me that stuff. the squirrel, the animals that get in the games, it keeps things kind of moving. I mean, has attendance, attendance really doesn't go down at Wrigley, but across Major League Baseball, have there been attendance problems lately? I know they changed the time in the game, right, to make it more fun? No, I think what we're seeing in baseball is that, you know, you're always trying to attract new fans and you always feel like you can have new fans. But our league-wide attendance is pretty good.

it's uh you know just like i say you're always trying to find find the new fans a lot of times people talk about how baseball fans are like skew a little older but that age stays pretty consistent over time so our fans aren't really getting older we just have generally have a slightly older fan base than the than the other sports and it goes i think it goes a lot to grandpa's taking kids to games and things like that too it's a little more family it really is it is like i mean my grandfather took me into my first baseball game back in the day at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. That was a, wow, what a death trap that was. I remember they used to smoke cigarettes up in my section. They were all just smoking, having a great time. That's how old I am. They were smoking cigarettes at the,

and I call it cigarettes because I'm Baltimore at Memorial Stadium. That was, but it really is. It's like families going and there, it's the place to have those like first memories with your family and incredible baseball. It's the most family. Again, I grew up in Baltimore. I don't want to take you off topic, Tim, but can I share a smoking story with you? When I moved to Chicago, you could still smoke inside the Chicago Stadium during the Blackhawks games. Imagine that. I've been to a Blackhawks game where I was in the very last row, so the ceiling is just a few feet above your head in the old Chicago Stadium, which was an amazing, dirty old building. And the place was just a cloud of cigarettes.

Rocky and cigarettes. And it's great. When we're making restaurants great again. All the pictures of the stadiums, they have this great haze to them. And then, like, they don't have it now anymore. Because the cigarette smokes gone. People were dressed like E.J. That's right.

E.J. with, like, a fedora on and a cigar. Do you remember you said restaurants? Do you remember smoking and non-smoking sections in restaurants? Brother, we just lost, so in Grapevine, Texas, where I lived for a very long time, we just lost one of our last smoking restaurants there. They just, they're actually, they've decided to eliminate. smoking from uh flips is a fantastic restaurant that i go to all the time they're a sports bar and they've just they they just closed this sunday to remodel and get rid of the smoking

there's no partitions you're just sitting next to smoking like back then when you go into the smoking section you're just next to it like it's just a different table it's not a section i i almost feel i almost feel as if that logic could have applied to uh covid restrictions and you know what they put the yeah yeah Remember the plexiglass, the little, like this little amount of plexiglass in between you and the register? Yeah. No, it was the same exact thing. People didn't understand how airflow works.

But I've got no problems with it. I'm okay with a smoke. There are two smoking restaurants left in Grapevine. And one is the VFW and one is a place called Wilhoits. It was the last gas station that Bonnie and Clyde went to before they went on their run. Why is it still called the VFW? Veterans of Foreign Wars? Yeah, why isn't it just the VW?

at this point? Because that's Volkswagen. Oh, we can't. Is that, is that going to be, is that going to be like copyrights, Frenchman or something? Yeah, probably just, we haven't had anything but foreign wars in how long? Like, there are no there are no, there are no

civil wars anymore. We just, we're, we're everywhere around the world. It feels duplicative, is all I'm saying. But yeah, no, I, I'm just more upset that I can't smoke in bars anymore. That's, I really wanted to I wanted to do that. I would, I would love it.

has there been ever a conversation about Todd about like bringing like having like a like a cigar lounge at stadiums because I would do that in a heartbeat you know I'm sure teams have explored that I we have not ourselves looked into that but I'm sure teams are always exploring like you know what what their fans want to do and how they want to like consume the games and be at the games what they want to do there so I'm sure somebody's talked about it at some point but we haven't we haven't gotten that far I wonder if you could do like individual club boxes maybe. If you could just let the owners of the boxes.

But then they'd have to add in all the circulation. Like the negative ventilation and everything. It'll seep through to the side the other boxes. Yeah. That's no point. You have to have negative pressure. Also, you have seats out front of the box, too, that this smoke would come over. When's the last time you've been to a baseball game in a nice box?

Oh, never. Gosh. No, like a couple months ago. Was that a Nats game? Yeah. I was in a Tigers game recently in one of the boxes, and you had to pay for the food in the box. What is that? What is that about?

