November 24, 2025 • 34 mins
JFK assassination 62 years ago, yesterday. President Trump still has huge support from republicans. Ukraine and Venezuela building to a conclusion soon? Judge threw out Lindsey Halligan as prosecutor in Comey and James cases.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
And Hi, how are you welcome to the Big Podcast
on this Monday. Today's the twenty fourth day of November.
Year of our Ward twenty and twenty five. My name
is Tom Sullivan. And so off we go. Yep, everybody,
Well I don't know if everybody's going, but yeah, we
(00:44):
kick off that well kickoff probably Friday night. But Thanksgiving
travel week one of the busiest of the year. And
we look here, I've got the eighty eighty one million
people are supposed to be traveling or Thanksgiving. I it's
(01:07):
not John Berman earlier today talking about this, and he
said said, why do you what's wrong with staying home?
What's wrong with not having to put up with cousin Eddie?
But eighty one million people are going to mostly get
in the car. Eighty nine percent of the people traveling
(01:29):
will be traveling by car, So obviously you don't have
that far to go. I think most people stay where
they grew up and where their family, their siblings, their parents,
their cousins, their nephew, what their children live. But my
family were scattered all over the country. So eighty one
(01:51):
million traveling eighty nine percent by car, only seven percent
by air. But you would think it was the end
of the world. They go to the airport. Reporters go
there and they find a whole bunch of people that
are miserable for some reason, and they interview them. So
there's a handful of a smaller percentage that go by
(02:13):
I don't know by what else they go by train,
I guess. So it's going to be busy, but it's
spread out this week. I mean, like I said, some
people probably pushed off on Friday, some over the weekend,
some today. There are lines at the airports already being reported,
(02:34):
and the busiest travel days will be next Sunday. That's
the busiest travel day. So I go back to what's
want with just stay where you live. So in any case,
look at people get it's wonderful to get together. But
the stories, I just find that there's a lot of
(02:56):
comedy involved in some of the dysfunctional family stories out there.
And I don't know why I find it so funny.
Maybe I can relate. I don't know. By the way, yesterday,
so we weren't doing a podcast yesterday, but yesterday was
(03:21):
a big historical date. This is who I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
And so my fellow Americans ask not what your country
can do for you? Ask what you can do for
your country?
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Yeah, so that was JFK taking his inauguration January twentieth,
nineteen sixty one. I did the math sixty two years ago,
and so it's not one of the big you know,
the fiftieth, they're the hundredth or whatever the way we
do our odometer readings. But it's it's a big deal
(04:06):
because there he was, you know, signing up for the
job that was going to wind up causing his death
a couple of years later. But I thought about what
he has said so many times. It was nineteen sixty one,
different time, different culture, but it's a really simple statement.
I don't know who wrote that for him, but ask
(04:27):
not what your country can do for you? Well, that's
what That's the basic. That's the way people live today.
We have millions and millions of millions and millions of
Americans that are asking, Hey, what can the country do
for me? What you want me to do something for
the country? What what are you talking about? So it
(04:52):
is flipped completely and I would imagine that President Kennedy
has probably flipped a couple of times in his grave
just thinking about it's such a simple statement that was
basically at the end of a fairly long inaugural dress.
So that's where we are. So our current president. It's
(05:16):
interesting to watch the ratings on him. You find ratings
that say he's got lousy ratings, he's got lousy support.
The question comes down to do the Republicans still support him.
We're going to get into Marjorie Taylor Green too, who
said she's going to resign in January. But Harry Anton
(05:39):
did a quick check to find out are Republicans still
supporting President Trump?
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Look, this is still Donald Trump's Republican party, and we
can see it here.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
They it's like a rock.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
To quote Bob Seeger, I mean, take a look here
Republicans who approve of Trump. Six months ago, it was
eighty seven percent. Now, well, hello, it's the same number.
It's eighty seven number. He has not lost any support
among Republicans compared to six months ago. As I said
at the beginning, he's like a rock. He's like a rock.
The Republican base is sticking by Donald Trump at this point.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
So what about all this talk of him losing support?
Who does that come from?
Speaker 3 (06:16):
It is among independents, It is not among Republicans. Oh yeah, okay,
I think this gives the game away, right, which is
Donald Trump. If you look at twenty first century president's
own party approval at this point in term two, who
leads the pack, It's Donald John Trump. Eighty seven percent
of Republicans approved Donald John Trump. You go back to
twenty thirteen, seventy eight percent of Democrats supported Barack Obama,
(06:37):
and it was seventy eight percent of Republicans who supported
George W. Bush back in two thousand and five. At
this point, so Donald Trump has the biggest own party
highest own party approval of any president who served their
entire second term in the twenty first sent You know,
when you go up against Donald Trump, you're going up
against a buzzsaw because Donald Trump's endorsement record is it's
(06:59):
hard to find anyone else who beats it. Times Trump
endorsees one GOP primaries. In twenty twenty it was ninety
eight percent, twenty twenty two is ninety five percent, in
twenty twenty four it was ninety six percent. And I
will note the majority of times that Donald Trump backed
a challenger to an incumbent like Marjorie Taylor Green, that
challenger won a majority of the time. The bottom line
(07:19):
is this, there was a real reason why Marjorie Taylor
Green decided, you know what, it's not worth the fight,
because more times than not, when you go up against
Donald Trump in a Republican primary, you lose. All right,
So we go to the prediction markets here and the
chance to leave the Republican Party by January first of
twenty twenty seven. You can see it thirty one percent.
I think this is a pretty good baseline, which is
(07:41):
more likely than not Marjorie Taylorgrean will stay within the
Republican ranks. But there's actually a pretty decent chance that
she doesn't. And then that becomes really interesting to see
what she has to say about Republicans and Donald Trump
in particular, if she decides to waigh Audios Amiga.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
So, Marjorie Taylor Green is not just your average ordinary
member of Congress. She said over the weekend she's going
to resign from her position in Congress on January sixth.
Interesting date. She's had a split with President Trump on
the Epstein files in a big way. She also split
(08:17):
with him on the H one B visus. She doesn't
like them. President does like them. Split with him on
AI regulations by state. She wants to have states be
able to regulate AI. President doesn't. I don't want them
to either. You're going to get a patchwork of AI
(08:38):
regulations that will not work. And also just foreign and tagma.
