A New Golden Age For America - In The Tank #480 - In The Tank

Episode Transcript
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Chris Talgo (00:00):
Jesus.

Donald Kendal (00:03):
Woo hoo. Are we are we live? Do we do we do the
cold open now? Do we do thecountdown stuff? I forget.
It's been so long since I'vebeen here. I'm just gonna jump
into it. Alright. At thebeginning of his inaugural
address, president Donald Trumpdeclared the golden age of
America begins right now. Andwithin hours of this statement,

(00:23):
Donald Trump began signing aseries of executive orders
taking the first steps towardsfulfilling this promise.
We are gonna be taking a look atsome of these executive orders
and the promises made by Trumpto help determine if we are back
on track to once again achievegreatness in the United States.
Also, we have to talk about thismassive AI infrastructure plan,
project Stargate. You can't missthat segment. It'll be towards

(00:46):
the end of the episode. We'regonna be talking about all this
and more on episode 480 of thein the tank podcast.

Donald Trump (01:30):
The golden age of America begins right now.

Welcome to the In the Tank podcast. As always, I'm
your host Donald Kendall. I'vegot a I've got a full crew here.
I got Jim Lakeley, VP of theHeartland Institute. I got Chris
Talgo, editorial director hereat the Heartland Institute, but
everyone must be sitting theresaying, what?
Who is this guy hosting? I'm soused to Linnea Lukin being the

(02:05):
host of this here program. Idon't know what this guy is.
Yes. That is true.
But don't worry. You are on theright program. This is the in
the tank podcast. I am the hosttoday because Linnea Luke and,
is she still trapped inWashington DC? As of yesterday,
she was trapped in Washington,DC.
The weather and all of thatstuff, the unusual snow in her

(02:26):
area of the country has groundedflights, so she was stuck as of
yesterday. But, don't worry.Fret knots because I am ready to
fill in as guest host of thishere program. Jim, how are you
today, good sir?

Jim Lakely (02:42):
I'm doing great. My favorite executive order, and
we're gonna be talking about alot of them, by Donald Trump,
was when he signed the executiveorder canceling global warming.
Immediately, it starts snowingin Florida and Georgia and South
Carolina. So and in Houston,Texas. So, yeah, that's my
favorite one, and that is whyLinnea is not hosting today.
And, we have, you know, somebodywho's who used to be the host.

Oh, that's right.

Jim Lakely (03:06):
I don't know. For about a decade. And, what what
happens on your first time backin the as in the hosting chair
after about 4 weeks? Glitchgalore. So

Everything was different. I've been gone for a
couple of weeks, andeverything's different.

Jim Lakely (03:18):
Everything everything falls apart. So

But don't worry. It's like you had to bring Tom
Brady back out of retirement todo this episode while, Lynnea
Mahomes is is, stuck somewhereelse.

True.

Chris, how are you this fine day, sir?

Doing good. Little little little chilly in your
office here, Donnie. Not neverreally feeling this, but, you
know, I'm gonna make it throughthis.

We're gonna we're gonna heat it up here in a
little bit, but, we got a lot totalk about. I am in a great
mood. The inauguration on Mondaywas a was was fantastic. I
watched a lot of coverage thatday. The thing that he started
off the inauguration with wasthat that term or that, that

(04:00):
statement that the golden age ofAmerica begins right now.
And that's something that heactually said during his
campaign, I think, maybe afterhe got elected. I don't know.
But I recall him saying thatsort of statement before this
inauguration, and it alwaysresonated with me. It was this
hopeful thing, this this goalthat we can strive towards, and
I hope that we are in theprocess of making that a

(04:23):
reality. So I wanted to dedicatethis entire episode to that idea
of, of the golden age of Americaand, you know, have a nice
little joyous tone here, untilwe get to talk about project
stargate.
But, we'll save that for the endof the episode. So, yes, on
Monday, president Donald Trumpofficially took office sworn in

(04:44):
as the 47th president of theUnited States. So, I've got a
couple of takeaways about theinauguration, how it all went
down, his speech and everything.But, Jim, you know, this this
was the this was the 6th,inauguration that I've been
alive for. It's probably thesecond or third that I've really

(05:05):
paid attention to.
So in terms of, like, how thesethings generally go down, I
don't have the best grasp ofkind of the precedent of all of
this. I think you've got acouple more inaugurations under
your belt than I do. So whatwere your your takeaways, just
off the top when it comes to theevents of Monday?

Jim Lakely (05:22):
Well, one of the things that it made a big buzz
on social media was how MelaniaTrump was dressed. Her v for
vendetta hat was absolutelyperfect.

I thought of Kung Lao from Mortal Kombat, but that
was that was interesting.

Jim Lakely (05:40):
Many many, many references, and none of them are
good. None of them are veryfriendly. I I thought that was
that was really something else.Yeah. There there hasn't been,
an inauguration indoors.
I think the last one, I didn'tcheck on this, but somebody had
told me this was the firstindoor inauguration and swearing

(06:01):
in of a president since RonaldReagan's second term. And,
again, that was done because itit was cold. And, of course, I
live here in Northern Illinois.Yeah. There's the hat.
Oh my gosh. Just absolutelythat's that's some serious
that's some serious messaginggoing on right there. But, you
know, the this the inaugurationof of, you know, was was was

(06:24):
pulled indoors for weather. AndI live here in Northern
Illinois, and I was making funof all of my friends in
Washington DC saying, oh mygosh. It's so cold.
I can't believe how cold it is.It was 24 degrees. That's not
cold. That's that's and it wasbright sunshine in 24 degrees.
That's called perfect tailgatingweather in Wisconsin in

(06:47):
December.
I mean, good grief. Put on acoat, put on a pair of gloves
and a hat, you're gonna be fine.But, and regardless, I I thought
it was, it was I didn't think Iwould be as excited and happy
watching that as I as I actuallyended up being. Because what,
Donald Trump ended up doing inhis inaugural address was, you

(07:09):
know, what they the the mediaspun it as his first inaugural
address, in some dark term. I'mChris, you might remember.
It just escaped my mind for amoment.

American American carnage.

Jim Lakely (07:20):
That's right. The American carnage inauguration
speech for the last time. Yes.That's right. And so for this
one, he gave a little bit of amini state of the union address.
It was only 30 minutes, and heabsolutely eviscerated the
record of the previousadministration right in front of
Biden and Kamala, and they hadto sit there and take it. It was

(07:44):
so that it's had to start offwith a real a real nice, revenge
in that regard. But he wasmaking he was pulling no punches
in his rhetoric on who's toblame for the the moribund state
of the of the American economyand culture these days. And then
he just went off and and gave,maybe one of the best inaugural

(08:04):
addresses as far as well, Ishould say, maybe one of the
best mini state of the unionslash inaugural addresses I've
ever heard. And then he hit theground, not running, but
sprinting, to implement a brandnew agenda for what he says will
be.
And, I think it could actuallyhappen, a new golden age in
America.

Yeah. Chris, I I'm curious, of your thoughts on
on this because, you know, likeI said, don't make a habit out
of watching this inauguraladdresses. I don't even think I
I remember being in the officefor the first time, Donald Trump
was sworn in. I don't think Iactually listened to it. But
this one, I was tuned in.
I was focused. I was watching.So, again, I don't know what the

(08:45):
precedent is for these types ofthings, what's standard, what's
unique. But I figured that itwas probably you know, I could
probably put a wager, on thisone being unique in terms of him
running down the previousadministration. Like Jim said,
Joe Biden is sitting, like,right behind him, and he says
and this is a direct quote fromTrump's speech.
It says, for many years, aradical and corrupt

(09:07):
establishment has extractedpower and wealth from citizens
while the pillars of our societylay broken and seemingly in
complete disrepair. We now havea government that cannot manage
even a single crisis at homewhile at the same time stumbling
into a continuing catalog ofcatastrophic events abroad. I
mean, that you're not pullingvery a lot of punches there,

(09:29):
Chris. So what's your take onit?

I think that was a very apt description of the past
few years under the lack ofleadership of president Biden.
So, I mean, honestly, I thinkthe ceremony was was very well
done. I very much enjoyed,Trump's speech. I do disagree
with Jim vehemently that it wasway too cold to be outside
because if it's less than 40degrees, we should not be

(09:54):
outside. I mean, what's

Jim Lakely (09:57):
wrong with you ever? For any reason. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, actually, 60
degrees would be my cutoff, butwhatever. Okay.
So yeah. No, Donnie. It wasgreat. You know you know what's
so great is that there'senthusiasm. There's excitement.
There's energy. There's athere's this feeling that, like,
you know, we we have a we have aleader back in our midst. It's
it it it is so, great to see,you know, the level of

(10:20):
excitement among the Americanpeople. And and I I I I truly
feel that. I truly feel likewhen you just when you're just
out and about, that the thepeople are like, finally, you we
have we have a new, you know, aa new administration in place.
It looks like they're reallygonna, you know, address some of
these long simmering problems.So this is all just great, and I
think that the inauguration wentout went off without a hitch.