Well, it's Detroit. That's true. It's Detroit. Todd, before we let you go, I want to talk a little bit more about free spoke, because I think it's an incredible idea. I've used it, obviously. I've talked about it. Man, what was your motivation in coming up with that? I know this is a totally non-sequitur question, but what was your motivation in coming up with this different search engine?

I really just, you know, over the course of time, like using different search engines, whether it be Bing or Google or the others that are out there, I just saw that there was like a bit of bias in the answers I was getting. And I was, you know, I said there's something more here than just this is what's out there and what's available. And so we started to dig into a little bit. And what you find out is you discover that Google for years, we worked with the UN on things like climate and that they are open-minded to suppress.

information. And we saw it, COVID's a great example of we saw their willingness to suppress information that was outside of the, you know, the storyline. And so really, we just wanted to create something that would really helpfully inform people. So we're trying to strip out the bias. We're trying to give all the best information we can. And as we go along, we just sort of, we've evolved, the products evolved to where we're really just trying to be just the fax man. We're trying to inform people. So we have great informed Americans out there making. decisions in their everyday lives. We'll be right back on Wilcane Country with E.J. Antony.

Yeah. That's why I use it. It's cuts to the chase, and it's great for me when I go to work on a show like this, and production I know always takes a look at that stuff so that you can see where the bias is and you're not getting tricked by any kind of stories, especially like young kids in particular, when they're coming up in media, need to know when they're doing production and working in the field where the slant in the story is, because you're not getting that, you're not getting fully informed when you're in college and kind of, just like these marketing people that are coming up and ruining businesses by going full, full left, just going full left.

Getting everybody to shift over. Oh, oh my gosh, yeah. That's a big problem, right? It stops you from asking things. Yeah. What are you asking it? Well, I mean, you could just ask it. Let's go there first.

Well, for our work, we'll just be like, hey, you know, we put in an article or something And it won't give an answer if you ask you like, hey, can you break down this article for me? It's like, sorry, that's against my protocol. I can't do that. That's interesting. Well, you should be using freeze. You're looking at Facebook for those things. Exactly.

I know. I'm going to have to start. Yeah. I, yeah, no, you guys are, I don't know what you're asking AI. I still, I question what you're asking AI to. It's all programmed off Reddit anyway. Yeah, I mean, if you, the issue with AI, like any of those places like chat GPT or so is that, you know, it's, they're just gathering their information from the same places that

Google and Bing are for the most part. Like, they're looking at an index and they might be looking at Reddit or Substack as well, but they're really just gathering their information from the same places that the traditional search engines are. Well, and it's because of whose program. I mean, if you're getting an AI that is designed straight out of San Francisco, the San Francisco area, you know what the politics are there. I mean, like, you know what you're getting. And it couldn't be any farther left. And they are unapologetically left there. So that's what you're getting from their developers there.

FreeSpoke.com, I would go check it out, guys. I would use it. It's incredible. And sign up for it. And I think this is a great thing that you've come up with, Todd. And by the way, you and I need to get together at some point and hang out. We definitely do. We definitely do all ping him when I'm in Texas.

Because there's, well, look, I'll come to Chicago because the, the Pokemon, the Pokemon Field Museum is up in Chicago right now. There's a museum for it? Yes, there is. My gosh. They have a Pokemon night for the Cubs? Cubs Pokemon Night. There you go. Oh, have you thought about that? See, now we're not going to let them go. Have

you seen the stuff that's going on like in L.A. when they do their giveaway nights with like one piece and the Hello Kitty stuff and people are lining up and then literally selling the cards for $400 as they leave the stadium on the spot? Have you seen that? Yes. We have plenty of giveaway nights.

too. I guess our stuff isn't as much in demand as the Dodgers these days. But we do have lots of giveaways throughout the year. I mean, you don't need giveaways because it's the Cubs and it's the best stadium, I think, still in Major. Riggley and Fenway, nobody needs a giveaway to go to either one

of those two stadiums. It's be real. But the Dodgers are... We always have a Greek night where we give out this Greek theme jersey. And then that's how I find out exactly how many Greek friends I have, which is turns out it's a lot. Lots of text, lots of calls.

