Showdown
Showdown Episode 126 8-15-24
(upbeat guitar music) - Welcome to Showdown. I'm Mark Casein and it is Thursday, August the 15th, back in the studio and enjoying every day here in the Banana Republic of the United States of America. How foolish can you be? Calling the United States, first of all, a Banana Republic, are we really? A third world nation that's in a free fall. So let's talk about what that free fall looked like this morning in the news. In the first place, initial unemployment claims dropped sharply. In other words, people are not losing their jobs and going to get unemployment. So the job market remains strong. Yesterday, we found that while inflation was down to 2.9%, that wage increases are currently at 3.6%. So again, workers are doing better. They're gaining during this period of time, they're gaining wealth, not becoming enormously wealthy, but doing fine. And then Donald says, we're in a free fall. You know what a free fall's like? First of all, it would require a crash of the markets. The markets did get hit pretty hard a couple of weeks ago and they have completely recovered. All of the ground that they lost, maybe except for an inch, but they've recovered. And yes, there remain problems in the markets, potential areas of difficulty in the economy, looking down the line. Joe Biden said yesterday that he was declaring that we've reached a soft landing. I don't think that's necessarily an accurate description of where we are. I think we'd like to see that. Everybody would like it. Are we there? Not yet. No, you can't look at what we've gone through here so far and say it's completely over and everything's going to be straight up. It's not that clear. It's not that far beyond the problems that were created by 500 days of an inverted yield curve, which by the way, is still in effect. That is pressure on the economy. It just is. It's pressure on the economy. It's overall potential pressure on the markets. So that remains out there. That's interest rates. That's the cost of borrowing. Inflation's at 2.9%. Well, the Federal Reserve wants it to be at 2%. Is that some fixed number that has to be reached? No, it really isn't. It's something that the Federal Reserve has said as a target and that's just their vision of what will work. But they wanna prevent a resurgence of inflation. And I think they're going to do everything that they need to do in order to be sure that there is not a resurgence of inflation. Because one of the things that could cause problems is the fact that the economy remains very strong. But you see, you can't have it both ways. You can't say the economy is strong and therefore we have longer term danger from inflation. And by the way, we're in a free fall as we sink into the reality of a third world market, of a third world country. It's foolishness to say these things and it's silly to have to listen to them. Although I can tell you that the Democratic Party is pretty comfortable with listening to it because I think almost without failure around the country, Democrats and even Republicans feel like Donald Trump has begun to lose any potential for salvaging this election. There are plenty of Republicans who are talking today about what Donald Trump needs to do if he wants to have a chance to come back from the point that he has descended to right now. It's just a reality. People know it, they feel it, they sense it and they see it in the numbers. Donald is behind in almost every single swing state and on top of that, there are states where he shouldn't have even been in competition with the Democrats and suddenly there is a competition. Florida could be in play, Ohio could be in play, Texas could be in play, especially if it looks like Ted Cruz is going down in the Senate race. There are problems all over the country that are popping up for the Republican Party and honestly, Donald has no idea what to do because what he's doing is just acting crazy and I want you to hear how crazy and in the first clip, what you're going to hear is Donald joking about the fact that he has been asked to give an intellectual speech. Well, he ought to be joking because he can't give an intellectual speech. He's supposed to be speaking as an intellectual about economics and I think what you're going to hear is that he's not capable. Go right ahead. I think you're on the wrong one. Do you want to do 27 first? No. Is this growth rate? Am I right or wrong? GDP growth rate. And so when you compare the two. Well, no, if you go back on this first one, this first one was the one where Donald spoke at around six and a half. Do you want to? It's all right. It just happened. And I think that's why I'm here from Joe Biden. He's like, look now, give me the credit. Yeah, and Mika, we've talked about this. The economy has been so strong except for inflation and it's still nagging and it's still too high. But that was a good number yesterday. So when you listened to Donald Trump's speech last night, it was almost like something that had been written months or even years ago when he's talking not only about inflation, but about a hell hole of violent crime when the violent crime numbers of courts are down across the country when migrants flooding across the border. Well, those numbers are down too. He's got a speech that he's programmed his greatest hits that just don't measure up to the facts right now in the country. Well, he was supposed to deliver an economic focused speech yesterday in North Carolina, but just as you put, Willie, minutes after taking the stage, he questioned the significance of the economy in November's election. And again, veered off several times to personal attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris. Take a look. Now, this is a little bit different day