Uber-Manliness

Episode Transcript
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Jacob Smulian (00:04):
Hello and welcome to another episode of Geopolitical Cousins.
I am your editor and apparentlyintro maker Jacob Mian.
Um, this is a super fun episode.
The cousins are unpacking the US'response to Iran's attack on Israel.
Um, they are diving into whether or notdeterrence is a credible strategy anymore.

(00:27):
And then the topic we'veall been waiting for.
Taylor Swift's geopolitical reach.
So the world is messy.
It's raining outside.
Get off your phone, go touchsome grass and let's get into it.

Jacob Shapiro (00:48):
Alright, listeners, Marco is up at, is it four
20 or five 20 in the morning?
Marco?

Marko Papic (00:52):
It is five 20.
Five plane.
Okay,

four.
Four would would be uncivilized.
Five is at least in therealm of civilization,
although it's still not good.
Uh, everybody admires yourdedication for being here.
It's nice to see you.

Well, first of all, uh, this is the life of a strategist.
It's 24 hours.
You know, you've got clients,uh, requesting a call at
like 3:00 AM in the morning.
Uh, it's also a life of someonewho lives on the West Coast.
This is how the rest of you.
Punish us for living in, uh,on the Pacific, uh, coast.
And then finally, uh, if you want toachieve absurd levels of manliness,

(01:26):
you do have to wake up early tobench press, and we will get to
this a little bit later, I believe.

Yes.
From, from Canadian nationalismto, uh, Uber Manliness.
Uh, let's just start right there.
So this was sparked by an articleBBC had it, but there's a bunch
of different, um, uh, bunch ofdifferent articles around this.
Uh, we're gonna be talking about FatherMoses McPherson, whose congregation
has tripled in size in the last I.
18 months.

(01:52):
He lives in Georgetown, Texas, justa little bit north of Austin, Texas,
the city where Marco and I met also.
Uh, it's funny, I was thinking,I didn't even tell you this.
Marco uh, Gordon Ramsey did like a kitchennightmares episode in Georgetown, Texas.
And this is like a, I don'tknow, spiritual life nightmares
is what this guy does.
I don't know.
He like goes into your house and yellsat you and tells you what to do Anyway.

(02:13):
Uh, so he, uh, this guy FatherMoses, he was a Protestant who
worked as a roofer, but now he'sa priest in the Russian Orthodox
Church outside of Russia or RO car.
I dunno if they call it that,but that's what their acronym is.
Acronym is here.
Um, and I mean the, the BBC articlehas just, whoever wrote this
article must have had a ton of funbecause it leads off with a quote.

(02:35):
A lot of people ask me, fatherMoses, how can I increase my
manliness to absurd levels?
End quote.
Um, and he has a whole YouTubevideo as championing a form of veal
unapologetic masculinity, uh, with which.
Sort of confusingly Marco includesskinny jeans, crossing your
legs, using an iron, shaping youreyebrows, and, and eating soup.

(02:56):
These are all thingsthat are too feminine.
Yeah.
Yeah.
These are like, you know.
Yes.
Yeah.
So he, he's saying that thesethings are too, uh, too feminine.
Uh, he's gotten 75 new followers,uh, which doesn't seem like a
lot in 18 months, but whatever.
Like, that's more than zero followers.
He, I wonder if he has a podcast,he, he can claim that he, uh,
tripled it in size anyway.
Um, it also, it literallyseems like a plot.

(03:18):
I don't know if you've seenthe righteous gemstones on HBO.
It's like a, like I'm watching it withmy wife right now, which is about these
like us mega, it's like, it's about a usmega church and John Goodman is the pastor
and he's got all these silly children.
One of the kids, like the youngest one ofthe kids, seems like a closeted gay guy.
And he's, he's assembled this likearmy of muscular men and he's like

(03:40):
teaching them how to like, uh, be withChrist, but also like, like literally
they're training to carry the crossthrough the Judean desert itself.
And like they have to eatnice and like lift a bunch of
weights and things like that.
And I turned to my wife and Iwas like, 'cause she grew up
in the, in the Baptist world.
And I was like, is this real?
Like, do people do this?
And she was like, nah,nah, this is a joke.
But it's not a joke.
'cause here's Father Moses saying wehave to increase our levels of manliness.

(04:02):
Um, you know, Skyward.
So I'll let you cook from there, Marco.
'cause we are gonna makethis serious in a second.

Yeah.
So I think, um.
First of all, I am Orthodoxand I can tell Why didn't

that?

Yeah, we, I mean, you know, serves, serves our Orthodox
and we definitely eat soup.
In fact, when I was, uh, young, mygrandmother who had herself observed
levels of manliness, just FYI, soshe would like force feed me soup.
Before the meal, it was like,if you didn't eat soup, this
was like obsession of Serbiangrandmothers was to feed you soup.

(04:39):
So I don't understand why soup inthe American version of, uh, Russian
orthodoxy is, um, is not manly.
But, uh, so first of all, for those ofyou who don't know, um, Christianity
has many different denominations.
The two main ones before Martin Luthercame along and like protested the
two, um, were Catholic and Orthodox,uh, roughly split along the borders

(05:06):
effectively of the Byzantine Empire.
Uh, and the difference between thetwo, and this is important 'cause a
lot of people don't understand it.
Uh, whenever I say I'm Orthodox, they'relike, oh, you're Russian Orthodox.
It's like, no, no,that's not how it works.
Um, in the eastern part of Europe,uh, most countries basically have
their own, uh, orthodox religion.

(05:30):
So think of it the way thatAnglicans, for example, exist.
Um, you know, it, it's muchmore associated with the state
itself, the nation state.
And so you have Armenian Orthodox,you have Bulgarian Orthodox, you
have Russian Orthodox, uh, do nothave, of course Ukrainian Orthodox,
which was controversial, um, SerbianOrthodox, uh, and so on and so on.

(05:51):
Greek Orthodox, of course,also very important.
You have several other denominationsand they're all, um, essentially equal.
Although the Archbishop ofConstantinople is still like Titularly.
Uh, above all of them, youknow, uh, but, but not really.
They're, they're pretty much all equal.
So each one of thesegroups has its own pope.

(06:14):
Uh, anyways, this particular offshootin the US that's gaining a lot of,
uh, uh, followers is the RussianOrthodox Church outside of Russia.
So the diocese, I guess, would whatbe, what we would call it, is it's an
offshoot of the Russian, uh, church.
It's not the American Orthodox Church,which I actually also believe exists.

(06:36):
Um, anyways, long story short, um,because, uh, Russia's so manly,
you know, um, there is, I guess,appeal, um, for people to join
this Russian Orthodox Church.
And I thought that was really interestingbecause later embedded in this article,
um, is basically this interesting link.

(07:01):
Um, to a web, to a website run by the,I think, Russian Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, where you can go and get a visa.
You can get a visa for, um, join, uh,for basically residency in Russia.
Uh, that's a path to permanentresidency for like-minded

(07:23):
individuals from countries.
And they list the countries andthe countries are effectively
all from, um, from the west.
Um, it's not like anyRussia adjacent countries.
Um, it's just targeted towards thewest to attract immigrants, like
wine minded, conservative, you know,people who believed in manliness.

(07:47):
Is, I guess, not eating soup andnot wearing skinny jeans, obviously,
even though one would argue perhapsthat you have to be, you have to
achieve giga levels of manlinessto pull off skinny jeans in 2025.
That's, you know, some would saythat, some would say that's how you
achieve giga, levels of manliness.
But yeah, so like the Russian foreignministry has this website, um, and this

(08:10):
visa program that allows you to join, uh,basically Russia and get, uh, residency.
And it was in this article, Iguess because, uh, you know, it's,
it's this whole wave that's now,uh, started, uh, it's on YouTube.
It's a guess in the Russian Orthodox, uh,offshoot of Russia standing as a bulwark
for Western, uh, traditional values.

(08:35):
Um.
I don't know what to say about that.
It seems weird.

Well, yeah, it's called, it is called the shared
values visa, which is remarkable.
And it's like got pictures of like aballerina and like beautiful, you know,
uh, beautiful scenery inside Russia.
I don't see any pictures oflike, Siberia here, for example.
It's like some beautiful, like rockfixture in the middle of a lake.
Um, I, I think there are like acouple interesting things here.

(09:01):
The first is like the history of theRussian Orthodox Church in general, um,
is actually extremely geopolitical andit's, it's really relevant to, to Vladimir
Putin and all the things that he's done.
And Vladimir Putin, you cankind of tell is obsessed with
this idea of manliness too.
Not just conservativeness, but manliness.
Like always needing to be out withhis shirt off, riding the horses,

(09:22):
like jumping in the cold water.
Like he's always had to projectthis image of being super manly
and super strong all the time.
Um.
And I think part of it is thatfor most of the 20th century, the
Russian Orthodox Church was on theouts with the Russian government.
The Russian Orthodox Church had reallydeep ties with the Czars, and it was sort
of the Czars and the Russian OrthodoxChurch, like, I don't know, like governed

(09:44):
as a little bit too strong, but theyworked hand in hand to maintain Russia.
Uh, but the communist wantednothing to do with religion.
Uh, I'll, I'll, I'll take a, a Lenin quotehere outta my bag that he wrote in 1905.
Quote.
Religion is a kind of spiritualgin in which the slaves of capital
drown their human shape and theirclaims to any decent human life.
End quote.
Probably Lenin would be eating soup and,uh, in, in skinny jeans in Moscow right

(10:08):
now as he's, as he's blogging that.

Yes.

Um, and like, I don't know when the, when the
communists first take power, there'ssort of this uneasy relationship
with the Russian Orthodox Church.
Um, the Russian Orthodox Church is allowedto rally Russian patriotism in World War
II and the fight against Nazi Germany.
But in 59 Khrushchevbasically says no more.
We are gonna be a real communist,basically atheist state.

(10:32):
And the Russian Orthodox Church sort ofhas to go underground and Putin turns
that around when he takes power andwhen he's trying to sort of rebuild
a sense of Russian nationalism.
He really does inject the RussianOrthodox Church, um, with a lot more
importance and gives them free reign.
And sort of the same way hegave ProGo free reign with
the, um, with the mercenaries.

(10:53):
He gave the Russian Orthodox Churchfree reign to go about and spread,
uh, as you sort of say Russia'svalues throughout the Orthodox world.
And apparently he's tryingto spread it throughout.
Of the United States too.
I, I don't think it's gonna dothat much in the United States.
Um, but you know, like, uh, therewas some Pew data that showed that,
uh, you know, Orthodox Christiansin the United States are 64% male,

(11:16):
which is up from 46% in 2007.
So, so something is happening likemen are flocking, uh, to this Orthodox
church in some meaningful way.
And I guess.
I guess he's articulating something.
I find the description of his, ofFather Moses and this particularly
masculine orthodoxy that he'sdescribing, pretty boring.