(10:42):
That was awesome. And, I eventhink that the media coverage of
it was was pretty fair.

Oh, okay. I I was gonna ask you about that. Were
were people on CNN, MSNBC losingtheir minds over some of these
dog whistles that he was surelypeppering in with a speech or
anything like that?

Not that I saw. No. I mean, there's not, you know,
so I watched the original, well,not the original. The the the
original. The the the first timeTrump was inaugurated, I was
actually, teaching, and I was inthe classroom, and we were
watching it.
And I remember, like, the CNNcommentators, and it was very
dark. It was very, you know,just trying to, you know, put as

(11:20):
much shade on as possible on onhis speech. That just did not
happen this time. I think thatthe CNNs and MSNBCs are starting
to realize that in order forthem to maintain their audience,
they need to at least besomewhat fair. And so far, it's
only a couple days in, but theyare being much more fair than
they were last time around.

Okay. Yeah. We'll definitely get into that in the
time of unity or divisionsection of the podcast. But,
Jim, outside of, you know,starting off just laying
haymakers on, you know, hispredecessors, I don't even think
it was just limited to Biden. Ithink you can probably throw,
Obama in there just like theleft in general.
But beyond that, he did moveinto kind of the big picture,

(12:02):
you know, rosy predictions forthe future, all the stuff that
we're gonna strive to do, newage, the golden age of America,
all of the stuff that was veryoptimistic. Me sitting there
just, like, feeling so hopeful.I think I've seen some comments,
coming through, expressing thesame sort of stuff. Speech gave
me a lot of hope and optimism,and and I I have to agree with

(12:24):
that. And we were talking in theoffice yesterday, when we're
when we're kind of preparing forthe show, and you had made the
case that, you know, some ofthese speeches, you know, even
in those state of the unionaddresses by some presidents,
you know, there's a lot of,like, talking about, like, stuff
at the margins and, you know,very very kind of broad speaking

(12:45):
things, but this was a lotlarger in scope.
All the things that Trump wassaying were were like, no. We're
not gonna just mess around withstuff on the edges. Like, we are
transforming this. We are goingback to the great days of
America. Do you wanna elaborateon all that?

Jim Lakely (13:03):
Well, yeah. As I described it as kind of a mini
state of the union, I was struckby how big, you know, the big
ideas, the big plans he wastalking about in his inaugural
address. I mean, he said, youknow, America will soon be
greater, stronger, and far moreexceptional than ever before. I
return to the presidencyconfident and optimistic that we

(13:25):
are at the start of a thrillingnew era of national success. A
tide of change is sweeping thecountry.
Sunlight is pouring over theentire world, and America has
the chance to seize thisopportunity like never before.
And and he said, I'm gonna haveto search for it in here. He
said, yeah. He said oops. I'mI'm sorry.
I was looking for the word Marsin the, in the yes. And he says,

(13:49):
you know, once again, we willconsider it's once again, the
United States will consideritself a growing nation, one
that increases our wealth,expands our territory, builds
cities, raises our expectations,and carries our flag into new
and beautiful horizons, and wewill pursue our manifest destiny
into the stars, launchingAmerican astronauts to plant the

(14:11):
stars and stripes on the planetMars. That is some big plan.
Those are some big plans. He hasreclaimed the use of the term
manifest destiny, which hasgotten, as Chris would know, as
somebody who taught governmentand social studies in, in high
schools.
The term manifest destiny doesnot exactly have a good

(14:33):
reputation over the last 100years. Donald Trump has
reclaimed that and used it tohow we will travel to the stars.
The the idea he plants in ourminds this vision. Imagine, you
know, Elon Musk climbing out ofa starship, unfurling an
American flag, and stabbing thatmother right into the soil of

(14:54):
Mars. I mean, that's that thatcomes to mind.
And, again, how it's kind of ait was kind of a mini State of
the Union address. It itreminded me of how most State of
the Union addresses, especiallyfrom Democratic presidents,
like, Joe Biden or Barack Obama,or my mind went back to Bill
Clinton. You know, a State ofthe Union address by those
presidents was often talkingabout these kind of small ball

(15:17):
government programs. And thesmallest ball, government
program ever that came to mind,and some of our older listeners
will remember this, is midnightbasketball. Remember, we were
going to solve inner city crimewith midnight basketball.
And so my mind immediately whenwhen Donald Trump said that
we're gonna plant the stars andstripes on Mars in in hope you

(15:41):
know, he thinks in his term, Ithought immediately, boy, that's
that's a lot that's a lot biggeridea than midnight basketball,
which is what which is what BillClinton put out there for
everybody to applaud, I don'tknow, in 1994 or something like
that. So, yeah. This this was,as I said, I I I did not expect

(16:01):
to be as, as excited about thefuture after watching the
inauguration and listening tothat speech. And then, frankly,
we're gonna get into it, seeingthe flurry of more than 200
executive orders, and then hegave a speech today to the World
Economic Forum in Davosremotely, and that it was
remarkable. So this thispresident is, now that he has a

(16:23):
second chance, he is notscrewing around.
He is serious, and things arehappening fast, and it's
fantastic.

Yeah. Donnie Donnie, just one one just, yeah,
I wanna add one more thing here.So I actually, thought that
there was some similaritiesbetween, Trump's second
inaugural speech and Kennedy's,inaugural speech because what
Kennedy did was he laid out avision. He laid out a vision for
the next decade. And in 1961,when Kennedy was giving his
inaugural speech, it it was atime of great, energy and

(16:51):
enthusiasm.
A young person taking over, youknow, the 19 fifties were great,
but it was like, okay. We'regonna move into this new era.
And, the the the the people ateit up, and, you know, we did
accomplish, you know, one of hismost, you know, most important,
feats by putting, you know, aman on the moon before the
decade ended. And I've justfound a lot of parallels between

(17:12):
what, you know, Kennedy waslaying out and what Trump's
laying out. And, you know, Johnf Kennedy, you know, only was
president for a couple years,but I think people forget that,
during those couple years, heactually did get some big things
done, one of them being a hugetax cut.
And, that tax cut actuallyreally propelled, the United
States, all throughout the 19sixties. And, hopefully, we're

(17:34):
gonna see a similar tax cut, andwe're gonna see a similar just,
you know, common sense approachto regulations. You know, John f
Kennedy was also, you know, nota big fan of regulations and
just, you know, common sensepolicies. So I I I do see some
parallels between the 2, and Ithink that, the young people,
are especially, you know,excited for for Trump. And the
fact that he's appealing toyoung people is great, and I

(17:56):
think that it's this is gonna befar beyond Trump's next 4 years.
I think that this mantle is justgonna be, you know, held for
probably, you know, the nextcouple of terms.

Yeah. That is very interesting. I didn't, I
didn't, think about that. But,you know one thing that's, that
I think a lot of people arenoticing. I was watching the
coverage of the inauguraladdress and that all the events
on Monday, from like the Blaze.
Glenn Beck was on there with afew other Blaze people. And, one
thing that one thing that kindof came through when Donald

(18:31):
Trump was campaigning and he wason the Joe Rogan program, he had
talked about his first timebecoming president and the
whirlwind of all of it. And itit almost seemed like he wasn't
expecting to become president.And when he actually became
president, it was just, like,having to figure everything out
on the fly, and how that tookup, like, a lot of his
bandwidth. Was just trying tofigure out, like, the processes

(18:53):
of all of these differentthings.
And, and then when so when GlennBeck mentioned this, he actually
mentioned something similar tothis at the convention or the
the conference that, Chris and Iand and Justin went to in
November. But he said the samething during this coverage of
the inaugural address here,where he basically said that it
seems like Donald Trump went to,like, president's school in,
like, the last 4 years. Like, inbetween his terms, he just,

(19:17):
like, studied up on everything,and and and basically got
himself to a point where hecould hit the ground sprinting,
as Jim mentioned. And I feellike that is very apparent in
what he said during hisinaugural address, and then, you
know, the actions that occurredin the hours after that. They
literally had, like, a desk setup, like, in the area so that

(19:40):
Donald Trump could justimmediately sit down and just
start signing executive ordersand executive actions and
memorandums and what have you.
So what we saw literally withinhours of him being sworn in as
president was a flurry ofexecutive actions. And I wanna
talk about some of these becausethese really are kind of the
first step towards, you know,this this idea, this this Trump,

(20:04):
idea of, you know, the newgolden age of America. So, I
feel like we could probably gothrough each of us and talk
about maybe some of these,executive actions that, stood
out to you, maybe ones that areyou suspect are gonna have a
larger impact than others, maybesomething that you were
surprised about or anything thatyou specifically wanna comment

(20:25):
on because there are a lot tochoose from. I have a list here
sitting next to me, not anexhaustive list, but a very long
list of some of these items. Sowith that long kind of preamble
to me calling on one of you andhaving you talk spontaneously
about these executive orders,I'm gonna throw it to Jim.
What which of these, which ofthese executive actions stood

(20:46):
out to you the most?

