November 25, 2025 • 40 mins
States want to regulate AI, all with their own regulations instead of one national standard. Comey/James case is not over. Is the Pentagon going to activate Sen Mark Kelley so they can court martial him?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
And Hi, how are you welcome to the Big Podcast.
It's Tuesday. Today is the twenty fifth day of November,
year of our lower twenty twenty five. My name is
Tom Sullivan, and we get started. It's starting to feel
like a holiday week, isn't it. I mean, everything seems
(00:43):
to be a little bit out of kilter right now.
The focus is on the bird on Turkey on Thursday.
On Thanksgiving, you've got the focus on the food. We
got some numbers from Butterball. We got traffic, and I
wonder sometimes if the media is not just exaggerating this
(01:07):
whole thing about everybody's traveling. Eighty some million people are
going to be on the road, spread out over a
number of days. It's eighty one million people. Eighty nine
percent of that will go by cars, seven percent by air.
But I was watching a number of the networks this morning,
(01:28):
and they have their reporters dutifully stationed at airports around
the country, and I didn't see one that looked crappit.
They all looked They looked less crowded than I normally
expect on the normal business day traveling someplace, going to
the airport. Busy airports, people are flying more aviation. Commercial
(01:52):
aviation passenger loads are up every year and have been
for a number of years. They took a dip during COVID,
but other than that, it's been back on the road
to more and more on TSA, screening more people. So
I've told you before, I think my solution to any
(02:15):
zaniness at the airport, even though I haven't seen any yet,
I'm not at the airport. I'm watching through some camera somewhere.
But my solution was we would go travel on Thanksgiving
morning because nobody's traveling, the roads are pretty quiet, and
everybody has gone to Grandma's house, and so you go
(02:38):
to the airport. It's really nice. You get on the
plane and it's that you know, it depends upon you
can't go too far. But I mean we would fly,
take maybe a two hour flight to where we were going,
and get there by early afternoon, and by that time
everybody's just getting ready to sit down and have turkey.
(03:01):
So it was it was my solution to getting around
the crowds.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
But the travel.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
As far as people on the road, there is no
question that the gas prices are helping because the average
this is triple a average gasoline per gallon for the
cheap stuff three dollars and five cents. It was exactly
(03:29):
three dollars and five cents one year ago as well.
So it's gone up a little bit, it's come back
down as we're back down to three zero five. And
I mean that's giving a lot of people reason to
gas up. It doesn't cost as much. I will tell
you this. Everybody's talking about a year ago. So I thought, well,
(03:50):
let me go back to January twentieth of twenty twenty one,
the day Joe Biden was inaugurated, and the price of
gas was two dollars and thirty eight cents when Donald
Trump handed over the baton to Joe Biden, to thirty eight.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
So this is this is good.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
We had you want to go back aways, Well it
was it was covid uh two dollars eleven cents in
Thanksgiving twenty twenty. It was two fifty five a gallon
in twenty eighteen. It was two sixty a gallon twenty nineteen.
(04:35):
So during Trump one point, oh, it was primarily a
two dollars price something along those lines. But I will
tell you this. I one of the things that we
know about Donald Trump is he always everything's the greatest,
Everything's the best, Everything's the biggest. He likes to make
things sound better than they are. So I don't know
(04:56):
who did this survey said, did Donald Trump make things
sound toy say, better than they really are, about the
same as they really are, or worse than they really are?
Sixty percent that he makes things sound better than they
really are, twenty seven percent said about what it really is,
(05:17):
and thirteen percent that he makes things sound worse than
they really are. So anyway, today it's a big travel
day on the road, supposed to be the peak when
most people are going to be on the road today.
I guess you want to get there early. In my
old hometown of Seattle, there's been a huge problem. They
(05:38):
just solved it today. For the last two weeks they
have had there's two pipelines that bring jet fuel to
the Seattle Airport and they're leaking, and they just discovered
it about two weeks ago, and they've been scrambling for
the last two weeks to figure out where is the leak.
(06:02):
So they had to shut everything off so they didn't
destroy whatever the land was wherever the leak was, and
they've been trucking jet fuel about a couple hundred miles
to the Seattle Airport. Ninety oil trucks notty gas trucks
a day, and they just discovered today where the leak is,
(06:26):
so they're getting it patched up and getting your fuel back.
But flights going to Seattle have been asked to carry
extra fuel so that they when they get to Seattle,
they don't have to fuel up. So that's what's going
on out there. I told you Butterball has numbers, and
(06:46):
they were asked at Butterball about they were asking their customers,
what are you going to do to control the cost
of Thanksgiving dinner? And number one answer by far was nothing.
Fifty eight percent said they're not going to change the thing.
They're going to do what they've done in the past tradition,
(07:08):
you know, So twenty eight percent, I'm sorry. Fifty eight
percent said no change, twenty one percent said they're going
to ask a guest to bring some dish, fifteen percent
said they're going to change some of the side dishes.
(07:31):
Fourteen percent said it's not about if we're not going
to change anything about the vood but they're not going
to decorate with decor, paper goods, things like that, and
twelve percent, which I think is wrong, said they're going
to change dessert.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Now.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
I don't know what your favorite dessert is, but whatever
it is, usually at Thanksgiving, it's usually a really good one.
So that's what's going on with butterball people. Most of everybody,
fifty eight percent are saying, I'm not changing a thing.
People like to keep their traditions the way they are.
So we've got that today. We've got a lot on
(08:10):
the economy. I want to get to. There's a fight
going on about AI that is well, I don't want
to get into the weeds about which companies. They're pouring
huge amounts of money into AI. They're all trying to
be the leader in it, and we're finding out who
(08:32):
we thought was the leader, which was Meta, because they've
been pouring more money than anybody else. All of a sudden,
we're finding out it looks like Alphabet, the parent of Google,
is in the lead right now. Anyway, it's going to
change so volatile. But one of the fights that I'm
talking about is a fight that states are wanting to
(08:55):
regulate artificial intelligence. And so far there are four states
just that's it, only four that have passed legislation to
regulate artificial intelligence California, Utah, Colorado, and Texas, and I'm
(09:19):
surprised about Texas. California, I'm not surprised about But the
whole idea is the less regulation, the better if you
want AI to really take off, and that because China
is over there, Trumpet, it's a bit. If you want
(09:40):
the United States to be the leader of artificial intelligence,
out get out of the way government.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
That means you too.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
States. Washington is broken in many many ways, and they'll
probably try to do something. But if you go back
to the eighties in the nineties about regulating the Internet,
you're going to have a hard time finding those regulations
(10:09):
because they basically did not and as a result, the
Internet flourished. Are there problems with it? Sure, the Internet's
not perfect, but I'm sorry, but the more you get
government into the middle of it, that's why Europe doesn't
have really any leadership in the world of technology, because
(10:30):
they regulate the bajbis out of it. So a guy
named Joe Lonsdale, he has founded a bunch of different things,
including Pallenteer, and he is very concerned about states coming
up with a patchwork of regulations for artificial intelligence.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
You know, this has been an issue we're working on
all year.
Speaker 5 (10:53):
Obviously close friends with David Sachsen and Cratzios wearing this
in the administration. And listen, we are on the verge
of something amazing for our civilization.
Speaker 6 (11:01):
Right.
Speaker 5 (11:01):
We have tens of thousands of builders in our country.
They're going to bring down the cost of health care.
