9/4/25: Epstein Victims Threaten List Release, Xi Military Parade, McDonald's CEO Dire Warning

Krystal And Saagar discuss Epstein victims threaten client list release, Xi military parade, McDonald's CEO dire warning.

 

Juan Rojas: https://substack.com/@rojasrjuand 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 3 (00:25):
We need your help to build the future of independent
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dot com. Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday. Have an amazing
show for everybody today.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
What do we have, Crystal, Indeed we do.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
We're going to take a look at that big Epstein
press conference yesterday with Thomas Massey, Rocanna, and Marjorie Taylor Green.
We want to hear from the survivors, and Rocanna is
going to join us coming in studio.

Speaker 4 (00:48):
I believe, so.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
I think he'll be here either here or remotely. In
any case, we'll have Rocana to break all of that down.
We're also taking a look at this giant Chinese military parade.
What it says about the state of the world in
our own military, where it stands in the pecking order
at this point. We've got some new signs of economic turmoil,
including some very revealing comments from the CEO of McDonald's.

(01:10):
New York Times reporting that the Trump administration, Trump himself
is trying to intervene directly in the New York City
mayoral race to try to clear the field for Andrew Cuomo.
Very interesting, what's happening there. Wanda vid Rojas is going
to join us to break down whether or not we
are prepping to invade Venezuela, so you definitely want to
stick around for that. And I'm taking a look at
Tim Dillon's defense of his appearance at a Saudi comedy festival.

(01:34):
I don't know if you guys have been following this.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
It's far.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
It's not just Tim Dillon, by the way, Basically every
comedian you've ever heard of is going to the Saudi
comedy festival part of their whole like whitewashing of their
image through cultural and sporting events.

Speaker 4 (01:45):
So there's a lot to dig into there.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Yes, that's right.

Speaker 3 (01:47):
I'm excited to listen because Tim was honest about it,
and that's I think your monologue is what culturally what
it tells us, which is important.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
Yes, that's before we get to that.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
Thank you everybody who has been signing up Breakingpoints dot
Com to become a premium subscriber. Obviously we did get
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actually got it. And of course we have our Friday
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Speaker 1 (02:10):
Now here's the thing.

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a friend. It's the most helpful thing that you could
possibly do for us. So with that, let's go ahead
and jump into the Epstein press conference, Congressman Rocanna and

(02:44):
Thomas Massey introducing a discharge petition in the House of
Representatives to force the government to release all of the
Epstein files. They were joined by ten Epstein's survivors who
were there at the press conference, who spoke quite poignantly
about the current cover up by the government.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
Let's take a listen and.

Speaker 5 (03:03):
Let me announce Now several of us Epstein survivors have
been discussing creating our own list of names.

Speaker 6 (03:15):
We know the names.

Speaker 5 (03:20):
Many of us were abused by them. Now, together as survivors,
we will confidentially compile the names we all know we're
regularly in the Epstein world, and it will be done
by survivors and four survivors.

Speaker 7 (03:35):
Jeffrey and Glynn were always very boastful about their friends,
their famous or powerful friends, and his biggest brag forever
was that he was very good friends with Donald Trump.
He had an eight by tim framed picture of him
on his desk with the two of them like they
were very close.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
So that was some of the they're going to release
their own lists. Obviously, some of the MAGA people are
upset that Trump was named there. Trump's defend and many
of the others. He's just one of many. Very true,
which is why you just released all of.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
It, isn't it.

Speaker 3 (04:04):
That's really why it all comes down to that. Yeah,
but it's just why it's like, oh, yeah, it didn't
have to all be a story about you, but you're
the person who created it. You whipped people up and
got people interested in the story. Promise transparency took it away,
and now it looks like, you know, at least the
appearance of by your own behavior is that it is
largely because that you, yourself were present. Easy way to

(04:26):
get around it is just to release everything here. Actually
was an interesting moment on MSNBC where they were asked
specifically about Trump and in particular what they knew about that.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
Let's take a listen.

Speaker 8 (04:38):
So can I get a show of fans who here
is satisfied with the level of contact they've had from Congress?

Speaker 4 (04:44):
Nobody, let me do. Let me ask this.

Speaker 8 (04:47):
How about the Justice Department? I want to ask a
couple of things about what you knew about things that
were happening with this case that you're obviously involved with.
Show of hands, did any of you hear from the
Justice Department before they released that memo, that two page
memo earlier this summer. No hands were any of you
told that Todd Blanche would be speaking with Gillay Maxwell

(05:07):
prior to that interview over.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
The course of two days.

Speaker 8 (05:10):
No, No, were any of you told about the prison
transfer that doing that to no where any of you.
Do any of you feel that the DJ has communicated
with you enough this year?

Speaker 6 (05:21):
Not?

Speaker 8 (05:22):
No, have any of you had any communication with the DJ. No,
nobody in this room has heard at all from the
Department of Justice.

Speaker 6 (05:30):
No.

Speaker 8 (05:30):
No, is that surprising to you?

Speaker 4 (05:33):
No?

Speaker 1 (05:34):
No.

Speaker 3 (05:35):
Now, the reason I think that's important is this traces
back to the original sin. You know, within all this,
the non prosecution agreement that was agreed to with EPCE
in two thousand and seven, which violated all of their
rights because they were not informed of the sweetheart deal
that he got, which enabled him not only to continue
a lot of his behavior. Again by the admission of
the DOJ and others, a lot of the testimony, including

(05:55):
people have spoken out previously, but it does go to
show you how they have been sidelined really in all
of this. And I do think it's important, you know,
not to only forget all of them but then particularly
what all of the stacks upon each other for you know,
we have a system again where legally they were required
to be informed of all of that, and then they
were like, oh, that's the reason that it got voided

(06:16):
back in twenty eighteen and a lot of these stuff
was even allowed to come to light. And since that period,
again they've just been kind of shuttled about as pawns
within this bigger story. And this is part of what
is so you know, I think horrible about it. It's
not about Trump or about maybe it is. It's not
about one particular person. It's about them. It's about the
treatment that they suffered. And then it's about a system

(06:38):
of extremely powerful people, both sides business, et cetera. They
came together and it seemingly, you know, use their power, influence,
et cetera, in order to cover up a lot of
what was going on there in a way that no
reasonable person would have ever expected to be treated if
they did not have all of these sorts of connections.
Those connections themselves remain I believe the central part of
the entire story.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
Yeah, your son rights is talk about the originals in there,
Because we were just talking before the show about you know,
the Palm Beach PD Originally, once they get the first
tip about this, they're pursuing this like they would any
criminal case. And obviously they're well aware that Jeffrey Epstein
is an incredibly wealthy, well connected individual. But they're trace,
they're tracking down the leads, they're going they're talking to

(07:19):
these girls, they talk to their families, they're compiling a
case file, and then the whole thing basically gets swept
up in the Sweetheart deal. So let's say that you
are a you know, you think that there's nothing more
to see here than basically one evil guy and Gallaine
Max while facilitating doing these horrific things, and there's no
larger conspiracy, there's no larger cover up. We also deserve

(07:42):
to know if rich and powerful people can just get
away with things just because they have that kind of money,
like that would also be an important piece of information
to have.

Speaker 4 (07:50):
The reason.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
I mean, there's obviously a lot of reasons why we're
suspicious that there are other things going on due to
the power and connections that he had do I mean,
we just had emails released between him and you know,
former Israeli Prime Minister a who Barack who's very enmeshed
in the like Israeli security defense industrial complex. So there
are many other questions there as well. But even just

(08:11):
to know, oh, this is how it goes for you
if you're rich and powerful.