She doesn't want anything to do with foreign wars, and
the president's been involved in skirmishes. So we'll see what
she does. She says she's not running for president, but
we'll also see just exactly how the magacrowd what they do,
because she was kind of the mama of the mega
(09:02):
operation out there. One other, a big personality that popped
up actually late on Friday. We were done with recording
the podcast on Friday when they came out of the
White House, And wasn't that something between the President and
Zaron Mam Donnie. I mean, it was a LoveFest. There
were a couple of political bros just hanging out. I
(09:28):
I don't know what you thought about that, but everybody
was on their very best behavior. Mark Seeson, this is
his observation.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
Well, because he doesn't want to be the scapegoat for
Donnie's failure. Socialism is going to fail because it fails
everywhere where. It's tried, and so Mom Donnie's excuse if
socialism fails in New York is to say, well, Trump,
Trump waged war on New York and punished New York
for my election, and that's why it didn't work. So
you know that Trump doesn't want to bail out socialism,
but he also doesn't want to be his his fall guy.
(10:01):
But the problem that zer Mandanni has is that socialism
only works if it has an external revenue source to
subsidize it. Right, So during the Cold War, Cuba was
bailed out by massive subsidies from the Soviet Union. It
looked like it was working fine because they were getting
hundreds of billions of dollars from Moscow. But then Soviet
Union collapsed because socialism didn't work there and all the
(10:22):
subsidies drive it up and it became an economic basket case.
It's going to be the same problem with Mom Dominie
in New York. Who is going to be his Moscow
to subsidize the government grocery stores and the free buses.
It's not gonna be Trump Trump. The federal government isn't
going to subsidize socialism, so he wants it to be
Kathy Hochel he wants her to raise taxes on all
of New Yorkers, so across the state, income taxes, corporate
(10:43):
tax everything to subsidize free buses and free and government
grocery stores in New York City. That's going to be
a huge, huge problem because at least to Phonic is
going to wrap that around her axle if she does it.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
And if you're not sure of what that reference was about, Alistaphonic,
she is the Republican uptate New York that is running
for or governor against Kathy Hochel. So that was what
Mark Fisson was referring to. As far as Mam Donnie,
we'll seize them. Something has to give there. Either he's
going to change, Mam Donnie's going to change, or it's
(11:16):
going to be nothing but problems. We'll have to wait
and see. While we're on the subject of socialists, Venezuela
is blessed with lots of resources, mainly oil and gas,
and they had so much that Hugo Chavez basically took
over all the private oil companies and promised the people
(11:40):
of Venezuela that he would take all the profits from
those evil oil companies and distribute them to the people
they would be getting rich all the people. And you
know what happened is that did not happen, and as
a result, the people rebelled. Chavez died Ugo. I mean,
Maduro just had They had an election there to re
(12:04):
elect him, and he lost by huge amounts according to
all the outside observers, but he proclaimed that he was
the winner, and so he stays in office. But things
are getting tense. Victoria Coats, former national security officer, says, yeah,
with all the build up of the military, something's got
(12:24):
to go there now.
Speaker 5 (12:26):
There's nothing covert going on that I can see. We
have our most modern, our most capable aircraft carrier, the
Gerald R. Ford, off the coast of Puerto Rico. We
have the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as
Lucas was just saying, General Dan Caine, also in Puerto Rico,
and the biggest military build up we've had since a
rock going on in the Caribbean. And so, you know,
(12:46):
this isn't subtle at all. I think President Trump has
tried with diplomacy to get a change out of the
Maduro regime. All we've seen, though, are more drugs pouring
across our southern border. Pouring into our country, killing our citizens.
That's what he's not going to stand for. So I'm
sure he would offer Maduro an off ramp, perhaps to
go to Russia. But I don't think he's staying in Venezuela.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
But we have, like like she said, the largest built
up dens of rock. We got all kinds of military
surrounding Venezuela. Is it just about Venezuela or are we
talking about the entire drug industry coming out of South America?
Speaker 5 (13:23):
Well, this for sure. I mean Venezuela is the head
of the snake, and so I think the logic would
be that given some interesting recent political changes in countries
like Bolivia and Chile, both of which are trending toward
a more conservative government, more friendly to Washington, you have
elections also coming up in neighboring Colombia coming up in March,
(13:44):
which also look like they're going to go conservative. If
you flip Venezuela right now, then I think all of
that change sort of falls into place. So I think
that should be the key target here.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Well, you can see the vision that Donald Trump has.
He wants to change Latin Americameric in South America into
friends in our hemisphere instead of battling against the drug
cartels in at least South American countries. And I haven't
even talked about what they're going to do in Mexico.
But with all of this, something's going to happen. According
(14:18):
to Victoria Coachs, within the next couple of weeks at
the very least, President said he wants to have a
conversation a phone call with Maduro.
Speaker 5 (14:28):
Well, the President has said he's very willing to talk.
You know, he's always going to choose diplomacy if that
is possible. And as I said, there could be an
off ramp for Maduro. We have putin hosting, for example,
Beshier Alasade, who was ousted this time last year US
from Syria. So maybe Maduro joins him in Sochi and
you know, is able to keep some of his billions
(14:49):
and have a retirement of sorts. If you will, bet
that we could then have a much more democratic, free
Venezuela that would be a friend in the United States.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
That's the plan. Try and take some of these South
American countries and make them into our friends. While we're
speaking about problems overseas. Ukraine, they've been working over time
over the weekend, Marco Rubio heading up the crew that
had been in Geneva talking to Ukraine about a peace agreement.
(15:22):
What's strange about this is it's the US and Ukraine talking,
but no, Russia is not there. But somehow Russia is
responding to what they're hearing from the talks between the
US and Ukraine. Here's Marco Rubio talking about where they are.
Speaker 6 (15:41):
We arrived here today with one goal, and the goal
was to take what knows twenty eight points to twenty
six points depending on which version as it continue to evolve,
and try to narrow the ones that were open items.
And we have achieved that today in a very substantial way.
I think the report today is that I think today
was worthwhile. It was very very It is probably the
(16:01):
most productive day we have had on this issue, maybe
in the entirety of our engagement, but certainly in a
very long time. Work remains, and because this continues to
be a working process, you know, I don't want to
declare victory or finality here. There's still some work to
be done, but we are much further ahead today at
this time than we were when we began this morning
(16:24):
and where we were a week ago.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
For so now, there was a news item over the
weekend that the President had given Zelensky until Thursday till
Thanksgiving Day to either fish or cut bait. If you
don't accept this peace agreement that we came up with,
then we're leaving you and you're on your own. Well
that's changed since the weekend. The deal right now that
(16:49):
is on the table for Russia and Ukraine is as
far as territory, Ukraine would see the don Esque, lou Hansk, Zapporzia,
Kierson and Crimea, so they would get rid. They would
say goodbye to the area that Russia currently occupies. As
(17:11):
far as security, no NATO in Ukraine, the army, the
Ukrainian army would be capped at six hundred thousand people
and there would be no foreign bases from any other
country anywhere in Ukraine. As far as withdrawals, Russia would
retreat from parts of Kharkiv. Kharkiv one hundred billion dollars
(17:34):
in frozen Russian money would be used to rebuild Ukraine.
