Iran Capitulates?, Interview: EJ Antoni, Isolation

On Tuesday night, Rich reacts to the breaking news that Iran has agreed to a 2-week ceasefire to work toward a peace deal ahead of President Trump's threat to end their civilization. Will it last? Then, Chief Economist E.J. Antoni joins Rich to discuss the jobs report and the outlook on oil prices due to the Iranian conflict. Plus, loneliness and isolation amongst people who work from home abounds. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is America with Rich Valdez powered bipolitweek dot Com and.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Rich Valdees is with US former Christian Administration official. You
worked at Chris Christie and in Fallistas on a lot of
public service stuff.

Speaker 3 (00:19):
Rich Valdez Communist now with the Washington Times. This is America, Richiev.
You're on the air with the Nation of the Nation
with America with your host, Rich Valdez. What's up, America.
I am Rich Valdez. Valdez with an US at Rich
Valdez on all of the social media. Welcome to the
Monday Night. No it's not mony, it's Tuesday Night edition

(00:39):
of This is America. I am Rich Valdes seventeen blocks
away from Madison Square Garden here in New York City
at our Times Square studio, and there is a bit
of breaking news that I want to share with you.
I don't think we have the breaking news music that
I like. I like the old school ABC news breaking
news music that goes anyway. So just imagine that's still

(01:05):
playing in the background, getting all dramatic and breaking news.
The Iranians have peed their pants. They said, please do
not end our civilization in the name of Allah. We
want to continue to exist. We want to make a
deal with President Trump El Trumpito den Alldos Magnus, the

(01:27):
forty fifth and forty seventh President of these United States,
El President Donald J. Trump, And that just happened moments ago.
Here we go based on conversations with Prime Minister Shabaz
Sharif and Field Marshal Assim Munir of Pakistan and wherein

(01:47):
they requested that I hold off the destructive force being
sent tonight to Iran and subject to the Islamic Republic
of Iran agreeing to the complete, immediate and safe opening
of the strait of our moves, I agreed to suspend
the bombing attack of Iran for a period of two weeks.
I should be doing this in my eld Trumpedo voice.

(02:08):
This will be a doublet sided ceasefire. The reason for
doing so is that we have already met and exceeded
all military objectives and very far along with a definitive
agreement concerning long term peace with Iran and peace in
the Middle East. We received a ten point proposal from

(02:29):
Iran and believe it is a workable basis on which
to negotiate almost all of the various points of the
past contention have been agreed to between the United States
and Iran, but a two week period will allow the
agreement to be finalized and consummated. On behalf of the
United States of America as president and also representing the

(02:52):
countries of the Middle East. It is an honor to
have this long term problem close to resolution. Thank you
for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump,
and I will add for dramatic effect, El Trumpito. So yes,
ed Trumpito knocking it out of the park, as we

(03:12):
knew he would. I knew he would write, I was,
let me take it back. I was a little unsure.
I thought he was going to knock you ran out
of the box. I really did. I didn't think they
were going to come to their senses. And I still
don't know that they did, right, I don't know that
they did. I believe that you can't trust these guys, right.
I think eventually you have to just kill enough of

(03:32):
the true believers in their cause that those that are
not totally sold go. You know what, Maybe I do
want to have a family one day. Maybe I do
want to becoming old man. Maybe I don't want to
die for this cause. And how many layers deep. You
have to kill the top leadership to get there. Is
really an unknown number to me. But I'm going to
read you a couple of more things that President Trump

(03:54):
put out On his truth social account. He posted the
actual letter that he sent to the Iranians as well
as the letter that he got from the Iranians. I'll
start with the letter from the Iranians. Official Statement of Iran, Tehran,

(04:16):
seventh April twenty twenty six. On behalf of the Islamic
Republic of Iran, I express gratitude and appreciation for my
dear brothers. Maybe I can do this in my ayatola voices.
I don't know if I have an iotolo voice, but
let's say, when you don't have audio because it's such
new breaking news, you kind of kind of make it up.
Right on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran, I express,

(04:38):
this is my iron chic voice Iran number one. I
watch a lot of wrestling as a kid.

Speaker 4 (04:44):
I express gratitude and appreciation for my dear brothers. He
is Prime Minister of Pakistan, Sharif and he Field Marshall
Munir for their timeless, tireless efforts to end the war
in the region. In response to the broadly request of
Prime Minister Sharif in his twit, and considering the request

(05:08):
by the US for negotiations based on its fifteen point
proposal as well as announcement by POTUS about acceptance of
general Framework of Iran's ten point proposal as basis for negotiation,
I hereby declare on behalf of Iran's Supreme National Security Council.

(05:31):
If attacks against Iran are halted, our powerful armed forces
will cease their defensive operations for a period of two weeks.
Save passage through the Strait of Ormuz will be possible
via coordination with Iran's armed forces with due consideration of

(05:51):
technical limitations. Sayed Abbas Arakshi. I'm sure I'm saying that wrong.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Islamic Republic of Iran. So two
things we gleaned from this. One I need to work
on my Iranian accent. Two, El Trumpito wins again, at
least for now. Right, this is a win for the

(06:12):
world now. On official letterhead, President Trump also put this
out here. Oh, actually that's what I read to you before.
I just read you the same thing on the Truth
social and this one is on the presidential letterhead.

Speaker 3 (06:26):
So there we have it. El Trumpito, thank you for
your attention to this matter. And that's good news. I
think that's great news. So many of us were having
an ail binder right the end of civilization. Praise be
to Allah. That's what he wrote, Open the f and

(06:46):
straight you morons, right, I think that's what he said. Now,
what are they gonna say, all these people the how
could he do that? It's a war crime. It's what
else were they saying about him? It's a war crime,
it's non presidential, explicitive, laid in blah blah blah. Guess
who's not doing anything now? I am seeing some reports

(07:08):
online that this ceasefire may already be violated, but I'm
sure that they will turn around the GPS grit inside
that thing. You saw the Limitationsuse me, what are you saying, sir?
I don't even know what that was, but I think
that was a bleed coming in from Twitter. Our buddy
Mario nawful. But anyway, the bottom line here is that

(07:34):
I think we didn't know what was going on, and
Ed Trumpito was able to pull this off. Why tough talk?
He let them know. It's the end of the road
for you. I've had it up to here.

Speaker 5 (07:47):
Right.

