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April 3, 2025 12 mins
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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
On X. I'm at Mark Blazer m A R K
B l A z R at Mark Blazer on X.
Seven Fields Man is who sent me this. First of all,
thank you for listening. Secondly, thank you for the information.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Listen to this.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Dots pretzels which we just test drove on the air,
cinnamon sugar, the parmersan garlic, the honey mustard, the original
all I'm a big time fan of. They're made in
the USA. They're great. Originally a Minnesota based company, they
were bought by Hershey a few ago and are currently
part of their snack division. Then he goes on to say,
I was an executive manager in the snack industry until

(00:42):
the twenty sixth of January last year when I retired.
So thanks for all of that. I appreciate it. Seven
Fields Man on X.

Speaker 3 (00:50):
They did they raise corn in those seven fields to
manufacture some snacks, because if so, he could still be
a hookup man.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
You never know, that is a nice little Hey, this
is a little bit about the company. But boy, those
things are so good. I mean, I mean really good.
Mike Dubuski's joining us.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Now. You ever had Dots pretzels?

Speaker 4 (01:12):
Mike, Oh yeah, I love a Dots pretzel. I like
the original ones. Yes, the red bag, I think that's yeah,
good stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
Yeah, we just testdrove the cinnamon sugar and the parmesan garlic.
We did it about a half an hour ago on
the air, and my Zach Attack brought them in and
because I was talking about him the other day, I
had the honey mustard for the first time and I
was raving about them.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
And we're not being paid an endorsement fee or.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
Anything like that, but we do that kind of stuff
on the show where we're like, hey, let me and
I warned people. I'm like, first of all, I'm not
responsible for your addiction when you try these A and B.
I'm also not responsible for your empty bank account after
you have to buy them all the time because they're
incredibly expensive.

Speaker 4 (01:56):
Yeah, yeah, but you're paying for quality. I would say,
these honey mustard will they're intriguing to me.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
So you haven't had those?

Speaker 4 (02:02):
Oh yeah, I haven't had those ones yet.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
They'll get you. They'll get you. You'll like them.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
They like parmesan, are going to beat my go to.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:09):
Yeah, I'm liking that too, Chuck.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Even Chuck even mentioned some of those cinnamon sugar with
a cup of coffee in the morning.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yes, and he's just.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
Like that actually could be a little bit of a
breakfast kind of a And then Zach described them as
kind of the crusty part of like a cinnamon roll
because it has that crunchy Have you had the cinnamon
sugar ones?

Speaker 4 (02:29):
No? I have, I have not. I don't normally go
for pretzels and sweet. Yeah, Like I'm not a chocolate
covered pretzel kind of guy, which I know is controversial,
but I feel like that's like not quite chocolate covered.
Like that's a little bit of a different Oh no, And.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
You know what, in true fashion with them, the star
of the show is still the pretzel. So that pretzel,
that classic pretzel taste comes through and then it's just
got the cinnamon sugar going on in the background. It's
not overwhelming and it's not overly sweet, and it really
does taste like kind of a crunchy, light cinnamon roll

(03:06):
kind of feel to it. Yeah, if you're looking for
something sweet one time and you can buy a small
you know, because you don't want to invest in a
huge bag and then go, man, he suck. I don't like,
you know, but Uh yeah, I think you know, I
think you would. I think you would dig them on.
But you know, I do like the chocolate covered pretzels,
and I am I have a sweet tooth is enormous.

(03:30):
As a matter of fact, the sweet tooth fills up
the entire mouth is how big that tooth is. Unfortunately,
so well, this is interesting. Amazon putting in a bid
to buy TikTok, as we're talking about here we go again,
we're talking about this, and I was not aware that
they're on the hook to sell this thing by Saturday.