They're going to make construction finally, how productivity go up,
make houses cheaper. Permit should only take you know, hours
instead of months, just like education is going to be
better for all of our kids, and personalized These are
all things they're going to fix our civilization. And yet
on both the far left and the far right, you
(11:21):
have a lot of populists who, for really nefarious reasons
are opposing this. There are reasonable people, by the way,
who have some concerns, and there's ways to compromise and
push you ahead for our civilization. But you have a
lot of crazy populist You have a patchwork of just
really intense stuff they're doing that would break all of this,
and we can't let that happen.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
So Joe isn't an anti state or pro federal government.
He talks about the fact that he's a federalist. He's
for states rights, but not when you have something like this.
You can't have a patchwork of fifty different regulations for
AI companies to try to meet.
Speaker 5 (11:55):
You know, No, I'm a federalist on most issues. I
have teams in twenty three states with this. Thrones of
too are watching this, and I think it's reasonable for
states to do a lot of things as laboratories of democracy.
So in general, I'm actually on the state's right side overall.
What's unreasonable is that you had Biden NGOs By pushed
by the last administration. You have European like rules, and
(12:16):
you have Populace trying to put in crazy new regulatory
authorities that demonize the builders, that demonize the tech. And
if you force us to hop through regulatory agencies in
every state, China is going to win and the builders
are going to lose. And so the interstate Commerce Clause
exists in the Constitution for a reason. This is one
of those examples we've learned from the California Mission standards
that broke the whole nation, and we're seeing a lot
(12:37):
crazier things being proposed now. So I think it's reasonable
for states to have some power in a lot of
different cases. That's what I want overall, but I don't
want to break the whole AI wave by the populists.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
So this fight is just getting underway, and there's so
much money involved that the states are all a bunch
of greedy people. They're looking at the billions of these
tech companies are spending and they want to get their
grubby hands on it. They want to tax it, they
want to regulate it. And Londale is a very smart guy,
(13:10):
very successful tech executive.
Speaker 5 (13:14):
You know, I think there's always an argument in our
country between safety and liberty, and I think people, especially
if they're not in the details, are right to be
concerned and want to be safe. But if you're going
to use safety to have arbitrary finds and arbitrary penalties,
where every state, including the radical blue states like New York,
are going to be able to break our BUILDERS waves,
that's not okay. Listen, you have states trying to ban
(13:34):
the use of AI in healthcare right now in ways
that are going to prevent us from making healthcare cheap,
or you have New York State already banning it in education.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
This is insane. Public schools in New York are not
allowing AI. You're not even in any kind of school
in New York.
Speaker 5 (13:47):
You have to call yourself a homeschool to use the
I right now in New York, which means we can't
personalize it and lift up the lives of the kids
who are not doing well in inner cities. This is
crazy stuff, and that the safety ism is what Europe does.
If you want to be a course ofation where you're
poorer than our poorest state, like Europe, we should, then
you should move to Europe. But American needs to stay free.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
I'm with him all the way. We'll see how this
fight turns out. But there's going to be, like I said,
a lot of government goops that the fact that they
are not allowing kids in New York state schools to
be introduced to AI. These are not smart people that
are coming up with these kinds of policy ideas in
(14:28):
other matters. We told you yesterday. We got the word
just before we finished recording yesterday about the fact that
the judge threw out the James Comey and Letitia James cases.
And that's not exactly what I explained that yesterday. That's
not what the judge did the judge threw out Lindsay
Halligan because she wasn't properly appointed as the US Attorney
(14:52):
for the Eastern Diffect District of Virginia. He didn't throw
the cases out. So now the question is what will
happen next. Is there another one hundred and day one
hundred and twenty day rule that starts, because that's what
happens when a new administration comes in. The US attorneys
(15:14):
around the country are the president has one hundred and
twenty days to put a new US attorney in and
if the president doesn't, then the judges in that district,
the federal judges can appoint somebody. And there's a lot
of constitutional questions about that going judges appointing a judge
(15:35):
and judges appointing somebody. That's an executive not a judicial job.
The job of appointing a judge is not for the
judicial branch. It's for the executive branch. So there's still
tons of legal issues to feel about this. But I've
heard already some people on the table television say, Wow,
(15:58):
that's it, that's it. Case is over, it's over. And
Joey Jackson, who's a good defense attorney, in New York City.
It's not so fist.
Speaker 4 (16:07):
Means is that they are not out of the woods yet.
Had it been dismissed with prejudice, it means that it
cannot come back to the extent that it's without prejudice.
The US Attorney's Office can seek to refile, and yes,
indeed they can. There are two options. I think the
one is to refile the indictment. The issue is is
the law says that if an indictment is dismissed on
(16:28):
a variety of grounds, you have six months to file
an indictment anew with regard to the five year statute
of limitations, we do know that as it relates to Kmy,
they indicted five days prior. Now Comy's people say, hey,
that clock keeps ticking. There was no validly appointed US attorney.
The government's position will be no, not at all, that
it would have frozen at that time, and we have
(16:49):
six months to go. The second option, as we noted,
and as they seem to notice, to take the appeal
to the Fourth Circuit, which is based in Virginia, that
is the appellate court that could look to see if
the district court got it wrong. Now the way I
view it, there's a number of issues. Remember that we've
seen in New Jersey an opinion that was consistent with
this opinion, and that is that you have one hundred
(17:11):
and twenty days to get Senate confirmation. You've got one
shot at the apple. And if you don't, then guess
what the district in that specific location gets to appoint
the US attorney? You executive, do not. We saw it
happen in Nevada, same ruling in Valley appoint the US attorney.
We saw it happen in California. Why am I saying
this because this precedent I know how oftentimes the politics
(17:32):
our otis was a lunatic judge who made a lunatic decision. Nonsense,
this precedent for it. Last piece of this this when
Samuel Alito was at the Department of Justice, he wrote
a legal opinion indicating that exactly what this judge ruled
as it relates to the dismissal of the indictment on
calling and dismissed on Letitia James's to the one hundred
and twenty days to get Senate confirmation, That's what it is.
Speaker 7 (17:55):
Now.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
This Justice Department takes a contrary view, but interesting if
it goes up to the Supreme Court, will he change
his opinion on that or will he be consistent with
what he said almost forty years ago.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
So that's a lot.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
But bottom line is this isn't over and it's going
to be kicked around in the courts for quite some time,
and we're still waiting to hear officially. The Press Secretary
said that they're going to appeal this decision, but it
may it's gonna be kicked around to the courts for
quite quite quite some time. In the meantime, Komi looks
(18:31):
like he's in better shape because of the statute of
limitations did expire five days after they indicted him, and
if the indictment wasn't legit, then his attorneys saved the cock.
The clock was still ticking, but we're going to have
to again. We'll see, but he probably has a better
chance of escaping any sort of liability. Letitia James has
(18:57):
another problem. This came out today. I'm waiting to verify,
but this is what's being reported is that Letitia James
she had this extra house in Virginia and she said
it was on the mortgage paper. She said it was
a second home like a vacation home. All right, some
(19:17):
people can afford to do that. But the problem with
it is on her tax records, apparently she claimed it
as investment property. And there's a huge difference. You can
you cannot write off everything from a to Z on
a vacation home or a second home, but you can
(19:38):
on an investment home. An investment home, you can write
off all kinds of things you can write I mean,
it's much much more liberal in the Internal Revenue Code.
So apparently she texted to her accountant this past year
that she needed to not take all the deductions that
(19:59):
she's been taking in the past, and that she wanted
to follow the Internal Revenue Code to the letter of
the law. Well, okay, what about all the other years
in which it was apparently treated as an investment property.
But you told the mortgage lender it was a second home.