Speaker 4 (08:14):
Okay, thank you.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
Good to understand that about what is going on in America,
you know, in terms, I'm curious, Sagger, for your view
on how this has played out politically and whether or
not this has ended up being a significant story for Trump,
because certainly it seems like with the MAGA base, you know,
Marjorie Taylor Green and Thomas Massey being there versus Thomas

(08:36):
Massey is now like brasona non grotto with magas certainly
with Trump, he's working hard to try to primary Thomas
Massey and get him removed from office, et cetera. But
it sure seems like most of the MAGA base has
moved on, that they have more or less bought his
idea that this is a Democrat hoax, that there's nothing
to see here, and you know, all of these all
these people only care about it because it has to

(08:58):
do with Donald Trump, and you know, they have sort
of moved on from it. I still continue to think
though that It's an important story not only because of
the substance of it, but from the political perspective. Trump
really positioned himself as this warrior against the deep state, right,
who was going to fight on your behalf, who was
going to reveal the truth.

Speaker 4 (09:15):
Expose the secrets, etc.

Speaker 2 (09:17):
And that image, the Epstein story was a dagger in
the heart of that particular image, and that was a
big part of his appeal with you know, I'm going
to talk about Tim Dillon in my monologue today, with
like that circle of people who felt like this was
like a renegade who was going to come in and
blow up the system.

Speaker 3 (09:32):
Trump's greatest strength is that he was a blank slate
for which you could project anything that you wanted. You
could be anti war and you could project it. If
you could be pro war, you could predict pro Israel
and anti Israel. Right, these were disparate forces. Epstein I
could go on for Maha, you know, like all of
that was a project which he could subsume, he could wink,
he could not.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
He was pro IVF and he was pro life.

Speaker 3 (09:53):
Now, if you're following the policy and all that, you know,
some of that would start to fall apart. But in reality,
that's not how most people vote like they look at it.
And unfortunately, one of the things that about Americans is
that they actually take a lot of the words of
politicians say seriously if you look at it.

Speaker 1 (10:08):
And so for the Epstein thing, it's like you just said, magabase.

Speaker 3 (10:12):
Is about twenty five to thirty percent of the American public,
maybe actually less at this point, that's seventy percent. Now
Trump won the popular vote, which means, you know, at
least some fifty one percent of the people who voted
in the election, at maybe half of the people who
voted for Trump then are not so called MAGA.

Speaker 1 (10:29):
So those people matter a lot.

Speaker 3 (10:30):
That's why I've talked about Israel in the context of Michigan.
Are all the people voted for Trump and Michigan because
Israel absolutely not. Was it enough of a margin to
get him over there? Absolutely yes. Now the Epstein one,
I don't think anybody really voted on Epstein per se,
But we live in an anti institutional, anti elite moment.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
The Epstein story resonates deeply.

Speaker 3 (10:49):
And by the way, you know, if I'm in public
or anything, what's the number one thing I got asked
about Epstein?

Speaker 1 (10:53):
Number one number one.

Speaker 3 (10:54):
Now, I mean a lot of that is because of
the work that I do, and that's maybe it's a
little bit self selecting, but that's also usually my gauge.
I'm like, this stuff still hits like it really does
to a lot of people, and I think the reason
again is that if you're not willing to engage and
or tell the truth about what's happening with this, then
what else are you covering up?

Speaker 1 (11:16):
It's like a side issue.

Speaker 3 (11:17):
It's kind of like one of those symbological areas for
politics where.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
If you can't tell me here, then this whole.

Speaker 3 (11:26):
Apparatus just seems the whole thought gimbal bingo. And that's
why I've always thought that the story is very deeply important.
It became kind of maga coated because it was anti establishment,
but now you're the government, you are the establishment, and
so you know, it kind of flips that on its head. Trump,
by the way, not helping himself all that much in
the way that he talks about all of this in

(11:46):
terms of making it look like a cover up. He
continues to call it the quote democratic Epstein hoax.

Speaker 1 (11:51):
Let's take a listen. He was asked about this in
the Oval Office.

Speaker 9 (11:54):
He's a Justice Department protecting any friends or donors.

Speaker 10 (11:57):
So this is a Democrat hoax that never ends. From
what I understand, I could check, but from what I understand,
thousands of pages of documents have been given. But it's
really a Democrat hoax because they're tried to get people
to talk about something that's totally irrelevant.

Speaker 11 (12:14):
Today, he called it a hoax while these women were
speaking out and they were saying, we're not a hoax,
we're human beings. It's not a hoax because Jeffrey Epstein
is a convicted pedophile. That takes away the whole hoax things.
It's not a hoax, it's not a lie. And on
that note, Eric, every Republican should be able to sign

(12:35):
on to this, and that's the real hoax that they're
afraid to sign on to it because somebody who you know,
who is a real coward from one of the Trump
admin officials came out and called this a hostile act
against the Trump administration. The hostile act was Jeffrey Epstein
raping fourteen year old girls.

Speaker 4 (12:57):
That was the hostile act. And it's not a hope.

Speaker 3 (13:00):
Oh good for her, props to Marjorie for being able
to speak out about this. We have Congressman Rocana standing by.
He's going to break down some of the latest on
his discharge petition. Let's get to it. Joining us now
is Congressman Rocanna. He's been a leader on the release
of the Epstein files, including a press conference.

Speaker 1 (13:18):
Who've just showed everybody yesterday. Thank you very much for
joining us, Sir, We appreciate it.

Speaker 6 (13:22):
Thank you for having me back.

Speaker 3 (13:23):
So you had that press conference yesterday, we were saying
a little bit before is very emotional. There were some
calls for any of these Epstein victims not only for
a release of the files, but also for potentially compiling
their own quote unquote list. At the same time, you've
been working with Congressman Thomas Massey for a discharge petition. Guys,
we can put a five up here on the screen.

(13:45):
So Congressman, can you give us any update on the
amount of signatures, and particularly Republican signatures you will need
in order to get to this to the floor and
potentially for a vote and for a release of the
Epstein files.

Speaker 6 (13:58):
Well, first of all, I just hope everyone takes the
time to watch the survivors. I felt just overwhelmed with
disgust hearing them. They were in tears. They were talking
about being in junior high or in ninth grade and
being raped, and they were being talking about having to
recruit other junior high and high school friends to come

(14:19):
to Epstein's house to be raped. It was horrifying and
I so admire their courage. I don't understand how every
person is not supporting what they want, which is the
release of these files. And this is something that has
gone on well before Donald Trump. They've been asking for
this for years. They're finally being heard. We have a

(14:40):
situation where we're going to get all two hundred and
twelve House Democrats. There's one of our members who lost
his mother unportrayed, so he's going to come in in
the next few days. He will sign and one other
members signing today will have two hundred and twelve. We
have four Republicans and so we need two more signatures.
Thomas Massey and I aroren conversation with about ten potential

(15:03):
people who are open to signing. I'm very confident by
the end of this month we are going to get
to the two eighteen number, and then we have seven
days and then we will have a vote on the bill.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
The President has really been pushing very hard to keep
Republicans from signing your discharge petition? What is your awareness
of those efforts? And you know how hard are they
whipping against this?

Speaker 6 (15:27):
It's as hard as I've seen them whip against anything.
I mean, the President, from my understanding, is reaching out
to individual members. We had twelve, remember co sponsors on
our bill, and Thomas Massey and I say we probably
shouldn't have gotten the co sponsors. It was giving a
roadmap to the White Episode who to target. And that's
why we're being a little bit more vague about how

(15:47):
we're going to get to two eighteen. But we're very
confident we will get there. But look, Thomas Massey has
millions of dollars being spent against him from the White House,
from the billionaires, some who may be implicated in the
sty files, from a pack. I mean, he's a profile
and courage and other members see that and they say, well,
we don't want millions of dollars spent against us. So

(16:10):
it really takes some guts to sign. But now with
Marjorie Taylor Green, with Nancy Mace, and with Lauren Bobert signing,
and after hearing those survivors, I really do think some
other Republicans are going to do the right thing. I mean,
it was just so emotional yesterday.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
Has Apax Sorry, just to pick up on what you
just said, I know Thomas Massey Apak is unhappy with
him for other reasons. Have they taken an interest in
Epstein file release as well?