Speaker 3 (07:47):
You take a guy that's always like y, all right,
give them another chance, give another chance. And let's be
frank here, This give him another chance thing is not
always it's not always give him another chance. Right. It's
not all Trump being a pacifist, which he is and
there's nothing wrong with that. A lot of times it's

(08:07):
him waiting, buying time, saying do we have them all?
Do we know exactly where each and every last one
of them is? And I think, let me tell you something.
I think this was a good move by Iron. Why.
I'll tell you why, because I believe with the way
Trump was talking last night about the way he was

(08:28):
gonna rain holy hell on these people, that he knew something.
They didn't know what it was. I don't know. I
can only speculate it, but he was negotiating like he
was holding the winning hand. And obviously, I mean figuratively speaking,
he's always holding the winning hand. He's got a bigger military,

(08:49):
more of a budget, more strength, more ability to execute
all of the above. But that's not what I'm talking about.
I'm thinking, remember when the guys from Hezbollah and Hamas
and whoever, it was I had their beepers and walkie
talkies exploding on their hip or in their pocket. I
remember that that was the guys that get the blame

(09:12):
for everything the Mossad, and the Mossad is good at
this stuff. And I feel like when Trump says, don't
you deer crust this line in the sand, and then
they go ahead and they cross that line, don't you
deer crust this new line in the sand. That's not
him getting bullied by the Malas. That's not him allowing
the Ayatola to push him around. That's him going on

(09:33):
the phone back channeling with Bibe, Hello, baby, do you
got him? Do you got them all? Where they at?
And bb chiming it, mister President, we know exactly where
each and every one of them is. I can explode
their peepies right off. I can explode them right now.
We can do it right now. Shut up. And I
think that's what he was doing. And I think these

(09:55):
guys were going to meet certain death, certain death. There
was going to be a show, of course, some major
show of strength, maybe that F thirty five stealth bomber
in and out again, blowing up some big stuff that
you know would hurt their feelings. But on top of that,

(10:15):
I really think that they were going to get taken
out big time and it was likely going to be
a costly mission, one where the President said, hey, look,
this is the best outcome is for us to truly
have peace, not to keep you know, killing people. At
the end of the day, he doesn't want anybody to die,

(10:37):
and that's a good thing, right, So kudos to Ed
Trompido and this breaking news on a ten point framework
with Iran, because I think that's important. I'm just going
to look that up because I think that Iran said
there was fifteen points from the United States and they've
agreed to ten of those fifteen. And I think that's

(10:59):
where we are at right now. So I don't know,
I don't know. Let's see here, let me see what
I got here in these ten points. All right, what
we know so far? President Trump gave Iran until eight
pm to reopen the strait of our moves. That was
an hour ago, and Pakistani Prime Minister Shabas Sharif played

(11:21):
a critical role in brokering the extension, urging the US
to delay the strikes while diplomacy runs its course. Fuel
prices are surging worldwide amid Iran's blockade. On the straight
up our moves quick commercial for you, and we're going
to talk about the surging fuel prices with ej Antoni
from the Heritage Foundation. He's going to join me in
the second and third segment, and in our fourth segment,

(11:41):
we're going to talk about something that I think we
haven't talked about in a while, if at all, is
the loneliness that people that work at home face. And
we'll talk about that later, but right now we're getting
to our top line stuff that we know. The White
House has been discussing potential meetings between the US and

(12:01):
Iranian officials, and these are discussions about in person talks,
but nothing's final until announced by the President of the
White House. Obviously, That's what Caroline Levitt said earlier today.
The American and Iranian heads of state have not met
in person for decades following the Iranian revolution in nineteen
seventy nine. So for context here, my friends, I was

(12:23):
born in nineteen seventy eight, Cinco de Mayo of nineteen
seventy eight, and this is nearly my lifetime ago and
soon it'll be my birthday again and I'll be forty eight.
So this has clearly been going on for the entirety
of my life. And I've shared with you my thoughts
on arian as a kid. I mean, just think about it.

(12:44):
My entertainment as a kid growing up was World Wrestling Federation.
Back then they called it WWF. Now it's called WWE,
and the big wrestlers, Hulk Hogan wrapped in the flag,
Sergeant Slaughter was a drill instructor. I mean, if you
know about it, you know about it. If you don't know,
you don't know. Who was the perpetual bad guy? Same
bad guys we got today? Is it predictive programming from

(13:07):
the CIA? Maybe? Who knows? But the bad guy then
Nikolai Volkoff, Right, Nikolai Volkoff, who'd come in singing the
USSR's national anthem. Who else was the bad guy? The
iron chic?

Speaker 5 (13:21):
Right?

Speaker 3 (13:21):
And he'd come in and he would spit and he
would scream, Iran number one, Iran number one. It was great,
and that Hulkogan would come in. I am a realmeric
I mean, that's you know, just this is my childhood here.
I would turn off after wrestling. I'd watch some cartoons.
What cartoon GI Joe right GI Joe with Sergeant Slaughter

(13:43):
who was in G I Joe as a cartoon. I
had the action figure, I had the wrestling action figure.
I had them all anyway. At seven point fifty pm,
Shaba Sharif, the Prime Minister of Pakistan says, with the
greatest humility, let me see if I can do my
Pakistani here. I don't have a good one. With the

(14:04):
greatest humility, I am pleased to announce that Islamic Republic
of Iran and the United States of America, along with
their allies, have agreed to an immediate sea is fired everywhere,
including Lebanon elsewhere, effective immediately. I warmly welcome. Oh boy,
I had to click more and it's taking forever now

(14:26):
to helpen well. He warmly welcome. Now I lost my
whole accent. I am warmly welcomed the sagacious gesture and
extend deepest gratitude to the leadership of both countries and
invite their delegations to Islamabad on Friday tenth April twenty
twenty six to further negotiate for a conclusive agreement to

(14:47):
settle all disputes. Both parties have displayed remarkable wisdom and understanding,
and have remained constructively engaged in furthering the cause of
peace and stability. We earnestly hope that the isl I'm
about talks succeed in achieving sustainable peace and wish to
share more good news in coming days with copies sent

(15:08):
to Real Donald Trump, Jdeva and Secretary of Rubio Envoy
Witkoff peace missions. Other people I do not know, and
mister arag Rakshi, he is the Minister of Noseke from
Iran and that's it. That is the the shab Serif.