Sanctions would be eased against Russia, and as far as
Ukraine would drop their war crime cases and Russia would
rejoin the global economic world. So that's the deal that's
on the table. As we go through this Monday, we'll
(17:59):
find out if it's a work in process. General Jack
Keene was asked his thoughts about what's happening with this agreement.
Speaker 7 (18:07):
Well, I think what we're already seeing here is the
president's determination to end this war. I mean, we saw
what happened as a result of the Alaska summit. You know,
Putin made promises that he didn't keep, and then all
the European leaders came to Washington with Zelenski and they
all pretty much were unified in their support for Ukraine
and also for a peace process going forward. And where
(18:30):
are we today. The reality is the presidents still trying
to get that wars stop, and we're putting together a
process to do that. I think what happened here the
initials document gets out, gets leaked out, and it appears,
and you know, so I read it just like everybody else,
to favor Russia at the expense of Ukraine. But what
(18:52):
was miss is it was an open process here. You know,
that was the initial document, and the administration welcomed comments
from friends and partners, Ukraine itself, European allies, and even
I put together a group of thought leaders in Washington
yesterday and provided some comments to the administration as well.
(19:13):
So this process is moving on, and likely that document's
going to improve and improved rather significantly because it is
an open process, and I think many people missed that
in terms of the initial thing that was out there.
So yeah, it remains to be seen.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
This is tough stuff.
Speaker 7 (19:31):
I mean, we've got Putin on the other side of it,
and the reality is he has not taken one single
step towards a temporary ceasefire or a piece deal whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Where he is.
Speaker 7 (19:44):
He still believes that eventually he's going to break the
will and resolve of the United States and the Europeans
and the Zelenski government and he will eventually have his
way here. And that is the determined process that we're
on here, putting this peace plant together yeather, hopefully with
good security guarantees that certainly favor Ukraine as a result
(20:06):
of the process, and some other things that we can
do to help Ukraine will convince Putin that negotiation is
the best answer as opposed to continue is wartime objectives
to achieve his strategic objectives, which haven't changed. Is top
of the government of Ukraine and expand into Eastern Europe.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
One guy that's on the opposite side of this is
Senator Mark Warner. He's the head of the Senator or
the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He doesn't
like this deal at all.
Speaker 8 (20:38):
This initial plan would be a total capitulation by Ukraine.
I think it would go down, Frankly as a historically
bad deal. And my fear is the person who's watching
this as close as Latimer Putin is President She and China,
because if we throw in the towel on Ukraine, I
think that gives Frankly more fuel to the fire in
(20:59):
terms of She taking on Taiwan. I think there's a
banzial all the way around.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
So we may get some definitive answers, not today, but
within a week to ten days. Venezuela, something's going to
happen there. Elliott Abrams, who was the ambassador to Venezuela,
he thinks Trump's going to do something very quickly.
Speaker 9 (21:21):
We're at the point now where the game is on.
Either Nicholas Vnduro is going to win or Donald Trump
is going to win. And if you think that Donald
Trump doesn't like losing, then I think he's going to
use those forces in some way.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Okay, so we got this huge build up of military.
They're not going to sit there forever. We've got the
deadline on Thursday. But it sounds like it's movable. On Ukraine,
they got to come up with either agreed to this
deal or not. And that doesn't even bring Russia completely
to the table. So you know it's moving. Everything's being
pushed as hard as they can push it. But I
(21:56):
don't know whether they're going to get a need answers
right away, but it seems like there's a decent chance
that we will get an answer on both of those
countries within a week to ten days. Breaking news coming
out today the judge that they remember they consolidated, uh,
not the cases, but consolidated the question on James Comey
(22:18):
and Letitia James about whether Lindsay Halligan was properly the
appointed acting US Attorney, and the judge in that case
ruled this afternoon she's not. And so the cases have
not been dismissed as far as the indictments against them,
(22:42):
but the cases have been thrown out as far as
Lindsay Halligan having the authority to be able to prosecute.
This is Jonathan Turley reacting to the judge's decision.
Speaker 10 (22:56):
He can in the sense that novelty is not good
when it comes to criminal indictments, and there was a
lot of novelty in the final day to get this
indictment through. They were right up against the clock, and
particularly with Komy, they had rejected one of the counts,
and so Halligan sort of put together the other two
(23:17):
counts rapidly and then submitted that. Now she and the
Department of Justice say that they showed that to two
of the jurors, including the foreman, but that the grand
jury had approved those two counts. But the biggest problem
that the judge saw here is Halligan herself. And this
is something that a number of us raised when the
(23:38):
indictment first came out. Under federal law, the president has
one hundred and twenty days to use an interim US
attorney and acting US attorney. That time was effectively used
up by her predecessor, and reportedly he was shown the
door because he had misgivings about some of these charges.
(24:01):
So the judge here is dismissing without prejudice, so that
in some ways is a small victory and that this
is not the end of the prosecution of James Comy
or Leticia James. The question is whether and how they
will cure this problem. Well, we're going to wait to see,
I think, and we're going to have the answer very soon.
(24:23):
Whether the Department of Justice is going to go back
to the grand jury and try to sort of clean
this one up. The key is going to be the
status of the US Attorney and that's going to be
an issue which they're going to have to address the
court here saying you simply didn't have this authority. Now,
the Justice Department has some good faith arguments that the
(24:47):
reading of that law is wrong and that it impedes
upon the president's authority. But I think a lot of
judges would have raised the same concern. The general view
has been that you sort of get one bite in
the apple at one hundred and twenty days.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Well, teacher James is putting out statements this afternoon talking
about how she's so thankful for the victory. It wasn't
a victory. The crimes have not been dismissed, the accusations,
the indictments have not been dismissed. The only thing that
was dismissed was that the US attorney was improperly appointed
(25:22):
and therefore cannot prosecute this case. So will they appeal
it or will they get another US attorney somewhere to
be able to prosecute this case. So that's still it's
not dead, but it sounded like it at first when
we heard the judge dismissed both of the Komi and
(25:43):
Leticia James cases. But there's a long way still for
both of those to go. You want to talk about inflation,
because people keep arguing about the President says prices are down,
prices are down, Treasury Secretary says prices are going to
be down. Next year is going to be great. There's
a lot of that going on. Let's start with car prices.
(26:10):
Fill the Bow covers Detroit for CNBC, and he's talking
about how car prices are way way up.