So she's got some explaining to do. She's not out
(20:21):
of the woods on that, and the statute of limitations
hasn't run. So Letitia James still has problems. Even though
she said she was clear, she's not. So let's get
down to the big legal stink of the day. This
is the one about the Democrats, the six Democrats that
came out and said it was a weird thing. They
(20:44):
did these little clips where they said, you're not required
to follow an illegal order. They were addressing members of
the military, you are not required to follow an illegal order,
and the next person would say not required to follow
an illegal order, and the next to the next to
the next. One of them was Mark Kelly, the Senator
(21:08):
from Arizona. Mark Kelly has a formidable background. He was
a fighter pilot, he was an astronaut. He's now a senator.
His wife not relevant, but Gabby Giffords who was shot,
(21:28):
so apparently the Pentagon wants to go after him. And
people are confused about this. But I remember my advisor,
when I was a brand new young kid in the military,
told me that there are two types of commissions. I
(21:51):
was Army, so it was regular army or reserve army.
And you can't tell the difference. They wear the same uniform.
It just depends upon whether or not you are locked
in for life, and as a regular commission, you're locked
in for life. And I remember my advisor, Major Leu Concien.
He said to me, he said, so this means that
(22:15):
even when you're an old man, they could drag you
back into the military, and a lot of people don't
know that, and a lot of people are not aware
of that. That's what's going on is they're trying to say,
you were a regular commissioned officer of the Navy, and
we're going to drag you back into active duty and
then we're going to court martial you. At least that's
(22:36):
the rumor. So Carley Stimpson is a former naval jag officer,
judge advocate general the lawyers in the military, and he
was asked about this. This is his reaction.
Speaker 7 (22:50):
Well, they believe that it's possible that Captain Kelly, retired
Captain Kelly, who is subject to the UCMJ under Article two,
committed a crime and so there going to investigate that.
And regardless of whether that's proves to be true or not,
the fact is that this video undermined good order and discipline.
They knew exactly what they were doing. They were essentially
(23:12):
wink wink, nod nod telling members of the military that
they should reflexively doubt the legality of the Commander in
chief's orders. And that's where they crossed the line. Politically.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
You hear what he said, they crossed the line politically
and uh not legally, but politically. And it's what were
they who comes up with these stupid ideas? Remember they
had a bunch of Democrats that were doing some sort
of dance and they thought that would be beneficial to
(23:43):
what what was the point? They were basically, like you said,
with a wink and a nod, saying, well, you know,
the commander in chief does a bunch of stuff illegal.
I mean, you better be on your egal eyes for
watching for this commander in chief giving you illegal orders.
That's what they were trying to imply. But what's further
(24:05):
bizarre about this is every single soldier sailor from private
to general knows and has been drilled into their young
heads when they got in the military that you not
only can, you must not obey an illegal order. The
difficulty is, how do you know if it's an illegal
(24:28):
order or not. You assume that the higher commands from
your commander all the way up to the commander in
chief are issuing legal orders. But there are some there
are some blatant errors Meli Masker and Vietnam that came
up about it. I was just following orders. No, it
(24:50):
was an illegal order. That's what the German soldiers said
after they've found the atrocities of killing the Jews in
Germany and a lot of the lower ranking people that
did that. So we were just following orders. So you
are required to know that the orders you follow are legal.
(25:14):
And I don't know if anybody who's ever run into
other than the guys in Vietnam in that one case,
would run into this whole thing. Jack Keene, General Jack Keen,
he's livid about the fact that they're playing games, these
politicians are playing games with the military irect But.
Speaker 6 (25:31):
He's an irresponsible, reckless of political leaders. And I normally
don't go after political leaders in our country, but they
deserve it now. They're absolutely undermining the military chain of command.
And what do they think our soldiers are. They're insulting
the intelligence of our soldiers and their moral commitment to
(25:52):
serve the nation by making these outrageous statements.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Couldn't agree more. But I also couldn't agree with the
president called it sedition and that they should be put
to death. I'm sorry, that's beyond but here's go back
to college. Stimpson, the JAG officer.
Speaker 7 (26:09):
Well, General's correct as usual, and the fact is that
there's one commander in chief and only one And the
proper way to litigate these policy disputes is either for
one Congress to reclaim their war powers in Article one,
Section eight and declare war or authorize the use of
military force, therefore the president has the top authority under
the Congress's passing of that type of law, or litigate
(26:32):
these issues which are happening in states where people are
calling up national guards. And so imagine the scenario where
Republican members of Congress would have issued the same type
of warning to members of the military when we sent
twenty five thousand troops to Haiti under President Clinton, saying
you should reflexively question that when Congress didn't authorize that authorization.
(26:56):
And there's scores of other issues in times in our
history when the Presidence sends troops into harm's way and
Congress didn't authorize it. So this is the wrong way
to go about this.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
So the SoundBite that adds to the confusion about all
of this is Alissa Slotkin. She was at one time
worked for the CIA, She's a member of Congress, a Democrat.
She was one of those that said make sure that
you don't obey in the illegal order. And she was
on ABC's Sunday Morning Show and this is her question
(27:32):
and answer.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
Do you believe President Trump has issued any illegal orders?
To my knowledge, I am not aware of things that
are illegal, but certainly there are some legal gymnastics that
are going on with these Caribbean strikes and everything related
to Venezuela.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
So again, it was a stupid thing for the Democrats
to put this tape out there. Didn't anybody stop and say,
why are we doing this? And then when she was asked,
have you ever heard of any illegal orders coming from
President Trump? And she said no. So now the question is,
(28:09):
is egg Seth and the Pentagon really going to recall
Mark Kelly onto active duty.
Speaker 7 (28:16):
You can recall somebody who's retired receiving retirement pay. I'm
a retired Navy captain, he's a retired Navy captain and
bring them back on active duty and charge them with
a crime. And it doesn't have to just be a
military crime. It can be any federal or state crime
under the Federals symbol OF's Crime Act. But the problem
is that when we've recalled people act to active duty
(28:39):
to prosecute them. Almost in every instance, it's been for
a crime they committed while they were on active duty,
not in this situation where he's a senator giving a
speech not covered by the Speech and Debate clause because
it wasn't a core legislative function. And so I don't
think any military jury is ever going to convict this
guy ever. So I think the punishment here is the
(28:59):
process ultimately not prosecute him.
Speaker 8 (29:01):
We're bringing back on activeduty.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
I don't think anybody's going to actually prosecute him, and
if they do, they won't find him guilty. And this
is just the wrong guy to go after. This guy
is an American hero. He was he has spent his
entire adult life serving our nation. He was in combat.
(29:23):
Listen to what he gives a brief resume of his background.
I've had a missile blow up next to my airplane.
I've been shot down, nearly shot down multiple times. My wife,
Gabby Gifford's meeting with their constituents shot in the hat,
six people killed around her. We know what political violence
is and we know what causes it too. You know,
the statements that Donald Trump made is insightful, incites others.
(29:47):
He's got millions of supporters. People listen to what he
says more so than anybody else in the country, and
he should be careful with his words. But I'm not
going to be silenced here. He's not happy with President Trump,
and any way, shape or form politically, he's pretty moderate
the Democrat. But the idea that this guy had a
(30:09):
career in the Navy, was a fighter pilot, was an astronaut.
The Senator, I'm sorry that I don't think you're going
to find a group that will convict him of a crime.