Speaker 4 (03:50):
Yeah. Well that's because President Trump gave fight to Ance,
which is TikTok's Chinese pairing company, a seventy five day
extension earlier this year, is right after each took off,
and that extension comes due this Saturday, April fifth, and
that means that TikTok needs to find a buyer. Amazon,
as of today, is the latest to sort of put

(04:11):
in a bid. A sources tell ABC News that they
sent a letter to the Trump administration saying that they're interested.
They join a number of other big tech firms out there,
among them Oracle or a group that contains Oracle. There's
a company called app Space that is excuse me, app
Lovin' that is also in the mix here. If we

(04:31):
go back to twenty twenty, when talk of a TikTok
sale first started to emerge, we were talking about companies
like Walmart. We were talking about companies like Microsoft. So
a variety of different figures potentially interested in acquiring TikTok.
But the Amazon one's kind of interesting, right. Amazon has
no real history in the social media space, but they
obviously dominate in the world of online commerce. Well, TikTok

(04:55):
has a TikTok shop. It is one quick swipe away
from your main feed of video you can go shopping
on TikTok, So it kind of makes sense to some degree. However,
there's a lot of stuff left to be ironed out here.
For one, China's government says that any sale of TikTok
that includes its algorithm, that is to say, the special
sauce that serves you videos, is not going to be allowed.

(05:18):
They're saying that's a no go. So that's something that
is left to be figured out by the Trump administration.
As the clock takes down here, isn't that.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
Like buying a car without a steering wheel.

Speaker 4 (05:27):
Though, I mean yeah, or car without an engine. Yeah,
that's that's a big part of it, right, is an
algorithm is what organizes your feed, right, TikTok calls it
the for U feed or obviously all familiar with the
Facebook feed or the Instagram feed. Well, the order of
content that you see is dictated by what you interact with,
and that's all decided by this algorithm. And TikTok's algorithm

(05:50):
is known to be really good, right, a cut above
its competitors here in the US, mainly Instagram reels from
Meta and YouTube shorts from Google. It is the thing
that keeps people coming back to TikTok. It is what
many people say makes TikTok addictive, particularly among younger people.
Selling TikTok without the algorithm means that an Amazon or

(06:12):
a Microsoft or whoever would have to build that algorithm
from scratch from the ground up. And again, as we've
been saying, Amazon is not a company that has really
any experience doing that. So that's going to be something
to watch. Now there's a caveat to all this, guys,
which is that President Trump has said he could lower
tariffs on China if Beijing agrees to sell TikTok, and

(06:33):
so he didn't mention the algorithm explicitly, but that could
be part of it, right, He could stipulate that the
algorithm has to come with TikTok. If China wants a
break on these tariffs that we've been talking about all
week again, a thirty four percent tariff on China on
top of an existing twenty percent tariff. Potentially more tariffs
coming down the line. That could be attractive to China.

(06:54):
We're just gonna have to wait and see.

Speaker 3 (06:56):
Yeah, what value does TikTok have to anybody without the algorithm? Seriously?
Is that is the value? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (07:02):
Yeah, yeah, it's a good question. In fact, the valuation
of TikTok is sort of an open question at this point.
Some people have speculated one hundred billion dollars. We all
remember Elon Musk spending forty four billion dollars for Twitter
a few years ago. That was thought to be an overpayment.
But then again, TikTok and Twitter now x are kind
of different things. So we're gonna have to wait and

(07:22):
see as well. But it is expected to be very valuable,
just given the fact that a lot of people use
it in the US. Right about one hundred and seventy
million people in America use TikTok every month, So a
lot of eyeballs, a lot of potential for advertising, a
lot of potential for possible subscription services, obviously a lot
of people very interested in that.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
You know. That's also what I was going to ask you,
and you kind of, I don't know, you kind of
spoke about their real quick the price tag, which it's
a mystery right now, correct to a.

