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November 24, 2025 • 13 mins
President Trump has made major White House renovations that are drawing widespread attention. Mark provides an update on the ongoing and complicated efforts toward a possible Russia-Ukraine peace deal.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's morea Mark Mark Simone on seven tenor well, it's Monday,
Thanksgiving week, it's Thursday's Thanksgiving and it looks like a
windy day. It may affect the parade. They may have
to lower the balloons. But we'll see a little rain
tomorrow maybe Wednesday morning, but Thursday, no rain. It just

(00:24):
could be very, very windy. So if you're going to
a big Thanksgiving dinner and you don't want to get
a fight about Trump and all that, we're going to
have some expert advice for you a little later this hour.
A great psychologist that doctor Keith Ablow, has done a
lot of work on Trump derangement syndrome. He's sort of
getting to the bottom of it psychologically. How bad is it?

(00:46):
What do you do with it? We'll get that coming up.
It's going to be a fascinating later this hour. I
notice President Trump did not go to marrow Lago this
past weekend, even though it was a cold, windy weekend
in Washington, d C. Normally you think he'd want to
get down to Florida, but he just didn't want to
go to mar Alago this weekend. There was nothing major

(01:08):
on the schedule, nothing that would keep him in Washington.
I think maybe he's just a little sick of those
old ladies at mar Alago that just chase him around
the dining room. You know, if he goes anywhere in
mar A Lago, the million old ladies you see in
the pictures chase him around. Now, Wi you wanw. I
just think he couldn't take it for the weekend. One

(01:29):
thing he did on Saturday, he went to Andrews Air
Force Base or whatever they call it now, Joint Base Andrews,
which clumsy name, but Andrews Air Force Base for years
had the best golf courses in the whole federal government system,
believe it or not. Andrew's Air Force Base, it's twenty

(01:49):
miles from the White House. It's in Maryland. Has always
had this nickname the President's Golf Course, because this facility
has two eighteen hole championship golf courses, the East and
the South courses, each designed as a par seventy two layout.
And apparently it's gotten run down. Like everything in the

(02:12):
federal government, it hasn't been kept up to speed. So
the president is going to have Jack Nicholas, the great golfer,
the legend. But Jack Nicholas runs a company that builds absolute, incredible,
state of the art golf courses. Is going to have
Nicholas and his company redo these golf courses so they'll
be as fine as any golf courses in America. Saturday,

(02:35):
during the day, he went out to Andrews, had Jack
Nicholson meet him there and they walked the course and
figured it out what they're going to do. Remember, Trump
has also built dozens and dozens and dozens of world
championship golf courses all over the world. Knows exactly what
he's doing. So these two experts, you know, you're really
lucky to have this guy in the White House. You
imagine Obama trying to rebuild a golf course. Can you

(02:57):
imagine Joe Biden trying to build anything. So you got
these two experts at building golf courses looking this thing over.
Trump's an absolute expert at building ballrooms construction. He's been
redoing bit by bit by bit parts of the White House.
Oh not just the ballroom, but there's a thing called
the Palm Court. When you come in to see the
President foreign leaders and you go through that door. The

(03:20):
first area you're in, it's a big lobby area it's
called the Palm Court, was just so old and decrepit.
President has rebuilt that completely. It had like a linoleum floor.
He put in the finest marble and he fixed the
whole thing up, paying for most of it himself or
with private donations. He's redone the residence. He's redone the

(03:43):
Oval Office. Obviously, some say overdone the Oval Office. But
and you know, when you're in the Oval Office, that
big Oval office, there's a doorway on the side. If
you go through that door, there's a hallway that goes
to the real office. What's something called the real President's office.
That little hallway goes down to a few rooms. One's
a private bathroom, one's a little den, one's a little

(04:07):
dining room, one's a little office. And that's where many
presidents would really work. Nixon didn't like the big Oval office,
so he'd go to a little office work out of there.
President turned it into kind of a TV room, and
he turned one room. He gets a lot of flak
for this. You'll see a lot of articles in the
left wing fake news, all the left wing sites. He

(04:27):
turned it into a gift shop. Why it's so tacky
it's a gift shop. And if you look at the pictures,
it's got shelves of gifts, Trump hats of all kinds,
Trump matchbooks, Trump cufflinks, trump watches, Trump pens, And they
make it sound like this is the cheesiest thing any
president has ever done. What is he thinking? A gift shop?