I think they're wasting their time on this. It was
a stupid thing for the Democrats to do. I'm surprised
Mark Kelly fell for it, but he did well. Let's
(30:33):
talk about go back to the economy. I told you
about the Butterball survey about fifty eight percent of people
are not going to change your thing with their traditions
at their Thanksgiving table. Good for them. It is one
of those times where we know there's always poverty, always
(30:53):
has been, always will be. But you stop and think
about the people that probably more so now than you
do normal. But about the people who don't even have
enough for a meal. Let alone, a butterball, turkey with
sides and et cetera, a dessert. But we got the
numbers out today and I think they portray an economy
(31:18):
that is slowing. ADP came out with their jobs survey.
It's not the government numbers, and this is for the
four weeks ending November eighth, and they said that we
were losing thirteen thousand, five hundred jobs per week for
(31:38):
four weeks ending November eighth. Consumer confidence numbers came out
today and it's clear this is the Consumer Confidence Index.
Consumer Conference Board puts one on out. The other one
of is the University of Michigan. This is Consumer Confidence
Board and they said the numbers drop got consumer confidence dropped.
(32:01):
It's an index number. It doesn't mean anything to most people,
but it was a very sharp drop. It went from
eighty eight I went down to eighty eight from they
were expecting it to be ninety three. And it just
shows again it's a big that's a huge drop in
this in particular index that's on how do you think
(32:22):
things are right now? And people have dropped their confidence
in the economy. Consumers are clearly more pessimistic about business
conditions now than they were six months ago. They asked
a second question, they say, what do you think the
economy's going to be like six months in the future,
and they got an even bigger drop. So people are pessimistic.
(32:48):
They're worried about the no higher, no fire job climate.
They're worried about keeping their jobs. They say jobs are
hard to get. So the conference board was a big
negative when it came out on all of that. With officialdom.
Scott Bennett, the Treasury Secretary, I know it's kind of
(33:11):
his job, but I think he really does believe this.
He is very bullish about the economy in twenty twenty six. Now,
that's great, but for people that are worried about their economy,
they're worried about putting food on the table this week,
they're worried about putting gas in the car this week.
So it's nice to see that there is maybe a
(33:32):
rainbow down the road not that far away. But that's
Scott Besson and he's been on that banging that drum
now for quite some time. Steve Moore, the economist, he
also is kind of on that same page. But he
was asked the question about DOGE. Did you hear the
(33:53):
DOGE has been shut down. Well, then that report came
out and then the White I said no, no, no, no,
they're still own business. But everybody's been checking though they're gone.
They're gone. According to the report, they saved two hundred
and fourteen billion dollars. Nothing to sneeze at, but that
(34:14):
was that was it. Now everybody's back to spending the
way they were before. Steve Moore was asked specifically about those.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
We's happened was the empire fought back.
Speaker 9 (34:26):
And when you try to downsize government, you know, the
government bureaucracy tries to do everything they can to prevent it.
I think that Elon Musk deserves a Metal of Freedom
and maybe even Nobel Prize in Economics for what he
has done for our country.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
But it is true.
Speaker 9 (34:44):
You know, they wanted one trillion in savings and they
ended up with what about two hundred and fifty billion.
That's still a lot of money, Stewart, I mean, my goodness,
that's larger than this the entire budget of almost every state,
So giant savings.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
I do not want those to go way.
Speaker 9 (35:00):
I think President Trump should instill this in our government,
so we have at least one agency that's trying to
cut costs rather than raise them. Was basically pointing out
how much waste there is in government, and they identified
trillions of dollars of waste. It's just that the agencies
will not cut their budget by and not just the agencies.
(35:21):
You need congressional help, you know, you need legislation to
downsize the budgets of these agencies.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
We just had a big fight.
Speaker 9 (35:28):
The Democrats shut down the whole government in order to
prevent any cuts from happening. So this is a very
difficult thing to accomplish. I think, you know, he came
and tried to take on the bureaucracy. He had some success,
but it's not like a private business where you can
just go in and slash costs.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
That's not the way government works.
Speaker 9 (35:47):
And that's why we're running a thirty eight trillion dollar
national bet.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
I am super bullish on the US economy.
Speaker 9 (35:53):
The TEX cut really starts to kick in next year,
the big beautiful bill. We're seeing hundreds and hundreds of
billions of dollars of investment capital flowing in.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Trump says it's trillions.
Speaker 9 (36:03):
I think it's probably closer to, you know, hundreds and
hundreds of billions. That's a lot of money to invest here.
We're seeing an investment boom. Look, I'm with you and
my buddy Larry Kudlow. You know, I think this is
going to be a great economy next year. Everything the
table is well set. Whether I think four and a
half percent growth is a big, big number, so I'm
not going to go that high, but I'll tell you
(36:24):
I think we're going to be between three and four
percent growth, And sy is that important. Once you get
above like three to three point two percent growth, you
do start bending that curve of debt down because the
economy grows faster than the debt and that's essential to
solving this fiscal crisis in Washington.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
So count me as I'm gonna say three and a
half percent.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Okay, if we get three and a half percent growth,
then yeah, that will be a positive, positive year. So
Scott Besson was also talking about the the FED and
there he's been doing the interview to get down to
a handful of people that are going to be presented
to the president. We had word yesterday that the President
(37:08):
was going to make a choice on who was going
to replace Jay Powell's the head of the Federal Reserve Board.
He'll make that announcement prior to Christmas. But then Wall
Street this afternoon there was a rumor that Kevin Hassett,
the head of the National Council of Economic Advisor to
(37:28):
the President, that he has been selected, and the market
rallied on that news alone, because Kevin Hassett is a
very smart economist, and he also realizes that Jay Powell
and the current FED have been very slow to respond
(37:51):
and that we really could use a reduction in interest rates.
Here's what Bestine said earlier today.
Speaker 8 (38:00):
And I think it's time for the FED just to
move back into the background like it used to do,
calm things down and work for the American people, set
monetary policy on a good course. That this isn't this
isn't sport. It's people's lives, and I think we just
(38:20):
need to calm down.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Well, I think he's right. The FED is lately they
want to be the darlings of the media. They're out
there there in front of microphones giving speeches. I think
they should go back to the way they used to.
They didn't even have news conferences none. They just put
out a statement and as far as the speeches, those
were very few and far apart, So the Fed should
(38:44):
kind of cool it, stick their green eye shades on
and work on monetary policy and be done with it.
One other rumor floating around the saff it's awfully hard
when you're doing a podcast to get of you breaking news,
but the whole idea about Ukraine and a peace agreement
(39:06):
with Russia. There is talk that President Trump is going
to meet with Zelensky on Thanksgiving Day on Thursday. Then
that was changed to know that's not going to happen.
The President will not meet with him, that there will
be a deal put together within a few days between
(39:26):
Russia and Ukraine directly, and that President Trump will meet
with Putin and Zelensky together when the deal is done.
So it's a lot of a lot of movement, a
lot of people trying to figure out how to get
this thing to an end. But we don't have as
(39:47):
we finish recording today, we don't have the final, final
final word. It's it's not a final final anything at
this point. Wall Street it, like I told you, it
loved the news about Kevin Hassett. It literally when that
rumor started floating around on Wall Street, the market went
(40:08):
straight up and it finished with the Dow up six
hundred and sixty four points to forty seven thousand and
one twelve. The rebound is off thats to p up sixty,
Nasdaq up one hundred and fifty three. A lot of
those tech stocks that went way up then went way
(40:28):
down there nibbling at them again today. The price of
gold was up thirty one dollars to forty one twenty five,
and oil fell one dollar down to fifty seven dollars.
Now for one barrel of oil. That's it for today.
