Showdown
Showdown Episode 142 9-6-24
[Music] Welcome to Showdown. I'm Mark Casen. And it is Friday. Wow. We're just flying. And it is actually sort of surprising to me because I woke up this morning expecting today to be a pretty quiet day, not a lot of real news, maybe just people talking about the same things that we've been talking about every day and didn't turn out that way at all. In fact, there's a whole lot of news, almost too difficult to decide which to start off with. But I think I'll start off with Dick Cheney and maybe with a little bit of a different perspective than some of the other people today have been talking about because everybody is, at least on the left, is thinking that first of all, this is really a great thing that Dick Cheney has done. And I do agree with that. He's against Trump. He's going to vote for Kamala Harris. He has endorsed her along with his daughter. Well, the daughter's probably no surprise, but certainly Dick Cheney, a little bit of a surprise. And maybe there's even more to it than that in that I think it's fair to think that George Bush, George W. Bush, is supporting the idea of what Dick Cheney has done. Now, I know there are lots of people in the Republican Party who don't like George W. Bush. Of course, that's all part of this insane Trump business because I always thought that Jeb Bush was a reasonable person as a potential president, not somebody I wanted to support, but somebody who was reasonable. Anyway, I'm guessing probably correct that the entire Bush clan is behind what Dick Cheney has done today. And all of this is great to whatever extent it depresses the vote in favor of Donald. But don't get me wrong. I don't think we need all that much help because I think that Donald is cooked. You know, how they say, sick of fork enemies done. Well, I think we're, I think we're there. I've been saying that for a month. I thought immediately when Kamala, or let's say it this way, when Joe Biden quit, I thought that Kamala would be in. And when Kamala was in, I thought that it would be very positive for the country. But here's the thing, we all know that it ended up being far more than positive. It's sort of turning into a rampage in favor of Kamala. You can look at the polls and the polls are showing her anywhere from five to eight points ahead of Donald nationally. And then, of course, you go into some of these individual swing states and she's ahead everywhere, except the only one where she wasn't ahead in the last poll I saw was North Carolina. And she, she was down by one in North Carolina. Now that was maybe a week ago. So at this point, she may be up by two, three or four because this is a very fluid election. And I mean, I think that it's, it's clear that things are breaking and they're breaking early against Donald. And I think Donald is petrified. And I think we can see it all the time. In fact, here's one yesterday, Donald admitted, he admitted that he knew that he lost. And in fact, not only did he say that he knew he lost, he said, oh, I lost by a whisker. Well, in the first place, he, he did lose by a whisker because, you know, 11,000 votes in, in Georgia and, you know, very small, you know, victories in, in some of the other states percentage wise for sure. So yes, he, he, he won, there's Joe Biden won by a small amount in the swing states nationally, of course, Joe Biden won by 7 million votes. Anyway, Donald admits that he lost by a whisker. So I think that's part of his, his fear. I think this is exceptional fear and fear that the, the legal system is going to come down on his head so hard, well, that he'll never see another day out of jail once this election's over. And we'll get to that in a second because Josh Mershan is, is pretty interesting and, and yeah, I have some thoughts for sure about him. But let's, let's go back to Dick Cheney. He, he certainly is a rabid anti-communist, a rabid, warmonger. That's Dick Cheney. He wants to fight. He wants the military to do some very bad things along with Bolton. The two of them are, are pretty dangerous skies politically, politically. Now, it turns out that when it comes to democracy, it's a different story. Now, some people may say, well, Cheney's angry because of what Donald did to his daughter. And therefore, this has nothing to do with politics. There's nothing to do with democracy. It only has to do with Dick Cheney wanting to avenge his daughter. I, I can't get in the man's head. I don't know whether he's trying to avenge his daughter or not. Maybe it's a little bit of both. But his daughter and he apparently now are well aware of the fact that Donald Trump is a very dangerous and bad man supporting Victor Orban, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong-un. So, you know, he, he's in league with all of the dictators around the world. You know, it's sort of like if Franklin Roosevelt had decided to be partners with Hitler and Mussolini. And that's