Businesses leaving blue states due to government interference

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is a podcast from War from Everywhere, USA. It's
Fox Across America with Jimmy Phalo. Oh you bet it is.
And we are fired off in this hour.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
To bring you just an absolute embarrassment of radio riches.
It's Fox Across America with Jimmy Phalom. We're gonna have
a chit chat with Marcus Lamonis, who is running Bed
Bath and Beyond. He is on the new season of
The Fixer on Fox Business, and he recently moved his

(00:31):
Bed Bath and Beyond operations out of California, like Playboy
before him, because Gavin Newsom and his anti business practices
have alienated the entire business community. We're gonna talk about
it in this hour and we're gonna have a grown
up chit chat about all things America.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
Eight at eight seven eight, nine to nine to one zero.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
If you want to be a part of the show,
and again, this is not a show that aims to
build consensus over anything other than the fact that if
you live in this country, you've hit the lotter. You
do an okay for yourself. You don't have to be
a Republican to listen. You don't have to be anything,
be a member of no political party, what nobody cares
on this show.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
We're just literally talking about the world.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
I was a former New York City cab driver, and
the thing I missed the most about it is strangers
getting into your cab and talking you with the candor
of someone you're never going to see again. So they
give you all kinds of you know, pork chop recipes
and conspiracy theories and everything in between, and you just
kind of sit there and take it. But it's fun
because you don't feel like anybody's.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Like work in an angle.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
They're not trying to like win over the cabby on
the way to thirty ninth Street. I mean, if they
were in the back of my cab, they were just
trying to stay alive to get the thirty nine stay home.
So the long season, nobody goes undefeated, especially not behind
the wheel here in New York City. But as we
get into way in this hour, okay, I want to

(01:55):
talk about specifically the issue the business community is having
with big blue states like California, in that the state
is just trying to do too much and everything the
state tries to do cost money, and of course that
bill gets passed on to the taxpayer.

Speaker 3 (02:14):
Thanks big government witnesses.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
But that's the bigger problem with California, as they have
states subsidized everything. They even jacked up a minimum wage
that's seen a massive amount of job losses ensue as
a result of it, because the only choice these companies
have if you double or triple the minimum wage is
to either a pass it on to the consumer and

(02:37):
go out of business, or b eat the increased operating
cost and go out of business, or see automate the job,
at which point all of those entry level positions go away.
That's what's happened out in California, where they've lost about
twenty thousand jobs due to their increased minimum wage. And

(02:59):
again I am here cheering for the working man every
day I was driving a taxi eighty four hours a week.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
I get it.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
But when the government decides it's going to close all
the gaps in your life, the only thing that can
inevitably happen is more taxes and a slower government. Okay,
and that California knows that better than anybody, because the
highest tax highest regulated state in the country had wildfires breakout,

(03:27):
eighteen thousand of them burned down, and we haven't built
back a single one yet do better than that, you'd
like to think. But Gavin Newsom just the latest and
the long line of Democrat politicians who's trying to fail upward.
Gavin Newsom is not on the news going, We're going
to rebuild the houses, you know what I'm saying. He's
not on the news going, We're going to get back
those minimum wage jobs that we just lost with this

(03:47):
dope law. No, he's on the news going Trump's the
devil and hopefully enough people like me that I can
run for president now with no record of success in
his country. You know, Gavin Newsom likes to say whenever
you criticize people leaving, he goes, oh, it's the fourth
largest economy, okay, but it's not like when he took
it over.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
It increased.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
You know what I'm saying. He inherited a magnificent thing
and has essentially run it into the ground. That's who
Gavin Newsom is. So you understand that when it comes
to big government, if you are running a business, a
big business has a very hard time existing alongside a
big government because that big government makes it harder for

(04:33):
you to hire. That big government puts a higher tax
burden on you, that big government incentivizes manufacturing happening outside
of America. Okay, And that's one of the biggest issues
people have with Trump is when it comes to these
tariffs and the judges that are fighting him and everything
in between. All he's really trying to do is force

(04:54):
companies to onshore wealth and employment. You know, if you
get people and I'm not saying we're gonna reclaim every
job we lost due to NAFTA, there's no chance of
that happening. But you know, if you could be driving
across the country and you know a third, a third
of the towns that are burnt out because the manufacturing

(05:16):
base left, if a third of them came back, that
would be such a win for so many communities and
so many millions of people. But sadly, it is the
government that's chased them away in every single urn.