because this isn't a rally. This is what we're talking about a thing called the economy. They wanted to do a speech on the economy. A lot of people are very devastated by what's happened with inflation and all of the other things. So we're doing this as a intellectual speech. You're all intellectuals today. Today we're doing it and we're doing it. Right now, and it's very important. They say it's the most important subject. I think crime is right there. I think the border is right there personally. We have a lot of important subjects because our country has become a third world nation. We literally are a third world nation. We're a banana republic in so many ways, and we're not going to let that happen because we're starting a free fall. She went from being a totally disrespected person six weeks ago. Nobody thought she had a chance. And I don't think she can possibly win. If she does, our country is finished. You want to know that, too. But she was totally disrespected. The most unpopular vice president in the history of our country for nearly four years. Kamala has crackled as the American economy has burned. What happened to her left? I haven't heard that laughing about a week. That's why they keep her off the stage. That's why she's disappeared. That's the laugh of a crazy person. And I will tell you, if you haven't done it, it's crazy. She's crazy. [CHEERING] They told her, "Don't laugh, don't laugh." [CHEERING] No, her laugh is career threatening. They said, "Don't laugh." She hasn't laughed. She doesn't laugh anymore. It's smart, but someday it's going to come out. That's the laugh of a person with some big problems. We're not going to let this incompetent socialist lunatic keep breaking our economy for four more years. It'll destroy our country. [CHEERING] On election day, we're going to tell her that we've had enough, that we can't take any more, Kamala. You're doing a horrible job. You know why she hasn't done an interview? Because she's not smart. She's not intelligent. And we've gone through enough of that with this guy, crooked Joe. OK, you can stop, but that's-- [LAUGHTER] Yeah, and as you can see right there at the end, they're laughing. The commentators are laughing. Well, they should be laughing. It is ridiculous. Remember where he started? He said that this was going to be an intellectual speech on the economy. What did you hear there about the economy, except-- [INAUDIBLE] That's all right. That's all right. No, they're just-- we're queuing up the next set. Don't worry. But anyway, look, there's nothing that he was talking about that had to do with economics. Everything he said had to do with projections about how she laughs, projections about how if she were elected, the country would be destroyed. There would be no coming back from it. It would be complete destruction. I mean, all of this about that she laughs poorly. He doesn't like how she laughs. And that her ideas show how dumb she is, that she isn't smart. What does this have to do with the economy? He was there to give what he said was an intellectual speech on the economy. Well, obviously, there was nothing intellectual about what he said, and there was nothing about the economy in what he explained. He talks about this idea of a banana republic. He talks about being part of the third world. I don't think Donald knows what the third world is. I don't think Donald understands really much about how our economy works. When I think back to things that he wanted to do back in 2020 and 2021, at the end of his time in office, he wanted to do some things to try to wreck the situation for Joe Biden. There was no doubt about it, things with China, things with Mexico. It was all nonsensical. And then even before that, he was talking about deals that he had made with China. Turns out he never made a deal with China ever. He said he had, and then China said there were no deals. He said he made a deal with Mexico, and Mexico denied it all. He said that Mexico had agreed to pay for the wall. Mexico said they'd never pay for a wall, and they never did, and there's no wall. The entire situation here is silly. And that's why those commentators on MSNBC, after listening to Donald's short period of speech, his intellectual talk on the economy, they're laughing. It's laughable, and everybody knows it is. And anyway, it's not working because every single day we wake up to new polls where Kamala Harris is doing better than ever, we wake up to new video where thousands of people are showing up at her rallies, and Donald's rallies are relatively empty. In fact, he's angry about the fact that he can't get those people to come out, and he's especially angry over the fact that Kamala Harris is so successful right now, and you heard him say it in the clip that we ran. He goes into this whole thing about how she was a failed vice president. So how is it that suddenly she's so successful? And then he says, well, she really isn't. But of course she is. We all see it right in front of us. Kamala Harris, no matter what Donald's so-called argument against her is, is gaining by the day. Now, I'll grant you. And on one hand, there's a part of this that is not based on anything that she's actually said. And here's what I mean by that. The polls show that Kamala is now favored by the voters on the economy by like two points. So by two points, the overall electorate says they trust her more on economics than they trust Donald. Well, in the first place, I never understood what they saw in Donald that made them trust him over Joe Biden. I didn't see any sense to it, but now it's reversed. And I don't think it's based on anything either except for the fact that they like her. And that's it because she's going to give a speech tomorrow. She's going to North