Speaker 4 (07:54):
Degree other than saying it's valuable, right like, it's one
of those things that like I don't think you or
I might be able to shell out for, but if
you are an Amazon or a Microsoft, maybe it is
one of those apps that is just so in the
public eye and so well used, particularly among an incredibly
valuable demographic to tech companies and advertisers and data brokers,

(08:19):
the young generation that you know, this could potentially be
you know, a deal in the tens of billions, if
not the hundreds of billions. So that means that's the
pretty rarefied air of companies that could afford it. And
you can imagine whatever deal goes through, antitrust regulators around
the world are going to want to take a close
look at it. Meta, Google, Microsoft have all dealt with

(08:42):
that in the past. Maybe they don't want the headache,
So it's it's a lot of stuff to consider here.
I think it's interesting that we haven't heard Elon Musk
express a ton of interest in buying TikTok. But you
know that that's maybe partially because he already owns a
social network, which.

Speaker 1 (08:58):
Could be ABC News Technology Order. Mike Dubuski, Mike, thanks
very much for this, appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (09:04):
We'll see.

Speaker 3 (09:04):
Yeah, what's funny about this to me is we worried
about content on TikTok. One of those investment groups is
actually headed up by the guy the founder of OnlyFans,
So you have to wonder what TikTok might become if
he was at the helm.

Speaker 1 (09:18):
The other thing with Elon him bringing up Elon, Elon
probably knows. Without the algorithm, it's literally like buying a
car with well I said, no steering, Well he's like
no engine, no wheels, no brake, no doors.

Speaker 3 (09:31):
I mean it's his YouTube, It's He's monetized YouTube is
all it is. Without that algorithm.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
That could be why Elon's like pass no thanks, pass
not interested.

Speaker 3 (09:42):
Interesting though, that, you know, even with the deadline coming up,
nobody really talked about this until Amazon said, hey, suddenly
it's headlines.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
Yeah, because it's Saturday. I mean we're talking after tomorrow.
Is the seventy five.

Speaker 3 (09:55):
Days that changed everything. Now it's a headline story because
Amazon has suddenly suggested that they might be in play.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
I thought it was also interesting that Mike brings up
that could Trump then go, hey, we'll back down some
of the tariffs if something to do with Since it's
Byte Dance, it's a Chinese company, so this could have
been interesting with his day of liberation, and they are
getting the stiffest deal as far as if we're going

(10:21):
to we're going to quantify any of this reciprocal tariffs
as a stiff deal. They're getting the stiffest. But it
could have been let me build in some of this
and then I can back some of it down if
they give us something to do with TikTok or I
don't know.

Speaker 3 (10:36):
Man, those high level finance games though, the corporate corruption
that goes on. Okay, so an American company, Joe's American
company buys TikTok from Byte Dance. Then Byte Dance buys
all the available stock in Joe's American company. So they
end up owning their owning their own thing. Again, they're
an American company. They happen to be majority held by

(10:58):
a Chinese company. When the Chinese company he buys them,
but it's American hild it meets the standard that Trump
set and still sends the money to Bite Dance. They
play games like that all the time, and we think
we win something, and unless you keep your eye on it,
you find out you lost.

Speaker 1 (11:12):
I can't imagine Joe's company that you're talking about, American
company that buys would not the stock thing would not
be already insulated in that deal where they could not
do that right, you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (11:27):
I don't know if they've gone that far.

Speaker 2 (11:28):
I'm not, Yeah, I don't.

Speaker 1 (11:29):
I'm spitballing here, But I can't imagine when you're playing
that high of that, that's an incredibly elevated game of investment,
that you are insulated there when you when you write
a check for you know, maybe possibly one hundred billion
or whatever it is.

Speaker 3 (11:45):
You got a president that is touting the right and
reasonableness of American companies being able to be American companies
and to make money and do all this stuff. Okay,
they pay one hundred million, and Byte Dance gives them
one hundred and fifty million dollars to buy it back
the next day. That to say, note that flies in
the face of the capitalist premise that you're present in the.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
First it's taking fifty billion.

Speaker 3 (12:05):
Yeah, yeah, that's a hard Uh, that's a hard sword
right there.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
It's interesting what we're gonna learn though these next what
forty eight hours, maybe a little more than that, but
sixty hours, we're gonna be learning something interesting with regard
to that.
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