Speaker 11 (26:21):
Take a look at what's happened with auto prices. Everybody
knows that they've gone up, but I'm not sure they
appreciate just how much they have gone up. We've asked
Cox Automotive to calculate the average transaction price going back
starting in October of this year, going all the way
back to twenty and eighteen. Look at the change in October.
The average transaction price, this is the average paid in
(26:43):
the dealership, not MSRP, was just under fifty thousand dollars.
That's roughly eleven thousand dollars more than what we saw
back in twenty eighteen before the pandemic, an increase of
twenty nine point five percent. And you really see it
reflected in terms of the autumn own monthly payments. According
to TransUnion, they now are above seven hundred and fifty dollars.
(27:05):
They've been steadily edging higher. The real increase was during
the pandemic, but they continue to move higher. And again
this is from TransUnion showing the average monthly new vehicle
auto loan payment is more than seven hundred and fifty dollars.
So a couple of things have been driving auto prices
and auto payments higher. First of all, automakers are focusing
(27:26):
on higher trim levels. I know everybody says, well, what
about the base price. Someone will order a vehicle a
base model. You know how few people order a base model.
It just doesn't happen. And the automakers realize that people
want the technology and the features that they've become used
to in automobiles. So as a result, higher trim levels
(27:46):
are what they're focusing on. Those are the vehicles that
are selling, and they're also facing higher costs. They're not
just doing this because they're saying, well, let's charge more.
They have to figure out a way to as much
as possible will protect their profit margins. And they have
to do that because costs have gone up, whether it's
raw materials, whether it's the impact of new labor contracts, tariffs.
(28:10):
In certain cases, suppliers have been able to push along
a lot of their increased costs increased cost excuse me.
So the bottom line is this that you take a
look at gm Ford and stillants. There will be a
hearing next month or in January, i should say, Senator
Ted Cruz wants to take a look at auto affordability.
It will be interesting to see what comes out of this. Yes,
(28:31):
people are not happy that auto monthly loan payments are
more than seven hundred and fifty dollars for a new vehicle,
but they've also gone up for used vehicles. It's about
one hundred and fifty to one hundred and seventy dollars
less for a used vehicle monthly payment. I think it's
somewhere in the five seventies five to eighty range. The
bottom line is this, these prices show no indication that
(28:53):
they are going to stop and reverse. They have plateawed
to a certain extent, but there's no indication that they're
going to be coming back down. And the interesting thing
is you will hear people say, well, I would buy
a more modestly priced vehicle if it was thirty five
or forty thousand dollars. And to be clear, there are
some vehicles that sell in that price point, at least
(29:14):
as a starting price. But you start adding on features.
You say to somebody, you want navigation, do you want
this particular feature, do you want heads up display? Whatever
it might be. And we have become as consumers convinced
that when we have a new vehicle, I want the
latest features, and so we go up a trim level.
And that's what the automakers are focusing on. They realize
(29:36):
that nobody buys a base price vehicle. It just doesn't happen.
I mean, I shouldn't say it never happens, very very
small percentage of buyers. So as a result, the prices
keep moving higher.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
So phil Rush past tariffs pretty quickly, but he also
talked about raw materials, Well, what are raw materials? What
do you make cars out? Are you make out of
steel and aluminum? And those tariffs are in some cases
fifty percent. And when it comes to the s he
called it trim. You want a navigation, you want a GPS,
(30:10):
you want all these various things. The cars are loaded
with computer chips today, and those computer chips are coming
in from overseas, and those are cost of the car makers.
More so, it's a combination of a lot of things.
But I don't dismiss the tariffs there at all. Marcus Lamonis,
(30:33):
guy who did the profit now, I don't know, he's
got some other show on, but he's a big investor
in small businesses and he was asked about inflation.
Speaker 12 (30:43):
Affordability is an issue, but what's the bigger issue for
me is how these exotic new financing tools have been
made available for consumers. By now, pay next year, buy now,
don't pay for three years, by now, never pay. And
when we have this drug that people have, which is
this access to credit, people are going to buy things
that they don't need. And while we hear people talk
(31:03):
about affordability. When you walk up and down New York City,
you see a lot of people coming in and out
of stores and a lot of people with bags. So
is it affordability or is people are people just not
feeling comfortable with what they're spending their money pull And
when we think about the digital age where we're on
our phones and we're not paying attention to people changing
and exchanging gifts like the one I got you that
(31:24):
you don't know about. It gives us a sense to
have camaraderie communication. It doesn't mean that it has to
be an expensive gift. And I think what we're seeing
happen this year is the average cart size at retail down,
the average order size down. That's something that I think
people need to pay attention to. So what I mean
is when you go into a big box retailer, Walmart, Target,
(31:44):
whatever it may be, the number of items that people
are putting in their cart and the amount of their
total order is actually not up. I see these trends,
but I also see other retailers that I have relationships with,
who you can tell are forecasting based on the amount
of labor they're going to put on the floor this holiday.
The amount of jobs that are going to be on
the floor of this holiday are down about fifteen percent
(32:06):
from a year ago.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Why is that.
Speaker 12 (32:08):
Are people expecting more or less traffic?
Speaker 9 (32:10):
Well, they're expecting less traffic.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
The Fox newspoll just out on it came out on Friday.
I was looking through it over the weekend. Majority of
Americans say cost of goods are up. Groceries the answer.
Eighty five percent of the people say groceries are up,
seventy eight percent of people say their utility bill is up,
sixty seven percent say their healthcare is up, sixty six
(32:35):
percent say their housing is up, and fifty four percent
say their gas prices are up, which is kind of
interesting because tech technically they're right. I was looking at
Triple A's national average of gasoline, and the national average
is three oh seven. A year ago it was three
(32:58):
oh five, So it's bouncing around down there, just a
little bit above three bucks on the national average for
the cheap stuff. Well, since we're talking financial numbers, why
don't we take a look at Wall Street. We started off.
You know, it's fickle. Everybody's trying to figure out, as
you know, you buy on the dip or is there
(33:18):
more of the falling knife to catch in any case.
Today it started off on the tech stocks, the ones
that sold off last couple of weeks. They started buying
them today. The Dow up two hundred and two to
finish at forty six four forty eight s and p
up one hundred two. That's a big gain for the
(33:39):
SMP index. Here's where the tech stocks are. Nasdaq up
five hundred and ninety nine, five hundred niney nine points
up to twenty two thousand and eight seventy two. Price
of gold up fifty dollars to forty one twenty nine,
and the price of oil was up a little less
than a dollar. It's up at fifty eight dollars now
(34:01):
for one barrel of oil. Thank you for coming by.