Jim Lakely (20:48):
Well, I like you said, there were so many. And,
you know, I started making alist, and the list just kept
growing.

Right.

Jim Lakely (20:54):
But it yeah. I mean, he signed over 200 of them, and
I and I know a lot of ourviewers and listeners may have
also watched when, you know,after so, yeah, they set up a
desk at the rally in the,Capital One Center in
Washington, DC, the big hockeyarena. And then he left that,
and went to the Oval Office andhad another another stack of
executive orders that he wassigning. And then he holds an

(21:17):
impromptu press conference thatis basically just, you know, you
know, shooting the ball withreporters as he's signing each
of these things. It was quiteremarkable.
And, again, I think peopleshould should remember that, as
they watch all the things thatDonald Trump is doing, in in his
presidency, like like thatimpromptu press conference with

(21:40):
the media while he's signingthese executive orders. I mean,
Joe Biden never did anythinglike that, was not capable of
doing anything like that. KamalaHarris, even though younger and,
at least with all of her brainmatter, you know, the synapses
are supposedly still firing likethey like normal for a, for a
middle aged woman. She wouldn'tbe able to do anything like
that. But it it was it'sremarkable that, Donald Trump at

(22:02):
his age, has this kind ofenergy.
But there's a couple of theexecutive orders, and I'm sure,
Chris has a few of his favoriteones. I'm gonna I'm gonna pull a
couple of these out that are alittle bit more unusual. He he
signed an executive order tomake architecture of our federal
buildings beautiful again.Instead of these hulking, you
know, Soviet brutalist style,architecture in in places like

(22:24):
the FBI building and, well, justabout all so many of the federal
buildings in Washington DC arejust frankly ugly as hell. No.
He decides, you know what? Agreat country has great
buildings. So I'm gonna sign anexecutive order, insisting that
it's there you go. Thank you,Andy. Producer.
The beautify public spaces in anin a noble United States. That
seems like a small thing, but tome, it really is a big thing,

(22:46):
because it says a lot about whatkind of country you are by how
beautiful your buildings are.And, of course, he withdrew from
the World Health Organization.So we're out of that. The the
organization that basically shutdown the entire world, over it
during the pandemic, and as weobvious as we kind of knew at
the time and certainly learnedit subsequently, it was none of

(23:07):
that big shutdown was necessaryto save lives.
And then, you know, a third oneand we'll talk about there
there's lots of them on climate,which we'll talk about tomorrow
in more detail on the ClimateRealism Show, the same time on
Friday. But, my other favoriteone is is making the federal
employees come into the officeto work. I have to forefend that

(23:30):
the people that we pay prettynice salaries and the most
luxurious retirement benefits inthe Western world actually get
off their ass, get put pants on,get out of their damn pajamas,
get into a car, and and comeinto work. I believe I I should
have had it for the show. Iapologize.
But I I saw something on x wherethe, I think a house committee

(23:53):
actually wanted to investigatehow full are these federal
offices these days with, youknow, hybrid work requirements
now or hybrid work abilities.Kind of standard across all
industries, even the HeartlandInstitute. We go hybrid work
now, and I'm here in my hometoday. But, how many of these
federal buildings are actuallyfull of federal workers? Or, how

(24:14):
full are they of federalworkers?
And I believe, maybe it was theDepartment of Energy, only 6%
occupancy. It is absurd. And so,the Doge project, which I know a
lot of us are very excitedabout, and people are worried
that the deep state is going tobe so entrenched that they're
going to counter and underminethe president at every turn like

(24:37):
they did in his first term.Well, something as simple as
requiring them to actually cometo work might might get all
those people to leave anyway.So, just as just as announcing
you're going to crack down onillegal immigration, you know,
illegal immigrants tend to, youknow, self deport.
Maybe we will have many federalworkers who are useless, at

(24:59):
worse than useless, harmful toAmerican freedom and the
American economy. Maybe theywill self quit. Or what is that
what is it that, Gen z does thisday? Is it quiet quitting? You
know, I'll take that.
Get get the hell out.

They'll they'll unemployed themselves. I think
it's That's right.

Jim Lakely (25:15):
Go enjoy your fun employment, government workers,
and get your early pension andget out of here. So Right.

Chris, throwing it to you. What, what executive
orders or executive actionstaken by Donald Trump stood out
to you the most?

Well, I'm gonna be a politician and not answer this
question directly. Okay?

Okay. Good.

I'm gonna put my politician hat on here. Okay?
Good. So here's here's what I'mgonna say. I saw an interview
with Donald Trump, and theyasked him, you know, this time
around, how was it differentfrom first time around?
And what he said was he thinksthat it was actually a blessing
in disguise, that he did not winin 2020. And I I I think he
obviously was saying that, youknow, with some, you know, just

(25:56):
not not being completely honesthere. But he said that, what
what that allowed him to do wasgo and be out of the White House
bubble, out of the Washington DCbubble, go around the country,
meet with the people, reallyunderstand what the pressing
problems were. Also, it let allthe the, first impeachment and

(26:17):
all that stuff just just get,you know, get out of the system.
So he comes in with a cleanslate.
He comes in having soundlydefeated, vice president Kamal
Harris. He comes in with aWashington DC that is not nearly
as willing to try to, you know,torpedo his his agenda. And I
think that that that that in andof itself is such a difference

(26:38):
maker. Because when you thinkabout 2017, January 2017 to
January of 2025, it's night andday difference. This whole deep
state, you know, the resistanceand all that, it's not what it
was back then.
It seems like Washington DC moreor less is on board with this.
And I'm not saying that everyonein Washington DC, Democrats in
congress are like, oh, thumbsup. Also, you know, all helped

(27:00):
Trump. But that deep state,resistance does not seem like
it's nearly as potent as it wasthe first time around. And,
also, let's keep in mind thathe's already getting rid of
people who would pose this athreat to his, you know, agenda,
whether it's the the woman whoran the the the prisons, whether
it's the who ran the coastguard.
It's just all these, you know,big big names up at the justice

(27:22):
department. They're all gone.They're not necessarily gone,
but they've been, you know,they've been reassigned, and
they're no longer gonna be inpositions to actually, you know,
blunt, the Trump agenda. So Ithink that in and of itself is a
humongous, you know, benefit tothe to the second, term here. In
terms of the executive orders,they're really, really wide

(27:45):
ranging.
Wow. I went on the White Housewebsite yesterday, and I
actually think everyone hereshould go and visit it because
it has been redone, and it's somuch better, so much more
patriotic too. It's just, youknow, just it's it's it's it's
you you gotta you gotta check itout. And I was just, you know,
kinda, like, scrolling andreading through some of the
executive orders there.Obviously, the ones on climate,

(28:06):
I think, are really good.
I think getting out of, theParis Climate Accord agreement
again, is, you know, gonna be aboom for, you know, American
industry and for, you know, youknow, just American business. I
do like a lot of the, theborder, stuff that's going on
already. I like a lot of the,you know, raids and getting

(28:26):
these, you know, violentcriminals out of our country.
You know, I think really when itreally boils down to it, the
people want our border ourborder to be secure. They want
the violent criminals and, youknow, those people to be, you
know, to be gone.
They want the cost of everydaygoods and services to go down.
Now the best way for Trump to dothat is to, up the ante with

(28:50):
American Energy, which he'salready doing. He's undoing a
lot of the terrible Bidenpolicies that prevented us from,
you know, drilling on federallands. He's also, you know,
taken, made it very difficultfor those those wind farms to be
built along the coast. So he'sdoing a lot of things there that
are great.
And, lastly, I think, obviously,national security and, defense,

(29:13):
and he's making, you know, greatheadway there. So I think, you
know, he's hitting he's hittingthe the 3 big things that people
wanted, you know, peace. Theywant, border security, and they
want the price of goods andservices to go down. So I think
he's off to a great start. Idon't see nearly the amount of,
resistance, in, you know, in DCthese days.

(29:35):
So I think that's a great thing,great thing. And I think that
he's really set up for 4 yearsof, huge success here.