Speaker 6 (16:36):
To your knowledge, No, I actually make that clear. They're
going after him because he talks about human rights in Palestine.
With me, they just tweet at tweet against me, but
with him, they actually are pouring in millions of dollars
to try to defeat him.

Speaker 3 (16:54):
Congressman, one of the things that happened earlier this week
is that the House Oversight Committee released bunch of quote
Epstein files. I spent hours, unfortunately going through a lot
of it. It turned out that almost nineties nine percent
of it, I believe from your commentary, was already public
So wasted several hours of my life. But that seemed
to be a cover for some Republicans to not vote

(17:17):
for your petition, despite the fact that again the vast
majority that's been so called release was already publicly available.
Is that how you saw that stunt by the oversight committee.

Speaker 6 (17:28):
Yes, look, if you're not following this closely, and Soon says, well,
thirty three thousand documents were released they average, Perstan says,
what wore they do they want? Well, that's less than
one percent a fule of files. The parts that were
released were already public. And they're not releasing the key things,
which are the witness interviews with other men who tried
to cover up for Epstein, with other men who are

(17:50):
part of this farm system and abused young girls. They're
not releasing the financial records, they're not releasing the CIA
or FBI investigations. They're not releasing what the survivors are
telling us should be released. And people have to say, well,
how do we know that they're going to release something accurately? Well,
the survivors lawyers have seen these files. They know that

(18:12):
there's explosive information in these files, so they will be
able to corroborate when there is a release that the
information has been released. And this is what the survivors
want for closure and for justice.

Speaker 4 (18:25):
That's I think that's a really important point.

Speaker 2 (18:26):
What did you make the other thing they did as
they released the audio and the transcript of that Todd
Blanche interview with Gallaine Maxwell.

Speaker 4 (18:33):
What did you make of that?

Speaker 1 (18:36):
What?

Speaker 6 (18:36):
I was embarrassing that Maxwell is lavishing praise on Donald
Trump to try to get a part in And I'd
actually really upset and angered some of the survivors. In fact,
the purpose of the Fresh conference for many of the
survivors was to get talked about the Epstein files and
the release of that. But some of them were so

(18:58):
outraged by Maxwell's abuse and how Maxwell is being treated
that they wanted to speak about that and did speak
about that. I mean, they were raped because of Maxwell
as girls, and now they're hearing Maxwell be treated as
some kind of victim. We're trying to get some kind
of pardon. You know, I don't think we fully understand

(19:20):
when we call when the President called this a hoax,
when they're talking about partnering Maxwell, the impact that has
on hundreds of survivors across the country.

Speaker 3 (19:31):
Congressman, another thing I wanted to make sure that I
specified with you is I saw that there was potential
for the CIA and others to actually redact or not include,
even with your legislation, some of the potential ties and
or scrutiny on intelligence. So what you know, safeguards have
you built in and pressure can you ensure that even

(19:52):
if such a release does happen, that it is not
covered up. Let's say for sixty years, all what's happening
with the JFK file.

Speaker 6 (20:01):
Well, it's going to be a fight for disclosure. And
I'm not saying that our bill is the panacea and
it's going to solve everything, but it's going to get
us a lot of the information, particularly where the financial
support for Epstein was coming from. Who the other powerful
Richard men were who engaged in the cover up, were
engaged in the sex trafficking. Are we going to be

(20:22):
able to fully understand if there were foreign ties and
who they were. That's going to be a fight. I mean,
obviously there's always they will claim national security privilege. We
will push for as much as can be released, but
the first step is to get the law pass to
call for the release of the file.

Speaker 4 (20:40):
Connorson.

Speaker 2 (20:40):
I've heard a lot of Democrats, you know, they're they're
signing on to the discharge petition, so we want to
we want to give them credit for that, but I've
heard them describe this issue as a quote unquote distraction.

Speaker 4 (20:50):
How do you see it?

Speaker 6 (20:52):
No one is saying that after yesterday. I mean, you
can't say that it's a distraction. I mean, there are
human beings who were raped as girls. And if a
nation is going to allow rich and powerful men to
assault and traffic young girls without any consequence, then it's
a nation that has lost its moral bearings. I mean,
I think this is the most fundamental issue, and you

(21:14):
know what, it's an issue that possibly could bring us together.
Are we still capable of coming together as a country
on anything like can't we come together as a nation
and say underage girls should be protected, our kids should
be protected. We should stand with survivors who are crying
in front of the country telling us that they were
raped as girls. You know, Marjorie Taylor Green was so

(21:34):
emotional afterwards, she gave me a hug. I mean, this
was not politics. It really was not. Anyone who was
there would realize that this was the most basic human issue.
And I really think that's how people should look at it.
We've gotten too in Nework being in Congress thinking oh,
what's going to have a polling advantage or a political advantage.
This is something just basic Justice.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
Congressman, really appreciate the work that you are doing, and
please keep us updated on this petition, and we're really
hoping that it can go through.

Speaker 1 (22:06):
Thank you for taking time and your day to join us.

Speaker 6 (22:08):
Thank you, thank you for covering it.

Speaker 3 (22:12):
Turning now to Beijing, where we brought everybody the news
of the Shanghai Cooper SEO meeting where Mody and Putin
and she worked together. It was a major moment for
the rise of multipolarity. But now we have to focus
in specifically on China, which had a stunning display of
military might in the capital and with Shishingping and millions

(22:37):
of Chinese soldiers service members all gathered in you know,
immaculate uniforms of production for the ages, which a single
message to Washington, do not mess with us.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
We are one of you.

Speaker 3 (22:48):
Now you have to deal with it. So we have
some video that we can show all of you. I mean,
one of the most you know, stunning things actually was
Kim Jong Un. I believe this is one of the
first like ever Internet meetings ever even taken part of
Vladimir Putin was right there next to him, basically as
I talked about the rejoining of those two countries in

(23:09):
the post Ukraine environment. But you can just see like
the pomp, the circumstance, the pageantry, the actually being able
to march information of all of their uniforms that were
put together. I mean, there's only one audience in the
world for all of this, It's Washington, and they're actually,
this is the scary part because what do we see here.
We have ICBMs and other missiles capable of hitting anywhere

(23:31):
on the globe thirty to sixty minutes. They had a
stunning display really of a lot of their new military technology.
By the way, they don't have supply chain problems, they
don't have Lockheed Martin stocks and other things that they
have to deal with.

Speaker 1 (23:46):
They have got one.

Speaker 3 (23:47):
Singular goal, which is America. You will not mess with us.
If we want to take over Taiwan, we'll damn well
do it. If we want to continue to fund Russia,
we will. And by the way, that's why we're starting
a new pipeline. It's not an act that Russia and
North Korea were standing there side by side.

Speaker 1 (24:03):
And if anything, I think that that.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
Picture with Mody with Putin at the SEO and now
with North Korea and Kim Jong un standing by the
side is a perfect symbol of the failure of US
diplomacy because at every single instance this was avoidable.

Speaker 1 (24:22):
We had the Putin Summit.

Speaker 3 (24:23):
We could end the war in Ukraine if you really
wanted to, you could absolutely we could restore decent relations
with Russia and find some sort of agreement Rock Proschma
or whatever with Ukraine. With North Korea, Trump met with
North Korea, he met with Kim Jong un, he shook
his hand, all sort of this developed. But the one
thing is in both times he refused to drop the
Neo Khan line. With North Korea. He's like, but you

(24:44):
got to give up your nukes, and they're like, no,
it will never happen.

Speaker 1 (24:47):
It will quite literally never happen.