(15:30):
I probably do a better shaba shif than I do
the others. Although I've never met mister she Reefs, I
don't know if he has like an Indian slash British.
He know, there's a lot of like Priyanka Chopra onhe
that married Nick Jonas. She's a really beautiful accent, right,
She's like Indian but yet also English and depending on
I guess on when you grew up back in stan

(15:50):
in India, were On's the same place I had a
good friend growing up. Shout out to my guy Monish
Manish and his family and they're all Indian but his
dad was born in Pakistan, his mom was born in Vietnam.
He was born in Nigeria. They're all Indian, though, beautiful family.
By the way, some of my dearest friends. Anyway, Rip's

(16:12):
my man hero who who passed away some months ago.
All right, anyway, we're getting out in the weeds here,
We're getting out in the waied. This is what happens
when you let me do breaking news and the only
audio I have for the breaking news is me doing impressions.
All right, So that's the latest on that. I don't
know if there's more that I can add to this.
Let me see both parties displayed blah blah blah. The

(16:34):
new supretor of the new Supreme Leader of Iran, Moshtaba Khamani,
I have to say it that way because it keeps
me going, is reportedly incapable of running the country, according
to an intelligence assessment reviewed by The New York Times
or is it the Times India? Just as the Times
here and need some clarification on that. The diplomatic memo,
understood to be a comprised memo of both American and

(16:58):
Israeli intelligence, claims that Khameny is in capacitated and receiving
medical treatment in the Holy City of com Oh, so
they let him know, Hey, we know where your man's is,
and we're gonna drop a bomb on your man's in calm.
Dropping bombs on the calm. How about that? And when
they drop those bombs, guess what these guys, No, no, no,
don't kill Ariyahtola. Take it easy, take it easy and trumpito.

(17:20):
What do you want two weeks? You got it, We'll
see what happens to come. Qom is approximately ninety miles
from Tehran and considered a sacred site to Muslims of
the Shia sect. So I think that was it. And
again they would have been justified in this saying that

(17:41):
the commander in chief of the Iranian military is the
Ayatola and taking out this individual as a high value
military target was required. Whether or not he was in
this holy city or not is secondary. And this is
how you get around this war crimes thing. Now, if
they target this city without the Iotola there, then it's

(18:04):
a total war crime. And this is why you can't
pay attention to all these people out there that are
just freaking out. Anyway, let me see what else we've
got here. I want to see if there's any additional news.
I see that there were some reports about additional skirmishes

(18:25):
and fighting in Iran. But so far, in the last
couple of hours, all we have is Trump and Iran
have agreed to two week Well it's really the United
States and the Islamic Republic. What else here? Trump suspends
attack for two weeks. Yeah, that's pretty much all the

(18:46):
news thus far. Here we go. This looks good. Maybe
this is it. Iranian link tackers have disrupted multiple US
industrial sites. They're always good for a cyber attack. These
guys multiple US oil and gas and water sites in
recent weeks, according to a federal advisory released today. Three

(19:09):
sources familiar with the investigation, which means they leaked this
to CNN Politics. The hacking campaign marked an escalation of
cyber attacks launched by TRON since the US and Israeli
war with Iran began. Because it tested the safety systems
at US industrial plants that protect human life. The hacks
have caused some industrial processes at the sites to shut down,

(19:31):
forcing them to operate manually. These sources say that the
downtime has caused financial losses for some victims. The Federal
Advisory also said hackers have in some cases tried to
use destructive malware or wipers to delete data from victim companies,
but it was unclear if they were successful. So anyway,

(19:53):
this is pretty vague. It's not telling me anything that
happened today with any specificity. But again, leave it to
CNN to do just that. Of course, they make this
look like it's new in the last forty nine minutes,
but I don't see the newness of it. This is
saying it's all happened in the last couple of weeks.
I guess they saw a memo now that's showing that

(20:13):
a lot of that. All right, I'm gonna pause right
here because i feel like I'm all over the place.
I'm going to regroup, see what we got. We're gonna
connect with ej Antoni and talk about the economic aspect
of all of this. We're going to talk about Iran
and the economics of Iran. But first we're going to
talk about the jobs report. Some people say it was
a great job support, others say it wasn't a great
job support. One thing we know about ej Antoni that

(20:35):
while he is oftentimes supportive of the president, and was
himself nominated by the President to run the Bureau of
Labor Statistics because of his prowess as an economist. He's
always honest and he always calls it very accurately. So
keep it locked right here. I'm Rich Valdez coming right
back with ej Antoni.

Speaker 1 (20:53):
This is America, This is America. He's brown, he's bald,
and he's breaking it down.

Speaker 3 (21:11):
Oh he's still has some what's his day, Rich Valdez?

Speaker 5 (21:24):
All right to me, he goes.

Speaker 3 (21:24):
Welcome back, Rich Valdes, keeping your company tonight and our guest.
You know him as the resident economist here with Rich Valdez,
This is America. You know him as EJ and Tony
head honcho over there, chief economist at the Heritage Foundation.
Always in the headlines because people want to know what
he has to say about what's going on in our economy.
E j Antny, welcome back, brother, Oh Rich, great to

(21:46):
be back, Thank you man. So you know, yesterday I
was looking at this article in Forbes magazine and they
were beating up this report, this Job's report, saying that
there's really my reader's digest version, that there was no
big difference between a Trump Jobs report and a Biden

(22:07):
jobs report because it might be adjusted up or down
one way or the other, and criticizing the administration for
doing that. That's something you and I have talked about
a lot. So talk to me a little bit about
what you think about this forbespiece if you've seen it,
or that critique.

Speaker 2 (22:23):
Overall, Well, I think there's certainly a kernel of truth
in it, but there's also some really really big differences
we should address between the jobs report jobs reports under
Trumps versus Biden. First of all, where the similarities. Well,
one of the things is the massive downward revisions that's
a huge problem at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which

(22:43):
still hasn't been fixed, which has been ongoing, and not
just myself, a lot of major investment houses were pointing
this out all the way back in twenty twenty two,
that the data was unreliable and that we were going
to have these big downward revisions, and we have had
them every year since then. And it's not just the
annual revisions, but also the month to month revisions. The

(23:04):
problems have not gotten any better. In fact, by some metrics,
I think you can argue they've actually gotten worse. So
again there are serious statistical issues at play here. They
have not yet been fixed. They were not addressed under
Biden post COVID, and they have not yet been addressed
even to this day. So that's the similarities. One of
the really really big differences, though, that is worth pointing out,

(23:26):
has to do with government jobs. This was especially an
issue in the second half of the Biden administration as
they really ramped up their efforts to hire a lot
of federal bureaucrats. And what happened there, Rich was you
essentially were adding jobs. You were adding to that headline
jobs number, even though you weren't actually increasing the number

(23:46):
of people employed in productive work, that is the private sector.
Now what has happened under Trump. They've managed to get
rid of a whopping ten percent of the federal workforce.
That's astounding, So credit where credit is due. They have
made great progress in cutting down the federal bureaucracy. If
you look at these federal jobs numbers, you have to

(24:07):
go all the way back to nineteen sixty six, so
full six decades ago to find a lower print. In
other words, find a time when there were fewer federal
bureaucrats employed than there are today, so again credit where
credit is due. That they have really made, I think
good efforts in reprivatizing the economy, you.