(04:49):
What an ego? A None of these articles point out
that every president did exactly the same thing, but not
on such a good scale. If you went to see
President Bush, if you went to see President Clinton, if
you went to visit any president, they would always at
the end walk you over to that thing where they
would give you gifts. There was always presidential cuff links,

(05:13):
presidential pen, oval, office matchbooks. I mean, I got a
big collection of this stuff. They'd give you this. It
was mostly the cufflinks. That was the big thing. That
the cuff links at the presidential seal. For a million years,
that was the main gift. But it's now twenty twenty
five and nobody wears cuff links anymore. You never see
French cuffs anywhere anymore, so why would you give cuflinks?

(05:36):
Nobody can use them anymore. So that's why Trump has
switched to hats and all that stuff. You know, they
still have the presidential cuplings, although I've never seen him
give anybody, and so pens are good, even a pen.
It's kind of out. Most people don't use pens that
much anymore. So he didn't go to mar A Lago
this week and stayed in Washington. They were working on

(05:57):
the Ukraine deal throughout the weekend. Now, the problem with
this Ukraine twenty eight point piece plan, whatever it is,
it favors Russia completely. It's very bad for Ukraine. But
this is round one. This is how Trump does if
you put out a plan that's way too far in
this direction, and then you make the other side negotiate back,
so he knows what he's doing. There's a deadline Thanksgiving Day.

(06:20):
Marco Rubio was asked about that.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
The deadline is, we want to get this done as
soon as possible. Obviously, you know, we'd love it to
be Thursday. We'd love to be ultimately. The important point
today is that we have made substantial progress. We've really
moved forward. So I feel very optimistic that we're going
to get there in a very reasonable period of time,
very soon.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
Okay, but the deal is so pro Russian. They think
Russia wrote it.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
No matter what we came up with today. Obviously we
now have to take what we come up with. If
we can reach that agreement with the Ukrainian side to
the Russian side, that's another part of this equation. They
have to agree to it.

Speaker 1 (06:49):
Yeah, so whatever you see in the agreement, it's not
going to be the agreement. This is just round one.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
I think this is a very very meaningful I would say,
probably best meeting we've had so far in this entire process,
going back to when we first came into office in January.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
Yeah, so apparently they're talking, they're making progress, they're getting
there in this deal. And again it's round what like
the greatest movie you've ever seen that you love, What
a brilliant script. If you went and looked at the
first draft of the first round of the script, it
looked terrible. So it gets rewritten and rewritten and rewritten.
That'll total happen until they get approval.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
It's ultimately have to be signed off of by our presidents.
Although I feel very comfortable about that happening given the
progress we've made. And then obviously there's the Russian side
of the equation. But again we think we have some
pretty substantial insights over the last nine months into some
of the things that are really important to them.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
Yeah. Now, remember they did the Gaza peace deal. That
took a lot of rounds, but they learned a lot
from that that they've applied here to this. Speaking of Gaza,
the president has had all the hostages he can visit
the White House a no number of these hostages telling
horror stories about torture. You know, well, the crazy left

(08:03):
out there protesting Israel, the absolute horrible villains in this
where the Hamas idiots with it wasn't just torture, many
of them telling stories of sexual abuse, men being abused
by men sexually. It's just the most ugly stuff imaginable.
Now you're probably saying, yeah, I didn't know that. Well,

(08:26):
it's because obviously the media looks the other way on it.
They make it look like Israel's the bad guy here
when Hamas has been the most awful thing on earth.
That everything they've done talking about war crimes, the worst
stuff in the world, and of course the media totally
ignoring it. This story about the sexual abuse of these prisoners,
go back look at all the Sunday shows. See if

(08:47):
you see a word about this there the hostage is
telling these stories. Not a word on these Sunday shows.
But they'll do a half hour on Marjorie Taylor Green.
So I don't know why I still I don't know
why I still watch these Sunday show They are so
corrupt and so fake and so awful. Hey, here in
New York, you got the governor's race coming up next year.