I know it's going to be a shortened week, but
we plan on being here, so I thank you for
coming by today. We'll certainly be here tomorrow and I
look forward to seeing you then.
And Hi, how are you welcome to the Big Podcast
on this Monday. Today's the twenty fourth day of November.
Year of our Ward twenty and twenty five. My name
is Tom Sullivan. And so off we go. Yep, everybody,
Well I don't know if everybody's going, but yeah, we
(00:44):
kick off that well kickoff probably Friday night. But Thanksgiving
travel week one of the busiest of the year. And
we look here, I've got the eighty eighty one million
people are supposed to be traveling or Thanksgiving. I it's
(01:07):
not John Berman earlier today talking about this, and he
said said, why do you what's wrong with staying home?
What's wrong with not having to put up with cousin Eddie?
But eighty one million people are going to mostly get
in the car. Eighty nine percent of the people traveling
(01:29):
will be traveling by car, So obviously you don't have
that far to go. I think most people stay where
they grew up and where their family, their siblings, their parents,
their cousins, their nephew, what their children live. But my
family were scattered all over the country. So eighty one
(01:51):
million traveling eighty nine percent by car, only seven percent
by air. But you would think it was the end
of the world. They go to the airport. Reporters go
there and they find a whole bunch of people that
are miserable for some reason, and they interview them. So
there's a handful of a smaller percentage that go by
(02:13):
I don't know by what else they go by train,
I guess. So it's going to be busy, but it's
spread out this week. I mean, like I said, some
people probably pushed off on Friday, some over the weekend,
some today. There are lines at the airports already being reported,
(02:34):
and the busiest travel days will be next Sunday. That's
the busiest travel day. So I go back to what's
want with just stay where you live. So in any case,
look at people get it's wonderful to get together. But
the stories, I just find that there's a lot of
(02:56):
comedy involved in some of the dysfunctional family stories out there.
And I don't know why I find it so funny.
Maybe I can relate. I don't know. By the way, yesterday,
so we weren't doing a podcast yesterday, but yesterday was
(03:21):
a big historical date. This is who I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
And so my fellow Americans ask not what your country
can do for you? Ask what you can do for
your country?
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Yeah, so that was JFK taking his inauguration January twentieth,
nineteen sixty one. I did the math sixty two years ago,
and so it's not one of the big you know,
the fiftieth, they're the hundredth or whatever the way we
do our odometer readings. But it's it's a big deal
(04:06):
because there he was, you know, signing up for the
job that was going to wind up causing his death
a couple of years later. But I thought about what
he has said so many times. It was nineteen sixty one,
different time, different culture, but it's a really simple statement.
I don't know who wrote that for him, but ask
(04:27):
not what your country can do for you? Well, that's
what That's the basic. That's the way people live today.
We have millions and millions of millions and millions of
Americans that are asking, Hey, what can the country do
for me? What you want me to do something for
the country? What what are you talking about? So it
(04:52):
is flipped completely and I would imagine that President Kennedy
has probably flipped a couple of times in his grave
just thinking about it's such a simple statement that was
basically at the end of a fairly long inaugural dress.
So that's where we are. So our current president. It's
(05:16):
interesting to watch the ratings on him. You find ratings
that say he's got lousy ratings, he's got lousy support.
The question comes down to do the Republicans still support him.
We're going to get into Marjorie Taylor Green too, who
said she's going to resign in January. But Harry Anton
(05:39):
did a quick check to find out are Republicans still
supporting President Trump?
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Look, this is still Donald Trump's Republican party, and we
can see it here.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
They it's like a rock.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
To quote Bob Seeger, I mean, take a look here
Republicans who approve of Trump. Six months ago, it was
eighty seven percent. Now, well, hello, it's the same number.
It's eighty seven number. He has not lost any support
among Republicans compared to six months ago. As I said
at the beginning, he's like a rock. He's like a rock.
The Republican base is sticking by Donald Trump at this point.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
So what about all this talk of him losing support?
Who does that come from?
Speaker 3 (06:16):
It is among independents, It is not among Republicans. Oh yeah, okay,
I think this gives the game away, right, which is
Donald Trump. If you look at twenty first century president's
own party approval at this point in term two, who
leads the pack, It's Donald John Trump. Eighty seven percent
of Republicans approved Donald John Trump. You go back to
twenty thirteen, seventy eight percent of Democrats supported Barack Obama,
(06:37):
and it was seventy eight percent of Republicans who supported
George W. Bush back in two thousand and five. At
this point, so Donald Trump has the biggest own party
highest own party approval of any president who served their
entire second term in the twenty first sent You know,
when you go up against Donald Trump, you're going up
against a buzzsaw because Donald Trump's endorsement record is it's
(06:59):
hard to find anyone else who beats it. Times Trump
endorsees one GOP primaries. In twenty twenty it was ninety
eight percent, twenty twenty two is ninety five percent, in
twenty twenty four it was ninety six percent. And I
will note the majority of times that Donald Trump backed
a challenger to an incumbent like Marjorie Taylor Green, that
challenger won a majority of the time. The bottom line
(07:19):
is this, there was a real reason why Marjorie Taylor
Green decided, you know what, it's not worth the fight,
because more times than not, when you go up against
Donald Trump in a Republican primary, you lose. All right,
So we go to the prediction markets here and the
chance to leave the Republican Party by January first of
twenty twenty seven. You can see it thirty one percent.
I think this is a pretty good baseline, which is
(07:41):
more likely than not Marjorie Taylorgrean will stay within the
Republican ranks. But there's actually a pretty decent chance that
she doesn't. And then that becomes really interesting to see
what she has to say about Republicans and Donald Trump
in particular, if she decides to waigh Audios Amiga.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
So, Marjorie Taylor Green is not just your average ordinary
member of Congress. She said over the weekend she's going
to resign from her position in Congress on January sixth.
Interesting date. She's had a split with President Trump on
the Epstein files in a big way. She also split
(08:17):
with him on the H one B visus. She doesn't
like them. President does like them. Split with him on
AI regulations by state. She wants to have states be
able to regulate AI. President doesn't. I don't want them
to either. You're going to get a patchwork of AI
(08:38):
regulations that will not work. And also just foreign and tagma.