Speaker 1 (05:28):
Okay. Government is not the solution to our problem. Government
is the problem.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
So when you talk to a guy like Marcus Lamonis
later in the hour, he's the executive chairman of Bed
Bath and Beyond, he's a CEO of Camping World, he's
on the show The Fixer, he knows how government directly
affects a business. He knows it better than just about
anybody out there. And it's why they left California. Okay,

(05:56):
play three hundred businesses of left California. Think about that.
Playboy left California. I said this last week. Playboy came
into business in nineteen fifty three. They started in Chicago,
quickly moved out to California in the sixties, had a
sixty five year run in California. Gavin Newsom shows up,
they leave. Think about that, Okay, Hugh Hefner, they pulled

(06:18):
their operations out of California. Hugh Hefner has never pulled
out of anything in his life.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
I mean.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
But the point is anti business practices can chase away
an iconic brand.

Speaker 1 (06:32):
You know what else does it? Crime?

Speaker 2 (06:34):
So Gavin Newsom's had a massive problem with crime and homelessness,
and the Democrats did a lot of things they thought
were empathetic.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
That's what New York's trying to do with Zorn.

Speaker 2 (06:43):
Mam Donnie, that lunatic, you know, Mom, Donnie represents more
of what we've seen in Seattle and la and on
the West Coast, which is empathy for criminals, which is yes,
empathy for drug addiction. And again, their addiction is a
horrific thing. It could happen to anybody listening to the
show right now, So you absolutely have a lot of

(07:03):
grace when it comes to that issue. But the idea
of in I don't want to say incentivizing it, but
certainly building a support system for public drug use is
the worst thing that could ever happen to a city
and its small business community when you start having safe
heroin injection sites and now kids are walking past junkies

(07:23):
dying in the street on the way to school. Number one,
that's not a good atmosphere for a kid to grow
up in. But number two, when people are that spooked
out by the urban blight, they're a lot less likely
to come there and spend their money. You know, think
of what's happening to the businesses in AOC's district. Doubt
in Queens, AOC who killed off Amazon jobs replace them

(07:44):
with migrant hookers.

Speaker 1 (07:46):
Oh yes, I've read about that in the Bible.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
So you can't walk a block on Jackson Avenue and
not see a migrant hooker. And you know what, people
aren't excited to bring their kids to those local businesses
show up with a family on a night out when
dad's going to get hit on by you know, some girls,
Sinebuns or whatever the hell her name is. I don't
have an answer, So you realize that in a lot
of these instances, the crime issue is the as the

(08:11):
economic issue, and vice versa. Okay, In struggling inner cities,
there is a direct correlation between high amounts of violent
crime and low amounts of economic opportunity. Meaning if there
aren't a lot of legal ways to make money, people
start making it illegally. You know, if you can't get
a job at a store, all right, maybe you'll sell drugs. Okay,

(08:35):
If can't get a job at a store, maybe you'll
car jack, Maybe you'll steal cars.

Speaker 1 (08:38):
Maybe they'll do stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
Maybe one of those guys stealing iPads and phones and
everything else on the subway like they do here in
New York City. And the point is, if you can't
make it legally, you make it illegally.

Speaker 1 (08:49):
But if you.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
Become a community where people are making it illegally, you
become that less likely to welcome legitimate businesses.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
And if you're not welcoming legitimate businesses, you're not.

Speaker 2 (08:59):
Ultimately going to attract a lot of legitimate people who
are gonna come keep your community afloat. And that's the
biggest challenge to what California? Did you scare off the
good businesses? Okay, there's a lot of bad street stuff
going on, but lo and behold, a lot of people
don't feel comfortable there. And it's a mindset of everything
we've heard out of the Democrat Party. Brandon Johnson. I

(09:19):
played you this clip last week in Chicago. Here he
is saying, arresting people is racist. This has bananas. Clip nine.

Speaker 4 (09:25):
The federal government just spend that money on proven solutions
to crime and violence reduction. We cannot incarcerate our way
out of violence. We've already tried that. If we've ended
up with the largest prison population in the world without
solving the problems of crime and violence, the addiction on
jails and incarceration in this country, we have moved past that.

(09:48):
It is racist, it is immoral, it is unholy, and
it is not the way to drive violence down.

Speaker 1 (09:55):
Oh what a loser. He says, arresting people is racist.

Speaker 2 (09:59):
I mean on winners are not allowed to allow losers
to rewrite history. And Mayor Brandon Johnson as a loser.
He's pulling a fourteen percent. But when you get out
there and you're like, yeah, arresting people is racist, kid.
Do you know in Chicago ninety eight percent of the
murders the victims are black people.

Speaker 1 (10:20):
Okay, if you arrest their murderer, it's not because you're
a racist.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
It's because you hold the people who follow the law
in higher regard than the people who break it. But
that's not happening in any of these cities. California's example.
Chicago's an example, Dude, Baltimore, think about Baltimore. Baltimore actually
sued Hyundai and Kia because they said their cars were
too easy to steal. Hey, we're not the problem for

(10:47):
not enforcing the law and putting people in jail.