Speaker 5 (24:25):
Know, EJ and Tony.

Speaker 3 (24:26):
A lot of people were surprised by this Job's report,
saying that it, you know, defied expectations. It came in
a lot higher, all good things. What's being attributed there? Right,
they're saying it's non foreign payroll, it's private sector growth.
But is this part of is it the same?

Speaker 5 (24:45):
Right?

Speaker 3 (24:46):
Is this because people are joining ICE because they changed
the requirements, or are we seeing the beginning of an
economic resurgence in our country?

Speaker 2 (24:55):
Well, you know, Rich, I think in the same way
that people were too down on the January report. In
other words, I think they kind of over exaggerated how
bad the previous report was. I think now they are
playing up a little bit how good this report is.
These reports are composed of two different surveys. One is
a survey of businesses, the other is a survey of households.

(25:17):
And while the survey of businesses showed that the number
of jobs was increasing, the survey of households showed that
the number of people actually employed was going down. For example,
the unemployment rate declined, not because people shifted away from
unemployment and to employment, but simply because unemployed people gave
up looking for jobs left the workforce. So, yes, the

(25:39):
unemployment rate went down, and that looks good on paper,
but if you understand why it went down all of
a sudden, the report doesn't look that rosy anymore. So again,
just like the previous report that had a big drop
on the headline, wasn't as bad as people thought, I
think also this one is not quite as good as
people think either. We have to look beyond the headlin

(26:00):
lines here. We don't want to just become, you know,
cheerleaders for one thing or another.

Speaker 3 (26:04):
In my opinion, I agree with you, and this is
why I felt like I saw a lot of headlines
pro the job's report. I didn't hear much from the
actual White House on it. A little bit, but nothing majoring.
I would have imagined if it were as spectacular as
some of the headlines made, it seem that Trump would
have been leading with that.

Speaker 5 (26:20):
Saying, you know, we've had a great jobs report, you know,
but we didn't hear that.

Speaker 3 (26:23):
So ultimately I thought, what is this them propping it
up to knock it down? And I think oftentimes we
do see that a lot in the media. What grade
would you give it?

Speaker 5 (26:32):
Good?

Speaker 2 (26:32):
Good question, Rich, I mean, I have to give it
a C. I would love to give it better than that.
But again, if as soon as you dig dig into
the report, as soon as you get past the headline,
you start looking at some of the internals. Unfortunately, there
are just too many areas where we're not making progress.
In fact, we're we're moving in the opposite direction. Right
where we're it's in retrograde. For example, if you look

(26:54):
at the progress that had previously been made by Native
born Americans who were in the first year the Trumpet
administration making huge gains, again a stark contrast to Biden,
where native born Americans were actually losing jobs and all
net job growth was going to foreign born workers. Today,
unfortunately that pattern has really stopped. What I'm getting at, Rich,

(27:15):
is the fact that you can make I think a
really strong case after statistical adjustments, that the number of
Native born Americans employed today is roughly the same as
it was back in twenty nineteen, seven years ago. And
again that's not all Trump's fault. Obviously, Biden was at
the HELM for four.

Speaker 5 (27:32):
Of those years.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
But the really great progress we were making on the
jobs front for Americans in the first year of his presidency.
The breaks came on really hard in the month of March. Now,
some of that might have to do with the war
with Iran, and we'll see as that, hopefully, please God,
gets revolved, very resolved, very soon. Hopefully the labor market
gets back on track after that. But I think it's

(27:55):
just too early to tell. Right, one month does not
give us a trend right now.

Speaker 5 (28:00):
I get that.

Speaker 3 (28:01):
Now there was a couple of areas where it dipped, right,
it took a little bit of a dive. Is this significant?
Is this something that we should be paying a lot
of attention to. Is it something that we're going to
feel on Main Street? Or is this kind of an
ebb and flow fluctuation?

Speaker 2 (28:18):
Great, great question, Rich, you know, I think it is.
At this point you have to kind of chalk it
up to being, as you said, the ebbs and flows
of the labor market. Unfortunately, we're seeing changes simultaneously in
supply and demand, So labor supply and labor demand. If
you were only changing one or the other, but holding
the other end of the equation constant, it'd be very

(28:40):
easy to predict which way things were going, both in
terms of wages and also in terms of the number
of jobs. But we're seeing pretty stark changes to both
sides of that equation. So it's becoming very, very difficult
to just assess where the labor market is today, let
alone predict where it's going in the future. So again,
and one month does not give us a trend. I

(29:02):
think we're really going to have to wait and see
how the rest of the first half of this year
shapes up before we should really feel confident in giving
a more definitive assessment of that labor market.

Speaker 3 (29:16):
Now, overall, you've given this jobs report a see how
would you grade the overall economy, our economic health in
the country, labor growth GDP, all of it.

Speaker 2 (29:30):
You know, if you had asked me five or six
weeks ago, before the war with Iran, I would have
given you a different answer. It would have been a
lot more rosy, a lot more optimistic outlook. But unfortunately,
these these high energy prices that was really a cornerstone
of the Trump agenda, and a lot of a lot
of his economic performance was predicated upon those prices staying low.

(29:51):
And now with the spike that we've seen that puts
a lot in jeopardy, you know, looking at the economy,
So I think you have to really downgrad it, maybe
even so far as to a CNUS. And again I
take no joy in saying that, and I don't make
that kind of assessment lightly, but I also have to
put the caveat on their rich that we have no

(30:12):
idea what's going to happen with this war with Iran.
There's talk of a ceasefire now, so you know, again
we don't even know which way this is going to
go in six weeks, six days, let alone something like
six months. So it's really difficult to see where the
economy is going to be at the end of this year.
One thing I can tell you for sure, though, is

(30:32):
that there are a lot of price increases that are
now just baked into the cake that are going to
happen even if the war is resolved very quickly and
amicably between both sides and we get the crewed and
the LNG flowing asap. For example, you've seen huge spikes
and fertilizer prices just as farmers were buying that fertilizer

(30:52):
for their crops. That's going to translate into higher food prices,
not today, but this autumn when those crops are actually
getting harvested and those crops are being brought to market.
So again there's a lot, unfortunately that's already baked into
the cake in terms of those prices increases. And that's
why I greed the economy as harshly as I do

(31:13):
right now. Even though folks aren't feeling it necessarily immediately,
they're going to be feeling it in the months to come.
And that's even under an optimistic scenario.

Speaker 5 (31:24):
I me, he goes.