No, so they give out, they have these one-piece cards because they deal on these anime cards. And there are scalpers in the parking lot. There was a guy, there was a video, man, I should have prepped for this and sent this to you guys at a time. There was a guy, he had a fanny pack full $100 bills. And he was just counting them out as people walked out of the stadium to buy the cards off these people. I don't understand. I really don't understand that. I don't understand the value of that kind of stuff.

I just think it's a free giveaway, and it's for kids anyway. It should be for kids, but yeah, it's wild. Todd, thanks for being here, freespoke.com, and yeah, let's get together soon, sir. Definitely. Thanks for having me on. We'll talk to you guys soon. No problem. See ya.

I want to talk to you guys and E.J., because we were talking about this on the way in, I filled up my tank of gas, and I can't figure out for the life of me, gas prices, because it seems like barrel prices are going down. This is when we get real serious. My buddy, I always forget, it's the chief economist. I talk about everything else. in my life. And I go, dude, why is gas not lower than what it is right now? And he gives me this long response. I'm like, wait, this is a topic for the show. So can you explain this to me?

Because hold it. So let me explain to you from me, from a, just a dummy who's watching this, right? We got Venezuela, right? We took over Venezuela. Yeah. Yep. We're the number one producer of crude in the world under Trump. We're the number one energy producer, basically, in the world under Trump. why do we need Iranian? Why does the Strait of Hormuz Hormuz make any different to us? Why do we need that? Why is my gas

not 25 cents a gallon right now? So it's a couple of things. One is not all crude's created equal, right? Ironically, the stuff that we get out of the ground here in Texas is typically thinner oil with a lower sulfur content and our refineries here at home are not actually set up.

They're not optimized to handle that kind of crude. They're set up typically to handle the stuff coming out of the Middle East or coming out of Venezuela, coming out of the Canadian tar sands, right? That's why all of this oil comes here to the United States, to the Gulf refineries, to then get refined, some of which we use and then the products I mean, and then some of it we just ship around the world. So, ironically, most of the stuff that we're getting out of the ground here, we're not even actually using here.

So crude is very much a global market, right? And even if we were actually refining our own stuff, the refiner then has to say, okay, do I want to sell it here or do I want to sell it abroad? And if people abroad are willing to offer more for that gas, that diesel, that jet fuel, whatever, then they're going to sell it to them instead of selling to us. So that, again, crude is a global market. That's a real big part of it. But the other thing is that increasingly it's looking like there's a shift in terms of where is the bottleneck. At first, the bottleneck was obviously Hormuz, right? It was the fact that there just wasn't enough crude to go around.

That's why we were dipping into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That's why we emptied the tanks in Cushing, Oklahoma. Countries around the world have been going through their reserves at a crazy, crazy pace. Now what's happening? Well, you had a bunch of crude that did get out of the region during the ceasefire, less so now, because things have kind of fallen apart again. But what's happened in Eastern Europe? Ukraine has hit all 10 of Russia's major refineries this year.

and they have greatly decreased the actual amount of product that's able to be produced by those refineries. In other words, now even if you have the crude available for those refineries, they can't run enough of it through to produce enough gasoline. Russia just extended their export ban on gasoline to the end of the year. So all that, again, all that product that normally would have come out of those Russian refineries and then get sold around the world, now none of it is actually getting to the market. None. So where's that missing supply going to come from? It's coming from places like here. Why don't we have those refineries? Is that a Democrat thing? Yeah.

In 277, okay, this is what led to the events in Fallout. So we're going to get to that point. I understand. Yeah. I'm going to start investing in Vault Tech now, actually. I think that's a good idea. And I'm going to start saving my bottle caps. How does that translate to the pump, though, what you just said, what I'm curious. How does that get to that directly? Say one more time, how does that get to what? Translate to what we see at the pump. I mean, it seems like it changes every day.

It's so volatility of it. It's just up and down. Part of that is the fact that if you're a gas station owner, we've got to remember, you might see Exxon or Chevron or whatever on a gas station, right? Virtually none, I think it's literally like less than 1% of those stations with that corporate branding are actually owned by the corporation. I didn't know that. Almost all of them are small, yeah, almost all of them are small operators.