She doesn't want anything to do with foreign wars, and
the president's been involved in skirmishes. So we'll see what
she does. She says she's not running for president, but
we'll also see just exactly how the magacrowd what they do,
because she was kind of the mama of the mega
(09:02):
operation out there. One other, a big personality that popped
up actually late on Friday. We were done with recording
the podcast on Friday when they came out of the
White House, And wasn't that something between the President and
Zaron Mam Donnie. I mean, it was a LoveFest. There
were a couple of political bros just hanging out. I
(09:28):
I don't know what you thought about that, but everybody
was on their very best behavior. Mark Seeson, this is
his observation.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
Well, because he doesn't want to be the scapegoat for
Donnie's failure. Socialism is going to fail because it fails
everywhere where. It's tried, and so Mom Donnie's excuse if
socialism fails in New York is to say, well, Trump,
Trump waged war on New York and punished New York
for my election, and that's why it didn't work. So
you know that Trump doesn't want to bail out socialism,
but he also doesn't want to be his his fall guy.
(10:01):
But the problem that zer Mandanni has is that socialism
only works if it has an external revenue source to
subsidize it. Right, So during the Cold War, Cuba was
bailed out by massive subsidies from the Soviet Union. It
looked like it was working fine because they were getting
hundreds of billions of dollars from Moscow. But then Soviet
Union collapsed because socialism didn't work there and all the
(10:22):
subsidies drive it up and it became an economic basket case.
It's going to be the same problem with Mom Dominie
in New York. Who is going to be his Moscow
to subsidize the government grocery stores and the free buses.
It's not gonna be Trump Trump. The federal government isn't
going to subsidize socialism, so he wants it to be
Kathy Hochel he wants her to raise taxes on all
of New Yorkers, so across the state, income taxes, corporate
(10:43):
tax everything to subsidize free buses and free and government
grocery stores in New York City. That's going to be
a huge, huge problem because at least to Phonic is
going to wrap that around her axle if she does it.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
And if you're not sure of what that reference was about, Alistaphonic,
she is the Republican uptate New York that is running
for or governor against Kathy Hochel. So that was what
Mark Fisson was referring to. As far as Mam Donnie,
we'll seize them. Something has to give there. Either he's
going to change, Mam Donnie's going to change, or it's
(11:16):
going to be nothing but problems. We'll have to wait
and see. While we're on the subject of socialists, Venezuela
is blessed with lots of resources, mainly oil and gas,
and they had so much that Hugo Chavez basically took
over all the private oil companies and promised the people
(11:40):
of Venezuela that he would take all the profits from
those evil oil companies and distribute them to the people
they would be getting rich all the people. And you
know what happened is that did not happen, and as
a result, the people rebelled. Chavez died Ugo. I mean,
Maduro just had They had an election there to re
(12:04):
elect him, and he lost by huge amounts according to
all the outside observers, but he proclaimed that he was
the winner, and so he stays in office. But things
are getting tense. Victoria Coats, former national security officer, says, yeah,
with all the build up of the military, something's got
(12:24):
to go there now.
Speaker 5 (12:26):
There's nothing covert going on that I can see. We
have our most modern, our most capable aircraft carrier, the
Gerald R. Ford, off the coast of Puerto Rico. We
have the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as
Lucas was just saying, General Dan Caine, also in Puerto Rico,
and the biggest military build up we've had since a
rock going on in the Caribbean. And so, you know,
(12:46):
this isn't subtle at all. I think President Trump has
tried with diplomacy to get a change out of the
Maduro regime. All we've seen, though, are more drugs pouring
across our southern border. Pouring into our country, killing our citizens.
That's what he's not going to stand for. So I'm
sure he would offer Maduro an off ramp, perhaps to
go to Russia. But I don't think he's staying in Venezuela.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
But we have, like like she said, the largest built
up dens of rock. We got all kinds of military
surrounding Venezuela. Is it just about Venezuela or are we
talking about the entire drug industry coming out of South America?
Speaker 5 (13:23):
Well, this for sure. I mean Venezuela is the head
of the snake, and so I think the logic would
be that given some interesting recent political changes in countries
like Bolivia and Chile, both of which are trending toward
a more conservative government, more friendly to Washington, you have
elections also coming up in neighboring Colombia coming up in March,
(13:44):
which also look like they're going to go conservative. If
you flip Venezuela right now, then I think all of
that change sort of falls into place. So I think
that should be the key target here.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Well, you can see the vision that Donald Trump has.
He wants to change Latin Americameric in South America into
friends in our hemisphere instead of battling against the drug
cartels in at least South American countries. And I haven't
even talked about what they're going to do in Mexico.
But with all of this, something's going to happen. According
(14:18):
to Victoria Coachs, within the next couple of weeks at
the very least, President said he wants to have a
conversation a phone call with Maduro.
Speaker 5 (14:28):
Well, the President has said he's very willing to talk.
You know, he's always going to choose diplomacy if that
is possible. And as I said, there could be an
off ramp for Maduro. We have putin hosting, for example,
Beshier Alasade, who was ousted this time last year US
from Syria. So maybe Maduro joins him in Sochi and
you know, is able to keep some of his billions
(14:49):
and have a retirement of sorts. If you will, bet
that we could then have a much more democratic, free
Venezuela that would be a friend in the United States.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
That's the plan. Try and take some of these South
American countries and make them into our friends. While we're
speaking about problems overseas. Ukraine, they've been working over time
over the weekend, Marco Rubio heading up the crew that
had been in Geneva talking to Ukraine about a peace agreement.
(15:22):
What's strange about this is it's the US and Ukraine talking,
but no, Russia is not there. But somehow Russia is
responding to what they're hearing from the talks between the
US and Ukraine. Here's Marco Rubio talking about where they are.
Speaker 6 (15:41):
We arrived here today with one goal, and the goal
was to take what knows twenty eight points to twenty
six points depending on which version as it continue to evolve,
and try to narrow the ones that were open items.
And we have achieved that today in a very substantial way.
I think the report today is that I think today
was worthwhile. It was very very It is probably the
(16:01):
most productive day we have had on this issue, maybe
in the entirety of our engagement, but certainly in a
very long time. Work remains, and because this continues to
be a working process, you know, I don't want to
declare victory or finality here. There's still some work to
be done, but we are much further ahead today at
this time than we were when we began this morning
(16:24):
and where we were a week ago.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
For so now, there was a news item over the
weekend that the President had given Zelensky until Thursday till
Thanksgiving Day to either fish or cut bait. If you
don't accept this peace agreement that we came up with,
then we're leaving you and you're on your own. Well
that's changed since the weekend. The deal right now that
(16:49):
is on the table for Russia and Ukraine is as
far as territory, Ukraine would see the don Esque, lou Hansk, Zapporzia,
Kierson and Crimea, so they would get rid. They would
say goodbye to the area that Russia currently occupies. As
(17:11):
far as security, no NATO in Ukraine, the army, the
Ukrainian army would be capped at six hundred thousand people
and there would be no foreign bases from any other
country anywhere in Ukraine. As far as withdrawals, Russia would
retreat from parts of Kharkiv. Kharkiv one hundred billion dollars
(17:34):
in frozen Russian money would be used to rebuild Ukraine.