Speaker 3 (31:24):
We're on with EJ and Tony, the chief economist over
at the Heritage Foundation, and as we speak, negotiations are
going on between Iran, the IRGC people, the Ayatola and
the White House, and we don't know the outcome of that,
but I do want to get into these energy prices
you mentioned, So stick with me, EJ and TONI We're
coming right back.

Speaker 5 (31:43):
I mean, he goes with EJ. A Tony, don't go anywhere.

Speaker 6 (31:46):
This is America. This is America.

Speaker 3 (32:12):
President m Jake Russ, mister President, welcome to the program.

Speaker 6 (32:14):
Service.

Speaker 3 (32:15):
Well, thank you, Rich and thank you for everything.

Speaker 2 (32:18):
I know you very well, and I have I.

Speaker 6 (32:20):
Listen, but I have a lot of people that listen
and they love your show, and I appreciate it very much.

Speaker 5 (32:26):
Welcome back for media.

Speaker 3 (32:27):
We continue the conversation with EJ and Tony, chief economist
at the Heritage Foundation. You likely remember him from being
tapped on the shoulder by El Trampito himself to run
the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And this is a guy
who knows how to add the numbers, knows where the
numbers are buried, and that's why we bring him on
the show. Ej Antoni, I want to get into this

(32:48):
energy price issue right because obviously the United States has
been drill baby drilling, and we've done well with our
own energy production and we're not buying we're not dependent
on buying a ton of oil from anybody body else,
thank god. However, there are others that are and this
affects everybody. Like you said before, the baked in price increase.
Give us a snapshot on where we are today with

(33:10):
energy prices and how you think they will eventually dissipate.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
Really really good questions. You know, we just saw a
new record set for dated Brent crude, which is the
kind of the global sees benchmark, and unfortunately that has
now surpassed levels that we saw even during the energy
crisis in twenty twenty two with the invasion of the Ukraine,
or that we saw right before the mortgage meltdown and

(33:38):
the global financial crisis, the spike and oil prices that
we had then. So what this is though, this isn't futures,
this is dated, So this is essentially people who are
trying to take physical delivery as soon as possible, immediately
or as soon as possible, and so we've actually seen
those prices spike even higher than the futures contracts, which

(33:59):
means delivery in the case of Brent, you know, two
months after the future is actually the contract actually closes.
So what I'm getting at here is there is this
scramble for energy right now that the market is not
pricing in for months to come. So that's a bit
of an indication that people do think you're going to
have some kind of resolution in the coming months. But

(34:20):
it doesn't solve the current supply problem. It doesn't solve
the fact that so much energy has not passed through
the Strait of Hormuz and so much energy infrastructure has
had to be shut down, and other energy infrastructure has
been damaged or destroyed. And a really important note rich
on oil infrastructure being shut down. These are not pieces
of equipment that you can simply turn on and off

(34:41):
like you're flicking a light switch. You're talking about things
that oftentimes take weeks to either start up or shut down,
and that's under emergency procedures. Again, these are not things
that you can quickly turn.

Speaker 5 (34:54):
On and off.

Speaker 2 (34:55):
They are built to operate under very steady conditions and
to operate almost in perpetuity, essentially just shutting them on
or off for maintenance typically.

Speaker 5 (35:06):
And that's really it.

Speaker 2 (35:07):
So even if you get the strait of Hormos open today,
it may still take a couple of weeks before infrastructure
and the Gulf gets turned back on and the crude
actually starts flowing again. And so we're looking at a
situation where, again, unfortunately, even under an optimistic scenario, there's
going to be extreme pressure in the oil's market because

(35:30):
in the oil market because there's such a shortage of it.
And then one last thing that's important to point out.
We are a net exporter of crude, but that's only
when you include all of the distillates all of the things,
the products that we're making from those barrels of crude.
If you're just looking at crude itself, we're actually a
net importer. So we're exporting some of it, we're importing

(35:53):
some other oil. Why on earth do we have that?
It's because not all crude is created equal. Some crude
is thicker, it's heavier, it's more viscous. Other crude is light.
Some crude has a very heavy or very high sulfur content,
sour crude. Other crude has very low sulfur content, sweet crude.
So what we typically get out of the ground in
West Texas, for example, is light, sweet crude. A lot

(36:14):
of our refineries are not set up to optimally refine that.
That's why we import crude from Canada, from the Tar Sans,
from Venezuela, from certain parts of the Middle East. Right.
We import that crude because that's what our refineries are
set up optimally to process.

Speaker 5 (36:32):
So if we.

Speaker 3 (36:35):
Spitball this a little bit, you've got these ships presuming
yes tomorrow they open up the straight and more ships
are coming through. If production is stopped or slowed, or
whatever the case may.

Speaker 5 (36:48):
Be, how do we.

Speaker 3 (36:50):
Estimate this a month, two months. What type of price
tag does that look like on these barrels of crude.

Speaker 5 (36:58):
Good question.

Speaker 2 (36:59):
Oil prices are definitely going to come down as you
get that crude flowing again. The issue is that because
you have had infrastructure again damaged or destroyed, that infrastructure
is not going to be coming back on anytime soon.
So that represents a permanent, if you want to think
in the short term, a permanent decrease in supply. Now.

(37:20):
On the other hand, you do have certain parts of
the world that have some excess capacity. In the United States,
believe it or not, as much as we have been
doing the drill, baby drill, we don't have much excess
capacity right now. Well count was actually steadily declining under
the Biden years, and that means that although we were
getting more efficient at getting more oil out of each

(37:40):
well and thereby increasing production that way, we weren't actually
building in a lot of excess capacity into the system,
which believe me, would be great right now, but unfortunately
we had four years of Biden. So again, you do
have some areas of the world that have some excess
capacity and can help make up for the shortfalls. What's
been damaged or destroyed thus far in the Middle East,

(38:03):
but it's unclear if they'll be able to replace all
of it, in which case you're probably looking at oil
prices again definitely coming down, not staying at one hundred
hundred and twenty barrel, but not necessarily getting back down
to sixty five.

Speaker 5 (38:17):
How long do you think that stays that way.

Speaker 2 (38:19):
At sixty five or or close to sixty five do
you mean, or at current prices.

Speaker 3 (38:24):
Now, at this unknown state, presuming things go back online,
what do you think that turnaround looks like?

Speaker 5 (38:29):
That length of time to bring it back down to
fifty good good question.

Speaker 2 (38:34):
At least a couple of months probably, And again, unfortunately,
a lot of this just has to do with the
slow nature inherent in oil infrastructure. I don't mean that
these facilities are slow in processing crewed. They may be
very fast in doing so, but again, getting them started
up is going to take some time. It's going to
take some time to renew confidence in the safety of

(38:57):
ships actually moving through the strait. It's going to take
some time again to replace the lost capacity in terms
of what was damaged or destroyed.