(11:36):
He is like saying you can either,you can serve God by being a nun
or a monk or by getting married.
Uh, he says you shouldnot use any birth control.
Masturbation is pathetic and unmanly.
Uh, he doesn't want his services tofeel like a Taylor Swift concert.
Okay.
Um, he says The look at the languageof worship music, it's all emotion.
That's not men.
Okay.
Bullshit.

(11:57):
Uh, but fine.
Like, it's just, it's just likevery sort of normal, retrograde,
patriarchal, conservative, like fluff.
But I guess that's what people want.
I don't know.

So there's, there's a couple of things where we can take
this and I definitely wanna take itto the visa, uh, the value visa that
Russia has, which is fascinating.
Uh, you know, I encourageeveryone to go to the website.
Uh, I mean, BBC does as well, which, which

that was funny to go to the website.
We do not, we do not suggest that youapply for the Russian value visa, or I
guess you could do whatever you want.
Y'all are all, you

do whatever you want.
I mean, why not?
Like it's a free market.
Um, I guess, and just the pictures thatthey show ballerina, the cre uh, the
Kremlin, um, and also just this likepicture of a family that got from, from
like a stock photo, um, of just, you know,a man holding a baby, a woman holding a

(12:49):
child, and they're holding hands, runningthrough, I guess wheat fields in Russia.
So, um, couple of things.
First of all, I do think that menand boys are, are clearly lost.
There's a great book by RichardReeves called Of Boys and Men, which
I would encourage ev everyone to read.
And in fact, effectively itargues that, um, it know one

(13:12):
of the problems is that, um.
Just genetically speaking andbiologically speaking, women and girls
develop faster than men mentally.
Um, and so what happens in competitionin education is that quite often
girls are going to outperform boys.
Now, in the past, the way that we, uh,didn't allow this to happen is we, what's

(13:38):
the word, discriminated against women.
That's right.
That was their solution forthousands of years of human history.
We basically just discriminated women.
Um, but because we don't actually do thatanymore, or not to like the extent it
happened in the past, what's showing upin test scores, in educational results,

(13:58):
in job opportunities, especially in aheavy service oriented economy, is the
fact that, you know, girls Rule as thefirst chapter of the book is titled.
Now, Richard Reeves is notsome right wing ideologue.
Um, he's actually, um, Ithink, uh, what is he exactly?
Um, I don't think he's just an author.

(14:19):
Uh oh, no, he is, um, he is a socialscientist, senior fellow at the
Brooking I institution, president ofthe American Institute for Boys and Men.
Um, which I have to say sounds weird.
Uh, has a PhD, I thinkin, um, oh, a geography.
Uh, interesting, interestingpath to write about this.

(14:40):
But, you know, he's not, uh, Imean, you know, he works for the
Brookings Institution, like he's,he's not some weird YouTube show
or a podcaster, if you will.
Um, and so his book is not somesort of call to go back in time.
He's just trying to fix this,uh, this issue that's coming up.
And then nobody is verycomfortable talking about, you're

(15:02):
not comfortable talking aboutit, because if you talk about.
Boys and men falling behind,you're somehow anti-feminist.
You know, and I think one of the mostinteresting thing that Reeves argues
is that that's not the case at all.
You can be a feminist and you canalso just identify ways in which
men and boys in today's modernsociety are starting to fall behind.

(15:23):
But why do I bring this book up?
I bring this book up, first of all,because it's an interesting one, and
I like reading different perspectives.
But diff the other issue is that, um,Reeves is right, and that's why there's
such appeal to new forms of achieving ubermanliness, you know, in a world where boys

(15:45):
fall behind the school, uh, and then endup, you know, um, you know, facing law
schools and medical schools where a vastmajority are not women, uh, who graduate
from those programs, which is fine.
Like that's all good and, and fine.
But like the point is there is.
There is something missing.
And I think it's being filledincreasingly by ideologies and new

(16:09):
religious cults or new religions, uh,and new appeals to how to become a man,
you know, new, new sort of, uh, ways.
And I think it's an interestingpoint that I don't think we've all
accepted as the source of the newideological tensions in the world.
I think that's something that like,is not being discussed enough.

(16:31):
In other words, we're in a post-industrialsociety, this appeal of bringing
back manufacturing to the us there'spart of it that makes sense from
a national security perspective.
You should be able to build carsif you one day have to build tanks.
Okay.
Steel, aluminum, I get it.
Yeah.
Steel aluminum are reallyimportant in a war.
So there are ways to justify, you know,tariffs through national security.

(16:53):
But when you start asking forbicycles and like, you know.
I don't know, like toasterovens to be built in America.
You have to step back and be like,okay, well what is this about?
And then you realize, well, it'sabout the fact that, you know, for
a lot of men who are not very welleducated and can't really do service
jobs, um, what is there to do?

(17:17):
So I do think that this, this issue,this socio, you know, biological
issue that we have in our society ofmen and boys falling behind in 2025
is not just a silly sort of a meme.
It's also underpinning a lotof the, uh, policies that are
being shaped by right of center.

(17:38):
Um.
Parties across the world.

Yeah, we, we talked about Israel Palestine last time, so now we're
gonna talk about, uh, the, you know, this,uh, we're, we're just flirting with the,
with cancel stuff all over the place.
I, it, it's funny, I think there's a lotof different things you can attribute
this to, and I don't know which one it is.
I'm, I feel like it's a cop outto say, oh, it's all of them,
but maybe it's just all of them.
But like, on my list of thingsthat could be driving this, um.

(18:05):
Uh, there's a couple different ones.
Number one is just like the sort ofwith the, with the, with the end of the
Cold War and the victory of capitalism.
Like we can go back to, to Lenin andthe gin of the masses and just say
like, yeah, like all of this, likeGodlessness and just consumer culture
and bye byebye, and do whatever you want.
Like there is like a moral centerthat seems to have gone away.
And if you look at decadesof declining religious rates.

(18:28):
Um, like that's in there.
It could also be driven by the internet.
Like people are not hangingout in person anymore.
They're hanging out andplaying video games.
They're, they're not, uh, when GeorgeKennon was writing in the 1950s about how
much better the United States is in theSoviet Union, one of his key indicators
was Americans hang out with each other.
They go to bowling leagues.
They have like natural affiliationsand institutions where they do stuff

(18:49):
together and they're not worried aboutthe KGB taking and, you know, arresting
them and putting them in the gulag.
They just want to go bowl andlike do whatever they wanna do.
Like that has really gone away, uh,manufacturing and agriculture, like
two of the manliest jobs out there.
Even if you are making bikes likesteel and aluminum, really manly,
being in the field doing stufflike really manly doing stuff with
elec, uh, electrician work like.

(19:11):
Yeah.
You know, all that, all thosejobs have gone away and they've
been considered bad and they'vesort of been considered low end.
And as to your point, the manufacturingjobs are not even really there anymore.
I wonder if the universityhas something to do with this.
Um, and you can see, I think with theway that MAGA is cool with the, the
Trump administration literally shootingthe United States in its own foot,

(19:31):
like I really do think 10 years fromnow, when we talk about the long-term
impact of the Trump administration,the attack on US universities that is
happening right now is gonna be the.
Biggest thing that negativelyimpacts the US going forward.
But you can feel in how the MAGAmovement treats, um, the academy, that
they think there is something wimpy,whether it's critical race theory
or, you know, all these other things.

(19:51):
Like there's something there.
And I would tie that to the issue ofmanliness with, you know, it used to
be, um, that only the, not the bestand the brightest that the upper
crust of society went to university.
Like university was finishing schoolfor the men of the aristocracy
or for the upper classes.
Like people like Franklin Delano Rooseveltwent to university because it was sort
of, oh, you were on the short list ofsomebody that could run the country.

(20:13):
I think for better mostly, butfor better and for worse, like the
university has been democratized.
Not only can anybody go to university,everybody should go to university.
And we'll tip the scale so that nomatter where you are, how intelligent
you are, everybody deserves the samechance to go to university and get
a liberal arts degree, even thoughthat's not necessarily what you need.
So I think that's in there.
And then feminism is in there too.
And women saw women wantedto have money of their own.

(20:36):
They wanted to have careers of their own.
Uh, I always crib from um, ChristopherHitchens who said, if you want the,
the most surefire way to cure povertyin the world, empower women, give them
access, like, and give them power oftheir, their own biological clock.
Every single society that has done that,um, has enriched itself massively, uh,
going forward, which actually cuts againstthis idea that Russia shared values, the

(20:59):
woman has to go back into the house andbreed while the men do manly things and,
and build things and stuff like that.
There's an interestingjuxtaposition there too.
And then, I know I'm rambling,but the last thing is just,
it's also not just the, like theRussians and the shared values.
Like this has been an obsession ofElon Musk's and sort of the rights
for some time in the United States.
Like I can go back to three, fouryears ago where Musk is talking about

(21:23):
population collapse due to low birthrates being a much bigger risk to
civilization than things like globalwarming or things like geopolitics.
And you've got like this coterie of yourJoe Rogans and your Dave Portnoy and your
Chris Williamsons, all of whose podcastsI would happily appear on so that I could
connect with the misguided male youth.
But they're all out there, like inthis very, muscular is the wrong word.

(21:44):
It's like a very simplistic, like avery sort of empty bro culture that
a lot of people listen to becausethey relate to it 'cause they feel
like it's a quote unquote safe space.
So I don't know.
I'm trying, I'm like throwingthings out at the wall trying to
figure out what the why is and weprobably won't be able to do it.

But no, I think, I think what's what's fascinating about this
is that this is one of the thingsthat I think is happening in the
world right now on almost every issue.
Um, and what I mean by that is that.
There is a challenge to the conventionalwisdom, and it's usually set, uh,
right of center, um, and the liberalleft and the progressive mainstream

(22:21):
ignores it and basically says it'sa slippery slope towards a racist
eugenics, like Nazi fascist state.
And so it refuses to discuss it, and thenit's just remains in the right wing domain
where it leads to a Nazi fascist state.
So what do I mean, what do I mean by this?

(22:44):
Um, like climate change I think is avery similar topic where, um, climate
change obviously is clearly happening.
But is it going to cookus by next Tuesday?
Are we all gonna die by next Tuesday?
Eh, I'm not sure that that's the case.
And no, driving a Tesla doesn'tmake you better human being.
It actually makes you stupider ifyou are driving a Tesla in part

(23:04):
of the country where electricityis not derived from alternatives.
So you're just a moron who's driving apiece of technology with 200 kilograms
of metals that somebody had to dugout, dig out of the ground, take to
China, refine it and send it to you.
So that's a good exampleto me of, of an issue.
Similarly with this, and what Ifind, uh, fascinating with Richard
Reese's book, which I've readby the way I just checked up.