Speaker 4 (24:49):
So drop it should, by the way foreign policy.

Speaker 1 (24:52):
Idiots to do.

Speaker 6 (24:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:54):
So they're like, no, it's not happening. With Putin, they're like,
oh you have to yeah, I don't even know what
the demand here is. Putin right is like, oh, we're
going to meet with you, but we're still going to
fund Ukraine. He's like, okay, well, I've got millions of
troops and China's got here. You know, they have my back.
India's going to keep buy my oil. So I'm just
going to keep rolling, all right, And in the meantime,
you guys can figure out whatever it is that you want,

(25:14):
and I'm just going to continue inch by inch. I
don't care how many soldiers of mine die in Ukraine.
In the end, I'm probably going to win. And so
that's their strategy. And the same with China. Like it's
not just tariffs. I support tariffs on China. Again, though
the level of capriciousness has made it so that g
has in the last decade been able to fully go
in on the Maiden China twenty twenty five plan. I mean,

(25:36):
by the way, you know, a lot of that weaponry
was distinctively part of it. If you went and read
all of the primary source documents that they're released ten
years ago, you see there the ability to compel MODI
putin North Korea. You can make fun of these states
if you want to. A lot of them are not
like economic powerhouses. But what we have learned in the
post Ukraine environment is that production, the native capacity to produce,

(25:59):
is the single most important thing for a nation in
a time of crisis. China has been able to marry
economic production, economic growth. They have the state managed capitalism
at the highest most efficient order, and they have now
the ability to bring all of these former US allies
and or US like states which were able to engage

(26:20):
with the United States go in with China and say, hey,
they're going to be a better partner to me. So,
combined with their deterrence, their weaponry, the I mean just
the sheer might of their economy, of their defense sector,
anybody in Washington who's dealing with the bullshit that we
are today should be deeply afraid. And this is scary

(26:41):
because as someone who's been covering this for literally a decade,
I remember reading those twenty twenty five plans. I was like, ah,
it's never gonna happen, or you know, the very Washington's
gonna wake up. The pivot to Asia is finally happening.
We're here now, We are here now, and we lost.
We have to admit it. Can we even catch up?
Maybe that's a big question mark. So it's stunning.

Speaker 1 (27:01):
It really is. Ye that parade.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
I think that military paraode is in intentional global wake
up call or wake up call at least here at home,
that we already live in a different world than most
Americans imagine that.

Speaker 4 (27:11):
We live in.

Speaker 2 (27:12):
And I was taking a look at this Foreign Policy
magazine article. The headline is China's military is now leading.
Wednesday's parade proved the regional military balance has irrevocably changed.
And I just want to read you a little bit
of this just to underscore what I'm saying here. It's
now widely accepted that the story Western countries once told
themselves about China's technological development, it's a mere imitator of

(27:34):
Western tech. It steals ip its success as a result
from wasteful public subsidies is inadequate. I would say that's
putting it kindly. This story still has some elements of truth,
but is much less true than it used to be.
China is today an innovator and a technological leader in robotics,
electric vehicles, nuclear reactors, solar energy drones, where they make
seventy to ninety percent of drones made in China. By

(27:57):
the way, guys, high speed rail and AI. If confirmation
were needed, the September third military parade through Beijing confirms
that we must add military tech to this list. It's
no longer enough to say the China's military is catching
up or there just copying foreign military equipment designs. China
is now innovating and it is leading in the process.

(28:18):
The regional military balance that has for decades favored the
US and its partners is being irrevocably changed.

Speaker 4 (28:24):
Now.

Speaker 2 (28:24):
One thing that they, of course don't have that we
do is we have this these military basis spread all
over the world.

Speaker 4 (28:30):
They do not have that.

Speaker 2 (28:31):
So that is a very different kind of an orientation
towards the globe. But in terms of military tech, you know,
I've been listening to to Seth Harpool we add on
this show to talk about the Fort Brag Cartel, the
book that he just wrote. He you know, studies and
follows and researches and does you know, all kinds of
incredible journalism around the state of the US military. And

(28:51):
he says, we're fooling ourselves if we think that we
just ran supreme And it's sun question, you know, when's
the last time we want a war? Like? Look at
how we did with the How did it go with
us in the houthis yes, right? How did it go
with us in Afghanistan? How is it going with all
of our weapons? And know how and yes, you know,
special operations, special operators on the ground in Ukraine.

Speaker 4 (29:10):
How is that going right?

Speaker 2 (29:11):
Even in Gaza, where it's our tax dollars funding this
horrific genocide, it's our weaponry, How is that Hamasa is
still able to operate and able to you know, to
take out IDF soldiers at times. So we're sort of
living in a delusion about our unquestioned military superiority. And
I think, you know, for anyone who's paying attention, this

(29:33):
parade is one symbol that should help to pop that bubble.

Speaker 1 (29:36):
Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (29:37):
I think I said this last the analogy I was
having dinner with somebody and it was very knowledgeable about
US defense. And the analogy was is that the United
States in the lead up to World War Two, our
technological advantage was simple production more than anything. So the
B seventeen, the B twenty nine, they were not the
world's greatest aircraft, but we could just make a shitload

(29:59):
of them. So the Nazis invented the V two rocket,
They invented the first jet engine, the first jet or
not the first jet aircraft that the United States actually
had to engage with above the skies of Germany. Guess
what you still won even with the technically or less
superior aircraft. Why because you could produce a ton.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
There's great stories.

Speaker 3 (30:18):
You know, the Japanese Zero was one of the most
sophisticated airplanes of its time, but you know, the production
after it was eventually bombed away. The Japanese would have
to like use a horse drawn cart to bring a
newly finished piece of air material to another. Now we
are the Japanese and the Germans. We have this stunning

(30:38):
B two.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
It costs two billion dollars. We don't have the oil
to put in it.

Speaker 3 (30:42):
We don't have the production facility or others to create
the ammunition that goes into the basic gun. Now, what
China has been able to do is not only match
us stunning technology, they have the entire supply chain to
deal with it if they need to. They have the
economic might and all the ability to sustain all of that. Meanwhile,
we're living in a service based, financialized, ridiculous system where

(31:05):
I was just telling you today FanDuel is now going
to fund public transportation so that fans can get to
an Eagles game in Philadelphia. The government can't fund it
because so FanDuel is stepping in.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
Well, our reality, our military parade was funded by what
volunteer and coinbase we have.

Speaker 3 (31:22):
We actually said that let's put that B two please
up on the screen. This is a symbol of you know,
we can't mark it's all yeah, look at this. Look
I I do not want to be in a position
where I'm putting down our service members, you know. And
they probably didn't have a lot of time to prepare
for this because it was shoddily and hastily put together.
The individual people in there, I have nothing but deep

(31:44):
love and respect for. What I have concerns about is
what is the system that places them in potentially harm's
way and has failed them, and at the same time
is raping the American taxpayer who has to spend.

Speaker 1 (31:57):
A trillion dollars a year for the nonsense.

Speaker 3 (32:00):
Take a look at their GDP per spending per capita
on military and then compare it to ours. That's the
most important thing. The other thing that we all need
to grapple with is that g and putin they are
megal lomaniac crazy but smart, and that we have megalomaniac
crazy but not smart. And just to show you all,

(32:23):
this particular clip is she and Putin chatting about how everyone,
anyone could live to one hundred and fifty with organ tram.
I mean, these guys are obsessed with transhumanism, with living
forever in the exact same way, but they may actually
be able to do it.

Speaker 1 (32:38):
Let's take a listen.

Speaker 3 (32:40):
In the past, people rarely lived longer than seventy years,
but today they say that at seventy you are still
a child.

Speaker 4 (32:48):
Human Organs can be continuously transplanted.

Speaker 8 (32:51):
The longer you live, the younger you become, and can
even achieve immortality.