Carolina tomorrow. And she's going to give a speech on the economy. And she's going to explain her economic program. Whatever that is. We've heard that basically it's the same thing that Joe Biden has been promoting. But with possibly some things moved a little bit. Well, we'll know tomorrow. But when it comes back to Donald's side, what you heard, he had nothing to tell us. He had no point to make about the economy except to say that inflation is devastatingly destructive. Except for we know that inflation is actually improving. We heard the numbers yesterday down to the lowest in three years down to 2.9%. So overall, it's still a little bit above the Fed target, but it's heading in the direction that the Fed wants it to go. And in the meantime, the number is relatively tame. But Donald says that it's complete and utter destruction. Everybody knows that's not true, but I don't even think they're listening to that. I think they're just saying that they favor Kamala Harris on the economy because they like her. That's all. They just like her. They don't know. No one knows because she's giving the speech tomorrow and then you'll hear her plan. Right now, you haven't heard a plan. The only plan you heard today, and this was an interesting one. I loved it. It was very funny. It was really the best line of the day by any politician. And it was Joe Biden because when Joe Biden was speaking at the event that he was at today, they were talking about Project 2025. And Joe Biden said, he said, let me tell you about our Project 2025. He said, we know what theirs is. He said, they want to do the craziest things they can do. He said, our Project 2025 is very simple. He said, we're going to beat the hell out of them at the polls. He said, that's our Project 2025. Funny enough, because we know that their Project 2025, they won't even acknowledge anymore. They're running away from it so fast. You know what Donald says, he's never heard of it before. Doesn't know any of the people involved in it. To him, it's ridiculous. He doesn't know. He doesn't know Project 2025. 2025, it doesn't know the people. Doesn't know anything. It's his favorite story. Doesn't know anything. I think it is accurate to say that he really doesn't know anything. I think that's true. But as far as Project 2025 is concerned, that is his plan. And we've done this before. I'm not going to go through it again, but we've spent the time before. We've gone chapter by chapter with, with Ali Velsi from MSNBC. We looked at all of the people that are involved in each chapter. Who worked for Donald Trump. And they've all been injected into this program of developing Project 2025. And then beyond that, we heard in 2022 where Donald asked the Heritage Foundation to develop this plan. And they did. He asked Kevin Roberts to create this plan for him to be used when Donald Trump takes office in 2024. We're actually 2025. Okay, but here's the thing. Donald now says he's never heard of it. Doesn't know what it was. Doesn't know how it got there. When you play that clip, he acts like it never even happened. So who do you believe? Do you believe the words of Donald Trump when he said, I want the Heritage Foundation to create the plan for me? Or do you believe Donald when he says, now that the plan's in place, I understand you don't like it. So I'm running as far away from it as I can. And pretending that I never heard of it before. I mean, you can choose. But the truth is that Donald always lies, always. And I've said this for years. Everything that Donald says, any time he opens his mouth, any time he makes a claim, it's always a lie. It's always a lie embedded in anything that he tells you. He doesn't even know how to say this is the straight truth and then actually tell you. He doesn't know how. So for example, you know Donald right now is talking about the border being out of control. In that clip that I put on here, he said, they want me to talk about the economy today. But honestly, it's probably more important to talk about the border. He said, because that's where the real problem is. But here's the fact on the border. When Donald came into, I'm sorry, when Joe Biden came into office and Donald left. In 2021. There are approximately 8,000 border crossings per day. This year had dropped to about 4,000 a day. About six months ago. It's currently at 2,000 per day. In fact, the number of people coming across that border is so small. The governor Abbott from Texas is having a serious problem because he was supposed to be busing immigrants all over the country in order to torture Democrats. And he can't get enough people to fit on the buses because there aren't enough people crossing the border. And it's a real big problem for him next week because he had planned to send a large number of buses to Chicago to embarrass Democrats at the Democratic National Convention. And he can't come up with enough immigrants to fill a bus. That's for next week. He's trying right now to come up with with immigrants to put on a bus to send to Chicago. And he can't find the immigrants. There aren't enough. He can't find them anywhere. Now, a lot of people say that's good. The number of people at the border is that's coming across it. It's way down. And that's what we want. But here's my point. Personally, I don't want it down. I want it up. I would like to see the people coming across that border consistently higher. I would like to see the people coming across that border brought into the United States. Given the assistance that they need in order to live here in a productive way. And I think that overall, the whole idea of immigration would be very positive for the United States. And we played the clip from Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan said back in the