(23:26):
He worked for Nick Clegg.
I mean, you know, like he was theleader of the liberal Democrats in the
United Kingdom, deputy Prime Minister.
I mean like mm-hmm.
He is not a right wing lunatic.
So for all of you who have not heardof this book of Boys and Men, no, it's
not some right wing appeal to likesubjugate women, but what he does is
he presents data and says, Hey look,boys are falling behind in education.

(23:49):
There's nothing like wrong with that.
Like, you know, they just develop alittle bit later than women, but we
send them to school at the same time.
And they compete for entry exams atuniversities, very competitive at
18, and they are not yet ready tocompete with 51% of the humans who
are developed earlier than them.
So then they fall behind and then we,they fall through the cracks, and then

(24:12):
they're left to be caught by the YouTubersand podcaster that you were mentioning,
and apparently the Russian OrthodoxChurch of America, which offers them
a path to Uber, levels of manliness.
But what I find interesting, andwhere I wanna point a finger to is
to the left, is to the liberals,because they're the ones that are

(24:33):
unwilling to even debate this issue.
In many ways.
And I actually, the way I found outabout Reeves is I watched him on,
on a couple of, like comedy talkshows where he was basically being
made fun of by the interviewer.
Like mm-hmm.
All really, like, men are falling behind.
And he's like, no, no, I'mactually serious about this.
You know, like, here's this book,you know, and they're like, ha

(24:55):
ha, ha, uh, and he's like, no, butseriously, we need to talk about this.
And if we don't talk about it,then the men who fall through
the cracks or the boys are goingto find ways to be, to fulfill
themselves, to be manly on YouTube.
And I think this is, this issomething where Donald Trump and
the MAGA movement are kind of right.

(25:16):
You know, it's, it's this, it's, it's,it's this, um, failure to debate, failure
to recognize something is a problem thatthen leads to people reaching for the
Russian Orthodox Church as a solution.
To their problems.
And it's, it's, it's the unwillingnessoften of, um, the establishment

(25:41):
writ large to debate the issuessimilarly with climate change,
mitigation of climate change.
You know, like, um, as somebody wholives in Los Angeles, who's, uh,
who's, uh, basically, you know, aplace where I live almost burned down.
Uh, I can tell you that I don't wantthe mayor of my city going to cop.

(26:02):
Mm-hmm.
Like she needs to stay in thistown and make sure that there's
mitigation to climate change.
'cause it's happening.
You know, like state officialslike Governor of California should
not be going to an internationalconference in climate change.
Sorry, bro.
Sorry.
You know, come on.
My podcast, come at me.
We'll talk about it.

(26:23):
But Governor Newsom should stay hereand mitigate for what's gonna happen.
Sitting there and pretending it'snot happening, you know, and that
we can still mitigate it throughEVs in like Bulgaria is nonsense.
You need to make sure that there'senough water in like fire hydrants
for example, so that mitigation occursagain, a very similar problem that we

(26:43):
have in our society where there's anissue and it just doesn't get handled
because the waste to handle it actuallyundermines the bigger, bigger story.
Um, so this is one of those things andI find it, you know, fascinating that
we've basically gotten to a point.
You know, some young man, um, has norecourse to anything else other than
to listen to Joe Rogan bench pressand join the Russian Orthodox Church.

Yeah.
Um, yeah, I'm here in New Orleansground zero for climate change.
And exactly to your point, like, you know,there have been so many plans about how
to deal with living close to water andinvariably none of the plans get made.
They just build some more pumpsand some construction company gets
a backend deal and, and whatever.
Um.
I, I guess, um, you know, youwere talking about the left.
I, I wanna protect some part of the leftbecause I don't know if you saw this.

(27:30):
Did you see that Bernie Sanders wenton Andrew Schultz's podcast, um, a
couple weeks ago and was getting majorflack on the left for going on there
because like people accused him ofbeing a racist and things like that?
I would, I would encourage peopleto go watch the episode itself.
It got over a million views.
Um, but he did, I mean, he did whatBernie always does, which is Bernie.
This is the thing I like about Bernie.
Even if I disagree with 60% of what comesout of his mouth, he's always the same.

(27:52):
He's always authentic.
Like he's telling you exactlywhat he thinks and he basically is
like, don't get me on this hole.
I'm a racist thing.
I think that this is a class issueand I think poor people have been
taken for a ride in this country,and I think we need to deal with
inequality in all these different ways.
Don't distract me with all this bullshit.
I was marching in thesixties and seventies, like,
I'm not, I'm not that guy.
I hate that I'm beingpigeonholed like that.

(28:13):
But to your point, like Bernie waslike kept on the outside, uh, in that.
And that 2016 election was sortof thrown into the populous bag,
pushed to the side, pushed as, asthis person who wasn't relevant.
When there is, there is avoice on the left that is
willing to sort of confront it.
And there it's, it's less about, um,or, or the thing that he's really
focusing on there is the establishment.

(28:34):
And, and this is where the, the sort ofTrump thing breaks down because it's, you
know, Trump promised to drain the swampand to get rid of the establishment,
to challenge conventional views.
And o okay.
Like, with you, with you, with you,except like the level of like, of like
propping up the establishment and thegrift that we're seeing out of this White
House is just like absolutely shocking.
And that doesn't seem to matter to people.

(28:54):
But, uh, last point, just, um, youknow, it was shocking at the time that
Kamala Harris wouldn't go on Joe Rogan'spodcast like she had Trump on and
like, she, well, no, correct me then.
'cause she didn't, my understandingwas that she didn't wanna go on,

she, no, uh, Joe Rogan addressed this, uh, on his
podcast, I think, and it was, uh.
She basically said, look, you have tofly to us and I'll give you an hour.
And he was like, no, no.
The whole point of this is you have tocome to my like physical location, be
here for like three hours and it's whenthis thing gets into that two and a half

(29:31):
hours, that's when you start losing, youknow, your, your composure and that's
when you see the real stuff, you know?
And, and I thought that was fair.
Um, on his, you know, this ishow he does it and, you know, she
has to do what he wants, but theyrefuse to accept those conditions.
And then Trump was like,

already, it's the same thing like Kamala Harris.
Kamala Harris.
Like if he hadn't invited her,Kamala Harris should have been
begging to get on that show.
She should have been trying to reachall those people that were listening
and instead by saying, no, they justgave another platform to Trump and gave
all those, anybody who was looking toRogan like a Oh, okay, like Trump is
brave enough to come on here and talkto this guy, and the other one isn't.

(30:10):
That's like all I really need to know.
And I, I don't want this to be a JoeRogan love session, but I will say
like, I listen to him every once in awhile, honestly, when I have trouble
falling asleep gets me right to sleep.
Um, but, um, I think.
I think he does a reallygood job of opening space
for interesting conversation.
He's not afraid of looking like an idiotand asking stupid questions sometimes

(30:31):
to smart people, sometimes to peopleI regard as absolutely batshit insane.
But like, he opens up aspace for conversation.
And I think there is like a realdesire for like, oh, like you
could say whatever you want.
Like you'll, you'll, like, itdoesn't matter how dumb the view
is, like you can learn or that's agateway drug into actually learning
something rather than being takenby Father Moses to stop jacking off.

(30:54):
And, uh, no, that's,

so, okay, so here's some homework for our,
uh, for our, for our fans here.
Um, so first of all, go and watch,uh, Richard Reeves' interview, uh,
of Boys and Men and reframing debatesabout gender on the Daily Show.
Uh, this got, I think, uh, 267,000 views.

(31:15):
It's on YouTube and he'sbasically interviewed, um.
By Desi Lid, who is one of the anchorsof the Daily Show, rotating anchors.
And effectively, like, it's a hilariousinterview because this guy who worked
for Nick Clegg of the Liberal DemocraticParty of the United Kingdom, probably

(31:36):
the most socially liberal party in theUnited Kingdom, um, wrote a book that
says that boys have fallen behind and Desilytic can't stop by making fun of him.
You know, it's like, thisis ridiculous, right?
Like, but men are toxic.
Um, and he has a real problem with the,the term toxic masculinity, you know?

(31:57):
Um, and he makes a really good point,which is that we have basically decided
that this is a ridiculous conversation.
Anyone who has a conversation aboutboys falling behind is clearly a right
wing lunatic, and therefore we'regonna just let them join the Russian
Orthodox Church of America and you know,God, and then, and then learn how to.

(32:19):
Become men from, frommuch, much worse options.
And that's, I think that's wherethe establishment really is.
Deaf and, you know, um, how to raise boys,how to, how to integrate men into society
when you know the easy jobs are gone.
That's a really important issueand shouldn't be left to YouTubers

(32:42):
and podcasters and, you know,various like Reddit threads to solve

so that, well, and I don't know how you've, I don't know how
you feel about this, arguably is goingto get much worse if the promise of AI
is everything that people say it is.
Okay.
So first it came for the manufacturingjobs, but how about the lawyers and the
architects and the engineers and the, evensome of the doctors and things like that?
Like what happens when,

well, most doctors and lawyers are now women.
Jacobs so.

You know?
Well, okay.
Like, it's gonna come for them too.
I'm just saying like, you've alreadygot like this like, like tip, like,
like they're losing like professionalavenues for accomplishment.
Like what happens when, well, thereis an anecdote, I've said this on my
other podcast where, um, some, somefriends that I have in North Dakota,
the, the men in the, like the young boyscollege age don't want to go to college.

(33:32):
They want to go to electricianschool or trade school or whatever
else, and just make a hundred grandor 150 grand, be an electrician and
they're totally happy with that.
Or be a stone mason orsomething like that.

Yeah.
Well that's not a bad idea.
I mean, I think that that's where oneof the things that President Trump
said was that he wants to redirect thisfunding from Harvard to trade schools.
So, I mean, there isn't, thereis, there is an argument for that.
Um.
Obviously it doesn't have to beredirected from Harvard, but the truth
is that in Germany, for example, noteverybody does get to go to university.

(34:02):
Uh, I mean, you, you get a chance,but, uh, if you're not good enough,
um, quite a, quite a lot of peopleend up going to a two year program.
I don't wanna call it a trade school.
It's not necessarily a trade school.
It can be a two yearprogram for hospitality.
It can be, uh, you know, a twoyear program for like a, like
an accelerated business degree.
The point is there is otheralternatives other than the university.

(34:24):
Um, but, but you know, what's, what'sinteresting to me about all this is
that, um, it, it requires I think,acceptance of some of the problems.
For example, with climate change,it is very expensive to transition
to an electronic vehicle, electricvehicle, you know, so we need
to take that into account.
Putting taxes and gasoline, uh, maymake sense if you are in the city.