Speaker 3 (32:57):
So yeah, you can even achieve immortality longer you live.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
This or I mean, you know, and I've talked about
this with Putin.

Speaker 3 (33:04):
He's a czar she, I mean, he's the new song Emperor.
Like these guys are.

Speaker 1 (33:09):
Not Communist or you know, they're like, oh, he's the
new Soviet Union.

Speaker 3 (33:14):
Guys read a book like you have to go way,
way deeper. And if you look at the way that
they talk about the Chinese elites in particular, they look
at themselves as the inheritors of a twenty five hundred
year old culture. You know, they're not looking at themselves
as history began with Malza Doong. That's part of it,
but it is part of a much much broader picture.
And so you know, in a way, it's like the

(33:35):
old world is punching back and here.

Speaker 1 (33:38):
In the US like weirdest.

Speaker 4 (33:40):
This is what Yegor says to me.

Speaker 2 (33:42):
He's like, you know, maybe the aberration was like, you know,
us of Western dominance in the world, that the historical
tradition is actually China being the well.

Speaker 6 (33:51):
Of the world.

Speaker 1 (33:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (33:52):
Lextreman asking that we did a podcast, He's like, well,
the American empire fall and I was like, well, statistically, yeah.

Speaker 4 (33:58):
It's like asking, are we gonna one day die?

Speaker 1 (34:01):
Said fight Club quote.

Speaker 3 (34:02):
You know, on a long enough timeline, the survival rate
for everything drops the zero. So yeah, if you look
at the China, yeah, exactly. The aberration in China was
that during the nineteen hundreds it was weak and it
was divided. A lot of kind of was it depends.
It's complicated, but the point just broadly is that where
they see their you know, historical where they see themselves
today is on a long timeline that we cannot we

(34:26):
can barely conceive of in their culture and in their history.

Speaker 1 (34:29):
And so this will be the single most.

Speaker 3 (34:32):
Important battle for the twenty you know, for the twenty
first century. It might be a hot battle, it might
be economic, who knows, But it is the story of
our time. It really you cannot you really cannot grapple
with it unless you are actually Yeah, all the people
alive who really had to deal with psychologically the rise
of either Nazi Germany or the Kaiser Imperial Germany.

Speaker 1 (34:55):
That's what it was like to live through, you.

Speaker 3 (34:57):
Know, when you were the British Empire and the sun
never set upon you, and all of a sudden you
have this you know state Germany, this new state, and
they're ramping up industrial production and science, and it caused
all kinds of destabilization and nobody really knew what to
deal with.

Speaker 1 (35:10):
And it ended in the First World Wars.

Speaker 3 (35:12):
A catastrophe, absolute catastrophe. And I don't have any faith
that our statesmen today are smarter and able to deal
with this crisis. And the people back then were a
hell of I've read all their a lot of their
primary documents correspondence. They were a hell of a lot
smarter and thinking deeply, and they still weren't able to avoid. Yeah,
you know, some sort of horrific Uh, well.

Speaker 2 (35:32):
I mean Trump is just in it for himself, like
he only cares about what he can on the state.

Speaker 3 (35:37):
Because this is it's not Trump, it's Biden. I mean,
it's the system.

Speaker 7 (35:41):
Sure.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
But also in this moment, like Trump has accelerated, Yeah,
this is the Trump effect, Like he is accelerated becoming
together of these world leaders. And you even had some
you know, attempted reproachment between South Korea and North Korea
and the context of this, and I think it's also
important to remind because we talked about this earlier in
the week, you know the purpose of this parade in
part to recast the narrative of World War Two and

(36:05):
the post World War War two order, and to put
China at the center of that and China as a
leader and the.

Speaker 4 (36:11):
True sort of air to the post World War two order.
So it's you know, narratively and propaganda.

Speaker 2 (36:19):
From a propaganda perspective, it's interesting as well.

Speaker 3 (36:21):
Oh, absolutely, it is fascinating to see them try to
reclaim the World War Two. I mean, look, I mean
I do get it in a certain way. I think
what twenty million Chinese died in the Second World War
fighting the Japanese. It wasn't all the Chinese communists. You know,
a lot of the Chinese nationalists are the ones who
died and that as well, so you know, it was
a little complicated. Sometimes they were pretty happy to let

(36:42):
the nationalists get killed by the Japanese if it meant
it was good for them.

Speaker 1 (36:45):
It's an interesting story.

Speaker 3 (36:46):
A lot of people should actually spend more time thinking
and reading about it. But the point more broadly is
that they love to flip the terms on the United
States and be like, oh, a US led ward order,
what does that.

Speaker 1 (36:57):
Led to chaos Iraq?

Speaker 3 (36:58):
You know, And they love to talk about zero sum
competition or mutual respect. Mutual respect in their minds means
Taiwan is ours and you can fuck off, or you know,
how Russia decides to elect its country is its own business.

Speaker 1 (37:12):
If Kim Jong un has to create a famine to
create ICBMs, so be it.

Speaker 3 (37:16):
And you know, in the nineties it would be very
easy to say, well, that's not who we are. Well,
you can't say that in the year twenty twenty five.
Not in the midst of Gaza, Ukraine, Libya, Syria a rock.

Speaker 2 (37:27):
How are we going to stand on some like territorial
integrity principle. We're funding a genericide INASA now that it
would be insane to go to work sign over Taiwan.

Speaker 3 (37:34):
Our Secretary of State is on his way over to
Israel apparently, or I guess I should say whatever what
they claim to be Israel. Apparently he's going to participate
in a cellar event, you know, in yeah, exactly, and
the Secretary of State of the United States of America.
So really we're going to fund Ukraine to protect their
territorial integrity. Okay, I mean you know, it's like, oh,

(37:55):
and we have a problem with monarch, we have a
problem with dictators.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
Really, that's not who we buy are oil from.

Speaker 10 (38:00):
Is it.

Speaker 3 (38:01):
Oh wait, so it all falls apart on a very
basic scrutiny. Let's go ahead and get then to Trump,
which we've been building up here.

Speaker 1 (38:08):
Who is you know?

Speaker 3 (38:10):
He kind of admitted the quiet part out loud. He's like,
they were doing it because they wanted me to watch,
and I was watching.

Speaker 1 (38:15):
Let's take a listen.

Speaker 9 (38:16):
I put out a truth last night.

Speaker 10 (38:19):
You saw that, and I was the one that brought
it up. I said, they're only doing this, They're really
they're looking to when they did what they did.

Speaker 9 (38:28):
I thought it was a beautiful ceremony. I thought it
was very, very impressive. But I understood the reason they
were doing it. And they were hoping. I was watching,
and I was watching. My relationship with all of them
is very good. We're going to find out how good
it is over the next week or two.

Speaker 1 (38:43):
They were hoping. I was watching and I was watching.

Speaker 3 (38:45):
He told them in a truth that he was like,
they all conspire against the United States.

Speaker 1 (38:51):
Well what are you going to do about it?

Speaker 3 (38:52):
You know, and not just wave, you know, like wave
around until putin big things are coming, Like what like
what exactly what do you have left? What cards do
you have left to play? You want to know who
China's cards.

Speaker 1 (39:05):
Let's go and show everybody.

Speaker 3 (39:06):
Let's put this up there on the screen, all the
military parade, all the military equipment that they were debuted.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
You know, it's stunning.

Speaker 3 (39:13):
Hypersonic missiles, combat vehicles, unmanned aircraft, undersea drones, nuclear missiles
capable of hitting anywhere on the globe.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
I mean, this was a massive shot at the Pentagon.

Speaker 3 (39:25):
This is all has production lines capacity that does not
rely on us. Does anyone want to know who we
rely on for some of our military equipment.

Speaker 1 (39:34):
Right, it's called China. It seems smart, really works out.