Thank you for coming by. We'll be back again tomorrow.
(40:48):
Hope to see you then
And Hi, how are you welcome to the Big Podcast.
It's Tuesday. Today is the twenty fifth day of November,
year of our lower twenty twenty five. My name is
Tom Sullivan, and we get started. It's starting to feel
like a holiday week, isn't it. I mean, everything seems
(00:43):
to be a little bit out of kilter right now.
The focus is on the bird on Turkey on Thursday.
On Thanksgiving, you've got the focus on the food. We
got some numbers from Butterball. We got traffic, and I
wonder sometimes if the media is not just exaggerating this
(01:07):
whole thing about everybody's traveling. Eighty some million people are
going to be on the road, spread out over a
number of days. It's eighty one million people. Eighty nine
percent of that will go by cars, seven percent by air.
But I was watching a number of the networks this morning,
(01:28):
and they have their reporters dutifully stationed at airports around
the country, and I didn't see one that looked crappit.
They all looked They looked less crowded than I normally
expect on the normal business day traveling someplace, going to
the airport. Busy airports, people are flying more aviation. Commercial
(01:52):
aviation passenger loads are up every year and have been
for a number of years. They took a dip during COVID,
but other than that, it's been back on the road
to more and more on TSA, screening more people. So
I've told you before, I think my solution to any
(02:15):
zaniness at the airport, even though I haven't seen any yet,
I'm not at the airport. I'm watching through some camera somewhere.
But my solution was we would go travel on Thanksgiving
morning because nobody's traveling, the roads are pretty quiet, and
everybody has gone to Grandma's house, and so you go
(02:38):
to the airport. It's really nice. You get on the
plane and it's that you know, it depends upon you
can't go too far. But I mean we would fly,
take maybe a two hour flight to where we were going,
and get there by early afternoon, and by that time
everybody's just getting ready to sit down and have turkey.
(03:01):
So it was it was my solution to getting around
the crowds.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
But the travel.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
As far as people on the road, there is no
question that the gas prices are helping because the average
this is triple a average gasoline per gallon for the
cheap stuff three dollars and five cents. It was exactly
(03:29):
three dollars and five cents one year ago as well.
So it's gone up a little bit, it's come back
down as we're back down to three zero five. And
I mean that's giving a lot of people reason to
gas up. It doesn't cost as much. I will tell
you this. Everybody's talking about a year ago. So I thought, well,
(03:50):
let me go back to January twentieth of twenty twenty one,
the day Joe Biden was inaugurated, and the price of
gas was two dollars and thirty eight cents when Donald
Trump handed over the baton to Joe Biden, to thirty eight.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
So this is this is good.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
We had you want to go back aways, Well it
was it was covid uh two dollars eleven cents in
Thanksgiving twenty twenty. It was two fifty five a gallon
in twenty eighteen. It was two sixty a gallon twenty nineteen.
(04:35):
So during Trump one point, oh, it was primarily a
two dollars price something along those lines. But I will
tell you this. I one of the things that we
know about Donald Trump is he always everything's the greatest,
Everything's the best, Everything's the biggest. He likes to make
things sound better than they are. So I don't know
(04:56):
who did this survey said, did Donald Trump make things
sound toy say, better than they really are, about the
same as they really are, or worse than they really are?
Sixty percent that he makes things sound better than they
really are, twenty seven percent said about what it really is,
(05:17):
and thirteen percent that he makes things sound worse than
they really are. So anyway, today it's a big travel
day on the road, supposed to be the peak when
most people are going to be on the road today.
I guess you want to get there early. In my
old hometown of Seattle, there's been a huge problem. They
(05:38):
just solved it today. For the last two weeks they
have had there's two pipelines that bring jet fuel to
the Seattle Airport and they're leaking, and they just discovered
it about two weeks ago, and they've been scrambling for
the last two weeks to figure out where is the leak.
(06:02):
So they had to shut everything off so they didn't
destroy whatever the land was wherever the leak was, and
they've been trucking jet fuel about a couple hundred miles
to the Seattle Airport. Ninety oil trucks notty gas trucks
a day, and they just discovered today where the leak is,
(06:26):
so they're getting it patched up and getting your fuel back.
But flights going to Seattle have been asked to carry
extra fuel so that they when they get to Seattle,
they don't have to fuel up. So that's what's going
on out there. I told you Butterball has numbers, and
(06:46):
they were asked at Butterball about they were asking their customers,
what are you going to do to control the cost
of Thanksgiving dinner? And number one answer by far was nothing.
Fifty eight percent said they're not going to change the thing.
They're going to do what they've done in the past tradition,
(07:08):
you know, So twenty eight percent, I'm sorry. Fifty eight
percent said no change, twenty one percent said they're going
to ask a guest to bring some dish, fifteen percent
said they're going to change some of the side dishes.
(07:31):
Fourteen percent said it's not about if we're not going
to change anything about the vood but they're not going
to decorate with decor, paper goods, things like that, and
twelve percent, which I think is wrong, said they're going
to change dessert.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Now.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
I don't know what your favorite dessert is, but whatever
it is, usually at Thanksgiving, it's usually a really good one.
So that's what's going on with butterball people. Most of everybody,
fifty eight percent are saying, I'm not changing a thing.
People like to keep their traditions the way they are.
So we've got that today. We've got a lot on
(08:10):
the economy. I want to get to. There's a fight
going on about AI that is well, I don't want
to get into the weeds about which companies. They're pouring
huge amounts of money into AI. They're all trying to
be the leader in it, and we're finding out who
(08:32):
we thought was the leader, which was Meta, because they've
been pouring more money than anybody else. All of a sudden,
we're finding out it looks like Alphabet, the parent of Google,
is in the lead right now. Anyway, it's going to
change so volatile. But one of the fights that I'm
talking about is a fight that states are wanting to
(08:55):
regulate artificial intelligence. And so far there are four states
just that's it, only four that have passed legislation to
regulate artificial intelligence California, Utah, Colorado, and Texas, and I'm
(09:19):
surprised about Texas. California, I'm not surprised about But the
whole idea is the less regulation, the better if you
want AI to really take off, and that because China
is over there, Trumpet, it's a bit. If you want
(09:40):
the United States to be the leader of artificial intelligence,
out get out of the way government.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
That means you too.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
States. Washington is broken in many many ways, and they'll
probably try to do something. But if you go back
to the eighties in the nineties about regulating the Internet,
you're going to have a hard time finding those regulations
(10:09):
because they basically did not and as a result, the
Internet flourished. Are there problems with it? Sure, the Internet's
not perfect, but I'm sorry, but the more you get
government into the middle of it, that's why Europe doesn't
have really any leadership in the world of technology, because
(10:30):
they regulate the bajbis out of it. So a guy
named Joe Lonsdale, he has founded a bunch of different things,
including Pallenteer, and he is very concerned about states coming
up with a patchwork of regulations for artificial intelligence.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
You know, this has been an issue we're working on
all year.
Speaker 5 (10:53):
Obviously close friends with David Sachsen and Cratzios wearing this
in the administration. And listen, we are on the verge
of something amazing for our civilization.
Speaker 6 (11:01):
Right.
Speaker 5 (11:01):
We have tens of thousands of builders in our country.
They're going to bring down the cost of health care.