(34:49):
Fine.
Like totally got it.
You may not need to go to target withyour car, like take public transportation,
but if you live in a rural part of theUnited States of America, um, you know,
you may believe in climate change, youmay wanna mitigate it, but you don't
have public transportation systems.
So that's not the best wayto mitigate this issue.
For example, all I'm saying about thisis that I do think there's callousness.

(35:12):
That's what I would say.
I think the left.
Mm-hmm.
And the liberal mainstream hasbeen callous when it comes to these
issues, dismisses them as nonsensicaland doesn't wanna discuss them.
And I think this 15 minuteinterview between Richard Reeves
and Desi Lytic is like a perfectexample of that callousness.
Now, God bless her, she's a comic.

(35:34):
It's not her job tointerview the man properly.
Um, but I thought that that was,that was a very, very good, uh,
way to kind of think about this.
And that's why this BBC article,you know, comics, uh, attention.
That's why we spend 35 minutes.
Basically talking about it because, um,BBC, I mean, on one hand, really good
job on shining a light in this issue.

(35:56):
On the other hand, they aremaking fun of it themselves.
They're saying like, look at theseidiots in central Texas, you know,
finding appeal in Russian orthodoxy.
Like, how, how stupid is that?
But what they're not really, uh,examining, and it's not their job,
they're just journalists, but what they'renot examining is why, why do mm-hmm.
You know, young men starting familiesfind a need to, you know, like appeal to

(36:20):
some sort of a higher power in order tofeel, uh, comfortable with who they are.
And that's, and that's I think, a deepersocial issue that's maybe at the crux of
almost all of our increasing, you know,increasing levels of, of toxic ways to
achieve Uber manliness, which includes,uh, toxic forms of nationalism, jingoism.

(36:42):
You know, trade tensions, a lotof this stuff at its root cause
may be a biological reality.
We have finally broken down discriminationagainst women, and that's awesome.
Yeah.
And not all of it, again,it's not perfect, but we've
broken down a lot of it.
But that has created this interestingconsequence, which is that men and

(37:02):
women don't develop at the same pace.
And so by the time they're 18 yearsold, men should be behind, given the
biological realities of the two of them.
And I think that's fascinating.
And Dan might be, and, andit really, yeah, sorry.
Uh, permanent gendering almost ofpolitics, you know, which is, uh,
which, which is not a good thing.

(37:23):
That is not, you know, politicsshould not be gendered.

Well, and going back to our Russian values visa, like there's a reason
that Vladimir Putin, like made Ukraine,like, you know, he wanted to deify them,
but also that Ukraine was like, you know,this source of like sexual promiscuous.
And there's, you know, gay people runningaround Kyiv and they've abandoned the
values of Russian Orthodoxy and like, wehave to get the back into the Russian fo.
Like this was part of the rhetoricalcocktail that justified this, and

(37:49):
as Russian men going to fight.
So that's what you're, you're gettingif you get the Russian value piece.

I love the way you put it.
Put that again, what kind of cocktail?

What did I I I've, I've already blacked out.
What did I say?

Well, no, I mean, it's, it's this toxic cocktail.
You're right.
That definitely got, um, usedfor Russia versus Ukraine.
But, but even the tariffs, even thisidea of bringing manufacturing back
to the US it appeals to a sort of alost individual sitting somewhere in
Oklahoma or Indianapolis or whatever,and saying to themselves like, Hey,

(38:20):
if only we didn't have globalization,I would be in a better spot.
And first of all, that's ridiculousbecause when we do return manufacturing
to America, you are not gonna bein that factory unless it's to oil
the automated robots, you know?
So like you will stillnot have a good job.
Whoever you are out there, but I'mpretty sure you're not listening

(38:41):
to Jacob Shapiro and Marco Bob.
Um,

you know, and, and this, this was actually like on Fox News.
Like, uh, Fox News has Jesse Waters.
He did a whole segment, uh, what was this?
In, in April.
The segment was, could Trump's tariffsbe the ultimate testosterone boost?
He's called everything fromgrocery shopping to eating
soup in public feminine.
I wonder if he's visitingwith Father Moses.
Uh, and you know.

Like you are.
So, I dunno, I

make a great soup.
I mean, you're outside ridiculous.

You're working, there's like smoke billowing out of the soup.
Like this is, this is very manly.
Like you try eating a soupmade by a Serbian grandmother.
God.

But listen.
And, and he said when you, hesaid, when you sit behind a screen
all day, it makes you a woman's.
Studies have shown this.
And then there was another, uh, anotherperson who came on the program that
said that Trump's trade policies, toyour point, we'll fix the crisis of
masculinity stemming from the lossof manual labor jobs in America.
So this is not academic.
Like if you're listening to thisand being like, uh, Marco and Jacob
retired, they're, they're searchingfor something to talk about.

(39:41):
No, no, no, no.
This is like actually the top of the fold.
Like in, like, not just in the Joe Roganuniverse, in the Fox news universe,
in the mainstream like right wing

universe.
Well see.
But see, this is what I'm getting at.
Now we can sit here andmake fun of it, right?
Or we can say, okay, okay, okay.
But like, but why does it appeal?
First of all, I just gotta be very clear.
There will be no expansionof manufacturing jobs in the
United States of America.
It's not gonna happen.
It is not gonna happen.
Zero chance that that happens.
Zero.
Let's, you know, I'llfind anyone about it.

(40:11):
Um, and I ate soup from a Serbiangrandmother, so come get me.
You know, like, and so like, so, okay,so five years from now, when we look at
the numbers and we see like there was alittle bit of a hiccup in manufacturing
jobs, the point is the policy appealsto this, like bringing testosterone
back to America and then, you know,the liberal left and establishment
will say, well, this is stupid.

(40:31):
There won't be any jobs inAmerica because Mark was right.
It's automation.
But we still haven't solved the fact thata bunch of dudes find this appealing and
they find it appealing because of the kindof things that Richard Reeves talks in
his book, not some right wing, lunatic,centrist, liberal, Democrat from the
United Kingdom with a PhD in geography.

(40:52):
You know what I mean?
Like this guy is.
Just presenting facts.
Yeah.
Um, and we don't want to talk about thosefacts because it somehow makes you less of
a feminist or less pro women to point outthat boys are falling behind in education.
And this, I can't stand this, Ican't stand this as an analyst 'cause
this is what I do for a living.
I'm just an analyst.
I analyze problems and I hate itwhen certain problems are colored

(41:16):
by politics and you're not allowedto even bring those problems up.
Um, because it makes you somehow, youknow, not member of the establishment,
which I obviously couldn't care less.
'cause my clients pay me a lot of moneyto not be part of the establishment.
And

really what we really, what we need is all these young men
to come listen to the two, the twowhite cousins talk to each other about
these issues and real, this is whereyou will learn the art of manliness.
Should we change the tag for the podcast?
Like discovering the Art

of Man?
Oh yes.
Uber Manliness comes from listeningto Jacob Shapiro and Marco Parker.
First of all, ranking a global powersby geopolitics is pretty manly.
I'm gonna say.
Um, of course.
And I mean, and also like, youknow, ranking the most geopolitical
like sport movement moments.
Like Yeah.
I, I think, I think we're manly.
Um, and I think it's funny tobe manly, by the way, and I

(42:06):
think that's, uh, I think we're

manly.

I think

we're manly.

Please, uh, validate my masculinity.
Okay,

well I'll, I'll, I'll get us outta here on, on one personal
story, or, or you can, you can respond toit, which is, 'cause I, I, I'm gonna go
read this book that you rec recommendedwith Reeves, and I went through my list
of like, potential reasons for this.
But the, it sounds like from the bookthat you mentioned that he's really
talking about, it's actually a biological,physical thing, the way that's education
structures are set up The beginning.
The beginning, yeah.
The beginning.
Okay.

(42:34):
And then, then he getsinto the other stuff.

Why do girls crush it?
Like that's the idea.
Like girls are crushing it and it's, youknow, because they're biologically more
advanced at the early part of their life.
They just, uh, they mature faster.
Which by the way, if you have children,when I, I have two daughters, well,
and I have two daughters and a son.
And I remember going to my wife when myson was about 18 months old, and I said

(42:59):
like, we should, we should get him tested.
I think, I think, I think, you know,there's something mentally wrong with him.
And she went to me and she'slike, no, he's just a boy.
And your first child was a girl and soyou're anchoring to her development.
And I was like.
Oh, okay.
So not wrong.

(43:20):
Like I've lived the experience,but I've also lived and before,
uh, sorry to No, no, you're good.
Interject with my personal story to yours.
Um, this is very personal to me becauseI have witnessed in the educational
system across both Quebec and California,subtle ways in which young boys
are being discriminated sometimes,sometimes for just being like, you know,

(43:43):
neurotic little, you know, shitheads.
They're just being, you know, likein, in the case of my son as, as an
example, I mean, I was in a meetingin his kindergarten, you know, the
poor kids didn't speak any French.
And the kindergarten teacher, theprincipal and my wife kind of ganged up
on him and, uh, in, in ways that were likeprojecting societal problems on like, the

(44:07):
principal literally uttered the words.
Does he have problem respecting women?
Now, this is a five-year-old boy.
You know, and everybody in the room.
Every woman in the room waslike, kind of nodding knowingly.
And I was like, no, he's a 6-year-old.
He's 5-year-old.

(44:27):
Shithead.
He has trouble respectinganybody, you know?
Um, but anyways, that's, that's, that's,I think, uh, anyone who's actually
raised kids in today's world, I thinkcan, can relate to some of these issues.
And, uh.
And it's, you know, that's why it'sa very interesting topic for me.

Well, and just my personal anecdote on this, um, listeners may
know this, I don't know if you knowthis, uh, Marco, I was a proud member
of the Cornell University Glee Club.
I was also the Omega for twoyears in the row in the Glee Club.
So that meant that I had thelowest voice in the entire Cornell
University Glee Club for two years.
We would compete to seewho had the lowest voice.
That, by the way, makes me waymore manly than Father Moses.
I have sung the Rah Madoff Vespersand I can hit the low be flat.