Speaker 3 (39:36):
And the more that you look into all of their
capacity and their show, it's like you said, they not
only have the ability to spend less because they don't
have some great geopolitical projection. By the way, Trump yesterday
was like, yeah, we'll send more troops to Poland. I
was like, oh, really, why, you know, for what reason?
Why why do we need troops in Poland and all
over the Baltics, in Germany and Korea and Japan, And

(40:00):
I mean, I could go on forever.

Speaker 1 (40:02):
Some of those makes sense. Japan, Korea, et cetera.

Speaker 3 (40:04):
Germany why, I mean again, it's one of those where
nobody asked basic questions. Keep cutting these checks to the Pentagon,
and that's what it looks like when you're actually intelligent
and you think deeply about what this is all going
to look like and potentially should look like in the future,
should anything happen. The last thing we wanted to mention
was about Korea because this was actually very interesting. Let's

(40:24):
going to put this last part up on the screen. Obviously,
Korea one of the top ten trading partners of the
United States, one of the most important US allies in
all of Southeast Asia actually sent their speaker in parliament
to shake hands with Kim Jong un at the Beijing
military parade.

Speaker 1 (40:40):
Now why is that important?

Speaker 3 (40:41):
Well, it used to be in the first Trump administration
that the United States was the one who was trying
to broker some sort of peace and or you know,
rock proch mood between the South and the North. But
now the Koreans, who you know, look not exactly in
love with China, are sending delegations to the Beijing military parade.
And basically a method a word to Washington is you

(41:01):
treat us like shit. They don't treat us so bad
over here, even though we have all of our differences,
and they're willing to shake hands with Kim Jong un
and potentially broke some sort of piece via China. Without
the United States, it would be a disaster. So everybody
keep their eye on this. I know can seem tedious
and more, but I mean it really is. Like it's
like the nineteen thirties or the early nineteen hundreds all

(41:22):
over again, Like the entire world order is being rewritten
before our eyes. It's not that hard actually to figure
out what's hard to figure out is how to avoid
what usually happens when something like this does seem like
it's on the horizon. The last thing I wanted to
mention was this story, which again Chaulle's challenges dollar supremacy.
Can we go ahead and put a B seven please,

(41:43):
which is developing countries have been swapping out of dollar
debt to cut their borrowing costs. They say that sovereign
borrowers are now turning to lower interest rate currencies such
as the Chinese rembe and or the Swiss fronc to
get around the fluxus and the interest rates of the
dollar set by the Federal Reserve. So just another little

(42:05):
thing that we can look at, just broadly about all
of the signs.

Speaker 1 (42:09):
Of where things are going. I'm not a bricks person.

Speaker 3 (42:11):
I'm not saying it's all happening, you know, tomorrow and
the end of the US empire.

Speaker 1 (42:15):
That's not how it works.

Speaker 3 (42:17):
The point is is that sometimes it takes decades and
the initial signs, though, if you're smart enough, you can
see that they start to rhyme with a lot of problems.
Which is probably a good segue to our economy block,
which is about how we have troubling signs in our
economy and a lot is fake. So let's get to it,
turning down to the economy, as we said, into where

(42:40):
we can actually look to some truth. Unfortunately, it comes
from the CEO of McDonald's who shockingly actually dropped some
truth bombs on CNBC about how divided the country is
on whether you make over one hundred thousand dollars or not.

Speaker 1 (42:53):
Let's take a listen.

Speaker 12 (42:54):
Part of what we also saw was that particularly with
middle and lower income consumer, they're feeling under a lot
of pressure. He said, I think there's a lot of
commentary about what's the state of the economy, how's it doing,
And what we see is it's really kind of a
two tier economy. If your upper income earning over one
hundred thousand dollars, things are good, stock markets are near

(43:16):
all time highs, you're feeling quite confident about things. You're
seeing international travel, All those barometers of upper income consumers
are doing quite well. What we see with middle and
lower income consumers is actually a different story. It's that
consumers under a lot of pressure. In our industry, traffic
for lower income consumers is down double digits and it's

(43:39):
because people are either choosing to skip a meal, so
we're seeing breakfast people are actually skipping breakfast, or they're
choosing to just eat at home. And so for our business,
which has a significant group of consumers which are in
that middle and lower income, we needed to step in
with something like what we're doing here.

Speaker 3 (43:58):
Listening to the CEO McDonald A, let's skipping breakfast office
took now. I will say on McDonald's it's still outrageously
expensive compared to where it used to be. I don't
eat McDonald's maybe more than two or three times a year.
My wife gets hungry for it. She's nursing whatever, she
gets what she wants. So I go to McDonald's the mcgriddle.
It costs me nine dollars, and I tweeted about that.
People made fun of me because apparently I don't use

(44:20):
the app. No, I'm not degenerate enough to have the
McDonald's app or to be knowledgeable enough about set deals.
But in my head, as a child of the nineties,
you're on a road trip and you roll up to McDonald's,
how much do you think that should cost? A couple bucks?

Speaker 1 (44:34):
You know, a buck ninety nine? And yet it's not
just the price.

Speaker 3 (44:38):
What he really said there, which is important is if
you look he said below one hundred thousand, you're seeing
a massive reduction in lower income consumers being able to
go out to eat, and people are skipping breakfast.

Speaker 1 (44:50):
Now.

Speaker 3 (44:50):
I think that's hopefully they're getting enough to eat, you know,
elsewhere and or.

Speaker 1 (44:54):
Trying to eat at home.

Speaker 3 (44:55):
But the totality of it is that, yeah, it might
be marginally cheaper on a percent basis to eat at home,
but it's still really expensive to eat at home. If
you're talking about a cup of coffee. We've talked here
about coffee, futures, folders and more is actually exploded in price.
Even if you look at the basic necessities of goods
meat in particular protein, the price is just astounding. You

(45:16):
can still eat cheap if you want to, but it
takes a lot more effort than it used to in
the past. So if you put that together, I think
here is where you should listen to the CEO of
McDonald's or the CEO of Walmart.

Speaker 1 (45:26):
Or or these other people who have to cater to all
of these customers.

Speaker 3 (45:29):
And now McDonald's is scrambling to try and bring back
you know, below five dollars meals and more because they
can see the consumer cannot afford it.

Speaker 1 (45:37):
That's the real track.

Speaker 2 (45:38):
Yeah, I mean down double Digitsu says traffic from lower
income consumers. I mean, that is a very significant sign.
And it's not just that the prices are high. It's
also that the wages are not keeping up. We covered
pres I mean, I think the two tier economy comment
is the perfect way to think about it. You've got
the stock market that just keeps going up and up
and up, seemingly totally divorced, and we'll talk more about

(45:59):
what's going on there from the actual real economy, what
people deal with trying to make ends meet on a
day to day basis. And meanwhile, especially lower quintile wages
are not keeping pace with inflation. So people are struggling.
They're going into deeper and deeper debt, they are very.

Speaker 4 (46:15):
Pessimistic about the future.

Speaker 2 (46:17):
They are holding back on any purchases that they can,
they're apparently skipping breakfast so that they can make it
all work in their budgets. So these are dire indications
of where the economy is headed right now.

Speaker 3 (46:28):
That's absolutely and there's absolutely there is some really troubling
stuff behind the scenes, and I've talked about this in
particular with the stocks is. I was like, man, I
just don't get how with inflation, with reduction and consumer spending, tariffs,
how can the market.

Speaker 1 (46:44):
Continue to go up.

Speaker 3 (46:45):
Well, now we have a little bit more of the story.
Let's put this up here on the screen. Fantastic piece
by the Wall Street Journal behind this season's bumper earnings,
job cuts, price hikes glum workers quote, consumer spending is
not driving company profits as much as reducing expenses improving efficiency.
That could be a problem, they say. American companies are

(47:07):
once again beating profit expectations, but they're not doing it
by banking on blockbuster consumer spending. Instead, the latest batch
of quarterly earnings gets a lift for managers who are
squeezing out costs, boosting productivity, turning to new technologies, all
of whom who say they're holding down hiring often while
finding new ways to get employees to work more efficiently
aka work more, and are raising prices when they can.