Jim Lakely (29:43):
You you also have to you also have to remember that 8
years ago, the entirety of thelegacy media, which most
Americans still held in too highesteem and trusted as being
truthful, was telling everybodyin the world that Donald Trump
was a literal Russian agent inthe White House and that
Vladimir Putin was our actualpresident, and all that other

(30:03):
nonsense, which reminded me ofmy absolute number one favorite
executive order is, Donald Trumprevoking the security clearance
of the 51 liars and, you know,liars. I'm I I don't wanna get
any way stronger than that. Buttaking away their security
clearances, for lying about theHunter Biden laptop, calling it,

(30:27):
Russian disinformation. I stillI still don't understand how
Leon Panetta and some of theseother people that have been out
of government for decades stillretain high security clearances,
which they sell to, you know, onK Street, you know, because it's
it's very prestigious and rare,supposedly rare, to have to

(30:48):
still retain your securityclearance, high security
clearance, when you leavegovernment. There is no possible
reason that I can think of thata retired, you know, CIA
employee should retain, highsecurity clearance when they're
no longer serving the Americanpeople in government.
These should be it should beroutinely revoked that when you
leave government, you lose yourhigh security clearance. And

(31:13):
but, you know, maybe that'ssomething that should be done
routinely. But the good news isthat these clowns, these liars,
these people who underminedPresident Trump and undermined
America by lying to us in the2020 election about the Hunter
Biden laptop, which was exposingthe corruption that we now all
see of the Biden family, thatnow their gravy train is going

(31:35):
to come to an end because theycan't sell that high security
clearance anymore. They'reuseless without it. So, good
good riddance to that.
If if that was vindictive, I'lltake it.

Yeah. Another another another great thing he
did was John Bolton, the thecrazy warhawk. That's what he
did. He took away his, hissecret service.

So good. Is that right? Can't say that. I thought
he was gonna make him like anambassador to, like, Somalia or
something like that. Chris, Ithought if I had to guess, what
your answer was gonna be for theexecutive orders.
I thought you were gonna gotowards the DEI stuff where he
just shredded these, like, DEIthings, and he said that we're

(32:13):
gonna return back to a meritbased, system in the United
States.

Yeah. No. Those are humongous. I am very glad to to
see that that's alreadyhappening. He's already, I
guess, you know, outlawed DEIwithin the entire federal
government.
So anyone whose, position was aDEI position, you're gone.
You're done. There's no there'sno need for you anymore. That is
great because we have gone sofar from meritocracy. We've gone

(32:38):
so far from a culture ofexcellence in these past few
years to one where everything'srelative and everyone's a victim
and everyone needs a handoff forwhatever reason.
That is a recipe for disaster.When when you're talking about,
you know, the top levels ofgovernment, you've gotta have
very, very competent people inplace. You've also gotta have

(32:59):
accountability, and we know thatthere was no accountability
whatsoever under the Bidenadministration. So the DEI, the
woke stuff, all that is justgoodbye. It's gone.
You know, the American peopleare sick and tired of it. We
wanna have people in charge whoknow what they're doing and who
are more than capable of, youknow, handling, you know, these
positions. And under DonaldTrump, I think that that is just

(33:20):
good that is going to be, thethe return that we need.

Wait. So they're they're outlawing DEI hires and
practices across the federalgovernment?

Yes. Does that

mean they have

They have eliminated DEI throughout the
federal government. It is nolonger allowed

to be Does that does that See see Wait. Does
that mean that he has to refilla Supreme Court seat? Oh, shit.
Woah. Woah.
Hello?

So so, you know

Jim Lakely (33:51):
Well, what what it means, Donnie, is that the the,
you know, half the podcast we'vedone over the last year are now,
like, you know, very old. Right.And they're not very relevant
anymore.

So so a lot of these executive orders, a lot of
the actions that take place andthe kind of implications of
these things is what makes me sooptimistic about this idea of
the new golden age, for America.Because, you know, a lot of
like, we know the United Statesis, like, the best country. We

(34:21):
know that it's filled with someof the best innovators in the
entire world, and leftunrestricted. It could it could
thrive. It could absolutelythrive.
And what we've seen, under theguise of all you know,
everything from regulations to,you know, some of the DEI stuff,
some of the climate rhetoric orwhatever, has basically served

(34:42):
to just, like, wrap red tape andand, around the legs of this
economy that just wants to run.And I think that what a lot of
these things, you know, some ofthe stuff that Jim mentioned,
some of the stuff that Chrismentioned, even some of this DEI
stuff is basically just, like,unleashing that potential of the
American economy to, again, justthrive. And I think that no

(35:04):
executive orders had done thatbetter or is gonna have a bigger
effect on that than the stuffthat has to do with energy. And
I know that they're gonna talkabout this, tomorrow on the
Climate Realism Show at noon CSTon all of these different
channels, but, I mean, I can'tnot mention it. Right?
So declared a national energyemergency. He rescinded Biden's

(35:28):
protections around Alaska'scoastal areas, surely for
different drilling and otherenergy production reasons,
paused the offshore wind leasingin federal waters because we all
know that all of that is just acomplete waste of money,
withdrew from the Paris ClimateAgreement, directed the
Department of Energy to restartreviews for liquefied natural
gas stuff, revoked the Bidenexecutive order, which set a

(35:52):
goal for 50% of US vehicle salesto be electric by 2030. So all
of this stuff is just gonnahelp. It's just gonna be a boon
for for energy, production inthe United States. And it's, you
know, like like we've talkedabout on this podcast a 1000000
times and at the HeartlandInstitute for years decades is
that energy is the masterresource.

(36:13):
It is the the the foundationallevel of any economic production
at all. So all of these things,like I said, is just getting all
of those weights and shacklesoff the legs of this economy
that just wants to run justwants to run. So I'm hopeful
that, you know, many otheractions that, Donald Trump is
gonna take and the legislature,of course, is gonna take over

(36:35):
the next several years is gonnado nothing but help, in that
regard. And that is why I am sooptimistic, and that is why I am
very hopeful for a golden age anew golden age of America. Chris
or

Well, just, you know, one of the good things of
the Biden administration is thathe was not able to get laws
passed for lots of the things hedid. He used executive orders,
and the beauty of that is thatthey can then undo those
executive orders. So a lot ofthese things that we've been
struggling under for the past 4years were undone like that on
day 1. Sure. Now I really dohope, obviously, that Trump can,

(37:11):
get some bipartisan legislationpassed.
He's already gotten the Lake andRiley act, you know, passed, so
that's great. But I I I reallyhope we can get back to a place
where there is, you know, moremore, work across the aisle
because a lot of these, youknow, things that Trump is gonna
address here in what he wants todo in one big beautiful

(37:32):
reconciliation bill, but it'sprobably gonna take a couple
bills. There's gonna be some,you know, supplementary bills
that are gonna have to be passedas well. You're gonna need 60
votes in the senate to pass, youknow, some of those. So I hope
John Fetterman and some of theseother senators get on board.
You know, this this for thepast, few presidential cycles,
at least, you know, as I've beenwatching them, you know, in in

(37:54):
my adulthood here, it seems likewe just keep flinging back and
forth, you know, from, you know,president, Obama putting all
these executive orders, thenTrump undoing them, then Biden
redoing them, Trump undoingthem. That's no way to govern
the nation. It's it's veryshortsighted. I think we seem to
get back to some real basicshere, like regular order, you
know, in terms of our budget. Ithink, obviously, we can make

(38:15):
some huge budget cuts that'sgonna take, you know, both, the
Republicans and Democrats to geton board with that.
So I think that he's, you know,he's entering a time when, you
know, we need to make some bigfundamental changes, and I
really think he has thepolitical capital to do that.
And I also think that Biden'sutter failure to address those
things and let them actuallyjust keep getting worse and

(38:36):
worse, you know, just just makesit even more of a priority among
the American people. Like, theAmerican people, do they
understand, like, this thisnational debt,
$36,000,000,000,000, we gottadeal with that. We gotta deal
with these $2,000,000,000,000deficits. We gotta deal with the
fact that we're, our interestpayments are now, you know,
close to a $1,000,000,000,000per year.
This is stuff that's been, youknow, ignored for for decades,

(38:58):
and we cannot ignore it anylonger. So, you know, I if if I
think if anyone's qualified todo this, it's Donald Trump.

Yeah. Well, you know, that is a good segue into
this, unity or division section,but I do wanna give Jim one
final crack at, any of thisexecutive orders if you wanna
comment on anything that, Chrisor I have said. Otherwise, I'll
I'll go to the next section.What do you think?