(45:08):
Father Moses, I bet you can't do thatwith all of your aversion towards
soup and all of your nonsense.
Anyway, Cornell University Glee Clubwas an all male group when I was there.
And, um, it was honestly whereI learned not to be a shithead.
I was exposed to like all sorts of.
Male diversity and like it was okay tonot only was it okay to feel things,
you had to feel things in order to singwell and to be a good musician and like

(45:32):
unpacking all of the baggage of you're notsupposed to be feeling, you're supposed
to be masculine, you're not like, likethe Glee Club was like where most of
that stuff got rehabilitated for me andI learned that you could be emotional
and masculine at the same time anyway.
Like, not to make thislike a, a therapy session.
The reason I'm bringing it up.
It's because in the last couple of years,the Cornell University Glee Club, it's
not all male, and they've stripped allreferences to things like brotherhood

(45:54):
and fraternity and things like thatbecause they wanted to make it more
inclusive and they wanted anybody whowas the right voice part be able to
join the Cornell University Glee Club,even though there was also, there's
an all female group too, the Cornellversus cor, the Cornell University
Chorus and other like, you know, um,um, other choirs that you can join if
you want boys and girls or male andfemale voice parts and things like that.

(46:16):
And I'm just saying like, um, like,like maybe it's the biological
thing, maybe it's consumerism,maybe it's the loss of manufacturing
jobs, all these other things.
I just like the fact that in my ownlifetime I saw the institution that
like helped me work all the shit out.
Really no longer exists because it's notpolitically correct to have hey, just
dudes here, like just dudes figuringout how to be dudes and like in a

(46:39):
really productive, like really openlike way, but like that's not okay.
Yeah.
Everything.
Yeah.
I'm.

Uh, it, it, it is, it is a great example because I'm, I'm,
I'm positive I would bet anything Iown that the Cornell Glee Club is not
a source of toxic masculinity facts

and, and cured me of some of my own, like,
like boxes in that direction.
Yes.
You know?

Exactly.
Of course.
Yeah.
No, that's, that's a great example.
But, um, let's go tothe Visa for a second.
So, basically there's a clearproblem in, in the West that
you and I have identified.
Richard Reeves talks about it too.
Uh, we all understand it, whatto do with men and Russia goes
like, he, we've got a solution.
Come to Russia, you know,and you could be a man.

(47:25):
Um, and that got me thinking,first of all, God bless Russia.
All is fair in love and war.
I have no problem with the Visa program.
God bless you.
Yes, yes.
Do it.
In fact.
You know, if you don't feel comfortablebeing a man in America, go ahead,

(47:46):
pack your bags, go to Russia.
I have no problem.
It's a, it's a free world baby.
And if Vladimir is, is welcoming youto Russia and you wanna take him up, I
have absolutely no problem with this.
I would not impede, I would notpunish, I would not, I would not do
anything to people who wanna do this.
But

(48:08):
I think this is brilliantand I don't understand why
the west doesn't do the same.
You see, I think it's high time that,um, we separate immigration into buckets.
You know, you can have immigrationplan to bring labor into the country.
Fine.

(48:28):
Like, makes sense.
But why not have offensiveimmigration policy?
Like if you have a certain levelof education and you are from
a country that's an adversary,we want to like a vampire.
Suck your educated, smartpeople out of the country.
And so, you know, I've jokingly proposedthis in the past, like when Russia

(48:51):
invade Ukraine, I would've just said, Iwould've opened all the consulates, all
the embassies in Russia and said, Hey man,if you have a master's degree and above
like free green cards to America now, ofcourse there's like, no, there's gonna
be a ton of spies that come, like, comeacross the pond, obviously, obviously.
But eh, so what, you know,what does the FBI do anyways?

(49:13):
Like, there you go.
Jobs program.
Go, go make sure thesepeople are not spies.
The point is, I think that, um, whenyou, when you think about the West
versus Russia or versus China or versusany other adversary, I think it's a
fair point to say that the qualityof life is much better in the West.
I mean, anyone whodoesn't say that is like.

(49:33):
Clearly lost their marbles.
And the point is, yeah, I mean, I thinkthat what Russia is doing is a great
example of offensive immigration policy.
And um, God bless them,they're allowed to do that.
It is, like I said, all fair,all is fair in love and war.
I think the US should be adoptingthe same policy, but here we see the

(49:55):
ideological uniformity of the right wing.
We, we spent the first 45 minuteseffectively criticizing the ideological
rigidity and uniformity of the left.
The problem with the right is that it'shas its own ideological, sacred cause.
And one of them is immigrants arebad and immigration itself is some
sort of a tool, uh, with which theleft is trying to like, um, reduce

(50:20):
the white population of America.
But there is, there are, there areways in which immigration has in the
past been used, um, quite offensively.
And I think that this wouldbe one of the ways to do that.
So I actually, um.
I support the Russian, uh, what is it?
Value visa.
I think it's a great idea.
It's

a value visa.

Yes.
Value visa.
And I think that, um, you know, it,it's, it's not just a way to, um,
anger the American establishment.
I think it's a way for them to like,basically suck some talent into Russia.
But I, I don't think anyone'sreally gonna apply it to that visa.
I mean, it's gonna be very small.
I think if the reverse happened and ifthe West started appealing to really

(51:01):
smart, educated Russians, I thinkthat you would see, um, a huge exodus.
Huge.
And in fact, most of the Russians whoare educated, who are just trying to
work and raise families, they actuallymoved to places like Tbilisi in Georgia.
They moved to Belgrade in Serbia.
And, uh, it's, it's shockingthat the West is effectively

(51:23):
treating all Russians the same.
I mean, that's on some level.
Like ethicist, it's racist.
Similarly, with all Chinese treatingeveryone the same, if these are
your adversaries, if these are yourgeopolitical rivals, then absolutely
it makes sense to drain them of theirhuman capital and their talent by

(51:45):
making an appeal to them, making iteasier for them to come as international
students and as professionals.

Preaching to the choir, but the, the US is doing the exact opposite.
The US is basically making it impossiblefor, uh, you know, advanced students from
any countries to come to US universities.
So, so

let's pivot to that because I know that you're, uh, you're
interested in that, in that part.
Uh, you tweeted No, no, I, I,

I, I, I don't think we have to pivot to that.
I think we've got some other stuff totalk about, but just like, like it's,
it's shocking guys we're talking aboutthis, that like, like actually the
Trump administration is doing the exactopposite of what you're talking about.
Like, like, and maybe they, you know,uh, I saw, I think it was Rubio out there
claiming that they just need to expandsocial media vetting before they, you
know, restart student visa interviews.

(52:30):
But they've halted student visa interviewsfor the entire world trying to get to
US universities as they're like tryingto get, you know, trying to get funding
sources away from the universities.
And you're taking away that sweet, sweetinternational student like tuition.
Like it's just gonna, likeirrevocably change the face of US
science and it's gonna open up.
They're not gonna go for the Russianvalues visa, but Japan is trying
to attract more skilled labor.

(52:51):
Japan, like, like they'retrying to attract immigrants.
Like that's how, like long inthe tooth the situation is.
If China started doing this, like Ithink it would be really difficult
for people not to think aboutbeing at the cutting edge there.
Europe is the odds on favorite, or to yourpoint, Canada, like an odds on favorite
to like really profit from this, but like,no, listen, it's not what US is doing.
Listen,

just to be clear, just to be clear, there is a lot
of fraud, uh, and there is a lotof like, uh, non-productive ways.
Of attracting internationalstudents as well.
So Canada had this problemwith language programs.
Um, so basically you can just show up inCanada, get a student visa and like learn
English in Vancouver, but you're justreally partying and eventually you stay or

(53:32):
like, you know, you're a quote unquote thedrain on like social resources and so on.
I get that, I get that.
But there's ways to eliminate thatvacuous, non-productive source and pool
of international students and directthem towards the more productive.
And Canada's done that.
So Canada is actuallycutting international student

(53:53):
applications, uh, 10% this year.
Uh, but the effort is to keep theuniversity applications relatively
stable, uh, and eliminate those, youknow, semi fraudulent language programs.
Um, I think the US uh, Ithink maybe we've overreacted.
I. To this, maybe they are just likeintroducing social media vetting.

(54:14):
I don't think it's sustainable tonot attract international students.
Uh, I think we need to separatewhat's happening to Harvard
from the State Department issue.
And again, we'll, we'll see in 12 months.
Jacob, who's right, who's wrong?
You know, like, so I'm open, I'mopen to being obviously wrong
in this being like terrible.
Um, but I'm, I'm going even beyond that.
You know, what I'm saying is thatour entire immigration system can

(54:37):
be changed and not just of theUnited States of America, but also
of Europe and also of, uh, Canada.
And what I mean is that it can startto aggressively recruit educated and
well-trained professionals, you know,and, and not, and I think the, it,
it starts with a very simple point.
You cannot treat anyone, everyonewho's Russian, as if they themselves

(55:01):
approved and authorized andplanned the invasion of Ukraine.
And effectively that's what we're doing.
And it's benefiting countrieslike Georgia and Serbia.
You know, whereas it could be benefitingcountries like Germany, which do
need IT professionals desperately.
Um, and it's just a silly factthat this is, this is one of those

(55:22):
things where geopolitics has notbeen able to break through, uh,
very parochial domestic politics.

Yeah.
Um, you know, I think that maybe,uh, government should take a, they
should take a look at what the NBAdoes, like aggressively recruiting
talent throughout the entire world.
Get the best players into theNational Basketball Association.
And so the NBA becomes the bestbecause you find Giannis and
you find Victor, Victor, Ana.
Like, why shouldn't you just do thatwith immigration in general, you know?

(55:51):
Um, I feel like, was it not Germany?
There was a, I thought it was the eu.
Yeah, I mean, the EU actually acouple weeks ago, like launched a
new initiative to try and attractscientists and researchers.
To the block and I feel, I can'tfind it off the tip of, I'll have
to see if I'm just imagining it, butI believe, I thought it was Germany
or some European country was likebasically offering Russian, like

(56:14):
academics, like access to the countryif they needed it, like after the fact.
There you go.
But I can't, I can't find it.
Um, exactly.
Um, okay, we did an houron the Art of Manliness.
That's great.
Dealer's choice.
Marco, do you wanna talk about Bitcoinand crypto or do you wanna talk
about the big beautiful Bill first?

I think big, beautiful Bill, uh, Elon Musk was, uh.
Basically interviewed,um, uh, criticizing it.
He was of course the head ofDoge, which was supposed to
improve government efficiency.
And, um, he was surprised that the billincreases the deficit rather than def d
decreases it, which, you know, I don'tknow what planet he was on, uh, non Mars.

(56:52):
'cause you know, his Starshipblew up so we know it wasn't Mars.