Speaker 1 (47:29):
The processes are quote human light. Now.

Speaker 3 (47:32):
That is from one chief financial officer last month telling
investors about the initiative that includes automation upgrades global logistics
say the higher profit margins despite a nearly eight percent
drop in revenue, even though there is a prolonged freight recession.
How do you do that? You raise your prices. And so, yeah,
the companies are doing fine. The investors in the stocks

(47:53):
are doing great because that's where they demand.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
The number has to go up. It literally must.

Speaker 3 (47:56):
It's an American contract. It's like baked into our blood
at this point. But what does it mean for all
of you. You're paying more, you are working more hours
for less pay. You are potentially not going to get
a raise, you may even get a price cut, and
then you'd be lucky to actually work, you know.

Speaker 1 (48:14):
And continue in your job.

Speaker 3 (48:16):
Put that together and it just makes a lot more
sense about how exactly the McDonald's CEO with the straight
face can talk about you know, oh well we're you know,
we have all of this traffic down, et cetera, and
all of that. But then if you look at the
way that they continue to juice their profit, it will
be you know, the five dollars stuff in maintaining sales
there while also I guess taking advantages of idiots like

(48:37):
me who apparently roll up to the window and pay nine.

Speaker 4 (48:39):
Dollars pay fool for right, Yeah, mcgrid, don't download that app.

Speaker 2 (48:42):
Well, yeah, I mean there's a lot that's going on
in this article. I mean, first of all, AI has
got to be a part of this, as companies are
increasingly trying to instead of you know, hiring when we're
talking about white collar workforces, hiring those new college grads
because by the way, unemployment rate has really skyrocketed and
is quite high at this point, rather than hiring those
new college grads, they'll use AI and force their existing

(49:05):
workforce to work war to avoid building out their workforce
and to save costs. That way you have them you
know what's called taking price, So using the excuse of
tariff's inflation and also genuinely you know, facing higher costs
in certain regards, they're using that to hike prices even
beyond what is required. And then the other thing they
talk about in here is the financial engineering that's going

(49:28):
on too. So share buybacks they say have help put
a shine on profits. Reducing the number of shares outstanding
increases companies earnings per share numbers mechanically regardless of operating results. Overall,
LSG data indicates that repurchases added about one point three
percentage points to the S and P five hundreds gains
in the second quarter. So some of this is just
you know, financial engineering basically like smoke and mirror sort

(49:51):
of accounting tricks to get things to look better than
they actually are. So that's a piece of it as well.
But if you look through this article, they have a
chart in there that's pretty stunning where they look at
consumer spending, consumer purchases, and then they take out inflation,
they take out the price increases, and the line if
you don't take them out, then the line of consumer spending, Oh,
it's going up and up and people must be doing okay.

(50:13):
If you take that out, it's flat since twenty twenty one. So,
I mean that tells you a lot right there about how,
you know, how fake a lot of the you know,
the profits that are being generated here by these companies
and how little bearing they have on what is actually
going on with your average consumer owned.

Speaker 3 (50:30):
Yeah, and again this is why this is the Biden story.
Everyone understood that under Biden. Yes, yeah, the S and
P was up by like sixty percent over the entire course.
Were you sixty percent better off if you were invested?

Speaker 1 (50:44):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (50:44):
If you were buying stuff, no, you're buying steak at
the at Costco or yeah, good luck, all right, to
go ahead.

Speaker 1 (50:52):
And you know what a lot of people have done.

Speaker 3 (50:53):
If you really want to feel truly crazy, go in
your Amazon cart and scroll all the way back to
twenty twenty and go look at what you were paying
for basics, and then compare it to today.

Speaker 1 (51:03):
You can do that with Walmart.

Speaker 3 (51:03):
If you use Walmart or any of these other places.
You can even look at your credit card bill broadly
and look at I use like tracking, I know exactly
how much I pay for like every at the grocery store,
for example. You can compare based on five years ago
to today, and you know, just general, keep in mind
it is astounding sometimes like forty or fifty percent higher,
depending on the number of goods you're also showing. You know,

(51:26):
stuff is showing up in all kinds of the wrong places.
So both the New York Times and the Wall Street
Journal just wrote stories about how black Americans in particular
seem to be struggling. Right now, let's put this up
here on the screen both of them. What they say
on the New York Times side is that if you
look at this it's largely a cuts to federal agencies.
And that's also an important part of the story because

(51:46):
the federal government is the largest employer in the United States,
and they said that this is one of the most
staggering losses of employment that black women have ever seen
in our current economy. On the Wall Street Journal side,
they say unemployment may remain historically low, but on employment
for in black Americans, it's some seven point two percent.
Probably again attributable it seems to like federal agencies. But

(52:07):
the point just broadly is for Trump, one of the
things that he could hang his hat on when he
got elected was what was oh, I got historic margins
with black people.

Speaker 1 (52:16):
I got historic margins with.

Speaker 3 (52:18):
Hispanic And you know, if you talk to a lot
of those guys or gals, guys and in some cases gals,
what did they say that they voted for Trump on
the economy? They were fed up with Biden and they
didn't feel like Kamala was going to do anything about it.

Speaker 1 (52:34):
So look pocketbook and all of that.

Speaker 3 (52:36):
Sometimes it's number one, not always, but I do think
it can be very disillusioning broadly when you look at
all that and the general experience of being an American
consumer today, in my opinion, is hellish. Like it's just
deeply expensive. Everything is paid for play no matter what.

Speaker 4 (52:51):
Yeah, you feel exploited time, you really are.

Speaker 1 (52:53):
I mean it's like you go out to a restaurant.
I don't drink alcohol.

Speaker 3 (52:56):
You go out to a restaurant and it's not even
particularly good, and it's like six seventy dollars and you're like,
what am I paying for? Like again, in my head,
it should be thirty five. Should have just stayed at home,
you know. Same with the drive through, just everything apparently
no Disney World. I talked about this to marg at
every step.

Speaker 2 (53:12):
All the susceptions, like the now, if you're a big
NBA fan and you want to watch all the games,
good luck. Yeah you're gonna you have to buy like
freaking seven different streaming packages.

Speaker 4 (53:22):
In order to pull it off.

Speaker 2 (53:23):
So like this deal we thought we were getting with
the cord cutting and cable going away, now we're just
getting screwed. Now every company out there can Nicol and dime.
You are much more than that, frankly to death. So yeah,
it just it feels the level of sort of pillaging
and exploitation has been through the roof.

Speaker 4 (53:42):
It's been absolutely insane.

Speaker 2 (53:43):
And you know, just to go back to what we're
saying about about black workers, black workers are frequently the
reason it's important statistic obviously is because we want people
to have jobs. They also tend to be canarying the
coal mine for the economy because historically, you know, unfortunately,
you have black people higher represented in low wage, lower
skill employment, and so you have that dynamic. And then

(54:05):
you also have the American government. The federal government has
been you know, helped to build out the American black
middle class, and that is nowhere is more evident than
in and around DC. And so when you have Doge
coming in and just wantonly slashing random government positions, not
saving any money, by the way, just making everything worse
than kicking people out of a job, you can see

(54:26):
the effects of that showing up in the black unemployment rate.
And I'm sure that is especially pronounced right here in
this region.

Speaker 3 (54:33):
Absolutely, you know, to your point, I don't know, do
you know what NFL red zone is. I know that
a lot of my friends are not taking this well
well anyway, I'm sure a lot of our bro audience does.

Speaker 6 (54:42):
Now.