Speaker 1 (10:49):
It's your freaking cars. Look what she was wearing, your honors.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
She wanted it, wanted to get stolen, and that's the
approach they took. And it's so time you understand the
government doesn't help a ton, but it hurts an awful lot.
You live in a country where there is a social
safety net, and there are a lot of people who,
through no fault of their own, need that social safety net,
and it should be there for every single.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
One of them.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
But when we become a country that's telling able bodied
people they should depend on that safety net because it's
not their fault. Because America is systemically racist and it's bad,
and you just got to let the government solve your
problems anyway. Child care is too extensive, Let the government
give it to you. Commuting that's expensive. We got free buses, groceries,
sch moroceries, we got a government controlled grocery store. They're

(11:37):
trying to do all those things, but all of those
things wind up costing the tax payer money. As you know,
none of the free stuff is actually free, okay, But
a government that runs on that level of entitlement ultimately
makes their free state the most expensive one in the world.
And that's where we find ourselves in the modern democrat moment.

(11:59):
You've got Cargo where Brandon Johnson says, we can't arrest people.
That's racist, all right, So I guess go kill whoever
you want. You're not going to jail that ought to help,
that ought to help the vibe. I mean, come on, okay,
you look out at LA where Newsom is chasing away
big businesses like bad Bath and beyond with it, like I,
who the hell can do this? We can't operate like this? Okay,

(12:20):
it's bad. You look at New York where I'm at
zorn Mom. Donnie wants to be the mayor. And what
does he want to do when he becomes the mayor?
Free buses, government controlled grocery stores. Okay, he's tweeted all
his fantasies about defunding the police. I don't think he'll
have the wherewithal to pull it off. But when you
create a society that has all the incorrect empathies, there's

(12:42):
no way. There's no way for the quality of life
to go up. It can only go down. And that
is like the biggest challenge of this Democrat moment is
they believe it's like this summer of twenty twenty hangover. Okay,
twenty twenty was a tyranny of the minority. We all
watched George Floyd video and said that was bad. Don't
do that. Okay, But nobody in their right mind said,

(13:03):
you know what, no more cops. What we said is bad,
cops need to be held accountable, but we need to
be mindful of the fact that ninety nine percent of
the cops are good cops, they're heroes, they're people we
should be thankful and grateful for every single day that
we get out of bed in this country. Okay, and
that's how most of us felt. But the Democrats and
a lot of their allies in corporate America in the
summer of twenty twenty tried to make this about some

(13:23):
form of systemic racism, saying it wasn't Derek Chalvin who
neelt on George Floyd's neck, it was all of America.
You see, we've been systemically racist for so long we
don't even realize it. But this government is essentially the clan.
And that's what their pitch was. We got to get
rid of Donald Trump because America is systemically racist. We're
not gonna have a guy in power who's been there
three and a half years as a part of our

(13:45):
systemically racist government.

Speaker 1 (13:46):
That's not right.

Speaker 2 (13:47):
We need to replace them with Joe Biden, who's been
part of the systemically racist government for fifty years. That
makes more sense. And you're like, wait, that's a scam.
But nobody really had that conversation. And what you're watching
now when the Democrat Party is an outgrowth from the
last time they held sway over this country. They were
forcing ideas on us, and in a lot of ways
they got away with it. The American Academy of Pediatrics

(14:09):
was like, schools need to be reopened. Kids are safer
in schools. Trump came out that summer and was like
open the schools, at which point the Democrats are like, hell, no,
can't go to schools.

Speaker 1 (14:17):
That's racist. People are gonna die.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
And the American Academy of Pediatrics eventually rewrote their own
recommendation and the lead up to the election because they
weren't following actual science of his political science. But the
point is, in that moment they got away with it
because it was so much more about hating Trump than
it was about liking and helping your community. But now
we're in a place where people actually want deliverables, they

(14:41):
want a quality of life improvement. None of the Democrats
can give them to them.

Speaker 1 (14:46):
So their only.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
Response in this moment is to sit around and offer
you more government entitlement and tell you anybody who's against
it is some form of a racist, and no one's
listening anymore. Okay, that's the bigger problem. It's like he
goes twelve days without a murder. The people in DC
are like, woo who. This is amazing when a Democrat
shows up and goes, now, we're gonna have a rally

(15:07):
to get rid of these troops. We need everybody to
go back to killing each other. And if you're against that,
you're a racist. Okay, they're failing to heed. Like the
most simplest lesson known to man, okay, is that when
it comes to our very survival.

Speaker 1 (15:20):
Grace is not where the line is drawn.

Speaker 5 (15:23):
Is God's side and the other side.

Speaker 1 (15:26):
So the show that connects you to people in high places.

Speaker 4 (15:29):
It's like the most important man in the world standing
in here. You've got a conversation going with these children
botched across America with Jimmy there.

Speaker 2 (15:37):
It is box across America with Jimmy Thayla trying to
hold this country together on radio, broadcast at a time.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
I'm in town all week this week.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
We don't go back on the road till November, and
then it's a really aggressive run. My goodness, gracious, that
is going to take us everywhere. Indianapolis, We're gonna be
in Fargo, We're gonna be in Pittsburgh, in San Louis, Obispo,
we're going to be in Vegas.