They're going to make construction finally, how productivity go up,
make houses cheaper. Permit should only take you know, hours
instead of months, just like education is going to be
better for all of our kids, and personalized These are
all things they're going to fix our civilization. And yet
on both the far left and the far right, you
(11:21):
have a lot of populists who, for really nefarious reasons
are opposing this. There are reasonable people, by the way,
who have some concerns, and there's ways to compromise and
push you ahead for our civilization. But you have a
lot of crazy populist You have a patchwork of just
really intense stuff they're doing that would break all of this,
and we can't let that happen.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
So Joe isn't an anti state or pro federal government.
He talks about the fact that he's a federalist. He's
for states rights, but not when you have something like this.
You can't have a patchwork of fifty different regulations for
AI companies to try to meet.
Speaker 5 (11:55):
You know, No, I'm a federalist on most issues. I
have teams in twenty three states with this. Thrones of
too are watching this, and I think it's reasonable for
states to do a lot of things as laboratories of democracy.
So in general, I'm actually on the state's right side overall.
What's unreasonable is that you had Biden NGOs By pushed
by the last administration. You have European like rules, and
(12:16):
you have Populace trying to put in crazy new regulatory
authorities that demonize the builders, that demonize the tech. And
if you force us to hop through regulatory agencies in
every state, China is going to win and the builders
are going to lose. And so the interstate Commerce Clause
exists in the Constitution for a reason. This is one
of those examples we've learned from the California Mission standards
that broke the whole nation, and we're seeing a lot
(12:37):
crazier things being proposed now. So I think it's reasonable
for states to have some power in a lot of
different cases. That's what I want overall, but I don't
want to break the whole AI wave by the populists.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
So this fight is just getting underway, and there's so
much money involved that the states are all a bunch
of greedy people. They're looking at the billions of these
tech companies are spending and they want to get their
grubby hands on it. They want to tax it, they
want to regulate it. And Londale is a very smart guy,
(13:10):
very successful tech executive.
Speaker 5 (13:14):
You know, I think there's always an argument in our
country between safety and liberty, and I think people, especially
if they're not in the details, are right to be
concerned and want to be safe. But if you're going
to use safety to have arbitrary finds and arbitrary penalties,
where every state, including the radical blue states like New York,
are going to be able to break our BUILDERS waves,
that's not okay. Listen, you have states trying to ban
(13:34):
the use of AI in healthcare right now in ways
that are going to prevent us from making healthcare cheap,
or you have New York State already banning it in education.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
This is insane. Public schools in New York are not
allowing AI. You're not even in any kind of school
in New York.
Speaker 5 (13:47):
You have to call yourself a homeschool to use the
I right now in New York, which means we can't
personalize it and lift up the lives of the kids
who are not doing well in inner cities. This is
crazy stuff, and that the safety ism is what Europe does.
If you want to be a course ofation where you're
poorer than our poorest state, like Europe, we should, then
you should move to Europe. But American needs to stay free.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
I'm with him all the way. We'll see how this
fight turns out. But there's going to be, like I said,
a lot of government goops that the fact that they
are not allowing kids in New York state schools to
be introduced to AI. These are not smart people that
are coming up with these kinds of policy ideas in
(14:28):
other matters. We told you yesterday. We got the word
just before we finished recording yesterday about the fact that
the judge threw out the James Comey and Letitia James cases.
And that's not exactly what I explained that yesterday. That's
not what the judge did the judge threw out Lindsay
Halligan because she wasn't properly appointed as the US Attorney
(14:52):
for the Eastern Diffect District of Virginia. He didn't throw
the cases out. So now the question is what will
happen next. Is there another one hundred and day one
hundred and twenty day rule that starts, because that's what
happens when a new administration comes in. The US attorneys
(15:14):
around the country are the president has one hundred and
twenty days to put a new US attorney in and
if the president doesn't, then the judges in that district,
the federal judges can appoint somebody. And there's a lot
of constitutional questions about that going judges appointing a judge
(15:35):
and judges appointing somebody. That's an executive not a judicial job.
The job of appointing a judge is not for the
judicial branch. It's for the executive branch. So there's still
tons of legal issues to feel about this. But I've
heard already some people on the table television say, Wow,
(15:58):
that's it, that's it. Case is over, it's over. And
Joey Jackson, who's a good defense attorney, in New York City.
It's not so fist.
Speaker 4 (16:07):
Means is that they are not out of the woods yet.
Had it been dismissed with prejudice, it means that it
cannot come back to the extent that it's without prejudice.
The US Attorney's Office can seek to refile, and yes,
indeed they can. There are two options. I think the
one is to refile the indictment. The issue is is
the law says that if an indictment is dismissed on
(16:28):
a variety of grounds, you have six months to file
an indictment anew with regard to the five year statute
of limitations, we do know that as it relates to Kmy,
they indicted five days prior. Now Comy's people say, hey,
that clock keeps ticking. There was no validly appointed US attorney.
The government's position will be no, not at all, that
it would have frozen at that time, and we have
(16:49):
six months to go. The second option, as we noted,
and as they seem to notice, to take the appeal
to the Fourth Circuit, which is based in Virginia, that
is the appellate court that could look to see if
the district court got it wrong. Now the way I
view it, there's a number of issues. Remember that we've
seen in New Jersey an opinion that was consistent with
this opinion, and that is that you have one hundred
(17:11):
and twenty days to get Senate confirmation. You've got one
shot at the apple. And if you don't, then guess
what the district in that specific location gets to appoint
the US attorney? You executive, do not. We saw it
happen in Nevada, same ruling in Valley appoint the US attorney.
We saw it happen in California. Why am I saying
this because this precedent I know how oftentimes the politics
(17:32):
our otis was a lunatic judge who made a lunatic decision. Nonsense,
this precedent for it. Last piece of this this when
Samuel Alito was at the Department of Justice, he wrote
a legal opinion indicating that exactly what this judge ruled
as it relates to the dismissal of the indictment on
calling and dismissed on Letitia James's to the one hundred
and twenty days to get Senate confirmation, That's what it is.
Speaker 7 (17:55):
Now.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
This Justice Department takes a contrary view, but interesting if
it goes up to the Supreme Court, will he change
his opinion on that or will he be consistent with
what he said almost forty years ago.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
So that's a lot.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
But bottom line is this isn't over and it's going
to be kicked around in the courts for quite some time,
and we're still waiting to hear officially. The Press Secretary
said that they're going to appeal this decision, but it
may it's gonna be kicked around to the courts for
quite quite quite some time. In the meantime, Komi looks
(18:31):
like he's in better shape because of the statute of
limitations did expire five days after they indicted him, and
if the indictment wasn't legit, then his attorneys saved the cock.
The clock was still ticking, but we're going to have
to again. We'll see, but he probably has a better
chance of escaping any sort of liability. Letitia James has
(18:57):
another problem. This came out today. I'm waiting to verify,
but this is what's being reported is that Letitia James
she had this extra house in Virginia and she said
it was on the mortgage paper. She said it was
a second home like a vacation home. All right, some
(19:17):
people can afford to do that. But the problem with
it is on her tax records, apparently she claimed it
as investment property. And there's a huge difference. You can
you cannot write off everything from a to Z on
a vacation home or a second home, but you can
(19:38):
on an investment home. An investment home, you can write
off all kinds of things you can write I mean,
it's much much more liberal in the Internal Revenue Code.
So apparently she texted to her accountant this past year
that she needed to not take all the deductions that
(19:59):
she's been taking in the past, and that she wanted
to follow the Internal Revenue Code to the letter of
the law. Well, okay, what about all the other years
in which it was apparently treated as an investment property.
But you told the mortgage lender it was a second home.