And so, yes, they have the license to use that corporate branding, right? They're, they're buying like Exxon Fuel or Chevron Fuel or Shell or BP, whatever. But again, it's, it's an owner, it's a small owner operator in the vast majority of cases. And even if it's a guy who owns like a dozen stations, again, it's him. it's not Exxon who actually owns the store. So, yeah, go ahead. So when I see like a Costco or a Walmart, are they owned by those corporations?

Or no. Yeah. So if you have, no, no, no, it's not a stupid question. When you have a Costco, right, there's, you don't have, like, a guy who's franchising out a Costco. So that is the corporation. Okay. And then when you have, when you have Costco gas, they have certain standards that they require

their provider to meet. Like, it's got to be a top-tier fuel. they call it. So it has to have certain additives in there. But other than that, they don't care where they get it from. Like they don't care what run off of what refinery that fuel is coming from, as long as it meets their strict standard. So, but with gas stations, again, if you're a small owner-operator, when you go to buy gas to fill the tanks under the station, you need to pay whatever the going rate is at the time. So if you think that in a week, two weeks, whatever it is, It varies. Some stations get multiple deliveries a day. Some only get a delivery a week, whatever the case may be.

But you're trying to anticipate what is oil and what is gas going to be selling for in the future so that I can pay for that delivery. And so sometimes I have to raise the price today so I can afford that future delivery and not have to borrow a ton of money and pay through the nose with interest to actually get the gas in the tank to then sell. So gas stations really don't make money on gas? No, their margins are oftentimes incredibly thin. Sometimes you'll have stations that basically just their whole business model is literally to break even on gas. And they make it all in the convenience store. That's especially true for... Buckees.

Well, yeah, the businesses where they're not known for like the gas, they're really known as being a convenience store. Things like Royal Farms, Wawa, Buckees, a lot of these businesses where... Exactly. You're not thinking to yourself, oh, I love getting gas there, right? You're going there for the food, for the bathrooms, in the case of Buckees, whatever the case. No, you go for the merch at Buckeys. I mean, a lot of people are just loyal to the price. They don't care about whatever it is.

It's like, hey, I'll go to this one today and this one tomorrow, you know. Which also means when you're dealing in larger volume. So when you're dealing in, like, say you're a Walmart or a Costco or a Buckees and you have massive, massive amounts, odds are you're not going to have to, it'll all raise or lower, slower than other places. So you're more likely to have lower prices at those places because of the volume that you're dealing in. Am I right in saying that? Yeah. Yeah.

So there's two big factors. You just hit on both. One is it's just the sheer volume. So they're getting a discount from the supplier because they're telling the supplier, look, we guarantee we're going to purchase X amount from you at least. And so they can lock in a lower price because of that. And then the other thing is you are getting so much and you're typically paying for it ahead of time that you are now locked in over a longer period of time. So you're not subject quite as much to the incredible fluctuations that a smaller gas station might be. By the way, this is the conversation I will have with him on the phone.

Like we'll be talking about nonsense, right? Pokemon cards. Yeah, Pokemon cards. And then I'll be like, hey, God, gas is ridiculous. And then he goes into this. And I'm like, this is why you're the chief economist. This man never turns that off, by the way. That is always how he is on the phone.

Any predictions for it in the next six months? Anything that, or is it just so crazy we have no idea what's going to happen at all? Also, hold on. Let me add this. Why aren't we building the refineries here to use our own energy? What has held that up? I'd imagine Democrats or some sort of EPA regulation. But now that Trump has been in for two years, are we not moving on this stuff?

Yeah, it's been years, I mean, decades since we've actually like invested. into oil infrastructure in this country. During the first Trump term, I think you saw more of a, more of an increase in terms of the infrastructure investment for Nat Gas. Some of that then got canceled under Biden, and now it's, you know, back under Trump. But again, we're talking about investment here. This is, yeah, this is stuff that takes years to actually, to actually make. Right now we have, under Trump 2.0, we have actually gotten the ball rolling on the first

new refinery in, again, decades in America. more. It's going to be years before that thing is up and running. Now, fortunately, it is going to be able, or I should say it's going to be optimized to handle West Texas crude. So that's great, because again, you're going to be able to get the stuff out of the ground here, refine it here, and then just use it here. And it'll cut down on shipping costs. It'll make, it'll make the U.S. market a little more isolated in terms of not having to deal with these fluctuations from, or in these disruptions, I should say, from overseas. So that'll all be very beneficial. But again, the problem is these things take years.