Jim Lakely (39:20):
No. No. Just real quick. I mean, definitely tune
in to the Climate Real EstateShow tomorrow. We are gonna go
into more detail on a lot of theclimate and energy executive
orders that Donald Trump signed,including, having the
Environmental Protection Agencystart to dismantle the so called
endangerment finding Right.
Which declared carbon dioxide asa harmful pollutant when it is
not a harmful pollutant. And so,if that is able to come to pass,

(39:44):
that is a enormously big dealin, in this country. Because
without the ability to regulatecarbon dioxide as a quote
unquote pollutant, the EPAreally doesn't have a lot to do.
And a lot of its, regulationsover the last, from going back
to Obama, are pretty much nulland void. But, I think
importantly, on a lot of theseexecutive orders, again, we

(40:07):
shouldn't live in a country inwhich the President can sign 200
pieces of paper and completelyreverse public policy in so many
broad areas.
As wonderful it is to see DonaldTrump reverse a lot of the bad
ideas and bad policies of theBiden administration, of
President Biden, it is time forCongress, now that the
Republicans are serious aboutgoverning and, you know, getting

(40:29):
behind Donald Trump's agenda,with the House under their
control, with the Senate undertheir control, and now the
presidency, they need to startpassing legislation that makes
it so that these are notexecutive orders anymore, that
they are the law of the land,and that if the left and the and
a future Democrat administrationwants to reverse some of these
policies, they're going to haveto do it the old fashioned way

(40:51):
and pass legislation to do it.So that's, I think, something
that we really need to keeppressure on Congress to ratify
these sensible pro Americanpolicies into actual law, not
just stroke of the pen law.

Yeah. And, Jim, Jim, on that point, that's
that's very important becauseCongress also needs to take back
their regulatory powers. And oneof the big things is that
Congress has been, you know,pushing the regulatory powers
onto the, to the administrativestate, and that is not the way
it's supposed to be. Congress issupposed to pass clear laws, not
these big, broad, vague, 1,000page bills, by and then, you

(41:25):
know, allowing all these,bureaucrats to actually go in
there and interpret them andthen to, you know, basically
have, the the the power of lawon their side where, hey. If you
don't if you don't do this, youget fined.
You could just we're gonna makeyour life living hell. That's no
way to govern the nation either.So we need the we need the
congress to put their big boypants back on and just, you
know, reclaim their role as thelegislative body. You know? I I

(41:48):
I agree with you.
It's great that Trump is,reversing these, but we don't
wanna live in a in a countrywhere the executive, has that
kind of power. And, you know,we've been moving in that
direction for for a very longtime. I would much rather see
the executive having less powerin congress really reclaiming
its rightful place.

Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Bit of a a a more
medium term objective, though.All of these executive orders
clearly in the short, shortterm, you know, time frame and
all of that.
I think there was also anotherone, maybe we'll talk about it
on the show tomorrow, of, tryingto basically stop any of the
other kind of green new deal,green spending of the inflation

(42:28):
reduction act. I think there'sstill a probably 1,000,000,000
of dollars that hasn't beenspent yet, and I think Donald
Trump has done something toprevent that from being spent on
these fruitless, you know, greencauses. But, again, you'll have
to tune in to tomorrow's show,to hear more about that. But
there there's this other thingthat's been kinda going around.

(42:48):
Some of the some differentpeople I've seen on Twitter and
on the radio talking about thisidea, and that's whether or not
the left is gonna play nicer, Iguess, with Donald Trump this
time around than 4 years ago.
I think that some people, youknow, they're just completely
lost cause, whether it's likeJoy Reid or, you know, Keith
Olbermann or something. They'rejust totally lost it. They

(43:12):
couldn't possibly say one nicething about Donald Trump even if
he saved their lives. But, someother people, though, seemingly
are are getting a little bitmore in line, playing a little
bit nicer. In in previousepisodes of in the tank, we
talked about some of thesekinda, like, you know, bigger
business people, these big techpeople, kind of cozying up with

(43:33):
Donald Trump.
We talked about phone callsbetween, like, the head of
Google and and, Mark Zuckerberg,kinda reaching out to Donald
Trump before the election andtalking about the problems that
they're having with the, whetherit's with the European Union and
taxing them or fining thembecause of a, b, or c reasons.
But then even in the media, itseems like there's a little bit
of signs of this. I was drivinginto work yesterday, and they

(43:57):
were playing a clip on the onthe radio of one of these press
conferences with Donald Trumpwhere a person of the press, I
don't know if it was conferenceswith Donald Trump where a person
of the press, I don't know if itwas someone from, like, NBC or
something like that, asked some,like, you know, question, and
Donald Trump starts answeringit. And while Donald Trump's
answering it, the, the thereporter, like, interjects and
is, like, trying to saysomething else. And Donald
Trump's, like, hang on.

(44:17):
Let me answer your question. Youask you ask me a question. Let
me answer it. And the reporterwas, like, you're right. I
apologize.
And the host of the show that Iwas watching was making a big
deal of this as if like, youknow, this is some little sign
of like a little bit of aturning of the page when it
comes to the hostilities towardsDonald Trump. I know that's just
like a very small example ofthis, but, Chris, you brought

(44:40):
this up yesterday when we werekind of coming up with the
outline for the show. So do yousee more examples of this, or or
do you think it's just gonna bethe same old, you know, trying
to stab them in the backwhenever they get an
opportunity?

Well, I'm gonna use the confirmation hearings as as
my baseline so far, and I sawMarco Rubio got a vote of 99 to
0 in the senate. So it's that'srare, but Marco Rubio was a long
time senator. So, you know,kinda makes sense that the
senators, on both sides of theaisle would vote for him. But if
Marco Rubio is gonna get a 99 to0 vote in the senate, that I

(45:15):
think is very good news for therest of Trump's cabinet picks
first. And it also shows that,he's not gonna just face this
never ending, you know,resistance to to his
confirmation picks like he didlast time.
I think that, really, what itboils down to is the house and
and and senate, though, when itcomes to to legislation. The
Republicans have a very thinmajority in the house, so they

(45:37):
are gonna need every single,Republican congressman,
including Thomas Massie, to, youknow, stay on on point here and,
you know, and and make sure thatthey, you know, don't impede the
agenda. But it would be reallynice, and especially for the
Democrats who won in districtsthat Trump won to get on board
too because, you know, we doneed, you know, some sort of

(46:01):
unity here. We you know, since,you know, since going back to
even, like, the George w Bushdays where it's just like this
this this divisiveness ofRepublicans versus Democrats and
just constantly at war with eachother, I think we have to
overcome that. And I think thata lot of Democrats, you know,
switched, their allegiance thistime and voted for Trump because

(46:21):
the Republican party is more ofa broad based, you know, big
tent party.
They are actually listening tothe concerns of, you know, this
giant swath of American workers,former Democrats, union members,
and such who have been, youknow, ignored for far too long.
So I hope that, what we'reseeing from, senators like John
Fadiman who are saying, hey. Iwill vote if the bill is, you

(46:45):
know, in in line with my valuesand beliefs. That we'll see more
of that. I I really I reallyhope.
In terms of the the media andall that kind of stuff, man, I
don't really, you know, muchcredence into that because
because remember, their numberone thing is viewers. Sure. So I
think that, you know, CNN andthen and MSNBC in particular,
they realized, wait a second,the constant Trump bashing and

(47:06):
the constant GOP bashing is notgoing well for our business
model because viewers are arenot watching us. So I think it
was in their business bestinterest to kind of, you know,
play a little nicer. We saw Joeand Mica already go to Mar a
Lago right after Trump was, youknow, elected.
So they've already, you know, Ithink are playing much nicer
with that. I saw saw a segmentwith Jim Acosta where he was

(47:29):
just doing the same old stuff,but apparently, he's, you know,
gonna gonna be yanked from his,position in CNN anyways. So I
don't know. It's do you know thethe the the media, I think that
they will give him a longerleash this time around. But in
terms of the real unity, I thinkwe have unity among the people
and that we need unity amongour, our representative,

(47:49):
leaders.

Yeah. You know, I will say, personally, I am not,
very hopeful that anything isgonna change in terms of, you
know, the how the politicalopponents and opponents in the
media, what have you, are gonnatreat Trump. Just today, Donald
Trump was featured at Davos,World Economic Forum's annual

(48:10):
event, Davos, the big one. And,they had him remote in. He he
spoke for probably 15 minutesand then did q and a afterwards.
And it was funny because, like,Klaus Schwab comes out onto the
stage and just says, misterpresident. Like, I just felt
like there's, like, 0 joy inthat guy's, tone when he I don't

(48:33):
think there's any joy in histone ever, but, it just seemed
like he was almost doing itbecause he had to. Like, yeah,
we're gonna have Donald Trumpspeak. You know, he just became
the president of the mostimportant country in the world,
so we gotta give him 15 minuteshere. But what was funny to me
was after this speech, and thisspeech was just filled with it
was basically a a a Trumpcampaign rally speech.