So she's got some explaining to do. She's not out
(20:21):
of the woods on that, and the statute of limitations
hasn't run. So Letitia James still has problems. Even though
she said she was clear, she's not. So let's get
down to the big legal stink of the day. This
is the one about the Democrats, the six Democrats that
came out and said it was a weird thing. They
(20:44):
did these little clips where they said, you're not required
to follow an illegal order. They were addressing members of
the military, you are not required to follow an illegal order,
and the next person would say not required to follow
an illegal order, and the next to the next to
the next. One of them was Mark Kelly, the Senator
(21:08):
from Arizona. Mark Kelly has a formidable background. He was
a fighter pilot, he was an astronaut. He's now a senator.
His wife not relevant, but Gabby Giffords who was shot,
(21:28):
so apparently the Pentagon wants to go after him. And
people are confused about this. But I remember my advisor,
when I was a brand new young kid in the military,
told me that there are two types of commissions. I
(21:51):
was Army, so it was regular army or reserve army.
And you can't tell the difference. They wear the same uniform.
It just depends upon whether or not you are locked
in for life, and as a regular commission, you're locked
in for life. And I remember my advisor, Major Leu Concien.
He said to me, he said, so this means that
(22:15):
even when you're an old man, they could drag you
back into the military, and a lot of people don't
know that, and a lot of people are not aware
of that. That's what's going on is they're trying to say,
you were a regular commissioned officer of the Navy, and
we're going to drag you back into active duty and
then we're going to court martial you. At least that's
(22:36):
the rumor. So Carley Stimpson is a former naval jag officer,
judge advocate general the lawyers in the military, and he
was asked about this. This is his reaction.
Speaker 7 (22:50):
Well, they believe that it's possible that Captain Kelly, retired
Captain Kelly, who is subject to the UCMJ under Article two,
committed a crime and so there going to investigate that.
And regardless of whether that's proves to be true or not,
the fact is that this video undermined good order and discipline.
They knew exactly what they were doing. They were essentially
(23:12):
wink wink, nod nod telling members of the military that
they should reflexively doubt the legality of the Commander in
chief's orders. And that's where they crossed the line. Politically.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
You hear what he said, they crossed the line politically
and uh not legally, but politically. And it's what were
they who comes up with these stupid ideas? Remember they
had a bunch of Democrats that were doing some sort
of dance and they thought that would be beneficial to
(23:43):
what what was the point? They were basically, like you said,
with a wink and a nod, saying, well, you know,
the commander in chief does a bunch of stuff illegal.
I mean, you better be on your egal eyes for
watching for this commander in chief giving you illegal orders.
That's what they were trying to imply. But what's further
(24:05):
bizarre about this is every single soldier sailor from private
to general knows and has been drilled into their young
heads when they got in the military that you not
only can, you must not obey an illegal order. The
difficulty is, how do you know if it's an illegal
(24:28):
order or not. You assume that the higher commands from
your commander all the way up to the commander in
chief are issuing legal orders. But there are some there
are some blatant errors Meli Masker and Vietnam that came
up about it. I was just following orders. No, it
(24:50):
was an illegal order. That's what the German soldiers said
after they've found the atrocities of killing the Jews in
Germany and a lot of the lower ranking people that
did that. So we were just following orders. So you
are required to know that the orders you follow are legal.
(25:14):
And I don't know if anybody who's ever run into
other than the guys in Vietnam in that one case,
would run into this whole thing. Jack Keene, General Jack Keen,
he's livid about the fact that they're playing games, these
politicians are playing games with the military irect But.
Speaker 6 (25:31):
He's an irresponsible, reckless of political leaders. And I normally
don't go after political leaders in our country, but they
deserve it now. They're absolutely undermining the military chain of command.
And what do they think our soldiers are. They're insulting
the intelligence of our soldiers and their moral commitment to
(25:52):
serve the nation by making these outrageous statements.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Couldn't agree more. But I also couldn't agree with the
president called it sedition and that they should be put
to death. I'm sorry, that's beyond but here's go back
to college. Stimpson, the JAG officer.
Speaker 7 (26:09):
Well, General's correct as usual, and the fact is that
there's one commander in chief and only one And the
proper way to litigate these policy disputes is either for
one Congress to reclaim their war powers in Article one,
Section eight and declare war or authorize the use of
military force, therefore the president has the top authority under
the Congress's passing of that type of law, or litigate
(26:32):
these issues which are happening in states where people are
calling up national guards. And so imagine the scenario where
Republican members of Congress would have issued the same type
of warning to members of the military when we sent
twenty five thousand troops to Haiti under President Clinton, saying
you should reflexively question that when Congress didn't authorize that authorization.
(26:56):
And there's scores of other issues in times in our
history when the Presidence sends troops into harm's way and
Congress didn't authorize it. So this is the wrong way
to go about this.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
So the SoundBite that adds to the confusion about all
of this is Alissa Slotkin. She was at one time
worked for the CIA, She's a member of Congress, a Democrat.
She was one of those that said make sure that
you don't obey in the illegal order. And she was
on ABC's Sunday Morning Show and this is her question
(27:32):
and answer.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
Do you believe President Trump has issued any illegal orders?
To my knowledge, I am not aware of things that
are illegal, but certainly there are some legal gymnastics that
are going on with these Caribbean strikes and everything related
to Venezuela.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
So again, it was a stupid thing for the Democrats
to put this tape out there. Didn't anybody stop and say,
why are we doing this? And then when she was asked,
have you ever heard of any illegal orders coming from
President Trump? And she said no. So now the question is,
(28:09):
is egg Seth and the Pentagon really going to recall
Mark Kelly onto active duty.
Speaker 7 (28:16):
You can recall somebody who's retired receiving retirement pay. I'm
a retired Navy captain, he's a retired Navy captain and
bring them back on active duty and charge them with
a crime. And it doesn't have to just be a
military crime. It can be any federal or state crime
under the Federals symbol OF's Crime Act. But the problem
is that when we've recalled people act to active duty
(28:39):
to prosecute them. Almost in every instance, it's been for
a crime they committed while they were on active duty,
not in this situation where he's a senator giving a
speech not covered by the Speech and Debate clause because
it wasn't a core legislative function. And so I don't
think any military jury is ever going to convict this
guy ever. So I think the punishment here is the
(28:59):
process ultimately not prosecute him.
Speaker 8 (29:01):
We're bringing back on activeduty.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
I don't think anybody's going to actually prosecute him, and
if they do, they won't find him guilty. And this
is just the wrong guy to go after. This guy
is an American hero. He was he has spent his
entire adult life serving our nation. He was in combat.
(29:23):
Listen to what he gives a brief resume of his background.
I've had a missile blow up next to my airplane.
I've been shot down, nearly shot down multiple times. My wife,
Gabby Gifford's meeting with their constituents shot in the hat,
six people killed around her. We know what political violence
is and we know what causes it too. You know,
the statements that Donald Trump made is insightful, incites others.
(29:47):
He's got millions of supporters. People listen to what he
says more so than anybody else in the country, and
he should be careful with his words. But I'm not
going to be silenced here. He's not happy with President Trump,
and any way, shape or form politically, he's pretty moderate
the Democrat. But the idea that this guy had a
(30:09):
career in the Navy, was a fighter pilot, was an astronaut.
The Senator, I'm sorry that I don't think you're going
to find a group that will convict him of a crime.