You can't just snap your fingers here and get the change you want. I mean, I look at like a country like Venezuela, and I recall gas being incredibly cheap there. Is it because they have their own refineries to be able to, and they can actually churn it for themselves there? I think it more so has to do with the kind of regulatory environment that you face down there. Now, the other thing is that that was years ago. If you look at before the Maduro operation, they were based. outputting at only about 10% of their peak because the look all these great American companies went in right Chevron I think was a big one and one of the things they did was essentially build the

oil infrastructure almost from scratch in Venezuela the communists kick all these capitalists out oh so we went in and they they are good companies went in and did the work and then they yeah well and this sounds like New York by the way this is like what New York is doing with their big money yeah it seems like there's a pattern here it seems a callback. Yeah. Go ahead. So this is this is a big reason why when Trump initially said to these American companies, all right, get back in there, fix all the infrastructure that the communists get let get worn down and they didn't invest and a lot of it fell apart and that's why production fell so much. And initially all the American oil companies said, we're not doing that because we tried that once and and

we got hosed on it. We lost a ton of money. We lost all our plant and equipment and investment. Yeah. And so I think it's only been with a lot with a lot more guarantees from the government, both here and down there, that they've been willing to kind of dip their toes in the water and say, okay, well, let's get back into that game and try to get production up. But, you know, once more, just like with building the refinery here at home, you're not going to instantly be able to increase production in Venezuela. If you could, the communists would have done that to begin with. That's wild. So where does this go? Dan, that was a good question earlier. Where does this go?

What direction are we headed in? It's going to get worse, isn't it? So the oil market specifically, let's give you, I guess, the best case scenario. We get some kind of great peace deal with Iran. The straight gets open. Maybe they toll it. Maybe they don't. I don't know.

Will they. Will they. Will they. Yeah. Maybe they're going to I atoll it. That was. I gave you 50-50 on that. So, again, best case scenario, straight gets open.

Oil starts flowing right away, right? right it's not going to quite be pre-war levels because at this point you have had oil infrastructure actually damaged or destroyed in the region but you can get pretty darn close to pre-war levels you also have some countries like saudi arabia that have some excess production capacity that they weren't using so that'll help make up for it all right so oil begins to stabilize pretty darn quick prices at the pump come down not quite to pre-war levels but they can probably get close that's your best case scenario the problem is that we've had so many supply chain disruptions now that it is going to cause spillover effects into other consumer products and services. And we saw this during COVID, right? You had the economy shut down almost worldwide, almost all sectors, early in 2020. But then the consumer price increases, the fallout from that. Some of it is still rearing its head the next year in early 2021. So you blow a hole in a supply chain here,

and then it takes months or sometimes a year for it to actually show up in the form of less quantity available for consumers to buy and therefore higher prices. So the helium affecting all kinds of electronics and consumables there, that's going to take months to show up. The problems with sulfuric acid, that's going to take months to show up in copper, which is in like everything, right? And again, fertilizer with food, these things are going to take months to actually happen, to show up in the form of higher consumer prices. So all that to say, there is a more inflation coming because of this war, but it's not necessarily going to show up just at the pump. It's going to show up in a lot of other areas, too. Well, what a great place to end it on

gloom and doom. Thanks, E.J. So sell your Pokemon cards. So listen, you know where there's going to be an inflation and my Pokemon, the value of my Pokemon collection is just going to the moon. Remember we had to say that about Doge back in the day? To the moon, folks. Guys, thanks for having us here today. Dan, Patrick, thanks for hanging out. Everybody. Thanks for being in the comments. Make sure you like, share, subscribe, all those things. Thank you, E.J. and Todd Ricketts, man. Tomorrow there will be another. Who's the guest host tomorrow, guys? I want to shout them out. Danny Polichick of the boys' cast. Tune in tomorrow. Awesome. Be good. Oh, I love, I love them. I love them. That'll be a good show tomorrow.

Tune in tomorrow. Then see you next time. Listen to ad free with a Fox News Podcast plus subscription on Apple Podcast. and Amazon Prime members. You can listen to this show ad-free on the Amazon music app. 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.

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