Sanctions would be eased against Russia, and as far as
Ukraine would drop their war crime cases and Russia would
rejoin the global economic world. So that's the deal that's
on the table. As we go through this Monday, we'll
(17:59):
find out if it's a work in process. General Jack
Keene was asked his thoughts about what's happening with this agreement.
Speaker 7 (18:07):
Well, I think what we're already seeing here is the
president's determination to end this war. I mean, we saw
what happened as a result of the Alaska summit. You know,
Putin made promises that he didn't keep, and then all
the European leaders came to Washington with Zelenski and they
all pretty much were unified in their support for Ukraine
and also for a peace process going forward. And where
(18:30):
are we today. The reality is the presidents still trying
to get that wars stop, and we're putting together a
process to do that. I think what happened here the
initials document gets out, gets leaked out, and it appears,
and you know, so I read it just like everybody else,
to favor Russia at the expense of Ukraine. But what
(18:52):
was miss is it was an open process here. You know,
that was the initial document, and the administration welcomed comments
from friends and partners, Ukraine itself, European allies, and even
I put together a group of thought leaders in Washington
yesterday and provided some comments to the administration as well.
(19:13):
So this process is moving on, and likely that document's
going to improve and improved rather significantly because it is
an open process, and I think many people missed that
in terms of the initial thing that was out there.
So yeah, it remains to be seen.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
This is tough stuff.
Speaker 7 (19:31):
I mean, we've got Putin on the other side of it,
and the reality is he has not taken one single
step towards a temporary ceasefire or a piece deal whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Where he is.
Speaker 7 (19:44):
He still believes that eventually he's going to break the
will and resolve of the United States and the Europeans
and the Zelenski government and he will eventually have his
way here. And that is the determined process that we're
on here, putting this peace plant together yeather, hopefully with
good security guarantees that certainly favor Ukraine as a result
(20:06):
of the process, and some other things that we can
do to help Ukraine will convince Putin that negotiation is
the best answer as opposed to continue is wartime objectives
to achieve his strategic objectives, which haven't changed. Is top
of the government of Ukraine and expand into Eastern Europe.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
One guy that's on the opposite side of this is
Senator Mark Warner. He's the head of the Senator or
the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He doesn't
like this deal at all.
Speaker 8 (20:38):
This initial plan would be a total capitulation by Ukraine.
I think it would go down, Frankly as a historically
bad deal. And my fear is the person who's watching
this as close as Latimer Putin is President She and China,
because if we throw in the towel on Ukraine, I
think that gives Frankly more fuel to the fire in
(20:59):
terms of She taking on Taiwan. I think there's a
banzial all the way around.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
So we may get some definitive answers, not today, but
within a week to ten days. Venezuela, something's going to
happen there. Elliott Abrams, who was the ambassador to Venezuela,
he thinks Trump's going to do something very quickly.
Speaker 9 (21:21):
We're at the point now where the game is on.
Either Nicholas Vnduro is going to win or Donald Trump
is going to win. And if you think that Donald
Trump doesn't like losing, then I think he's going to
use those forces in some way.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Okay, so we got this huge build up of military.
They're not going to sit there forever. We've got the
deadline on Thursday. But it sounds like it's movable. On Ukraine,
they got to come up with either agreed to this
deal or not. And that doesn't even bring Russia completely
to the table. So you know it's moving. Everything's being
pushed as hard as they can push it. But I
(21:56):
don't know whether they're going to get a need answers
right away, but it seems like there's a decent chance
that we will get an answer on both of those
countries within a week to ten days. Breaking news coming
out today the judge that they remember they consolidated, uh,
not the cases, but consolidated the question on James Comey
(22:18):
and Letitia James about whether Lindsay Halligan was properly the
appointed acting US Attorney, and the judge in that case
ruled this afternoon she's not. And so the cases have
not been dismissed as far as the indictments against them,
(22:42):
but the cases have been thrown out as far as
Lindsay Halligan having the authority to be able to prosecute.
This is Jonathan Turley reacting to the judge's decision.
Speaker 10 (22:56):
He can in the sense that novelty is not good
when it comes to criminal indictments, and there was a
lot of novelty in the final day to get this
indictment through. They were right up against the clock, and
particularly with Komy, they had rejected one of the counts,
and so Halligan sort of put together the other two
(23:17):
counts rapidly and then submitted that. Now she and the
Department of Justice say that they showed that to two
of the jurors, including the foreman, but that the grand
jury had approved those two counts. But the biggest problem
that the judge saw here is Halligan herself. And this
is something that a number of us raised when the
(23:38):
indictment first came out. Under federal law, the president has
one hundred and twenty days to use an interim US
attorney and acting US attorney. That time was effectively used
up by her predecessor, and reportedly he was shown the
door because he had misgivings about some of these charges.
(24:01):
So the judge here is dismissing without prejudice, so that
in some ways is a small victory and that this
is not the end of the prosecution of James Comy
or Leticia James. The question is whether and how they
will cure this problem. Well, we're going to wait to see,
I think, and we're going to have the answer very soon.
(24:23):
Whether the Department of Justice is going to go back
to the grand jury and try to sort of clean
this one up. The key is going to be the
status of the US Attorney and that's going to be
an issue which they're going to have to address the
court here saying you simply didn't have this authority. Now,
the Justice Department has some good faith arguments that the
(24:47):
reading of that law is wrong and that it impedes
upon the president's authority. But I think a lot of
judges would have raised the same concern. The general view
has been that you sort of get one bite in
the apple at one hundred and twenty days.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Well, teacher James is putting out statements this afternoon talking
about how she's so thankful for the victory. It wasn't
a victory. The crimes have not been dismissed, the accusations,
the indictments have not been dismissed. The only thing that
was dismissed was that the US attorney was improperly appointed
(25:22):
and therefore cannot prosecute this case. So will they appeal
it or will they get another US attorney somewhere to
be able to prosecute this case. So that's still it's
not dead, but it sounded like it at first when
we heard the judge dismissed both of the Komi and
(25:43):
Leticia James cases. But there's a long way still for
both of those to go. You want to talk about inflation,
because people keep arguing about the President says prices are down,
prices are down, Treasury Secretary says prices are going to
be down. Next year is going to be great. There's
a lot of that going on. Let's start with car prices.
(26:10):
Fill the Bow covers Detroit for CNBC, and he's talking
about how car prices are way way up.