Speaker 5 (39:06):
But then you.

Speaker 2 (39:07):
Also have the question of how long is it going
to take for gasoline prices to come back down, right,
how long is it going to take for food prices
to come back down? And in those instances you have
to first wait for the negative effects. In this case,
the price increases to actually filter through the system before
we can even talk about when the price decreases are

(39:27):
going to follow.

Speaker 3 (39:28):
So, looking at the situation we have right now, presuming
this ten point framework that is being you know, rumored
right now between the administration and the iatola and the
latest iatola, let's say all that stuff happens and we're
good to go. What would be you know, you, as
the senior Economic Advisor of the United States, is there

(39:51):
something we can do to help mitigate this other than
not have war?

Speaker 2 (39:55):
Oh goodness, Yeah, not have ward would really really help,
you know, not going to war in the Middle East
would really help ensure that we don't have these kinds
of disruptions. So, yeah, obviously, no more war with Iran.
That would be a big one. That would definitely be
a huge, huge help. But aside from that, Rich, we
have to do better on cutting regulation and also cutting

(40:18):
marginal tax rates here in the United States in order
to remove the disincentives the artificial disincentives that government has
put in place that have artificially decreased production and capacity
as well. So again I think you do both of
those things, that's going to go a long way. But
those are long term provisions.

Speaker 5 (40:39):
Right.

Speaker 2 (40:40):
You're talking again about not just starting up infrastructure and
it taking weeks. That's infrastructure you've already built. You're talking
about building things from scratch. So now you're on a
timeline of many years. So unfortunately, we are more or
less stuck somewhere close to our current capacity when it
comes to both oil and LG.

Speaker 5 (41:01):
A j Antoni final question for you.

Speaker 3 (41:02):
A lot of speculation about a change in our banking
system to quantum, to embracing crypto, different types of coins
to do different types of things, and if this happens
sooner rather than later, how.

Speaker 5 (41:23):
What does that look like economically?

Speaker 3 (41:25):
I guess for many Americans you see a lot of
regular everyday Americans cashing in on this, or is it
going to be the institutional investors that are buying up
all the crypto right now, which I'm guessing or having
a bit of an issue as they need a lot
of energy to mine more crypto, and energy of course
is very expensive. Rich.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
I think it really just depends on which way the
regulations go here. You know, are we going to create,
for example, a kind of backdoor CBDC central bank digital currency?
And although there's a peace of legislation, I believe it's
on housing that's currently getting kicked around the halls of Congress.
If for some reason, someone snuck in a CBDC provision,

(42:06):
which seems really odd. And the provision might look good
at first because it says we're going to ban the
federal government from issuing one of these things. The problem
is that it actually allows for private banks to issue them.
So it's basically an end run around this idea of
banning CBDCs, and that would be terrible. That's a government

(42:26):
run crypto currency essentially, where the government can approve or
deny any transaction because every transaction has to go through
a central node, as opposed to something like a bitcoin,
for example, where it is purposely decentralized and it's a
peer to peer network, so you and I are transacting
with each other and it's not having to get routed
through a third party.

Speaker 5 (42:47):
Let's say.

Speaker 6 (42:48):
So.

Speaker 2 (42:48):
Again, it just depends on the kind of regulatory framework
that I think we're going to put in place before
we can make an assessment on which way these cryptocurrencies
are going to go. Where these stable coins let's say,
you know again, it really it really just depends on
what the regulators and what the lawmakers do, whether or
not it's going to be something that's you know, are

(43:09):
we talking it's going to be fully backed by one
to one with United States dollars or maybe with treasury bills?
Are these things just gonna float? Are they not backed
by anything? Can you make an infinite amount of them?
Or is it like bitcoin where you're just going to
asymptotically approach a certain limit and never go beyond that. So, unfortunately,
I think way too many questions to really give you

(43:32):
a good answer, as much as I would love to rich.

Speaker 3 (43:35):
Yeah, yeah, too many variables, I get it, And that's
probably why I have so many questions, because there are
so many variables and it's kind of hard to pin
this thing down.

Speaker 5 (43:43):
Ej Antoni. I want to thank you for being here.

Speaker 3 (43:45):
Let everybody know how they can follow you and keep
up to speed with the amazing work that you're doing.

Speaker 2 (43:50):
Best place to find me is going to be on
the x platform and the handle there is at Real
ej Antony.

Speaker 5 (43:57):
Outstanding. Check them out at Real Antony. I follow him.

Speaker 3 (44:01):
You should to ej Antoni, You're a gentleman, a scholar,
and a patriot.

Speaker 5 (44:04):
Godspeed to you, sir, Same to you, Rich.

Speaker 3 (44:07):
You bet my brother, and am he goes, there's still
more to come. I want to get into a little
conversation on loneliness. Ever since COVID, some people think it's
the best thing in the world to work from home,
but others they're suffering from the most serious case of
loneliness they've ever dealt with, because they wake up there,
they go to sleep there, they work there, They're doing
everything from there. Keep it locked right here.

Speaker 6 (44:28):
I'm Rich Aldees, this is America, this is America.

Speaker 1 (44:47):
He's making podcasting great again.

Speaker 6 (44:50):
This is America with Rich Valdez.

Speaker 3 (44:57):
All right, I mean, he goes, welcome back, Rich, keeping
you company this Tuesday night, and again Iran not getting.

Speaker 5 (45:05):
Blown to smither riens.

Speaker 3 (45:07):
Their civilization will continue for at least another two weeks.
And I want to jump into this conversation on loneliness
because this is something that two years ago we were
hearing about on the news as an epidemic as a crisis. Right,
there's a big deal going on with loneliness after the

(45:29):
Surgeon General put out a report saying it was as
bad as smoking to your health. Right, imagine that. Listen
to this.

Speaker 7 (45:38):
Searches for how to make friends and how to meet
people have reached all time highs. That's according to a
recent Google Trends search report. But the loneliness crisis is
not limited to our search bars. The US Surgeon General
recently released a report saying that the problems of loneliness
and isolation in the US have reached epidemic proportions. Studies
show that the loneliness crisis has been worsening even before

(46:00):
the pandemic, which forced us inside to avoid infection. And
loneliness can be associated with problems with our physical health,
elevated risk of heart disease, stroke, dementia and older adults,
and even premature death. Besides indicating how lonely we feel,
these search trends also show that we're looking to meet
new people out in the world. Think of social infrastructure

(46:20):
as potential points of connection, like libraries, parks, and public squares.
Because however many friends we have on social media, what
we're really looking for is that physical connection.