I think they're wasting their time on this. It was
a stupid thing for the Democrats to do. I'm surprised
Mark Kelly fell for it, but he did well. Let's
(30:33):
talk about go back to the economy. I told you
about the Butterball survey about fifty eight percent of people
are not going to change your thing with their traditions
at their Thanksgiving table. Good for them. It is one
of those times where we know there's always poverty, always
(30:53):
has been, always will be. But you stop and think
about the people that probably more so now than you
do normal. But about the people who don't even have
enough for a meal. Let alone, a butterball, turkey with
sides and et cetera, a dessert. But we got the
numbers out today and I think they portray an economy
(31:18):
that is slowing. ADP came out with their jobs survey.
It's not the government numbers, and this is for the
four weeks ending November eighth, and they said that we
were losing thirteen thousand, five hundred jobs per week for
(31:38):
four weeks ending November eighth. Consumer confidence numbers came out
today and it's clear this is the Consumer Confidence Index.
Consumer Conference Board puts one on out. The other one
of is the University of Michigan. This is Consumer Confidence
Board and they said the numbers drop got consumer confidence dropped.
(32:01):
It's an index number. It doesn't mean anything to most people,
but it was a very sharp drop. It went from
eighty eight I went down to eighty eight from they
were expecting it to be ninety three. And it just
shows again it's a big that's a huge drop in
this in particular index that's on how do you think
(32:22):
things are right now? And people have dropped their confidence
in the economy. Consumers are clearly more pessimistic about business
conditions now than they were six months ago. They asked
a second question, they say, what do you think the
economy's going to be like six months in the future,
and they got an even bigger drop. So people are pessimistic.
(32:48):
They're worried about the no higher, no fire job climate.
They're worried about keeping their jobs. They say jobs are
hard to get. So the conference board was a big
negative when it came out on all of that. With officialdom.
Scott Bennett, the Treasury Secretary, I know it's kind of
(33:11):
his job, but I think he really does believe this.
He is very bullish about the economy in twenty twenty six. Now,
that's great, but for people that are worried about their economy,
they're worried about putting food on the table this week,
they're worried about putting gas in the car this week.
So it's nice to see that there is maybe a
(33:32):
rainbow down the road not that far away. But that's
Scott Besson and he's been on that banging that drum
now for quite some time. Steve Moore, the economist, he
also is kind of on that same page. But he
was asked the question about DOGE. Did you hear the
(33:53):
DOGE has been shut down. Well, then that report came
out and then the White I said no, no, no, no,
they're still own business. But everybody's been checking though they're gone.
They're gone. According to the report, they saved two hundred
and fourteen billion dollars. Nothing to sneeze at, but that
(34:14):
was that was it. Now everybody's back to spending the
way they were before. Steve Moore was asked specifically about those.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
We's happened was the empire fought back.
Speaker 9 (34:26):
And when you try to downsize government, you know, the
government bureaucracy tries to do everything they can to prevent it.
I think that Elon Musk deserves a Metal of Freedom
and maybe even Nobel Prize in Economics for what he
has done for our country.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
But it is true.
Speaker 9 (34:44):
You know, they wanted one trillion in savings and they
ended up with what about two hundred and fifty billion.
That's still a lot of money, Stewart, I mean, my goodness,
that's larger than this the entire budget of almost every state,
So giant savings.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
I do not want those to go way.
Speaker 9 (35:00):
I think President Trump should instill this in our government,
so we have at least one agency that's trying to
cut costs rather than raise them. Was basically pointing out
how much waste there is in government, and they identified
trillions of dollars of waste. It's just that the agencies
will not cut their budget by and not just the agencies.
(35:21):
You need congressional help, you know, you need legislation to
downsize the budgets of these agencies.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
We just had a big fight.
Speaker 9 (35:28):
The Democrats shut down the whole government in order to
prevent any cuts from happening. So this is a very
difficult thing to accomplish. I think, you know, he came
and tried to take on the bureaucracy. He had some success,
but it's not like a private business where you can
just go in and slash costs.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
That's not the way government works.
Speaker 9 (35:47):
And that's why we're running a thirty eight trillion dollar
national bet.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
I am super bullish on the US economy.
Speaker 9 (35:53):
The TEX cut really starts to kick in next year,
the big beautiful bill. We're seeing hundreds and hundreds of
billions of dollars of investment capital flowing in.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Trump says it's trillions.
Speaker 9 (36:03):
I think it's probably closer to, you know, hundreds and
hundreds of billions. That's a lot of money to invest here.
We're seeing an investment boom. Look, I'm with you and
my buddy Larry Kudlow. You know, I think this is
going to be a great economy next year. Everything the
table is well set. Whether I think four and a
half percent growth is a big, big number, so I'm
not going to go that high, but I'll tell you
(36:24):
I think we're going to be between three and four
percent growth, And sy is that important. Once you get
above like three to three point two percent growth, you
do start bending that curve of debt down because the
economy grows faster than the debt and that's essential to
solving this fiscal crisis in Washington.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
So count me as I'm gonna say three and a
half percent.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Okay, if we get three and a half percent growth,
then yeah, that will be a positive, positive year. So
Scott Besson was also talking about the the FED and
there he's been doing the interview to get down to
a handful of people that are going to be presented
to the president. We had word yesterday that the President
(37:08):
was going to make a choice on who was going
to replace Jay Powell's the head of the Federal Reserve Board.
He'll make that announcement prior to Christmas. But then Wall
Street this afternoon there was a rumor that Kevin Hassett,
the head of the National Council of Economic Advisor to
(37:28):
the President, that he has been selected, and the market
rallied on that news alone, because Kevin Hassett is a
very smart economist, and he also realizes that Jay Powell
and the current FED have been very slow to respond
(37:51):
and that we really could use a reduction in interest rates.
Here's what Bestine said earlier today.
Speaker 8 (38:00):
And I think it's time for the FED just to
move back into the background like it used to do,
calm things down and work for the American people, set
monetary policy on a good course. That this isn't this
isn't sport. It's people's lives, and I think we just
(38:20):
need to calm down.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Well, I think he's right. The FED is lately they
want to be the darlings of the media. They're out
there there in front of microphones giving speeches. I think
they should go back to the way they used to.
They didn't even have news conferences none. They just put
out a statement and as far as the speeches, those
were very few and far apart, So the Fed should
(38:44):
kind of cool it, stick their green eye shades on
and work on monetary policy and be done with it.
One other rumor floating around the saff it's awfully hard
when you're doing a podcast to get of you breaking news,
but the whole idea about Ukraine and a peace agreement
(39:06):
with Russia. There is talk that President Trump is going
to meet with Zelensky on Thanksgiving Day on Thursday. Then
that was changed to know that's not going to happen.
The President will not meet with him, that there will
be a deal put together within a few days between
(39:26):
Russia and Ukraine directly, and that President Trump will meet
with Putin and Zelensky together when the deal is done.
So it's a lot of a lot of movement, a
lot of people trying to figure out how to get
this thing to an end. But we don't have as
(39:47):
we finish recording today, we don't have the final, final
final word. It's it's not a final final anything at
this point. Wall Street it, like I told you, it
loved the news about Kevin Hassett. It literally when that
rumor started floating around on Wall Street, the market went
(40:08):
straight up and it finished with the Dow up six
hundred and sixty four points to forty seven thousand and
one twelve. The rebound is off thats to p up sixty,
Nasdaq up one hundred and fifty three. A lot of
those tech stocks that went way up then went way
(40:28):
down there nibbling at them again today. The price of
gold was up thirty one dollars to forty one twenty five,
and oil fell one dollar down to fifty seven dollars.
Now for one barrel of oil. That's it for today.
Thank you for coming by. We'll be back again tomorrow.
(40:48):
Hope to see you then
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