He, he was wearing an Occupy Mars shirt, to which I
say, Elon, what are you waiting for?
Please go.
Sorry,

you, it was just, uh, it was just such a hilarious, like, oh
my God, this increases the deficit.
Of course it does.
Um, and it always was going to, um,I actually, uh, am gonna take a hot
take here, which is not a popular one.
Uh, whether you're a conservative ora liberal, um, I don't think it really

(57:23):
increases the deficit by that much.
I. You know, uh, this is not to saythat the US deficit is not very large.
It's between seven and 8% andit's going to be for the next
10 years, which is insane.
And it's insane, uh, not becausehaving an 8% deficit is a bad thing.
Um, but because there are moments whenyou need to expand your deficits to offset

(57:45):
the loss of private sector, um, you know,economic activity such as in a recession.
So when a recession happens,you should be in a deficit.
There's nothing bad with that.
You have to go into deficits to offsetand get the economy back on track.
And when you are at 8% deficitwith no recession, that's
a really bad place to be.

(58:07):
It means that you don't have any roomto stimulate if a recession happens.
And I wanna spend alittle bit of time, um.
Here.
A a lot of, a lot of my clients,very sophisticated investors, but
also just like regular people, youknow, or twitterati if you will.
Uh, a lot of people expect thereto be some sort of a calamity.

(58:27):
You know, there's gonna bea giant bond market riot
because the deficits are large.
Um, America is basically gonna default.
Uh, it doesn't have to actually happen.
It can just be a slow burn.
You know, you don't haveto have a heart attack.
You can just basically slowlydie over a period of 10 years.

(58:48):
Why?
Because interest rates are going toremain very elevated for the private
sector, which includes both corporates.
It also means you trying to buy ahome with a mortgage, you're gonna
have to lock in at a much higher rate.
And the reason for this is verysimple, when the government has a
lot of debt and it has to constantlyrefinance that debt in the markets.

(59:12):
Imagine it's like a governmenthaving a credit card.
Um, and that credit card is constantlycarrying like a $50,000, you know,
bill over and over every month.
The interest rate on that is goingto be, uh, very high, and there's
not gonna be a lot of demand in theeconomy for non-government debt.

(59:32):
So whenever interest rate is appliedto government debt, the private sector
always has to pay a higher interest rate.
And the difference between thegovernment and the private sector is
the government can print money andcan raise taxes whenever it wants.
Like the government can get revenuewhenever it wants by just taxing you more.
So it will always have alower rate of interest.
It will always cost it lessthan just private individuals.

(59:56):
And because of this, thegovernment will get refinanced
at 4.5% on its 10 year debt.
But that means that your 30 yearmortgage is gonna have to be six or 7%.
It's not gonna come down.
I think that this is somethingthat will over the next 12 months
become the political issue inthe United States of America.
People will begin to associate, it,will start to understand the math

(01:00:21):
because enough people, especiallymillennials who are not pretty old,
like, you know, I'm a millennial.
I'm 43 years old.
Millennials are going to startbeing like, wait a minute.
Why don't I own a home at 45, 43, 40, 39?
The interest rates are too high, butI saved all this money and all this
crypto, you know, I made all this moneywith Bitcoin, like I can afford a down

(01:00:42):
payment, but I just don't wanna lockmyself in with a, uh, interest rate of 7%.
And it's that connection betweenthe rate of interest, the cost of
financing, and the government debt.
So cost of financing for individualsand corporates and government debt.
I think that connection isgoing to be, start being made.

(01:01:04):
Um mm-hmm.
And I think that.
What I would say my hot stake hereis that yes, this big beautiful
bill does add to the budget deficit.
Although if you actually taketariff revenues, assuming that
the 10% tariff remains, it'sactually pretty flat to be honest.
So if any, you know, if I hear abunch of liberals coming out, like,

(01:01:26):
you know, a couple of months from nowseeing that President Trump's big,
beautiful bill added to the deficit,you know what, like, do some math.
Look at what Joe Biden did.
Look at what Trump and Nancy Pelosidid together as a, as a, as a loving
couple running the country in 2020.
Like this is not this, this bill isthe least profligate bill of anything

(01:01:50):
that was passed by the United States ofAmerica over the last like seven years.
So like, relax.
So, no, this is not the issue.
The issue is this.
I'm fine

Jacob Shapiro (01:01:59):
with that.
Just, just to be clear, that's notsaying that much, that this is the least
profitable of the last seven years.

Marko Papic (01:02:04):
I know.
No, no, no, but exactly.
But this is a truly a bipartisaneffort to fuck up American finances.
That's the point.
It's been a bipartisan, like, if you wannafind some bipartisanship, there you go.
It's the budget deficit.
It's beautiful.
Like it's, it's a source oflove between the two parties.
But what I'm getting at isthat my hot take, Jacob?

(01:02:25):
Is that this is it.
This is the last one because from hereon out, the politics are gonna pivot.
Uh, and actually the politics alreadypivoted in January, which is why this
bill is adding $2 trillion to thedeficit and perhaps not even if we

2 trillion.
I thought, where, whereare you getting 2 trillion?
I've seen 3.8 is the numberthat I've seen people settle on.
Where's your math?

Uh, 2.3 trillion from CBO.
From CBO, I thought it was 3.8.
Well between two, 2.5 and 3.5.
That's fine.
The point is, the point is it'sover 10 years, just to be clear.
Um, so nowhere close to the kind ofspending that we did during COVID.

(01:03:06):
Uh, and the second issue is thatthat doesn't count the tariff
revenue, uh, which is somewherebetween one and a half in 2 trillion,
uh, assuming eight 10% across theboard's tariff, not assuming all the
nonsense that was done on April 2nd.
So this bill is either flat and doesn'tadd to the deficit, or it adds 1
trillion over 10 years, which is a jokegiven the current size or the deficit.

(01:03:29):
The point, the, the whole point ofthis, the whole point is that that's the
peak and I think that politics is goingto start moving the other direction.
Uh, again, it already did.
I think that this bill wassupposed to be five to 7 trillion,
but they actually found cuts.
I. To add to it, which was not somethingthat was, uh, expected in 2024.

(01:03:51):
Uh, in 2024.
One of the reasons that the dollarrallied, and one of the reasons that,
you know, everybody thought that Trumpwould bring growth was that he would
simply repeat what he did in 2017, but themacro conditions are not there for that.
And so the bond market rioted inNovember and December of last year and
forced the House of Representativesto basically add cuts to this bill.

(01:04:14):
And by the way, just to, yeah, there's,

yeah.

Just one last point just to show the difference
in the political context.
In 2017, when the Republicans passedthe original tax cuts that were now
extending, it was passed without any cuts.
It was completely andutterly just unfunded.
This one, they actually found a lot ofcuts, uh, and they actually introduced it.

(01:04:39):
And so that's why the bill is not fiveto 7 trillion over the next 10 years.
It's two to 3 trillion.

Yeah, it's funny, as you were talking, I was trying to find the,
the CBO and I've got two different CBOs.
One estimate is 2.3 trillion,one is 3.8 trillion.
So I guess it's somewhere between 2.3and 3.8 trillion is the estimate of
what it's gonna add, uh, to the deficit.
And we'll see whathappens with the Senate.
I mean, there, there, it's not just like,we can talk about the spending issue too.
I mean, there's some hot button stuff inhere, like the changes to Medicaid are

(01:05:08):
gonna theoretically save $625 billion,but are estimated to push almost 8 million
Americans off of healthcare coverage.
Um, and if you start messing withpeople's healthcare, I feel like the
politics is gonna change around that.
There's also, like, I had never,maybe I'm just a, a new bio with this.
I had never heard of salt taxes.
And now the idea that there's like thishuge increased cap on state and local,

(01:05:31):
local tax deductions, like funny thereand all, all the green energy stuff.
I mean, I don't know that,that again seems just like
shooting ourselves in the foot.
Also, glad I went ahead and putsolar on my house last year rather
than waiting, uh, until this year.
Um, but I don't know.
I mean, if I was gonna take the oppositeside, um, well, I, I guess I can't take
the opposite side because you're sayingthat you think this is gonna get passed
and that just makes the problem worse.

(01:05:51):
You just don't think that there'sgonna be any more gravy after this one.
That this is the last one.
Is that the right characterizationof what you're saying?

Yeah.
Uh, basically, uh, this is it, youknow, a budget deficit around seven
to 8%, um, over the course of thenext, um, you know, 10 years is
unsustainable because we will have arecession at some point, you assume.
Um, and that will require thedeficit to go even higher.
Um, and also the bond market is basicallysaying, look, we're not gonna riot.

(01:06:22):
There's not going to be some sortof a calamity where, you know, bond
yields go through the roof, butwe'll just stay at a very high level.
So you're not gonna have a heartattack, but you're extremely
unfit and can't climb stairs.

And how do you think that's gonna change us politics?
Like, well, because the, the hardthing for me to imagine is that you're
gonna get a real impetus towardsfiscal like conservatism because like,
people are just used to the goodies.

Well, let's talk about that.
So the, the way it's gonna happen is that,um, we're gonna be in a permanent state
of high interest rates, and eventuallypeople are gonna ask why, why are we
in a permanent state of high interestrates, which constrain economic growth,
consumption of durable goods of homes?
And the answer is going to be,well, because the government is
crowding out private sector spending.

(01:07:12):
And private sector investing.
And this is, by the way, this is somethingwe all learned at 19 years old, crowded
into an amphitheater at a universitywhen we took macroeconomics 1 0 1.
This is that crowding out effect.
This is why you cannot growthe economy with deficits.
And so the irony, Jacob, is that fiscalconservatism will be stimulative.

(01:07:32):
This is where the fiscalconservatives and the right wing
policies and economics are correct.
When your deficits are persistently high,reducing them does actually lead to more
growth and even more equitable growth.
Like access, you know, access to creditis very important if you're poor.
Mm-hmm.
You know, uh, you're not using creditto buy jet skis and boats, although,

(01:07:54):
you know, obviously some people are.
But, um, access to credit is how youget a truck so you can get, have a job.
So you can be a plumber, uh, oraccess to credit is how you get
a home in a nice neighborhood.
Or it's how you send your kids to college.
So access to credit is very important.
It's not pernicious, it's not bad.
But when the government has basicallytaken all the supply of, you know,

(01:08:15):
bond buying, that there is, there isno more supply for the private sector.
And so that's where cutting thedeficit will become stimulative.
Uh, and I think that over thenext, um, you know, this, this bill
basically was al already surprised.
It, already surprisedhow conservative it was.
And again, I know the mainstream media isnot labeling it as such because liberal

(01:08:38):
media wants to paint, paint Trump asbeing profligate and irresponsible.
And I mean, on some level he is.
But I don't think that the mediais properly telling investors,
and also just regular listeners,how much lower this deficit is.
Like how much less of a deficitthis bill is bringing to the
table than it could have.