Speaker 1 (16:02):
We're going to be a West Palm Beach.

Speaker 5 (16:04):
All of.

Speaker 2 (16:06):
These days. You can get them at foxacross America dot com.
But right now we're doing good old fashioned radio. And
the word on the streets is Jerry Nadler. Jerry Nadler
is retiring from Congress. Good gosh, Jerry Nadler. Whoever replaces

(16:26):
that guy's gonna have some pretty big diapers to fill.
But here is Nadler some of his greatest hits over
the years, clip twenty.

Speaker 6 (16:33):
The president elect, although legally elected, is not legitimate. And
when we have a pandemic like COVID nineteen pandemic that
we had, two year olds should have been required to
wear a mask.

Speaker 1 (16:45):
It would be child abuse for parents not to do that.
And we need immigrants in this country.

Speaker 6 (16:51):
Forget the fact that the farm that our vegetables would
rot in the ground if it weren't if they weren't
being picked by many immigrants, many illegal immigrants.

Speaker 1 (17:05):
Do you condemn the attacks on ice agents quite at
text in ice eighties? I mean, Jerry Nadler. Life is hard,
but it's harder when you're stupid. So Nadler was a
dirt bag.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
He was a good easy punchline here in Fox because
in Trump won. When Trump won had his first administration
as forty fifth was the forty fifth president.

Speaker 1 (17:24):
He used to refer to.

Speaker 2 (17:25):
Nadler as fat Jerry all the time, and they had
a real personal animus against them. And it goes back
to the eighties in real estate and in the eighties,
if you had a nickname, everybody used the nick You
know what I mean, if somebody.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
Called you, if Trump called you fat Jerry.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
In the eighties, your kids called you fat Jerry, your
neighbors called you fatch.

Speaker 1 (17:45):
It's the way nicknames were.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
It was just a tougher time, maybe a better time,
but there was always this personal animus. So I'm waiting
for the other shoot to drop because Trump hasn't really
said anything in the way of Nadler announcing that he
doesn't want to run again because of the Biden thing.

Speaker 1 (18:00):
That's what he called it.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
But we keep being told there was no Biden thing
and the guy was fine, and it's all a misunderstanding.
And he never talks to dead people ever, you don't understand.

Speaker 5 (18:10):
God save the queen Man for a budget, just.

Speaker 3 (18:14):
To see if you guys know how to put a
plan together and then we'll figure out if there's something
here or you're giving me my five thousand back. You
had one shot to get it right.

Speaker 1 (18:24):
Oh hot damn.

Speaker 2 (18:26):
That is a promo from The Fixer, which airs tonight
at eight pm on the Fox Business Network. Joining us
now to discuss it. It's a long laundry list of credits.
I mean, you're all familiar with Camping World and the
Giant Flags, and I actually covered Bed, Bath and Beyond
quite intensely.

Speaker 1 (18:43):
Last Saturday night on my show. So it's high honor
to have you.

Speaker 5 (18:46):
Thank you for inviting me to the show.

Speaker 1 (18:47):
No, it was a big deal. The executive chairman.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
Of Bed Beth and Beyond, the CEO of the Camping World,
host of the new episode of The Fixer, Eric Tonight
Marcus Lamonis in studio.

Speaker 1 (18:57):
The crowd goes wild. Great to see it.

Speaker 5 (18:59):
Where your show's doing well on Saturday night.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
We're trying.

Speaker 5 (19:02):
I just want to like, have you as a lead.

Speaker 1 (19:03):
In come on, I come on before The Fixer.

Speaker 5 (19:06):
I want you to be a lead in now. I
need it.

Speaker 2 (19:08):
Yeah, come on, let's talk about this, okay, because you're,
you know, running the fixture and all these big giant companies.
As a former New York City cab driver, I have
functioned as a fixer in a lot of different capacities
in my youth. You know, people get in the cab
and all kinds of pinches and I've got to kind
of work it out.

Speaker 3 (19:24):
It's funny that you say that, because most people thought
that we were fixing something.

Speaker 5 (19:29):
Yeah, but we're not.

Speaker 3 (19:30):
The whole idea behind the fixer is to help you
get from A to B. And I have something in
my pocket that you don't know about, something in my
rolodex that you don't know about it, I'm going to
connect you. And it came from I did a documentary
in Lebanon, which is where I'm from, and it came
from when I landed off the plane, the producers at
the other network not to be named said to.

Speaker 5 (19:51):
Me, this is your fixer. I was like, what is that?

Speaker 1 (19:55):
Yeah, the name stuck with me.

Speaker 5 (19:57):
I was like, I'm going to go with that.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
That's amazing.