(09:09):
You got Elis Stephonic who looked like a shoe in
for the nomination the candidate, but then Bruce Blakeman jumps in.
Now Blakeman is the finest county executive in America. And
what is a county executive? Well, it's like a governor.
He's the governor of Nassau County and he's done a
brilliant job. Elise Stephonic, lover, she's brilliant, she's great, But

(09:31):
she's a legislator. Does she have any management experience? Because
you're a great legislator, does that necessarily mean you'd be
a great governor? I don't know. Kathy Hochel came out
of the legislator legislator les later who it was Couoma
that picked her as a legislator picked her to be

(09:52):
the lieutenant governor. Now, what you usually do if you're
a governor, you picked somebody who's not so great so
you don't get shown up. And then he picked her,
and of course she was just awful, and we got
stuck with her as governor. You can blame Cuomo for
picking her, but if you say that to him, he'll say, yeah,
but you guys re elected her. Well, he's got a

(10:13):
point there, so you'll have a legislator versus a former legislator. Now,
if Blakeman jumps in, he's the only guy with any
management experience, a great governor himself. And you know, Stephanic
is very smart, number one in her class at Harvard
and all that. But let's be honest, Blakeman is as

(10:34):
smart as anybody. So he's gonna be her equal, if
not better, on that score. Now, Stephanic is stronger upstate.
She's from upstate. She's an upstate type. Blakeman is a
more sophisticated, downstate New York City sort of a guy.
And half the votes for governor are here in New
York City. But can Blakeman play upstate? I don't know.

(10:57):
But he's a very smart guy. And he went up
there and did a were of Binghamton and all these
different areas, meeting with people, you know, going to the diner,
talking to people like a Bill Clinton kind of a tour.
And that's what you got to do. So he's weighing
it very carefully. He's a very smart guy, so he'll
check it out real carefully. He's got to make a
decision in the next couple of weeks on whether to run.

(11:21):
He was at the Binghamton diner last week. Now, this
could mean a primary, and a lot of people said, well,
this is not good. We don't want to have a fight.
Why should we have a prime? Well, you want a primary.
Even President Trump said, you know you're better off having
a primary. You don't want to have a coronation of
a candidate that never works. That's not a good idea.

(11:42):
You don't want to Kamala Harris sort of a coronation.
You want a primary. Somebody wins and earns the nomination.
That's the best way to do it. So we'll see
what happens. We'll take some calls in a minute. Eight
hundred three to two one zero seven ten is the number.
So I've had two, three, four Thanksgiving dinners already? Is

(12:08):
it five? I think we even got one down the
hall here today. You know, we have these buffets all
over the place down the hall that way Power one
oh five front of Charlemagne Studio is it's Golden Corral,
very good caterer, and they do these beautiful Thanksgiving dinners
and turkey and ham and stuffing and sweet potatoes in
every kind of pumpkin pie pee can I mean, the longest,

(12:31):
most elaborate Thanksgiving buffet. This is the fourth time they've
been here in the last ten days, so I've had
for these Thanksgiving dinners. I gotta be honest. Thursday, I
don't think I can eat any more turkey. I don't
want to see anymore Cranver. I've had enough. Hey, by
the way, there's a buffet down the other end of
the hall with it's delicious and what the food these scones. Well,

(12:54):
it's delicious. But I didn't Normally the restaurant has a
big sign or something, but I didn't see, and I said, uh,
it's right in front of lightl M. I said, who
did the buffet? It's phenomenon? He said, oh, Luftanza Airlines
I'm meeting airline food here, but it was great, So
I guess it's just American airlines US airlines that have

(13:15):
bad food. This Leftan's a pretty good food there. Anyway,
we'll take some calls. We'll get the Trump Arrangement syndrome.
We've got an expert to explain it to us, but
we'll take some calls. Next. Eight hundred three two one
zero seven ten is the number. Eight hundred three two
one zero seven ten
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