(01:09:00):
If you actually listened toTrump's um, election platform,
it was 10 to $15 trillion.
Extending the 2017 tax cuts alone.
Jacob is 5 trillion.
Just that alone is 5 trillion.
Just keeping our taxes the same.
You and I since we're US citizensand we live in America just keeping

(01:09:21):
our taxes the same cost 5 trillion.
And yet this bill is somehowbetween two to 3 trillion
additive to the deficit only.
So I think that the zeitgeisthas already changed.
I mean, clearly it has.
Uh, in 2017 the tax cuts were unfunded.
Now they're partially funded.
Uh, going forward, I think thispendulum is gonna swing even

(01:09:42):
further towards fiscal conservatism.
And the reason for that is notbecause government spending is bad.
I hate that it's not, governmentspending is sometimes extremely good,
but in this particular case, we'rejust running such a high deficit
that it's basically preventing you.
Yes, you listening to this, buying ahome with a reasonable mortgage rate, I.

Yeah, I'm, I'm not a, well, I, I'm, I'm struggling.
I'm struggling.
I, I get the zag thatyou're trying to make.
Um, and, and yes, like it's,it's the art of the deal.
He started at 10 to 15 trillion andnow it's down to two to 3 trillion, but
it's two, it's still two to 3 trillion,um, that, that's being added on.
So it, it's hard for, it's hard, andmaybe I'm guilty of anchoring to the

(01:10:26):
10 to 15, uh, trillion or anchoring tothe liberal media, but to me it just
seems like, um, yet another, I mean,and, and I also, I'm so uncomfortable.
I'm like literally squirming inmy chair, being in a position
to agree with Elon Musk.
Uh, but here I am like squirmingin my chair, being like, okay.
And I felt this way about thefirst Trump administration too.
Like the one thing I really, really likedfrom the first Trump administration.

(01:10:48):
Um, platform was infrastructure spending.
And I feel like we got everythingbut the infrastructure spending.
And the one thing I actually reallyliked about the Trump platform was,
oh, maybe like a return to some like,notion of fiscal like responsibility.
And there's not, there's there, to me,there is no fiscal responsibility here.
It's just the gravy trainis gonna keep going.
And the idea and like the thingswere, are gonna have to get really

(01:11:09):
bad for the normal American, um,citizen in order for the government
to say, okay, we do have to cut back.
And then it's also just, um, it's, it'sall of the policies smooshed together.
So if, if you take what you're talkingabout with the one beautiful bill in a
vacuum, like, okay, I can sort of getall the way there, but then you start,
you know, remembering that, well, part ofwhat they're accounting for is that tariff

(01:11:32):
revenue is gonna pay for some of this.
And I mean, I think the tariffpolicy is nonsensical and that
most of these tariffs won't behere probably in six to 12 months.
And if they are, it'll be likenegative on the US government.
You, you pair all this stuffwith, okay, but you're also
like killing the universities.
You are making it impossible forinternational students to come here.
Uh, immigration migration is also sortof stalled, so you're not getting that.

(01:11:55):
So maybe we're gonna get labor shortagesand higher labor costs and then
we're gonna get labor cost inflation.
What happens if we actually got.
Something that happened in theMiddle East or, um, that caused,
you know, energy prices to go up.
Or like what if energy prices staylow for so long that American shale
producers are out of the game and thenyou get a sudden spike and what are the
inflation numbers gonna look like there?

(01:12:16):
Food prices here, they're notnearly where they were like,
you know, three, four years ago,but they're starting to tick up.
They're appreciably above wherethey were last year and like
trending in the wrong direction.
So you start like putting all of thesethings together and then you think about
a United States that, to your point,has no fiscal space anymore, has done
the max of what it can possibly do.
And what did it get with that?
It didn't get beautiful infrastructureor manufacturing capacity or innovation.

(01:12:41):
It got nothing out of it.
Just like,

yeah.
Yeah.
Like the 2017 tax cutsbasically just stay.
Um, so a couple ofthings that I would say.
First of all, tariffs are like taxes.
They are taxes, they're, yeah.
Mm-hmm.
There's a Laffer curve.
Basically, if I were to tax you at ahundred percent Jacob, you would quit.
Become like a glee, a professionalgleesing, you know what I mean?

(01:13:04):
Like I wish God, that'd be great.
And the reason is that you don't have anincentive to work anymore at 90% taxes.
Similarly, if I were to tax and importat 50%, you would just not import it.
You would just stop consumingor you would buy an American
alternative, uh, at which point youwould get no revenue from tariffs.

(01:13:29):
And that's why there is thislike counterintuitive point.
If you wanna raise money from tariffs,you can't manufacture at home.
Lemme say that again.
If you want to raise revenue from tariffs,you have to continue to participate
in globalization and trade becauseyou're raising revenue from imports.

(01:13:51):
Mm-hmm.
And that's why you are right.
What's going to stay is probably justthat 10% across the board tariff.
But the 10% across the board tariffis small enough that it will allow
tariff, like tariff revenue to becollected and imports to continue.
The US is not going to shift thatmanufacturing domestically, but

(01:14:11):
it will also be able to raiseabout one and a half trillion.
Now, some of the estimatesare two and a half.
I go with the least, um, least optimisticone from the Peterson Institute.
I think that's the most appropriate.
So one and a half trillion will beraised, and that's what I'm seeing.
I think this bill is actually far moreconservative than people understand.
It raises deficit by two to 3trillion, but I'm comfortable

(01:14:34):
assigning one and a half trilliondollars worth of revenues from tariffs
because globalization continues.
Americans will continue to buybicycles from China no matter what
National Security Hawk psychopaths say.
And effectively that 10% will raiseone and a half trillion dollars.
So that's the first thing I would say.
That's where I think that maybe we're.

(01:14:54):
Well, it's funny because Trump himselfcalls it a big, beautiful bill.
I would say, uh, it is a mod, moderatelysized, and yet somehow still functional.
Bill, you know, was thata phallic joke perhaps?
Um, it's not that big, youknow, Donald, it's not that
big but me, you know, it works.

(01:15:16):
So that's the first thing I would say.
The second thing I would say is thatthe P research actually has a great poll
that looks at the share of respondentswho say the deficit reduction should
be a top priority of the US government.
Mm-hmm.
And that p research poll is fascinatingbecause it actually hits some of
the very important macroeconomicmoments of US history Exactly.

(01:15:39):
Correctly.
For example, after 2008, it goes from50% of Americans think the deficit
reduction is important to 70 by 2012.
And that's the birth of the tea party.
The Tea Party was born out of thisconcern about the deficits, and the Tea
Party got a lot of flack for a lot ofthings they did, but the Tea Party in

(01:16:01):
Barack Obama, both of them together,and I think both of them deserve credit.
The conservatives obviouslyalways give it to the Tea Party.
The liberals give it to Obama, butboth of them sat down and actually
reduced the US deficit from 10% to 3%,two and a half, like just under three.

(01:16:22):
So the US deficit shrunk from 10% in2000 and uh, 10 to basically, uh, by
2015 it was like, I think under 3%.
That's an extraordinaryamount of deficit cutting.
And it happened democraticallythrough a legislative process.
Now it was very painful, andthat pain led to voters not

(01:16:43):
caring about deficit reduction.
And you can actually see on the chartthe share of respondents who say the
deficit reduction should be a toppriority, declines down to 40% by 2021.
We're now in a post pandemic world.
Everybody wants infrastructurejust like Jacob does.
Everyone's cool with it.
And we start spending, and DonaldTrump takes advantage of this
decline in political supportfor, for basically prudence.

(01:17:07):
He passes the tax cuts in 2017without any offsets at all.
Just blows the budget deficit for thefirst time since the sixties in what
economists would call a pro-cyclical way.
First time since the sixtiesthat America expanded its
deficit outside of a recession.
And then of course, during the pandemic.

(01:17:27):
Both President Trump and Speaker ofthe House, Nancy Pelosi, basically
start out doing one, one another who'sgonna, you know, blow through the
deficit more because it's the pandemic.
And then Joe Biden famously,when he became the president in
early 2021, blows out another 2.1trillion for no really good reason.
Like that one, I think was the mostegregious act of fiscal responsibility

(01:17:49):
that that February, 2021, that early2021, basically decision to just do
some more helicopter drops to theAmerican public, because why not?
Even though we had a vaccine onthe way we knew it was coming, and
it was pretty clear that lockdownswere not gonna last anymore.
The point is that thisline bottomed in 2022.

(01:18:10):
This support for deficitreduction bottomed at 40%.
Only 40% of Americans thoughtin 21 that this was important.
It's now back up to 60.
It's back up to 60 Jacobfrom 40 to 60% in four years.
Why?
Because voters are kind of not stupid.
And they understand that inflationwas one of the consequences

(01:18:31):
of all this fiscal orgy.
And the second thing that I think votersunderstand is this crowding out effect.
They're starting to askquestions like, wait, why?
Why is this auto loan, like I was ableto afford a car, buy a car and have an
interest rate on my auto loan at like 3%?
Now it's at like 7%.
Why?
Why is my mortgage not 2%?

(01:18:53):
Why don't we have 2%mortgages for 30 years?
And the answer to allof this is the deficit.
And so that's why I'm, I think, uh, firstof all, I can empirically prove to you
that the directionality of this is movingtowards more, uh, fiscal conservatism.
But the other one is that historically Ithink a lot of people are very reticent.
You know, there's thisvery callous and glib view.

(01:19:14):
The democracy always stands towardssocialism and towards more spending that
voters will never vote to cut themselves.
Their entitlement benefits that.
Is repeatedly throughouthistory proven incorrect.
Argentina just elected a dude witha chainsaw and he was carrying a
chainsaw for a very symbolic reason.

(01:19:34):
IE I'm gonna cut The governmentpeople voted for him.
Margaret Cher did not mince wordsabout what she was gonna do.
David Cameron in 2010, same thing.
Um, and similarly again, Obama and thetea Party got together and actually
shrunk the deficit from 10 to 3%.
Not because they were doingsomething voters didn't want.
No, no, no.
It was the voters thatpushed them to that.

(01:19:57):
Uh, and you can measure wherevoters are on this kind of like,
um, you know, profligate versusconservative line through just polling.
And I'm telling you, it'smoving in the other direction.

Don't you miss the days of, uh, you know, civil cooperation
between the Obamas and the Tea Party whenour, our discourse was so civil and we
were working together, uh, in order toreduce the deficit and things like that.
Yeah.
This has been a trope.
This has been a trope in our podcast.
Uh, you might be right about this,so I feel like I need to think
about a little bit more, but I willdisagree with you until the day
that I die that the voters are smartor know anything, they're morons.

(01:20:32):
The Cornell University Lee Clubcured me of my toxic masculinity,
but not of my intellectual elitism.
It's all a bunch of idiots.
Um,

well, you know what I would say, I would say that, uh,
voters over the long term approximategood judgment, asymptotically.