Speaker 3 (46:29):
So I don't disagree with her. I think she's probably
onto something and she's basing this on the report that
the Surgeon General under Biden put out two years ago.
That was Doctor Surgeon General, doctor Vivic Murty, and I
have a clip of him. I don't want to overdo this,
but I want you to remember what he said then,

(46:49):
and then I'm going to play what's going on right
now to see if there's been an improvement there. Listen
to this.

Speaker 8 (46:55):
The growing mental health crisis in the United States and
also in other parts of the world, and my deep
concern has been in particular about young people. We are
seeing a literal youth mental health crisis in America. It's
the reason two years ago I released a Surgeon General's
Advisory on Youth mental health. And this is a deep
concern to me. We're seeing rising rates of depression and
anxiety among young people, and part of this is being

(47:18):
fueled by loneliness and isolation, which have reached epidemic proportions
in our country, in the UK and in other nations
as well. And now we're learning more and more that
that loneliness and isolation, which by the way, was exacerbated
by COVID, has a profound effect on our mental health
and well being, increasing our risk for depression and anxiety,

(47:39):
but also increasing our risk for physical illness as well,
like heart disease, dementia and premature death.

Speaker 3 (47:45):
Now this is where it gets really interesting. And again
this is an interview from Sky News out of Australia,
and I'll go back to the interview. There's only about
forty seconds left, but I just wanted to chime in
here and say, loneliness a quit in my mind to
mental health, right, you feel lonely. It's a feeling. When
they start saying that this has the same effects on

(48:07):
the body and life expectancy and whatnot as heart disease
and smoking. Now that's a whole different story, and it
shows you how dire, how serious, how sinister what happened
during COVID really was. Listen to this.

Speaker 9 (48:26):
Access to social media, to phones, to digital devices.

Speaker 8 (48:30):
People are getting younger and younger and younger.

Speaker 6 (48:32):
They're giving very small children phones and laptops and iPads.

Speaker 8 (48:36):
Now, social media is extraordinarily complex, it's evolving rapidly, and
many parents, despite their best of intentions and efforts, to
monitor their kids use and ensure that they it's safe.
They're finding it extremely difficult to do so, and so
we've got to step in and have the backs of parents.
And we've done this before with other products. We can
do it again with social media. But we have to

(48:58):
act now because social media is been on the scene
for twenty years and we have failed to put in
place and fundamentally implement the kind of safety measures that
have long been needed. We can't afford to wait any longer.

Speaker 3 (49:10):
Now. I'm not going to get into a whole thing
about online safety, social media and all that. I understand
that there was a case recently that's still being litigated
about is social media addictive? I would presume that it is,
and I would think that if I sold something, you know,
like I said my show, I hope that my show
is something that you find addictive, and when you don't

(49:30):
have it, you get withdraws, like some of how my
listeners were commenting on social media saying I have withdraws.
When I was on vacation. I can't call it vacation, right,
I was just working overseas. But the point I'm making
is I understand how anyone in the private sector that
produces a product or a service would want it to
be addictive quote unquote, so that people can't live without

(49:54):
the stuff that you do, that you produce. However, this
carries on into specific scenarios, and the specific scenario that
I'm thinking of in particular is the workplace. Right now,
the workplace is an interesting thing because one would think

(50:15):
that's where, you know, people make very very strong social connections.
Right when you're in high school. You make your friends
in school or in grammar school, in college, same thing.
Then there's the bar scene. If you become social right
you go out to restaurants, you go to parks. You
may be athletic in your social life. You'll meet more people,

(50:37):
but it's only a little while right where you're able
to do that. Some people maintain a very athletic lifestyle.
But for the most part, people have to work, and
I think by and large most people work in a place.
They have to go somewhere to do their work. And
that's where it becomes challenging for the people who don't
have to go somewhere. Right and I saw this article,

(51:00):
let me see where did it go? Here? It is
it's in a Spanish publication called El Pais, which stands
for the country, and Enrique Ray is the author of this.
It's just a couple of days old, April fourth, twenty
twenty six. He's writing it out of Murcia, Espana. I'll
read you some excerpts from it in a moment. It's
an interesting thing because one wouldn't think that loneliness is

(51:24):
occurring at this epidemic level. Still two years, four years
later from when we found out that this was a
big deal, and specifically to people who are at work.
So there's this woman out of the UK that has
a few things to share. I can't play the whole
video for you, but she raises a couple of interesting points.
Before I do a deep dive on that article, listen

(51:47):
to this.

Speaker 9 (51:48):
I'm going to talk to you about working from home
and coping with loneliness and isolation. My name's Katie Demain.
I'm at Eyeopener Institute, which is a consoleancy based in Oxford,
but we work with organizations all over the world, so
working from home for some people, this is quite a

(52:09):
strange phenomenon. It can be strange for those especially who
haven't experienced working from home before, but not everybody feels
like that some people feel elated that they're able to
work from home, whereas others may feel lonely and isolated.

Speaker 3 (52:27):
And that's a very true statement. Some people truly do
love the idea. Right, So, I can tell you during COVID,
I was doing three different jobs but all pretty much
the same.

Speaker 5 (52:37):
Right.

Speaker 3 (52:38):
I was hosting a radio show in New York City.
I was hosting a radio show on the weekends in Philadelphia.
I was hosting my podcast and excuse me. I was
also doing production work for the Mark Levin Show. So
what was my day like? It was hectic. I was
all over the place. I was in Westchester County, I
was in Manhattan, I was back at home. But during COVID,

(53:01):
it all came to a crashing halt. Why because they said,
you know what, we're going to stop people coming into
the office. And it wasn't during COVID. Its actually after COVID, right,
COVID had kind of wound it down and they decided
at this point, now we're gonna not let anybody come in.
It was the craziest thing, and like a real delayed reaction. Anyway,

(53:24):
bottom line was at the time, in order to facilitate
things legally and practically so that I could do the
work I was doing and not have to comply with
taking a vaccine. My employer was very accommodating and allowed
me to work from home to become permanently remote, which

(53:50):
worked well for me and that I was still able
to do all my work. And they did that by
installing studio equipment in my home and stuff like that. Anyway,
that was many years ago. To do my production work
for the Mark Levin Show. Now, I would tell people
at that time, oh, yeah, you and I work from home,

(54:11):
and they would their face would become elated, smiling from
ear to ear, and they're like, Wow, that's got to
be awesome. And I never ever viewed it as awesome ever.
I never considered that. That was never the word that
came through my mind. Awesome. I was happy to be
doing the work I was doing and blessed to be