late 1980s that the most important thing for the United States to grow in the future would be an increase in the number of people coming across the border. Now, Ronald Reagan said it. I never liked Ronald Reagan personally. But surprisingly, he was saying that. I happen to agree with it. And the point is, there are all these people running around the country who are against immigration and they don't even know that their hero in the Republican Party had actually taken the opposite way. They can the opposite position that they believe in. But all of that aside, the fact is that the number of border crossings is right now down to 2000 per day. It's just the number. Go look it up. A lot of people think that's really good. I'd like to see it higher. I'd like to see us send a million high school graduates down to that border and let them act as if they're in the Peace Corps, call it the Peace Corps and help these new people coming across into the United States to do better. And we could do that. And the effect would be outstanding. So right now I'm going to let you hear what Steve Ratner says about it on MSNBC's. One of the key economic people in discussing things on MSNBC. And I think you've got to go back just a touch before that. Just maybe a couple of seconds. Before and then you're going to see this is an off. Yeah, you're going to catch a whole thing on energy as well. Okay, here comes Steve Ratner from MSNBC this morning. It's repeated claim by Donald Trump that he had the strongest economy of all time. And now he's adding he handed Joe Biden an economic miracle. What's the truth about that? Not only did he not have the strongest economy of all time, he didn't even have the strongest economy the last two presidents himself and Joe Biden. And so let's take a look at some of the facts here. First, the strongest measure, the best measurement economy is its growth rate, GDP growth rate. And so when you compare the two and I have adjusted out COVID and fairness to both presidents, although you see it doesn't actually change the picture. Trump grew his economy at a rate of about 2.6% a year, which is actually not a bad rate. And that excludes COVID. Biden grew his economy, has grown so far his economy at 3.5% a year. If you take out the effects of COVID, the disparity is even greater. So I've done this as honestly as I can do, no matter how you do it, it doesn't come out in Trump's favor. Even against Biden, let alone against 5,000 years of other economies around the world. Secondly, you can look at jobs. That's a very important thing in an economy, obviously to Americans. And again, I've adjusted out the effects of COVID. 182,000 jobs on average a month created by Trump. 271,000 jobs on average created by Biden. Again, if you take out COVID, the disparity is far greater. So that is one of his most preposterous claims. Yeah, the numbers don't lie, and he has made that point. We were cooking along, and then COVID came, and that's not my fault. We can talk about that more of how he handled COVID. But even adjusted for COVID, you're saying Joe Biden has had the better economy. All right, let's move on to energy. This is former President Trump talking yesterday about American oil production and energy independence. We were energy independent four years ago. Think of it, today we're getting energy from Venezuela in the form of tar. Steve, what are the numbers show? Well, first of all, we were never energy independent under Donald Trump. In fact, we really haven't been energy independent going back until sometime before 1950. You can see that the amount of oil imports that we had during Trump did, in fact, decline. This is part of a long progression that goes back to the mid-2000s. It's nothing that he particularly did. It continued under Biden, and lo and behold, the first time we have been energy independent, as it applies to oil, was in 2023 under Biden's presidency, when we actually exported a bit more oil than we imported. Now, Trump has hung up on Venezuela. I'm not exactly sure why he usually likes the dictators. In this case, he seems to not like it as much. It is a fact, as Trump said, that Venezuelan oil is bad oil. It's very heavy. It's very polluting. But look what happened to Venezuelan oil imports over the last seven and a half years. Under Trump, we averaged 10.3 million barrels of Venezuelan oil a day coming into this country. Under Biden, we're down to 1.7 million barrels a day of Venezuelan oil. So the idea that somehow Biden is the one who brought in all this Venezuelan oil is absolutely directly contradicted by the numbers. As is often the case, exactly the opposite is true of what Donald Trump says. In fact, we are not running on Venezuelan tar. Okay, let's talk about migrant crime. Donald Trump yesterday in North Carolina went on a tangent about what he claims is a surge in migrant crime. Here's what he said. They all said I was wrong when I said that migrant crime will reach epidemic proportions, and now it's much worse than that. It's a lot worse than epidemic proportions. It's beyond control. We have a new category of crime. It's called migrant crime. And I think it's going to end up being the worst category of all. All right, Steve, what is the data show? Well, you know, it was supposed to be an economic speech, but he can't help himself. And he has to get off into things like migrants and immigration and the border and crime and all that kind of stuff. But once again, the facts are not quite what he said. First, let's just talk about crime in general. He likes to think the country's in the middle of some crime wave. It's actually not true. Violent crime per 100,000 people has dropped 26% under Joe Biden, an average of 398 per 100,000 people down to 294. What is even more amazing is