I don't know.
I, I don't think so.
And your ar I don't think your Argentinaexample actually helps you that much
because things had to get, you literallyhad to get to hyperinflation and people
had to get, so, like, things had toget so bad in Argentina that they were
literally willing to elect any crazyperson who was just seen as different, um,

which, yeah.
You know, and, and there's a lotof examples of that, by the way.
Uh, after the financial crisis inGreece, massive fiscal consolidation.
Greece is now doing really, Imean, relatively well, uh, not
really well, but relatively well.
Uh, we talked about that recently.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, you know, um, so yes, you areright that financial crisis do help.

(01:21:29):
They help push in this direction.
Um, but again, you know, it doesn'thave to be a financial crisis.
It can also just be a, a slow burn.
And that's what I'm telling you.
What I'm basically telling you,Jacob, is that we have a slow burn.
We have a burden on the economy,which is the high interest rates,
and they're not going away.
And it's gonna be verydifficult to overcome that.

(01:21:50):
Unless the government actually.
Releases some of that potentialby cutting its own debt burden.

Um, yeah, and I, and I think that counterfactual,
'cause I we're, we're gonna talkabout this I think throughout the
course of the rest of six, 12 months.
'cause I think you are correct thatthis is gonna be like the Rubicon or
this is gonna be like the thing that isgonna animate politics going forward.
But I, I go back to what I said earlier,which is, I'm with you sort of a ways
there, but I think what's differentabout this time is that the populace
have captured in large part the state andpopulace are not going to cut spending.

(01:22:23):
Populists have to keep on givingthe goodies in order to maintain,
uh, their political positions.
And Trump, and we talked about Bernieearlier, also a populist, like a
lot of these folks that are in thehouse, these are populists, these
are not people that I think are gonnaturn their back on on this spending.
They couldn't do it even thoughlike they're, you know, you had
Doge and these other things.
Wandering around trying to do that.

(01:22:44):
And I think the problem is that even with,even like, let's accept the argument,
like let's say, okay, it's only 2trillion, it's, it's not as conservative.
Let's, let's, I don't think we'regonna get a trillion and a half
of tariff for revenue, but okay,let's say we get the trillion and
a half of tariff for revenue too.
Like, okay, it's still like wegot nothing for all of this.
And we're sitting on a society that is notgonna manufacture things, that is giving

(01:23:06):
up a lead in innovation that is behindon and is going to be further behind
on all of these other different things.
And so you're gonna get governmentsthat are gonna look at this equation
and be like, well, do I keep giving thegoodies or do I make the hard cuts and
take people off social security and takepeople off Medicare and take people off
Medicaid and cut us military spendingand go after the big ticket budget items

(01:23:28):
in order that things are gonna grow.
But like to do that, like youhave to rehabilitate the society
and rehabilitate the economy.
And we're not like, we're not there yet.
Like we're not layingthe groundwork for that.
So you'll get into this trap where.
Like, it's not gonna be like it wasin previous iterations because like
you would need spending just to getthe economy to where it can take
advantage of what you're talking about.

(01:23:48):
Does that make sense?
Well,

actually there is another way to do it, and I think that populists can
get us there and it's left-wing populists.
And so for everyone out there who's onthe center right, all the way to the
far right, you know, be very carefulwith this notion that like, oh, Trump is
just gonna be like Nero and burn Rome,because what's waiting in the wings

(01:24:09):
is an alternative way to cut deficits.
And it's called raising taxesto the nose bleed levels baby.
You know, that's, that's anotherway you can solve this issue.
So we keep talking aboutcuts, cuts, cuts, cuts, cuts.
Oh, you know, cuts toMedicare, this, that.
But let's be very clear, presidentTrump is getting none of his

(01:24:31):
priorities from the election.
Like, you know, taxes and tips aregoing through a, a couple of other
things, but for the most part.
You know, he talked about expandingthe deficit, 10 to 15 trillion.
Not literally, I mean, he didn'tsay those words, but when you do the
math, you put all of his priorities,he's getting none of those.
Jacob, the vast majority of thisbill is going, you know what?

(01:24:52):
It's going towardskeeping the law the same.
And this is what a lot ofpeople don't understand.
It costs a lot of moneyto keep the 2017 tax cuts.
Why did they expire?
Because they were notfunded, as I said earlier.

Yeah.

They were not funded and because they were not funded,
the reconciliation procedure, whichis used to pass the 60 c pejorative
said the reconciliation procedurebasically forces you to, uh, uh,
sunset those, those, uh, that bill.
And so the, the fact of the matter,Jacob, is that there's an easy way, easy

(01:25:30):
way to significantly reduce the deficit.
I. It would be to just let, uh, thetax cuts of 2017 basically sunset and
I expected the next president of theUnited States of America, if it's not
a Republican, will effectively take usback to the tax rates, uh, of pre 2017.

Well, and, and I think you actually, I think you made the
important point here, which is thatthere's an alternative to what you're
talking about and that it's on the leftand that it's higher taxes, of course.
And, and, and this is where like, I,like I do think some of what's happening.
Well, I don't know, like,maybe, maybe Trump is right.
Maybe he really could shootsomeone in fifth and fifth Avenue
and nobody's gonna pay attention.
But when you look at things like, oh,charging however much money so you

(01:26:08):
can get access or not, not chargingmoney, uh, however much Trump meme coin
that you buy, you get personal accessto the dinner with President Trump.
Uh, you can buy club memberships forthe new club that they're setting up
in Washington dc I think the startingmembership is gonna be $500,000.
All the deals that the Trumps are signing,um, in the Emirates and in the Gulf.
And like, I mean, they've, they'vemade billions of dollars so far on

(01:26:30):
some of these like crypto initiatives.
And I think we should save likecrypto and Bitcoin, like for a
proper conversation down the road.
But which is just to say if the re, ifthe net result of all of this is that the
rich get richer and that you literallyhave, um, like the president of the United
States using the office to enrich himself.
Like that is eventually gonna give theother side fodder for Yeah, tax the rich.

(01:26:52):
How did they get that money?
Like, we want some of that piece of thepie that needs to come back into the
system rather being taken out by thesepeople who are still manufacturing in
China or who are, you know, in theirritzy clubs or in their, you know, gold
plated toilets and things like that.
Like, I think there is apopulous move waiting there.
And to your point, if the auto loanrates go up enough and then the mortgage

(01:27:13):
rates go up enough and you can'tblame the Biden crime family, or you
can't blame the woke people anymorefor that because it was the Trump
administration that was doing all of it.
Like there is sort of a counter ookay, like let's let's take out the
Franklin Delano Roosevelt playbook.
Let's get taxes up in the50 to 70% effective range.
Let's do all of this differentgovernment spending and hands

(01:27:33):
outs and things like that.
Like I do think that's a door,um, that is, that is lurking
in the background a door.
I think it is.
What, what beautifulmetaphorical language for me,

I think, I think life is about the delta.
Life is about perceiving.
I mean, markets certainly are, youknow, being an investor investment
strategist has taught me that.
Um, it's not about thelevels, it's about the delta.
It's about a rate of change.
And what I think is the most profoundthing is that President Trump walked
into office expecting to do what he didin 2017, blow the deficit, five, seven,

(01:28:08):
$10 trillion funding, maybe some ofit through some cuts, but not really.
And he's been pushed by the combinedefforts of the bond market and members
of the house to get that down to twoto three with sum tariff revenue.
And that is actually a shockingrate of change towards a more

(01:28:30):
conservative approach to deficits.
Now I think that, I think thatover the next five years, that's
gonna include some tax increases.
Yes.
It's not just gonna be finding cuts.
You're absolutely right.
There's gonna be a little bit more, butright now we can close on this, but.
Right now, the United States ofAmerica spends more on financing
that deficit than on the US military.

(01:28:51):
So just think, you know, thatthat's ultimately unsustainable
and we'll have to change.

That's a good place to leave it.
Any parting thoughts on the NBAfinals before we get outta here?

Uh, I mean, you know, so there's a geopolitical
s to the, uh, to the finals.
I mean, uh, looks like it's gonna beIndianapolis versus Oklahoma City.
That is.
I,

I wouldn't count out the Knicks yet.
Uh, I guess we should would

not count out the Knicks yet.
I don't know.

Hope Springs eternal.

Um, okay.
Well if it is Indianapolis versusOKC, though, uh, I just thought it's,
it's funny because it's kind of likeTrump country, you know, and yet he
hates the NBA, which is interesting.
Um, and, uh, yeah, I mean,like, it's kind of cool.
I think especially for Indianapolis, it'sa huge, you know, like basketball city.
I think if they make it to the finals,I think that would be kind of fun.

(01:29:42):
Um.
I guess the same for OKC.
Uh, I've been, I've been to OKC,I've watched the game there.
It is, it is a great atmosphere.
Um, but as long as the SeattleSupersonics don't exist, I'm
always going to be a little bitmiffed about OKC, having a team.

Yeah.
I wish I could make it interesting,but I I really, I I, it's gonna be
KC that, that seems pretty clear.
It's probably gonna be OKC for therest of the century, unless the
Spurs have something to say about it.

I think, I think they're, they're a great team.
I think, um, you know, dot is amazing.
Uh, I think that his defensive prowess isreally, really, uh, what sets them apart.
One thing I would say though is thatI feel that that team has a very
high variance on how it's refered.
And I don't mean this in a bad way,but like, um, you know, I think that

(01:30:32):
what they did to Yoic was amazing.
Um, uh, like Caruso was draped all overhim, but every single minute, every
single second of that exchange was a foul.
And it just came down to whetheryou're gonna call it or not.
And so I don't think that OKC haslike a recipe for long-term success

(01:30:53):
because despite the fact that SGAobviously is amazing, I just feel
that at some point over the next 12months, the referees could stop kind
of treating them like a novelty.
Like, oh my goodness, look at them.
They, they beat the crapout of their opponents.
So the perimeter, you know, like thereason that Caruso can guard Yoki is
'cause you're letting him file him.

(01:31:13):
Um, the reason that.is able to shutpeople down on the perimeter is that
quite often he is following the screener.
He is, um, you know.
What's the backup point guard?
Uh, number 22.
My brain just stopped.
But, uh, you know, that guy like isa hundred percent using his hands
on defense Every ABA play now in theNBA, everyone's just like wrestling.

(01:31:38):
I don't know if you've noticed that.
Yeah, that's a lot.
Um, and so anyways, um, I'm not sure howsustainable that is in the long term.
I think at some point, or, you know, theNBA has these, these waves where they just
kinda let something happen 'cause it'snovel and they're like, oh wait, that's,
that's actually really aggressive defense.
No, we're gonna start calling foul.
And then suddenly their defenseisn't as good as it was in the past.

Yeah, that's a fair point.
All right, we'll get you outta here.
Let's go get some coffee.

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