(54:33):
able to do it, but awesome was not it. I
used to go to a studio seventeen miles away from
from the Bronx, and it was a twenty ninth Street,
seventh Avenue, Broadway, Madison Square Garden. On the seventeenth floor

(54:55):
of that building was five radio studios and a day.
Just listen to what a day at work sounded like
for me. I would go from my home in New Jersey.
I would take the train, then the bus or the
bus and the train, excuse me, walk from the Port
Authority over to Madison Square Garden, take the elevator up

(55:16):
to the seventeenth floor to these five legendary studios, WPLJ
Power ninety five, WABC seventy seven, Nash FM one O
three point nine WNBM, And there was another station there
that I'm forgetting, but anyway, there was a lot going

(55:38):
on there. We had a sound stage. It was nice.
I had lots of nice radio friends. That was my
social network. I went to lunch with different people, We
ordered out, we you know, we were always having a
good time and telling jokes. And COVID came and it
was over. Then they sold the company and all sorts
of things happened. But the point was all that came

(55:59):
to an end. It wasn't lonely. But I missed those
people and I miss those times. So you take that
away from somebody, and sure you feel that kind of
culture shock. Now I still have the ability to work
from home, and I'm very grateful for it. But when
you need people in the business I'm in, you need
a producer, especially now that we're doing video from our

(56:20):
Times Square studio. It's a blessing to be able to
go over to the guy that's running the camera and say, hey, look,
this is what's going on. So anyway, that's the long
story short of why I never liked it. But apparently
there's a lot of people that take exception to this,
listen to this. So this piece in El Pais focuses

(56:41):
on a specific group of people that are freelancers, mainly
writers that work from home, and saying that loneliness impacts
them more than anybody and very interestingly right similar to
the same thing I mentioned to you that some people
think going to work as a hell whole, while others

(57:03):
think it's a blessing in disguise. Depends on what age
you are, however, a lot of the studies show that
between the ages of twenty and sixty, especially for men,
work is the place where new friendships most frequently occur.
Before then, like I mentioned, it was school, and then
in retirement it's your local neighborhood. So this is from

(57:24):
Juan Gomez Barisenna and he writes something called the Map
of Loneliness and very interesting, right. The most significant findings
there as follows. In twenty twenty four to thirty two
percent of freelancers felt the impact of loneliness and isolation constantly,
while eighty nine percent experienced it at some point. Sixty
six percent felt that irregular work patterns and routines were

(57:48):
detrimental to their well being, and ninety one percent felt
unproductive and overwhelmed by a lack of income who would
for at least one month. In short, eighty six percent
of respondents agreed that self employment is detrimental to mental health.
Now that sounds like something that would come out of Europe, right,
because I think Americans responding to this would react a

(58:10):
lot better than the Spaniards or any Europeans would in general.
But the bottom line here is I think when life
gives you lemons, you make lemonade. I'm not trying to
minimize this. I do believe that this is a real thing.
There was a very famous DJ, I believe his name
was a Vichy, and he killed himself because he would

(58:33):
be on top of the world DJing electronic dance music
EDM and have these stadiums filled with one hundred thousand people.
Guy didn't sing a lick of anything. He just would
play the music that he produced and put on a
great party for these people. And he loved it. And
the after party was excellent. And when he would go

(58:54):
home to his hotel room because he played all over
the world and he was by himself. After everything's over,
and after parties over, you got to go to sleep.
He confided with some people that he hated it, he
hated coming down from that high of performing. And in
a very minimal way, I've been able to relate to that.
I love being on the radio. I love doing what

(59:15):
I do. I love connecting with the listeners, whether it's
a podcast or television or video podcast or streaming, but
mainly radio. Radio is really the best connection. And when
I'm done with work, and you know, at first my
late shift, when I first started, it was at one am,
I was done. I was wired. I drink coffee all
through the show. So imagine that drinking two cups of coffee,

(59:38):
or at least one cup of coffee between nine and midnight,
or between ten pm and one am, and then doing
what at one am? Right, it's not even good TV
on let alone. Friends are a place to go for
a little while. One of my closest friends actually also
had a lead shift. Then we would go to like
the diner that was open twenty four hours and we'd
hang out. And those were not every day but on

(01:00:00):
frequent occasion. But shout out to Meli. Mel Melissa's an old,
dear friend. But the bottom line here that I'm trying
to make is I could see how this becomes detrimental,
and the question is how do you fix it? And
this article gets into something to combat this issue that

(01:00:21):
they call the pajama's mentality, and they say it's dangerous
if you don't keep an eye on it. The psyche
naturally gravitates towards what's comfortable, what's easy, and ultimately harmful
in the long run. You have to be a little
savvy and deliberately introduce friction, getting up early, getting dressed,
moving around, going out into the world. The bedroom mentality
can be countered by wearing ankle weights and going for

(01:00:44):
a four mile walk before your breakfast. Working from home
often requires you know different things, a certain aesthetic and
mental discipline to avoid becoming complacent with your own comfort again,
and this is in this piece advice. I'll share this
on social media if you want to take a look
at that at rich Valdesk with an s at rich Valdesk.

(01:01:05):
But bottom line here is it's not always a pot
of gold at the end of every rainbow. Right. This
isn't the best or everyone's cup of tea, I should say,
and this is something that we have to work on.
I think as we become a more connected society, we
see people a lot less and I see this trend

(01:01:28):
in many places, even in church.

Speaker 5 (01:01:31):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:01:31):
You would think church is a great social place, but
there's movements on YouTube and even within churches where people
want to become electronic members, right, And they will tune
in and listen to the pastor and do their praise
and worship and enjoy it, but they won't set foot
in the building. They don't want to be part of

(01:01:53):
the organized religion as many call it. This is bad
because loneliness is not good. So I just wanted to
introduce this topic because I think we're going to bring
in some of our heavy hitters, one of our you know, shrinks,
to kind of talk about this a little more. And
I'm curious if anybody wants to use this or something

(01:02:13):
related to this as a Dear Richie segment where I
give you my unsolicited and unqualified advice on your topic.
I would love to. I'd love to get into a
conversation on this. You know the phone numbers eight seven
seven Valdez one, or you can send a text to
that same number from your cell phone and we'll get
that as well. Anyway, I just wanted to put that

(01:02:35):
out there, a little food for thought. We'll resume on
this when we get together again. Until then, I say,
you got to stand for something, because if you stand
for nothing, you'll fall for anything. And the only thing
necessary for evil to triumph is for good people like
you to do nothing. So you know what to do.
Become an informed patriot, do the right thing. Start approxima

(01:02:57):
until the next time. America. I am rich Valdez and
this is America.

Speaker 6 (01:03:02):
This is America.

Speaker 1 (01:03:12):
M