Speaker 11 (26:21):
Take a look at what's happened with auto prices. Everybody
knows that they've gone up, but I'm not sure they
appreciate just how much they have gone up. We've asked
Cox Automotive to calculate the average transaction price going back
starting in October of this year, going all the way
back to twenty and eighteen. Look at the change in October.
The average transaction price, this is the average paid in
(26:43):
the dealership, not MSRP, was just under fifty thousand dollars.
That's roughly eleven thousand dollars more than what we saw
back in twenty eighteen before the pandemic, an increase of
twenty nine point five percent. And you really see it
reflected in terms of the autumn own monthly payments. According
to TransUnion, they now are above seven hundred and fifty dollars.
(27:05):
They've been steadily edging higher. The real increase was during
the pandemic, but they continue to move higher. And again
this is from TransUnion showing the average monthly new vehicle
auto loan payment is more than seven hundred and fifty dollars.
So a couple of things have been driving auto prices
and auto payments higher. First of all, automakers are focusing
(27:26):
on higher trim levels. I know everybody says, well, what
about the base price. Someone will order a vehicle a
base model. You know how few people order a base model.
It just doesn't happen. And the automakers realize that people
want the technology and the features that they've become used
to in automobiles. So as a result, higher trim levels
(27:46):
are what they're focusing on. Those are the vehicles that
are selling, and they're also facing higher costs. They're not
just doing this because they're saying, well, let's charge more.
They have to figure out a way to as much
as possible will protect their profit margins. And they have
to do that because costs have gone up, whether it's
raw materials, whether it's the impact of new labor contracts, tariffs.
(28:10):
In certain cases, suppliers have been able to push along
a lot of their increased costs increased cost excuse me.
So the bottom line is this that you take a
look at gm Ford and stillants. There will be a
hearing next month or in January, i should say, Senator
Ted Cruz wants to take a look at auto affordability.
It will be interesting to see what comes out of this. Yes,
(28:31):
people are not happy that auto monthly loan payments are
more than seven hundred and fifty dollars for a new vehicle,
but they've also gone up for used vehicles. It's about
one hundred and fifty to one hundred and seventy dollars
less for a used vehicle monthly payment. I think it's
somewhere in the five seventies five to eighty range. The
bottom line is this, these prices show no indication that
(28:53):
they are going to stop and reverse. They have plateawed
to a certain extent, but there's no indication that they're
going to be coming back down. And the interesting thing
is you will hear people say, well, I would buy
a more modestly priced vehicle if it was thirty five
or forty thousand dollars. And to be clear, there are
some vehicles that sell in that price point, at least
(29:14):
as a starting price. But you start adding on features.
You say to somebody, you want navigation, do you want
this particular feature, do you want heads up display? Whatever
it might be. And we have become as consumers convinced
that when we have a new vehicle, I want the
latest features, and so we go up a trim level.
And that's what the automakers are focusing on. They realize
(29:36):
that nobody buys a base price vehicle. It just doesn't happen.
I mean, I shouldn't say it never happens, very very
small percentage of buyers. So as a result, the prices
keep moving higher.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
So phil Rush past tariffs pretty quickly, but he also
talked about raw materials, Well, what are raw materials? What
do you make cars out? Are you make out of
steel and aluminum? And those tariffs are in some cases
fifty percent. And when it comes to the s he
called it trim. You want a navigation, you want a GPS,
(30:10):
you want all these various things. The cars are loaded
with computer chips today, and those computer chips are coming
in from overseas, and those are cost of the car makers.
More so, it's a combination of a lot of things.
But I don't dismiss the tariffs there at all. Marcus Lamonis,
(30:33):
guy who did the profit now, I don't know, he's
got some other show on, but he's a big investor
in small businesses and he was asked about inflation.
Speaker 12 (30:43):
Affordability is an issue, but what's the bigger issue for
me is how these exotic new financing tools have been
made available for consumers. By now, pay next year, buy now,
don't pay for three years, by now, never pay. And
when we have this drug that people have, which is
this access to credit, people are going to buy things
that they don't need. And while we hear people talk
(31:03):
about affordability. When you walk up and down New York City,
you see a lot of people coming in and out
of stores and a lot of people with bags. So
is it affordability or is people are people just not
feeling comfortable with what they're spending their money pull And
when we think about the digital age where we're on
our phones and we're not paying attention to people changing
and exchanging gifts like the one I got you that
(31:24):
you don't know about. It gives us a sense to
have camaraderie communication. It doesn't mean that it has to
be an expensive gift. And I think what we're seeing
happen this year is the average cart size at retail down,
the average order size down. That's something that I think
people need to pay attention to. So what I mean
is when you go into a big box retailer, Walmart, Target,
(31:44):
whatever it may be, the number of items that people
are putting in their cart and the amount of their
total order is actually not up. I see these trends,
but I also see other retailers that I have relationships with,
who you can tell are forecasting based on the amount
of labor they're going to put on the floor this holiday.
The amount of jobs that are going to be on
the floor of this holiday are down about fifteen percent
(32:06):
from a year ago.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Why is that.
Speaker 12 (32:08):
Are people expecting more or less traffic?
Speaker 9 (32:10):
Well, they're expecting less traffic.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
The Fox newspoll just out on it came out on Friday.
I was looking through it over the weekend. Majority of
Americans say cost of goods are up. Groceries the answer.
Eighty five percent of the people say groceries are up,
seventy eight percent of people say their utility bill is up,
sixty seven percent say their healthcare is up, sixty six
(32:35):
percent say their housing is up, and fifty four percent
say their gas prices are up, which is kind of
interesting because tech technically they're right. I was looking at
Triple A's national average of gasoline, and the national average
is three oh seven. A year ago it was three
(32:58):
oh five, So it's bouncing around down there, just a
little bit above three bucks on the national average for
the cheap stuff. Well, since we're talking financial numbers, why
don't we take a look at Wall Street. We started off.
You know, it's fickle. Everybody's trying to figure out, as
you know, you buy on the dip or is there
(33:18):
more of the falling knife to catch in any case.
Today it started off on the tech stocks, the ones
that sold off last couple of weeks. They started buying
them today. The Dow up two hundred and two to
finish at forty six four forty eight s and p
up one hundred two. That's a big gain for the
(33:39):
SMP index. Here's where the tech stocks are. Nasdaq up
five hundred and ninety nine, five hundred niney nine points
up to twenty two thousand and eight seventy two. Price
of gold up fifty dollars to forty one twenty nine,
and the price of oil was up a little less
than a dollar. It's up at fifty eight dollars now
(34:01):
for one barrel of oil. Thank you for coming by.
I know it's going to be a shortened week, but
we plan on being here, so I thank you for
coming by today. We'll certainly be here tomorrow and I
look forward to seeing you then.
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