Speaker 2 (19:59):
It's a great stud It's like, it's a great story
for me because it puts it at my level because
I always think of those stories about like how songs
get written and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (20:06):
How many years are your cab driver full time? Like seven? Licensed?
Like ten? Yeah?

Speaker 5 (20:11):
The medallion.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
Yeah, people start to talk after your third vehicular homicide.
You know it's the first two they give you someone
I'm kidded in the trunk. Yeah, you want to know something.
We filmed the prank, a taxi prank called junk in
the Trunk, ones where we had a buddy in the
trunk yelling for help and I was picking up passengers
and driving along with the radio up like everything was fine.

Speaker 1 (20:30):
And arguing with them like don't I don't hear anything.
What are you talking about?

Speaker 2 (20:33):
Is a comic named Chris lake Er funny kid, And
when we get to a red light, we'd pop the
trunk and he'd run down the street and we got
good reactions.

Speaker 1 (20:39):
Film in that prank.

Speaker 3 (20:40):
I have to tell you that I would like to
sponsor with I have no idea which business an actual
series where you bring that back. It's like it's like
dead people in cars as opposed to comedy.

Speaker 2 (20:54):
But they survived. They survived. We had a few of those.
We used to do things called the fast Meat Rodeo.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
Do you know what that is?

Speaker 2 (21:01):
So you turn the taxi meter on an out of
town rate, and it just multiplied it.

Speaker 1 (21:06):
It increases in multiples of ten, like a surge. Yeah.
So someone get.

Speaker 2 (21:10):
In your cab and they'd be in the cab three
minutes and they'd owe you one hundred and sixty eight
dollars already, and you just keep talking to them as
if this was normal, and this is where this thing
was headed. And see how long it took them to
actually start hurling expletives. It usually took like three and
a half minutes. It wasn't a joke, yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:26):
No, no, it was.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
It was we were just filming reactions, Yeah, because people
would lose their.

Speaker 1 (21:30):
Minds, like I'm not paying you eight hundred. I'm like, dude,
it's three driving the cab.

Speaker 5 (21:36):
They told you the guy.

Speaker 2 (21:37):
Getting you there, don't look at me. Capitalism, Yeah, screaming
at you. So there's a little bit of a little
bit of an overlap there. But I love this new series.
We were talking about it this morning. Is there a
part of you that gets to this place as successful
as you are, where you're a dog that's kind of
caught its own car, so you want to turn around
and help people catch theirs.

Speaker 1 (21:58):
Is that what this is born out of.

Speaker 3 (22:00):
I think it's a little I think it's first of all,
altruism should never be at the center point of capitalism.
So I think it's it's always to make money. But
I also like learning. Yeah, and that's the one thing
that people have not necessarily accepted as my answer. I
go into these businesses, I meet different people, and I
learn a lot, and I apply them to other businesses.

Speaker 5 (22:20):
I also find ways to open up new doors. But
truth be told at the end. Yeah. Do I like
giving people a shot that nobody else will give it to?

Speaker 1 (22:29):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (22:29):
All that works, I do, all right, I love that,
But I'm gonna make money do it.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
Yeah, of course it's not a gift because you know what,
otherwise it's just fundamentally off when you talk about the
business aspect of this. Yeah, if it's just straight altruism,
I mean that's we're dealing with this in New York
right now. We have a guy running for meyor who's like,
I'll just give it away.

Speaker 5 (22:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:46):
No, that's not sustainable.

Speaker 5 (22:47):
That's not me. And quite frankly, I'm not a parent.

Speaker 3 (22:50):
That's the one part of my life that's maybe a
little different than most it's an opportunity to teach people
tough lessons and to be uh, to be hard on
them fair.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
But we're talking to Marcus Lamonis. He's the executive chairman
of bed Bath and Beyond.

Speaker 5 (23:03):
Like, I would love if.

Speaker 3 (23:04):
You drove, Like if I owned a cab company and
you drove, I would love it.

Speaker 2 (23:08):
Really Yeah, wait, so this interview is going so well,
you can see me as a cab driver again, Well,
I could see us.

Speaker 3 (23:14):
Owning a cab I could see I could see us
owning a cab company.

Speaker 1 (23:18):
That would work. We could run down.

Speaker 2 (23:19):
I can tell you how they revitalized the tech this
specifically the yellow cab industry.

Speaker 1 (23:23):
This is real.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
Is what they should do with it now is just
calibrate it for tourism. For people who want a personal
tour guide that can show them things in the city.
They're not going to get out of an Uber or
a way Moo because the cab itself, the street hail
can't really compete with the convenience of the app. And
what happened is that bandwning was worth a lot of
money when it had kind of an exclusive hold on

(23:45):
the market, but when they came in with Uber and
left which are fine. They didn't create more passengers, they
created more drivers, so it kind of thinned out, you know,
the herd in terms of people doing this as a
career as opposed to doing it as like a gig,
as an extra hours gig. And I think the way
you could turn a yellow camp specifically back into a
career is to give it a more niche purpose than
a street hail. That's my answer. I don't know how

(24:07):
we fix that though, but that's, you know, for another story,
for another time. I didn't mean to go one on
one with a fixer, but here we are. First God, I'm.