that, in fact, ended Trump's administration slightly higher than when it began, or certainly at best, most favorably, you can't see any improvement under Trump's administration. All the improvement has been under the Biden administration. Now, there's the fallacy of migrant crime. If you read the New York Post, you'd think, of course, all crime was committed by migrants. But, in fact, we've talked about this, I think, before. But it's really quite traumatic. If you look at, if you break crime down between Native-born Americans' documented immigrants and undocumented immigrants, you can see that Native-born American crime rate is actually higher than it is for documented immigrants and way higher than it is for undocumented immigrants. That's true, whether you look at violent crime, whether you look at property crime, when you look at drug violations, the fact is, immigrants actually commit fewer crimes than Americans, and for the undocumented immigrants, it's not totally surprising. They don't want to get sent back to wherever they came from, so they tend to behave themselves better than a lot of Americans and a lot of documented immigrants. So this is a complete fiction that Donald Trump has created. And Steve, right on cue, the New York Post this morning on its cover has an 11-year-old Venezuelan child in handcuffs talking about the problem you just outlined. That's good. Great charts. Thank you. It's telling the truth as always. So, as I always say, first of all, Donald lies, that's all he does. Everything he says is untrue. And then, one more important point, and I've said this over and over again on the air, not only here, but anywhere that I have ever spoken. Migrant crime is down at the lowest level of any group in the United States. People who immigrate into the United States create the least amount of trouble of any group within the United States. It doesn't matter what study you look at. It doesn't matter which economist or which sociologist or which statistician you listen to, the numbers are always the same. Not only are migrants committing less crimes than anybody that are within our borders, but beyond that, it's the undocumented migrants who commit the absolute least number of crimes. Steve Ratner says it's probably because once they get here, they don't want to get in trouble and be sent back. I don't know what the reason is. Maybe that's true. Maybe it's not. But one thing I know is they don't commit crime. That I know, they come here and they leave everybody alone and they just try to have a better life. That we know, we know that from the statistics. We know that from the studies that have been done. We know that from the experts, from the university people who are researching these topics. We know for a fact that the people who come across that border cause no damage at all when it comes to crime, practically nothing. We're in there, if you look hard enough, you might find somebody, but essentially nothing. The biggest problem of course now, as I pointed out in Texas, is that Governor Abbott is looking forward to trying to embarrass some Democrats in Chicago next week and he can't even find enough migrants to fill a bus to send these people to Chicago in order to embarrass somebody. You know, it's the difference between Earth One and Earth Two. And I promise you, it's a lot nicer living on Earth One, where the reality is pretty nice instead of living on Earth Two, where you got to make up all kinds of stories about dystopian worlds that are about to crash in on us. None of it's true. But I will tell you this is true. The best food you can possibly find is going to be at Wenties. 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What is it that makes them think that the world is always on the edge of destruction? I just can't even tell you. I know that Democrats worry that there's a democracy issue facing all of us when we get to 2025 if Donald Trump's in that Oval Office. And how do we know that? Well, because Donald tells us, he says it very clearly. When you hear a guy say, vote for me and elect me because if you do, you'll never have to vote again. Those are his words. Now, you can say those words mean something else. You can tell me that when he says that you'll never have to vote again, he really means we're going to increase the opportunities to vote for everybody. But you're really going to have to explain to me how those words translate into this expansion of voting opportunity. Instead what we know is that Republican states around the country at this very moment are attempting to purge their voting rolls. They're trying to get everybody off the rolls that they can get off of there and the discussion is that they're really trying to reduce black voters. Well, there's a reason that they might want to and the reason would be is because black voters are not going to vote Republican. I know Donald has said for years that his black vote would always be increasing and supposedly this year that was going to go up to 25%. Now Donald thinks it's unfair that Kamala Harris is now in this position of being the presidential candidate for the Democrats because being black, well, she's definitely inspiring black voters to switch to her. According to Donald, if it hadn't been Kamala, who he says was a complete and utter failure as vice president that hadn't been for her, he'd be on his way to victory. Now he says, after he explains that, that he really is on his way to victory, that she can't win. She can't win because it would be destruction for the country. Of course, the truth is, is that the polls say that Donald is collapsing before our eyes. And I think it's reasonable to assume that women and black people are inspired by a lot of things from Kamala, but at least the fact