(48:54):
Like, he didn't he didn't, alterwhat he had to say because of
the audience that he wasspeaking to. He was saying the
same old, like, you know, Trumprhetoric stuff just in the face
of people that probablydisagreed with every statement
that he had to make. And despiteall of that, after he did his 15
minutes and before they went toq and a, one of the people in
the panels were like, oh, yeah.You know, wish you were here,

(49:18):
but, surely, you could haveheard the applause, all the way,
from the White House, you know,right, from from Davos here,
something like that. It was justlike an absurd thing to say, but
they were just trying to, like,kiss up to Donald Trump as much
as possible.
So, Jim, I I kinda suspectthat's just kinda part you know,

(49:39):
that's just them playing thepart or whatever, and it doesn't
actually reflect their what theyfeel in their heart or anything
like that. Donald Trump's beenfeatured at Davos at least one
other time, I think, when hefirst got elected in 2016. But,
Jim, what do you think aboutTrump's appearance at at Davos,
and this idea of unity anddivision?

Jim Lakely (49:59):
Oh, I when I was watching as I was watching the q
and a, between the panelists at,at at Davos with, with with with
Donald Trump on a huge screenlike Big Brother in 1984 right
over their shoulder, you know, Iwondered it's like, I wonder if
they asked Donald Trump what hisfavorite, shade of lipstick is
before they applied theirs tohis posterior because I could

(50:23):
not believe how they weretreating him. You know, the the
term being used here in theUnited States, you know, at the
election was that there's been avibe shift. There has been a
global vibe shift. I know wehave a lot of international
viewers of this program and alsothe Climate Realism Show on
Friday, and they would probablyattest to a global vibe shift.

(50:46):
But as I was watching these,people who who cast themselves
as the global elite, kissing upto, the new US the new and yeah.
The old and now the new UnitedStates President, Donald J.
Trump, I I couldn't help againbut think about how he was

(51:07):
treated on the internationalstage during his first term. He
gave a speech, to the UnitedNations in which he warned
Germany. In fact, he he warnedabout a lot of the trouble
that's happening around theworld. He warned them about it,
and they did not listen, and alot of bad things came to pass.
And one of them, he warned theGerman people that their

(51:27):
dependence on Russia for theirenergy is going to bite them in
the ass. And the delegates fromGermany were caught on camera
laughing

Exactly.

Jim Lakely (51:36):
At Donald Trump saying that to them. Who's
laughing now? Nobody in thatroom in Davos today, was
laughing, because they know thatDonald Trump means business. It
was extremely refreshing to seean American president go on a
global stage like that and defnot just defend America, but
celebrate America and let theworld know that, frankly,

(51:59):
America is back. And we are notgoing to be, you know, a
secretary or a sidecar or apartner in empowering in, a
faceless global elite.
The United States, under DonaldTrump, on the international
stage, is going to be pursuingAmerican interests. And American
interests are better for theAmerican people, whether it

(52:20):
comes to economics, to energy,to to war and peace, all of
those things. And he was layingdown a marker. This was a very
important speech. I think it'llbe looked back, as really
important in this second term.
He was saying, look, the this ismy agenda. This is what America
is going to do. You can like itor not like it, but what you can
actually do is be a partner withthe United States. You know,

(52:42):
we'll impose tariffs on you, butthe United States is gonna be
the best place in the world tobuild a factory so that you can
sell those those, those goodshere being as they're being
built by American, Americanworkers. So, it was just really
amazing to watch again afterObama basically spent 8 years on
an apology tour for the UnitedStates, how Biden is a complete

(53:05):
bumbling idiot, on theinternational stage, and now we
have a president who, is talkingabout America.
And you know what? The world isa better and a safer place with
a strong, assertive UnitedStates of America, and we have
that back. I like it.

Yeah. Yeah. No. It's, it was a if you have an
opportunity, check it out.Donald Trump's, Donald Trump's
World Economic Forum Davosspeech 2025.
There was one part where BrianMoynihan, who was, like, the
head of Bank of America. Right?Bank of America. Mhmm. He he
had, like, some question forDonald Trump.
Donald Trump responded to it,started talking about all of the

(53:41):
stuff. And then, like, directlywithout pulling his punches at
all, just, like, blasted BrianMoynihan for, like, debanking
conservatives and said, like,what you're doing with your bank
is wrong, and you have to stopit or whatever, like, directly
to his face. And then BrianMoynihan was just like, yeah.
You know, I'm excited for theWorld Cup too. It's just like

(54:03):
such a bizarre Yeah.
Such a bizarre thing to witness.But, but yeah. So it's gonna be
an exciting 4 years. I'm very,very optimistic when it comes to
some of the stuff. And one ofthe things that really caught my
attention was this announcement.
It might have been Monday night.Maybe it was on Tuesday, but I
think it was on Monday nightwhere Donald Trump at the White

(54:25):
House was joined by Sam Altman,who is the CEO of OpenAI. He was
joined by Larry Ellison, who isthe head of Oracle, and he was
also joined by, I forgot theperson's name, but it was, like,
the head of SoftBank. And theythey all came together to
announce this new thing, thismassive project called Project

(54:45):
Stargate, which is basically amassive artificial intelligence
infrastructure building project.So when I first saw this, like I
said, it was these 3 guys,standing next to Trump
announcing this.
It's called Project Stargate. Ithought it was like a US
government thing. Like, the USgovernment was was putting up
1,000,000,000 of dollars towardsthis. But from from what I can

(55:08):
see, the the US government hasno direct financing role, in
this project. But what it is isa 500 $1,000,000,000 project to
build massive, AI infrastructurein the United States.
We're talking about conventionhall sized, data centers across
the United States. They'retalking about some of these

(55:29):
already being built, in inTexas, and it's, yeah, it's all
this money is being put forth byOpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle. At
least that's what they said. Sothe it's it's over the span of 4
years. This is announced withinhours of Donald Trump taking

(55:49):
office.
A $100,000,000 is gonna bespent, like, immediately. A
100,000 jobs are gonna becreated immediately, in this
endeavor to build up AIinfrastructure in the United
States. And the idea of this,along with creating jobs and
and, you know, building all ofthis stuff, investing all of
this money, there's this ideathat, like, we want the United

(56:11):
States to remain at, like, theforefront of, you know, this new
emerging technology that isartificial intelligence and all
the different things thatartificial intelligence kind of
feeds into. So I was superexcited about this. I insisted
that it be part of the, youknow, topics that we talk about

(56:32):
on this podcast under this ideaof the golden age of America.
And then I looked into it alittle bit further. But, before
I talk about some of the stuffthat I've, uncovered, let's play
a clip. Let's play the the Trumpstargate clip. This is Donald
Trump, you know, standingalongside those 3 gentlemen I
mentioned talking about thisvery ambitious project. Go ahead

(56:54):
and play that clip, please.

Donald Trump (56:56):
We're joined by Oracle executive chairman Larry
Ellison, SoftBank CEO, my friendMasa Masa, Yoshi Son, and CEO of
OpenAI, and I would say the, byfar the leading expert based on
everything I read, Sam Altman.So, that's great that you're

(57:20):
coming in together. That's amassive group of talent and and
money. Together, these worldleading technology giants are
announcing the formation ofStargate. So put that name down
in your books because I thinkyou're gonna hear a lot about it
in the future.
A new American company that willinvest $500,000,000,000 at

(57:42):
least, in AI infrastructure inthe United States and and very,
very quickly moving veryrapidly, creating over 100,000
American jobs almostimmediately.

Yeah. So like I said, you know, Trump's
obviously super interested inthis because it's an emerging,
emerging industry. You know,we're gonna be at the forefront
of this 1000000000 100 of1,000,000,000 of dollars being
poured into these projects,100,000 jobs, all of this stuff
sounds great. Where do I sign?Right?
One of the things that was kindof hidden off of the the main

(58:17):
headlines of this was the major4th investor of this project. So
like I said, there's SoftBank,there's OpenAI, there's Oracle,
but there's also an outfitcalled MGX, which, might not
sound like anything to anybody,but it's actually the government
created investment arm of theUnited Arab Emirates. And that

(58:39):
caught my attention because allof the work that Justin and I
have done on the great resetbook and the dark future book
and looking into the great resetand the great narrative, a lot
of it's revolved around theUnited Arab Emirates. A lot of
those World Economic Forumconventions outside of Davos
were hosted in the United ArabEmirates. They're very

(59:00):
interested in pursuingartificial intelligence and all
of that, and they are the othermajor, contributor to this
$500,000,000,000 project tobuild AI infrastructure in the
United States.
Raises a red flag to me. So Istarted doing a little bit more
research into this, And, andit's that that this is not the

(59:23):
first 100 of 1,000,000,000 ofdollar investment deals that
this MGX, this United ArabEmirates investment arm has, has
undertaken. They also announcedone just a few months ago back
in September of last year, amassive $100,000,000,000
investment, program project, inthe United States to build up AI

(59:46):
infrastructure. That that onewas with, good old BlackRock,
our favorite, people that areassociated with the great reset.
So between BlackRock, OpenAI,Oracle, United Arab Emirates,
pouring 100 of 1,000,000,000 ofdollars into creating this AI
infrastructure program orproject in the United States