Speaker 5 (24:15):
Thinking, already had to beat that system. Sold stop, we
should just move on. I was thinking about it.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
I went from a taxi prade show to We're saving
tourism to there's just too much going on. What are
they going to see tonight on the fixture? What's happening?
What do they need to know?

Speaker 3 (24:28):
Well, first of all, I sent a note up to
the executive floor that I'd like to pick the clips
from now on because the clips aren't salty enough. Oh,
I get it, And the show's salty, and the show
has a lot of bite to it.

Speaker 5 (24:39):
And in tonight's episode.

Speaker 3 (24:40):
It's a bit dicey for me because it's really I
deal with racism m hm, and I deal with a
married black couple, wonderful people. I love them to death.
I'd still support them heavily, but they had a little bit,
a little teeny bit of victim syndrome that the world
was betting against them because of their race. And what
I I had to spend time thinking about and how

(25:02):
to communicate to them is the world's betting against you
because you're not doing the right work, you're not performing,
and we live in a meritocracy. And that was a
little dicey. The advertisers got really uncomfortable really fast.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
But good for you, because I think one of the
biggest challenges I say this all the time as a
talk show host, is we hit this fork in the
road general relation generationally where we do have to make
a choice between victorhood or victimhood. And I think there's
a lot on the left there selling a lot of victimhood.
And the reason it frustrates me is I was a
cab driver. When Obama got elected. He literally ran on,

(25:33):
yes we can, and we're ten years removed from that
from him being in office telling them, no, you can't
telling everybody that, and that you can kind of outsource
your shortcomings to society. But the truth is, you know
this better than anybody. The people getting ahead are getting
ahead because it is a meritocracy and there's no rule
that says you can't just outwork everybody else.

Speaker 3 (25:51):
No, I don't know what's going to happen here in
New York City, or we're going to try to take
minimum wages to thirty dollars and everybody's going to get
a bunch of free stuff. What concerns me is the
message that we're sending people that results don't matter. And
for those folks that get up every day like yourself
and grind it out at five am and stay up
till midnight and just trying to work to provide for

(26:12):
their family, they want an opportunity to make more money.

Speaker 5 (26:15):
And when you tell them that, they're going to.

Speaker 3 (26:16):
Be neutralized by the person who shows up late and
leaves early and they're going to make the same you're
taking the American spirit and you're crushing it. As an immigrant,
other people fought for me to have the right to
do that. Now I feel like it's my responsibility to
fight to make sure that doesn't happen to other people.

Speaker 1 (26:34):
Which I think is really commendable. Give me this the flag.

Speaker 2 (26:38):
We've spent a lot of time discussing the flag on
this show and other Fox shows.

Speaker 1 (26:42):
Is that what this is born out.

Speaker 3 (26:43):
Of the flag is very simple, and a lot of
people just hate me for it, which I'm very disappointed by.
It's my love letter. You know, when you come here
as an immigrant from Lebanon and you're adopted by a
wonderful family and you're given a chance to have a
roof over your head, food on the table, education, what
you make of it up to you. And the fact
that I've been able to become successful financially, become successful

(27:05):
emotionally and provide that for other people.

Speaker 5 (27:08):
No one could ever take that away from me.

Speaker 3 (27:10):
And this started back in twenty seventeen in a small
town in North Carolina where I put the flag up.
I always had a flag in my business.

Speaker 5 (27:17):
I have one.

Speaker 3 (27:17):
When I used to make the profit, we had one.
I put one up in a business. When I had
my family's dealership in Miami, we put one up. My
flags tend to be a little larger. They're thirty two
hundred square feet. They're one hundred and thirty foot pole.
It cost me two hundred grand to put them up.
I would sell anything I had to to make sure
that I put them up. Because when people drive by,
like your staff member in the hallway, the team member

(27:39):
in the hallway said, hey, we saw the flag.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
People know it.

Speaker 3 (27:42):
It's not about people don't rush in and buy our vs.
It's not the idea behind it. When they see it,
they know they're traveling this country.

Speaker 1 (27:49):
They get it, and they you know, and they know
they're dealing with somebody whose I want.

Speaker 5 (27:52):
To go to jail for it though for real, no,
I really do.

Speaker 3 (27:54):
People have said you're going to get arrested if a
court tells you. And I'm in two lawsuits right now,
one in Greenville, North Carolina, one in Severeville, Tennessee, and
now apparently a third one in Claremont, Florida. And they've
said to me if you if you lose the case
and you don't take it down, you will be held
in condemned to court and you will go to jail.
And my response is that would be the greatest thing ever.