Speaker 3 (54:42):
I think you pay for it it's like to be
able to watch all the games or something whatever. But
the point they now they're going to have commercials, so
you pay for it and you have to watch. That's
how everything works now, every or you know, it's like Hulu.
It's like, oh, you pay seven ninety nine, watch with ads.
We can pay fourteen ninety nine, watch with no fourteen
ninety nine, like a show that you might watch once,
you know, once a year. And then oh, you got

(55:04):
to have Netflix too, and then you have to have
Disney Plus. So just have a kid apparently gotta have
Disney Plus. Well, if you're gonna have Disney Plus, might
as well the Disney Plus version with no ads, because
then the kids will get angry. It's just it never ends.
It's everything. Everything is subscription. Everything is pay for play,
and even what you're paying for is not even particularly
good video games.

Speaker 4 (55:23):
It's the same thing.

Speaker 1 (55:24):
If you.

Speaker 2 (55:26):
May pay on the front end, or you may not
pay on the front end, you know, to download this game,
but then if you want to do this thing in
the game, or you want to rise to this level
in the game, then oh you gotta buy you gotta
buy the roebox.

Speaker 1 (55:36):
You got what is it.

Speaker 3 (55:37):
It's like you can crazy, you can play for it,
or you could pay to like get around.

Speaker 1 (55:41):
I think it's out for it again, I don't know,
I don't.

Speaker 2 (55:43):
I mean, it varies per game, but if you are
willing to shell out the dollars, then you're going to
advance more in the game and participate in the full
experience or whatever. It's really you know, I mean, it's
just at every turn, and you know, not to be
all like back of my day, but back of my day,
you bought the game and that was it. That was
the end of the story. Well, they could never of
a vision. They would have done it.

Speaker 3 (56:03):
If they could have, they just didn't have the opinion,
didn't have the time. So and to milk people for
as much money as possible. So I don't know, I
really sometimes when I look at the average prices and
then I look at the average income, I do not
understand how people make it at all, Like period, just
the monthly nut, the absolute basics. I'm like, do you

(56:24):
have any money left at all? And then no, you know,
you look at the credit card numbers and all that.
I'm like, yeah, that's the only way that any of
it makes sense. By the way, some breaking news just
came across the wire. US companies have announced just fourteen
hundred new jobs in August. That's the lowest for the
month since two thousand, in line layoff surging to thirty
nine percent with eighty five thousand. These EIGHTYP payroll numbers

(56:46):
this first walk that just literally just came out.

Speaker 4 (56:49):
As of fourteen hundred, that's what they said.

Speaker 3 (56:51):
Yeah, so I mean making sure. Yeah, that's that's the
that's the number from EIGHTYP.

Speaker 4 (56:55):
So when do we get the do we get the
government jobs report?

Speaker 6 (56:58):
To me?

Speaker 2 (56:58):
I think they're se much they are said, but it
comes out on Fridays, so we'll probably get that one.
I think it's the first Friday of the month, so
we'll probably get that tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (57:06):
Wow EIGHTYP number. Yeh.

Speaker 2 (57:11):
While you're looking at that, put the next element up, guys.
At least the tariffs are going well or restoring our
manufacturing glory hair. Oh wait, actually manufacturing contracts drop for
six months in a row.

Speaker 4 (57:23):
So and that's a big part of the story too.

Speaker 2 (57:25):
Here is you know, Trump was talking ironically about how
the court decisions with their regard to tariffs, we're creating uncertainty.
It's like Your whole thing is complete insanity and chaos.
What are we talking about here? There's no ability for
anyone to plan. No company would want to hire into
the circuit, No company would want to invest build out
big manufacturing plants in this environment, because you don't know

(57:47):
if the tariffs are on. If they're off, they obviously used.
You know, very likely it's going to be struck down
the authority that they use to levy these tariffs. They're
very likely to be ultimately struck down, at least some
broad swath of them. And so that has also raised
prices for consumers, made business owners much more uncertain about

(58:10):
what the future holds, and created another massive chill on
the economy that is filtering through as we speak.

Speaker 1 (58:16):
Yeah, by the way, it was a misprint. It's fifty
four thousand jobs. Sorry about that?

Speaker 6 (58:19):
Holy cow? All right?

Speaker 3 (58:20):
Still not fifty four thousand according to better than fourteen hundred,
but below the consensus forecast of seventy five thousand. See,
this is why I shoul believe everything you read on
the internet. You got to go and you read it.

Speaker 4 (58:30):
Sifty four thousand.

Speaker 1 (58:31):
What's g NBC doing there?

Speaker 4 (58:32):
Fifty four thousand is still not good?

Speaker 3 (58:35):
Anyway, So fifty four thousand jobs clams increased to two
hundred and thirty seven thousand, up from eight thousand from
the prior week and previous estimates job Openings said it
was one of the worst levels for job openings in
July since twenty twenty.

Speaker 1 (58:46):
Wow, there you go.

Speaker 2 (58:46):
Well, and let's put this last chart up on the screen,
because that underscores the point. We're now at a place
for the first time in a long time where you
have more job seekers than you have job open So
you can see that that red line, those are the
unemployed looking for jobs and there are now officially too

(59:07):
few job openings to go around. And this was according
to BLSS data, so government data, and this was compiled
by Steve Rattner and posted online. So you know that's
also a very significant data point in terms of the trajectory.

Speaker 4 (59:22):
Of the economy.

Speaker 1 (59:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (59:23):
Absolutely, So you can see all this stuff together. I
don't know, it's not good. I always think it's got
to end, but it actually doesn't. That's the that's the
one thing where these people are somehow smarter than me.
They can always figure out how to massage it, buy
backstock whatever.

Speaker 1 (59:38):
They never like the bubble.

Speaker 3 (59:40):
Everyone always is like there's a bubble that's going to happen,
and it just never stops. It's like they endlessly are
able to figure it out. The really crazy part, too,
is people just take it. They just keep paying and
paying and paying. That's why I keep meaning about your
monthly bills. I'm like, at what point You're just like, no,
we're not dealing with this anymore.

Speaker 1 (59:56):
But I don't know. People are conditioned again, I really
don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
A condition to think of it as a personal failing
if they're not able to make it rather than I
really think that that's part of the like sort of
perniciousness of the some of the American dream ideologies like
if you work hard and you play by the rules.

Speaker 4 (01:00:13):
You can make it, And there have been studies about that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
Because you have that so deeply culturally enmeshed, people are
much more likely to blame themselves if they're struggling, versus
looking at the system saying Okay, I need to protest
against this, I need to vote this person out of
office Versus other countries. The comparison I saw specifically was
the American working class, like in Youngstown versus the British
working class and like the London suburbs interesting and yeah,

(01:00:38):
and so I mean it's it's a real phenomenon. Is
people people turn inward and they blame themselves. They think
that it's a moral failing if they're struggling in the economy.

Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
It can be both, like someone, it can be your fault,
but a lot of it can.

Speaker 3 (01:00:48):
I mean, you when you look across the country, you
don't these trends housing part.

Speaker 1 (01:00:53):
I mean, this is why we were talking.

Speaker 4 (01:00:54):
About the house.

Speaker 3 (01:00:55):
You don't create You know, you don't set interest rates, period,
Like you're at literally at the mercy of the gods
in Washington as to whether your mortgage was at three
percent or at seven, like, you have no say on
that whatsoever.

Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
So like, yeah, that's not your fault.

Speaker 3 (01:01:10):
You don't set the price of meat, like you don't
set the price of any of this. I guess all
you can really control is your job. But you know,
within this and you look at the overall outpacing in
terms of inflation for necessities and particular education, especially anything
that's going to better yourself, like education or any of
the other things, compared to the amount of wage inflation.

Speaker 1 (01:01:30):
It's just it's just devastating, so I don't know. Tucker said,
people say that people should stop paying their credit card bills.
Maybe we should, Maybe we should