(01:00:09):
just seems a little bit weird.
But, there's a couple of otherthings that about this that some
people were kind of pointingout. One of them was, Larry
Ellison talking at a conferencejust a few months back,
basically saying stuff that wasvery in line with some of the
stuff that we've talked about onthis podcast as it relates to

(01:00:29):
the World Economic Forum andthey're, like, smart city agenda
sort of stuff. Well, there'sclips of Larry Ellison. I don't
think I have one of theseprepared, but it was of,
basically talking about creatinga massive surveillance state
project where everybody is gonnabe, like, monitored with sensors
and cameras that are that are,maintained by artificial

(01:00:51):
intelligence at all times 247.The the one of the direct quotes
of this was under this system,everyone is going to have to be
on their best behavior.
So everyone's kinda pointing tothis, seeing that Larry
Ellison's, associated with thisproject and thinking that this
is some, like, you know, biggerAI, you know, surveillance

(01:01:13):
state, smart city, worldeconomic forum sort of venture,
which has me a little bitconcerned. And when I was
looking back at some of theexecutive orders, they're very
much in line with basicallyopening the doors up to this
massive investment in artificialintelligence infrastructure. So
at one point during during theannouncement of this, Sam Altman

(01:01:36):
of, you know, CEO of OpenAIturns to Donald Trump and says,
like, you know, like this wecouldn't have done this without
you. And I was thinking, like,what does that mean? Because the
US government's not putting upany money for this.
But what they are doing isbasically paving the way,
regulatorily, to allow this tohappen, more efficiently. So one

(01:01:56):
of the things that Donald Trumpdid, and I don't know if this is
directly related to this or justa kind of a coincidence, But
Donald Trump also, one of theexecutive actions that he took,
was to rescind a Biden executiveorder on AI safety. And this
executive order basicallyrequired AI firms to, base,
like, submit reports on their AIprojects that could potentially

(01:02:20):
have national security risks andall of that. So we did away with
that, but I think the moreimportant thing that he did was
actually this declaration of anational, national energy
emergency. Because what thatdoes, and Donald Trump actually
mentioned this in his WorldEconomic Forum speech, is that
allows him to basically, like,approve really quickly the

(01:02:42):
building of, you know, powerplants that are going to be
needed by this massive AIinfrastructure build up.
Because as we've talked about,you know, on the show number of
times, AI takes massive amountsof energy. Powering these data
centers takes massive amounts ofenergy. We talked about how
Microsoft was onlining 3 MileIsland specifically to power one

(01:03:05):
of their data centers, for thisthis, AI, endeavor here. So what
I think is going on here isthat, Donald Trump, he mentioned
during the World Economic Forumspeech that basically within the
next, you know, 5 to 10 years,we're gonna need to double the
amount of energy that we'reusing today. A lot of that is
because of, the energyconsumption needed by these AI

(01:03:29):
products.
What he's doing is paving theway for these people to not only
build all these different datacenters, but also the power
plants to power them. So what wecould be experiencing with this
project Stargate, you know, alot of the people that are in,
you know, talking about itnicely is that the potential of
it to, you know, come up withcures for cancer or to usher in

(01:03:53):
an age of abundance or all ofthese different things. But a
lot of people are kinda gettinga little worried that we are
setting ourselves up for, likean artificial superintelligence
system that, you know, a lot ofexperts are kind of weary about
because it's a thing that couldnot really be as controlled as
as other things. And then, ofcourse, all the stuff from Larry

(01:04:14):
Ellison. I wait.
Andy, did you pull up a clip asI was talking? If you did, let's
go ahead and play that becausethat's amazing. Larry Ellison m
p 4, please.

Speaker 5 (01:04:25):
Police will be on their best behavior because we
record we're we're constantlyrecording watching and recording
everything that's going on.Citizens will be on their best
behavior because we'reconstantly recording and
reporting everything that'sgoing on. And it's it's
unimpeachable. The the cars thecars have camera, you know, cam

(01:04:47):
cameras on them. Alright.
We we have I think we have asquad car here someplace. But
those kind of applications usingAI if we can use AI and we're
using AI to monitor the video.So if that altercation had
occurred that occurred inMemphis, the chief of police
would be immediately notified.It's not people that are looking
at those cameras, it's AI that'slooking at the camera. No.

(01:05:09):
No. No. You can't do this. Itwould be like a shooting. That's
gonna be immediately that'sgonna be an event that's
immediately rip, an alarm isgonna go off.
It's gonna be and, we're gonnawe're gonna have supervision. In
other words, every policeofficer is gonna be supervised
at all times. And the and thesupervision will, and and if

(01:05:33):
there's a problem AI will reportthe problem and report it to the
appropriate person whether it'sthe sheriff or the chief or whom
whomever we need to, takecontrol of the situation. We
have, you know, same thing withwe have drones. We just if
there's something going on in ashopping center and I'll stop, a
drone goes out there, get thereway faster than a police car.

(01:05:55):
There's no reason for, by theway, high speed chases. You
shouldn't have high speed chasesbetween cars. You just have a
drone follow the car. I mean,it's very very simple. And then
new generation generation ofautonomous drones.

Donald Kendal (01:06:08):
Yeah. So, you know, like I said, I've done
enough research in WorldEconomic Forum. There's smart
cities and all of that, to bekind of concerned about things
like this. And, again, the ideathat the United Arab Emirates is
just willfully pouring 100 of1,000,000,000 of dollars into
this thing is making the redflags just go off in my head
when it comes to this project,Stargate. But I've spoken enough

(01:06:30):
about this.
Chris, you know, when Ioriginally brought this up on
Wednesday, I think, yesterday,in the morning. I was super
jazzed about it, so my tone hasprobably changed a 180 degrees.
But what are your thoughts?

Chris Talgo (01:06:45):
Well, as you probably know, I'm much more
skeptical of AI than many peopleI know. And yeah. Yeah. Because
I just feel that, you know, oncethat genie is out of the bottle,
there's no putting it back in.So I am very fearful that AI is
gonna be used for malevolentpurposes.
You know, our buddy Yuval Harariwrote a book about this that

(01:07:06):
I've read recently saying that,you know, the reason why
totalitarian, regimes havecollapsed from the Soviet Union
to Nazi Germany going back, youknow, 100 or even 1000 of years
is because they didn't have theability to process all that
information that was beingcentralized. AI is the solution
to that. I am very fearful whatthe world that Larry Ellison is

(01:07:27):
imagining where we are all, youknow, being tracked and
monitored by these, you know,AI, you know, systems. That is a
complete dystopia to me. I, youknow, I I feel that I grew up in
one of the best times everbecause I grew up before the
Internet really came of age andsocial media and all this stuff.

(01:07:47):
And it was just it was a it wasa simpler world. You know? It
was much more you're much moreconnected with people. You know,
maybe I'm just, you know, beingone of those people, like, oh,
you know, in my in my youth, itwas better. But I I genuinely,
sincerely believe that.
And I do think that we aregetting to the point now where
this technology is just becomingtoo much. It's just taking over
people's lives. They're becomingso dependent on it. They're

(01:08:11):
becoming addicted to it. It'sjust it's gross.
It's it's it's not human. It'snot moral in many ways, I think.
And, you know, I I just think becareful what you wish for. We do
not wanna live in a world inwhich we, you know, play second
fiddle to AI, and we're gettingdangerously close to that world.
So be careful what you wish for.

Yeah. Jim, I mean, I feel like I'm gonna have
to revisit, the dark future bookand, look over some of the notes
that we have taken on on thegreat reset over the, great
reset and great narrative overthe years. I will say before
turning it over to your commentsand all of this, I will say that
I definitely am more hopeful andoptimistic about AI than Chris
is because, like, truly, thereis the potential of, like,

(01:08:56):
curing cancer once and for all.There is the potential of, like,
pulling off some amazing thingsthat, you know, human brainpower
is is is too limited to be ableto achieve. So there is that
sort of stuff.
But if we're trading out thatfor, again, this world that
Larry Ellison is depicting or,you know, the people at the
World Economic Forum are talkingabout smart city projects, like,

(01:09:19):
is that a trade off that wewanna make? What do you think
about all of this?

Jim Lakely (01:09:25):
Well, I think Chris makes a fantastic point that,
one of the the the reason whyfree markets work better than
central planning is because ofthe you know, in just in the
simplest terms is that oneperson or a handful of people or
oligarchs or an elite cannotmake the correct decisions, the
way markets can. That, you know,millions of millions of people

(01:09:47):
making their own decisions,moves society in the most in the
best way that, central plannerscannot do, which is why the
Soviet Union, and communismfalls apart eventually, and,
capitalism prevailed over themin again, Chris, we grew up in
the in the greatest time in thein the in America because we, I
was a young man when, the SovietUnion, dissolved and the Berlin

(01:10:11):
Wall fell and all that stuff. Sothat was wonderful to be able to
witness at the time.