(28:15):
If I live, both my parents adopt. The parents are
now gone now my mother would say, you should go
to jail for it.

Speaker 5 (28:21):
If you believe in.

Speaker 1 (28:21):
It, that's awesome, good for you.

Speaker 5 (28:23):
Will you visit me?

Speaker 2 (28:23):
Yeah, I'd show up, put you broadcast there for via zoom,
which I do a zoom.

Speaker 1 (28:28):
I'm kidding.

Speaker 5 (28:28):
I'll make a deal.

Speaker 3 (28:29):
Okay, if I do go to jail for it, we
will do I'll do the We'll do our first call.

Speaker 5 (28:34):
You will be my first call.

Speaker 2 (28:36):
It'll be a call into a radio show. He's gonna
win a pair of concert tickets. I'm not getting out
of jail. He's just gonna he's gonna go Coasis at MetLife.
He's gonna be the ninety ninth was that was me?
I love I love all of this so much because perspective,
it's nothing is more badly needed in this moment than perspective.
And what I'm hoping is we're going through this kind

(28:56):
of societal recalibration, at least in some corners of the universe,
where people are in on the joke that if you
live in this country, you're doing okay. You know there's
still account of that. You know, there's a lot of
people selling a big government fix. Would you say the
way to split that difference, okay between what I guess
Trump is selling it a little bit of what you
just fled in California because you took bedbath and beyond

(29:17):
Alla California because you felt like the government was complicating business.

Speaker 3 (29:20):
Now wasn't complicating. It was making it impossible to make money.
And the idea behind businesses to make money and if
you can't make money, what are you doing? Because you're
putting the rest of the enterprise.

Speaker 2 (29:30):
At risk, and so you kind of felt like it
just wasn't sustainable in the sense that you could have
grinded it out, but there were better places to day.

Speaker 5 (29:37):
Here's what I was hoping happened.

Speaker 3 (29:39):
I tried to take a real high road to really
an intellectual approach with the governor. And I didn't actually
name him in the statement. I didn't call him out
for anything. I just said it's expensive to do business there.
What I would have anticipated is a governor of a state,
as he likes to tell me several times, the fourth
largest economy in the world, would have said, hey, listen, Marcus,
what you're saying is now, I don't agree with you.

(30:02):
I'm not going to spend time with you because you're
an idiot, but I'm going to sign a staff member.

Speaker 5 (30:06):
Somebody, just somebody talk about it at all.

Speaker 3 (30:09):
Instead, what I got back was snark and sarcasm and
quite frankly, a high level of immaturity. If you're seeking
an extra if you're seeking an office that's higher than
the governorship, you have to be willing to have conversations
with people from foreign countries, from domestic businesses, private citizens,
willing to talk about things that you may not necessarily
agree with. Yep, he doesn't want to do that, and

(30:30):
for me, it was a fade, a complete for him.

Speaker 2 (30:33):
Good for you, and because it gives voice to a
lot of people who do feel that way but don't
necessarily have the guts to.

Speaker 1 (30:38):
Act on it.

Speaker 5 (30:39):
And is it the repercussion, Yeah for sure. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:42):
And I think that's something that's frustrated to because I
cover this every day, is I'm watching a lot of
people try to fail upwards right now. They're trying to
become national names by establishing themselves as the face of
like an anti Trump resistance, Like Newsm's doing that.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
A little bit.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
They haven't really rebuilt most of California in the aftermath
of the wildfires. I know it's recent. But if you
see three hundred businesses like your own FLA, and you
see a lack of a rebound from a fire, and
you see a guy deciding that I'll just give Trump
the finger on Twitter for six months and hopefully become
a bigger name, doesn't it kind of speak to them
being a little detached from their base obligation to the

(31:15):
people who elected them.

Speaker 3 (31:18):
If I was running his political campaign, I would continue
to focus on whatever beliefs I had, but I would
start to think intellectually about what was it that I
could do to attract people from the middle, And rationale
and reasonability and intelligence is a good way to do that.
Acknowledging that everything isn't right, including some.

Speaker 5 (31:38):
Of the decisions that you've made.

Speaker 3 (31:40):
And I think he's landed in a place, as others have,
where if they move off of hey, I made a mistake.

Speaker 5 (31:45):
I'll give you a great example. This is controversial.

Speaker 3 (31:48):
When President Trump first was considering running for office back
in I don't know whatever year that was, twenty sixteen,
I think or fifteen, I was publicly critical of it.
People have said to me today, oh, you just reversed
your boot, lucky, and you're doing all this stuff said. No,
I'm an older person. I'm a little smarter than I
used to be. I learned the lesson the hard way.

(32:09):
I've read a little more, I've talked to more people.

Speaker 5 (32:10):
I'm entitled to change my opinion.