that she's a black woman and would be the first black woman president in the history of the United States. There are people who are excited about that. You can come out here and say, she's no good. For four years, she did nothing. But let me say this. There is no vice president in history who has ever been claimed as a great vice president that did so much while they were in that reduced position, that second spot in Washington. No one points to the vice president that way. No one says the vice president is doing a terrific job. We've got a convention coming in Chicago, and everybody's thinking back to 1968 because that was the last Chicago convention, which was pretty disastrous. And of course, Hubert Humphrey became the candidate at that convention for the Democratic Party for president. He had been the vice president, and everybody said the Hubert Humphrey had been a terrible vice president. Well, of course, that's what everybody says about vice presidents. They're not supposed to do anything. They get a few assignments, but basically they hang around to see if they need to replace the president. That's the time it doesn't happen. Sadly, there are times in our history when it has happened, and of course, the worst of all was Lyndon Johnson becoming president of the United States due to the death of John Kennedy, which was truly disastrous in many ways for our country. Only emotionally it was because people had come to love John Kennedy, and there was an emotional tie to him. And on top of that, he had become a great inspiration for an entire group of baby boomers in this country. It's just a fact. He was an inspiration and he was killed. People were shocked. That was the shock. That was the destruction emotionally. That was the incredible time in American history, not Kamala Harris taking over for 82 year old Joe Biden, that's not the destruction. But Hubert Humphrey was considered to be a horrible vice president. A lot of people disliked them. Some thought that it was terrible that he was following Lyndon Johnson's plan in Vietnam. And he said that Hubert Humphrey was against the Vietnam War, but that as a loyal vice president, he followed the plan and defended his president. That's his job. He's supposed to do that and he did it and it probably cost him the 1968 election because the truth is, if you take some time and find out about it, Hubert Humphrey was a highly respected politician from Minnesota from his early days as the mayor of Minnesota. Way back in the 1940s, he was successful as a mayor. He was a strong progressive leader in Minnesota, which has a history of this progressive attitude that comes from the farm labor party. It's still there. It's still talked about even with Tim Walts and he gets kicked around for it a little bit. Some people saying he's too progressive, but listen, that was an era when people revered great liberals in our system. If you listen to talk radio back in the 1960s, everybody was a liberal. Today, of course, everybody's a conservative, but back in the 60s, everybody in talk radio in the United States was liberal. Everyone was considered to be a good thing. Of course, the Supreme Court led by Earl Warren changed the entire look of the United States' social fabric in ways that, up until recently, most people liked. There were those against it, but most people liked it. Today, the culture wars are split right down the middle. If you went back to Hubert Humphrey as the vice president, just before he took that job, he was the kind of person who led the country down this liberal path which people wanted. They loved it and they loved him and then he became vice president and then it was destruction for him. If you go through American history, the story over and over again is that vice presidents have been looked at as people who do nothing, who accomplish nothing, who are basically worthless. Any part about that story, go back to Theodore Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt in 1900 wanted to run for president and the Republican Party was very fearful of Teddy Roosevelt. They felt that he was single-minded and that he was tough and that he would move the party in a direction that he chose and he wouldn't listen to any of the bosses in the Republican Party at the time and they were probably right. And so what they decided to do, they said, "Okay, we know what to do with Teddy Roosevelt because if we let him out there on his own, who knows what he'll do to sabotage the work of a Republican president, so make him a vice president because when you're the vice president, your job is to do nothing. You're responsible to do nothing." And Teddy Roosevelt did nothing. He sat there for a short period of time waiting to see what would happen and suddenly, shockingly, the president died. And guess what? The worst nightmares of the Republican Party came true. Teddy Roosevelt became the president of the United States. And when he became president, suddenly he was tough, he was smart, he was effective, and he was loved across the country. He served eight years in office almost the full eight years and then he gave up, turned over to his successor, although it ended up going to Woodrow Wilson. But in the meantime, Roosevelt was a hero as long as he wasn't vice president. Well, guess what? Another vice president has switched to become president. And right now, she's loved and Donald doesn't have the slightest idea what to do about it. But I know what we're going to do, we're going to get out of here and we're going to think about the St. Louis Sioux Company, we're going to think about Jules on Hampton, we're going to think about Wenties and their great food, and we're going to remember that until tomorrow, this is Showdown, I'm Mark Casein, good night. [BLANK_AUDIO]