Yeah.

But, but and you make the great point that, you
know, these global elitesbelieve that AI is the tool they
need to fix that flaw in theirsystem. That AI will now
actually work better than a freemarket, and free people to
determine the best avenue, thebest pathway to, organize and

(01:10:36):
move society. I think they'regoing to be wrong about that. We
will see. You know, AI is is itkeeps improving all the time.
It's here. Chris, that genie isalready out of the bottle. It's
too late to go back. We live inthe, the AI era that has really
just begun. And it's just amatter of where where it takes
us and where we end up.

(01:10:57):
What really concerns me, and itis just a tool, as, Donnie, as
you say, it can be used to maybewe can find a cure for cancer
using AI, because it can analyzethings that, you know, a team of
researchers, you know, that liveand die and pass on their work,
can't do it fast enough to savelives. But maybe AI can pick

(01:11:18):
that up and figure somethingout. That would be amazing. That
would be world changing. And itwould be world changing on the
individual personal level formillions of cancer patients.
And of course, it would have anenormous impact on the world by
extending, you know, people'slives, all sorts of things we
can't even imagine. It'samazing. But it is just a tool.
The thing that concerns me isthat a guy like Larry Ellison

(01:11:39):
and all of these global elites,when they talk about AI, he just
so casual casually just says,oh, yeah. Then we'll use AI, and
there'll be cameras everywhere,and it'll be watching at all
times.
And there's never a hint in hisvoice or his body language or in
his eyes that maybe that's not agood thing. Like, there's

(01:12:01):
there's no moral, component toit at all. It's all just, well,
of course, we will have thecapacity to have cameras
everywhere, and AI will be theone analyzing this stuff. And
they'll be setting off thealarms. And then we'll have
unmanned drones followingpeople, all over the city, so we
don't have to have high speedchases to talk about these
things that are incrediblydangerous and, obviously, an

(01:12:26):
invasion of people's personalprivacy and not chasing a
criminal down the street, ofcourse, with a drone, although
that has some troublingconnotations.
But, you know, the idea thatthere'd be cameras everywhere
and people can just keep an eyeon you, you know, to talk about
that so and be so blase and notthink at all about the enormous
violation of people's privacyand their freedom and their

(01:12:48):
liberty, there needs to be alittle bit more moral discussion
around AI as much as there is atechnical discussion about AI.

Yeah. But, Jim, so the you know, I I've I've read,
you know, some books about LarryEllison. Obviously, he's a very
smart man, you know, or cold. Imean, obviously, he's a he's a
very smart person. However, Ithink that, one of the fatal
flaws in his thinking is heworships technology.
He thinks that technology can dono wrong. And I think that he
needs to understand thattechnology, like any any

(01:13:18):
invention, has a good and a badside. And he just seems to
completely dismiss the, quote,unquote, bad side of it and only
say, look at all these greatthings it can do. And to me,
that's very naive, and it's alsovery self serving because,
obviously, he's got a stake inthis. So he wants, you know, the
US government to to be involvedin this project.
So just it's that that that thatmyopic view that AI will solve

(01:13:43):
everything. If we just, youknow, put our faith in AI,
that's that's like a religiouszealotry in my book. You know?
It's like, no. It's no.
It it it it AI is not the,panacea that's gonna solve all
of our problems. You know? Yeah.

Well, I mean, think of it like the Manhattan
Project. I mean, you know, we welearned how to split the atom,
and the good guys did it first.But, eventually, that technology
or that ability got to the badguys as well. Look. We're in a
race for AI.
It's either gonna happen withthe United States leading it, or
it's gonna happen with Chinaleading it. You know, there's
I'll take I'll take the formerover the latter as as with all

(01:14:20):
the troubles and and problemsthat we're already seeing.

Right. Yeah. But, you know, but just just be aware
that, you know, if the if theUnited States does become the
leader in the AI, and I I wouldmuch rather the United States
than China, the United Statescould turn into China where, you
know, social credit scores, andit's just, you know, like like,
all those things. And it's Ithink it's always done for the
greater good. And we're like,Donnie, like, you know, you talk
about curing cancer.
So what if AI, you know,determines that the reason you

(01:14:45):
get cancer is because of thisbehavior? Therefore, we will
eliminate that behavior. Right.Well, what about what about,
like, just, you know, free will?What about that?
You know? So what if AIdetermines that, you know, all,
you know, saturated fats arethere are are bad for you and
and and be final into cancer?Therefore, we've determined that
society will be better offwithout that. Like, is that a

(01:15:07):
good thing or a bad thing? Youknow?
What about what about whatabout, you know, the ability to
make your own decisions? AI, Ithink, is almost like a crutch
for people that don't wanna makethose kind of decisions and live
with the repercussions of those.So it's like, well, if AI will
just be my copilot and my guidethrough my life, I'll just do
whatever AI tells me to do. Tome, that's no way to live a

(01:15:27):
life. And I actually saw adocumentary about a guy who is
is doing that.
And it's like and, you know,he's saying, this is freeing me.
I don't have to make decisionsabout what I eat, what I do,
anything. AI just does it forme. Actually, you're not living
a life. You're a slave to AI.
Like Right. Do you not do younot see the irony in all of
this? Like, hello?

Yeah. No. It's a it's a massively interesting
thing. We could probably doanother hour talking about, this
and other implications of it. AsI was doing prep for this
podcast last night, one of thethings that I was looking into a
lot was this project Stargatething.
And as I was, like, kind offinding these these little
tidbits that I've shared withyou, I was, I was texting with

(01:16:09):
Justin Haskins about them, andhe found it interesting enough
where he compiled all the stuffthat I was sending him and and
found some other stuff as welland sent it over to our friend
Glenn Beck, who invited Justinon the show today, to talk about
this, the project Stargate andsome of these AI related things.
So Justin was on there for, Ithink, about a half hour this

(01:16:31):
morning talking about all ofthis. And so I talked to Justin
right before going live on thispodcast, and we were talking
about this issue, obviously. Andthere was a couple of things
that I won't share on this showquite yet, little too premature,
but we have some ideas in mind,to, you know, save humanity.
We'll we'll see what we can do.

(01:16:51):
We're just a couple of people,but, stay tuned for for all of
that because like I said, thisis an issue that I am certainly
very interested in is directlyin the purview of the emerging
issue center, which I am thedirector of. So this is an issue
that we've been talking about,thinking about. We have some
ideas in mind. Some we have somebig ambitions, for what we can

(01:17:14):
do under the center, under theHeartland Institute. So stay
tuned, stay tuned for all ofthat.
And, you know, don't, you know,like I said before, Linnea is
the host of the show now. Ireturned after only one episode
off, so don't expect to see myface as much on the show as you

(01:17:36):
usually would. Linnea will beresuming your hosting duties
next week. But, surely, I willbe on time to time to talk about
these issues, as newdevelopments arise. Gentlemen,
any final words?
Anything you wanna get off yourchest? Any funny stories? Now is
your time.

Just happy to have Linnea back as host next week.
That's all

I'm looking forward to. Alright.

Get you out of here.

Alright. Well, thank you all for tuning in to
this episode of the Thinkpodcast. Join us every week. If
you are an audio only listener,probably catching the show on a
Friday or later, leave a reviewfor us on Itunes. That would be
greatly appreciated.
And consider joining us everyweek, Thursdays at noon, central
time, where we go live onFacebook and YouTube and Rumble

(01:18:23):
and x and maybe Instagram too.Everything's changing when I've
been gone for 1 week. Join theconversation live, throw your
comments and questions in thechat. Maybe we'll show your
comments on the screen. Maybewe'll address your questions on
the fly.
You can help out our show not byusing Superchats because we have
been demonetized by YouTube, butyou can go to
heartland.org/inthetank anddonate directly to the show that

(01:18:47):
way, which is a good way to doit because YouTube doesn't take
a 30% cut, which is fantastic.You could also help out the show
just by hitting that likebutton, sharing this content,
subscribing if you haven'talready, or just leaving a
comment under the video. Allthose things help break through
that big tech algorithm thatprevents content like this this
from being shown to more people.Jim Lakeley, where can the fine

(01:19:08):
people find you?

Jim Lakely: Atjlakeleyonx@heartlandinstonx, (01:19:09):
undefined
and always visit heartland.org.

Yes. And also find them hosting the Climate
Realism Show tomorrow, Fridaysat noon CST on all of these same
channels. Chris Talgo, samequestion.

Same answer. Harland.org. Fantastic.

Alright. Thank you all for tuning in, and,
somebody will talk to you nextweek.

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A New Golden Age For America - In The Tank #480

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}A New Golden Age For America - In The Tank #480