Speaker 3 (32:12):
Course, and the minute that somebody changes their opinion and
acknowledges that, I think that people's respect for them, I
think goes up to be able to say that my
thinking can evolve.

Speaker 2 (32:24):
Yeah, it shows a lot more humility because a lot
of these people can't abandon the initial position, like we're
dealing We're dealing with this with crime right now. There's
a lot of people that are fighting a crime crackdown.
And you can have an opinion one way or the other.
I live in Chicago, Oh so good God.

Speaker 3 (32:37):
There's no there's nothing to fight about. Yeah, crime is everywhere.
The city is not what it used to be. I
live on Michigan Avenue. Who had to close my wife's
business because she was ransacked twice, over a million dollars
of stuff taken. You know, she's scared to walk on
the street. I don't want to walk on the street
by myself. That's not an idea, that's real.

Speaker 5 (32:55):
I live there.

Speaker 3 (32:56):
You have a governor who's totally detached Springfield as a
dumps or fire, and you have a mayor that nobody
wants there. So as a citizen of that town, I
would say to President Trump, I would love for you
to send some people.

Speaker 5 (33:09):
Yeah, you want to crack.

Speaker 3 (33:11):
Some scalls and clean things up, please, because my business
may succeed, my property value may go up, and my
wife may feel safe.

Speaker 5 (33:18):
Those are good things.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
Ye haven forbid.

Speaker 2 (33:19):
And the idea I used to you know, political opposition
used to come with a basic decency where issues like crime,
because crime, you can make it a political issue, but
it's not. If fifty eight people got shot in Chicago
this weekend, nobody has any idea who they voted.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
That's a human life issues.

Speaker 2 (33:32):
Yes, nobody has any idea, and that's what that basic
decency clause needs to be triggered.

Speaker 1 (33:37):
But I feel like we're missing that right.

Speaker 3 (33:38):
I'm wondering why elected officials in towns that are struggling
in any capacity financially with crime, whatever it may be,
can't say to somebody, I need help. And the sign
of a good leader is acknowledging what your strengths and
what your weak points are and if I said to you, look,
I want to open up a business.

Speaker 5 (33:54):
I don't know much about it.

Speaker 3 (33:55):
Can you help me, you're more willing to help me.
And it's less contentious. And it's not like people that
are there that voted for him are going to say
I'm not going to vote for you now because you
asked for help.

Speaker 1 (34:05):
Yeah, think about it happen.

Speaker 2 (34:06):
That's a great point, and I think in a roundabout way,
sixteen minutes after we started, what we're trying to tell
the Brandon Johnson's JB. Pritzkers and gavenusms of the world
is to watch The Fixer on FBN tonight.

Speaker 5 (34:16):
It day all.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
I think that's the answer.

Speaker 5 (34:18):
That's it.

Speaker 2 (34:18):
I mean, you watch The Fixer. There's only one takeaway.
We are the world, we are the children. I just
wrote that line myself, so inspired by to sit down.

Speaker 5 (34:25):
I wanted to finish the song, but I'm not going.

Speaker 1 (34:27):
Yeah, it's for the best. Just watch the Fix of
the night at eight Marcus Lamona's the greatest. We'll do
it again.

Speaker 5 (34:32):
Thank you, buddy.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
If you're listening to Fox across America with Jimmy Fayaler,
that's my name. Don't wear now Jimmy Fayler.

Speaker 2 (34:42):
Then I thought Fox Across America with Jimmy Phyla wrapping
up a three hour audio masterpiece brought to you by
the fine folks at Previgen, which is for your Brain.
We don't know if President Trump took the previagen before
he announced the plan today at the White House to
move Space Command from Colorado to Alabama, but we can
tell you that Space Force Command, the Space Force Command Center,

(35:05):
is moving from Colorado down to Alabama, hopefully a little
closer to Huntsville, with any luck, where we performed last year.
We love it down there in Huntsville. Good living, they've
got the good rockets, they've got Space Camp. It all happens.
But the president is governing like he doesn't understand. He
gets four years. And there's a part of me that

(35:26):
appreciates that most people get elected by running on some
heavy issues, and then minute they get into office, they
stop doing anything to solve the problem and they start
trying to fundraise off the issue.

Speaker 1 (35:39):
That's just how white folks will do.

Speaker 5 (35:41):
You.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
I don't doubt there's all kinds of fundraising going on
in the Republican Party. But no one can dispute the
fact that this is not an administration that has sat
on its hands. Okay, they have done everything. This guy
was on the roof two weeks ago. They repaved the
Rose Guard, They've hosted half of the EU with the
White House. They've kicked Zelenski out, they've let him back in.

(36:04):
It's been bananas. It's been bonkers, and the border secure
and the economy's doing a little better. So Wild Entertainment
and we do have a lot to show for it.
But this show is over. Pay up, get out. We'll
see you back here again tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (36:15):
For the week, this has been a podcast from wor