where we are. And of course, Franklin Roosevelt didn't and neither has Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney, other Republicans, as you probably well know, you should, that hundreds of Republicans have signed letters. These are previous members of administrations have signed letters opposing Donald Trump, begging the public to vote against Donald Trump. I mean, this is unheard of. This never happens. It's not just Dick Cheney. Across the country, there are Republicans who recognize the danger, who realize what Donald has in mind and they're with Kamala Harris. It's no wonder that Kamala's numbers are as strong as they are. Of course they are because people are standing with her. I said from the very beginning, and especially after the first, say, week and a half, that this was a mass movement that goes far beyond just saying that Kamala Harris is a good candidate way beyond. And I do think it opens the door to making Kamala Harris one of the greatest presidents of all time. And let me tell you why. Not necessarily because Kamala Harris is all that great. I mean, she's good, very good. But now I'm talking about rivaling even John Kennedy in terms of inspiring the country. But in a sense, I think it's important to realize that it's not Kamala that has done this. It's the country that has lifted her up and inspired her to inspire the country. I mean, that's the way I look at it. I think she's got courage. I think she's very smart. And I think she has been lifted by this, this mass movement in the country against Donald Trump and in favor of somebody who many people perceive to be a, a very good person. She gave a great speech at the Democratic Party Convention, one that came across as being extremely genuine. And, you know, while, while people have all kinds of things to say, I'm sitting here. I don't know if this is yesterday or today. No, it's yesterday. Okay. Yeah. So forget that. But, but, but you know, here's the thing. Donald is widely despised, except for by, and I've said this all along, 35, 35%, maybe 37. Look, the number is the same number that supported Joe McCarthy when he was disgraced. I think that's important to recognize. These people are the most extreme in America. Some of them are, are neo-Nazis. Some of them are just weird and crazy. Crazy is a lousy word. Weird is not a bad word. Weird is good. Weird is fine. Crazy is not enough. You know, you could say crazy about anybody. These people are worse by far than crazy. There's something wrong with anybody supporting Donald Trump. Now, don't get me wrong. A lot of these people are conservative and conservative. That's fine. Be conservative. Donald Trump is a rapist. Donald Trump is a convicted felon. He has been indicted four times in criminal cases in the United States, and except for the one that was dismissed, which is going to be restored. I will bet anything the 11th district is going to restore that case, and they're going to kick Judge Cannon from here to the moon. I mean, they've already done it to her once. No, twice. They're going to do it a third time, and she's going to be out of our site. So Dick Cheney did a lot here, but it's far more than Dick Cheney. Dick Cheney just joined in with a country that is fed up with Nazism. This is a Nazi movement that is supporting Donald Trump, who by the way, reads Hitler's speeches before he goes to sleep at night, which is, I guess, how he knows about the poisoning the blood words among some others. So I'm going to say that Dick Cheney did a nice job here. I'm very pleased with what he did. It's not a Democrat-Republican thing to me, because I can tell you right now, although I've never voted. No, I take it back. One time I voted for a Republican. I did vote for Eric Reitens, and that was only because the person he ran against was really a Republican, and I couldn't vote for a Republican. You know, Costa was a Republican, and Eric was a Democrat, so I really didn't have any problem with that. But here's the funny thing. I really don't see myself as a Democrat. I've always seen myself well to the left of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party hasn't always done right by far. The Democratic Party has not always done right by black people. I mean, that's a certainty. They've taken black people for granted many times, many elections. I mean, yeah, they support civil rights, for sure, but up to a point, up to a point. And so that's always bothered me about the Democratic Party, but don't get me wrong. I support Democrats, and I vote for Democrats always, but I don't feel like I'm a Democrat, because it's just a little too conservative for me. Now, on the other hand, Dick Cheney is surely as conservative as you can get in the United States without veering off into Trump land. And that's the good thing. He decided that he would support the conservative movement in the United States, which would be Ronald Reagan and so forth. And listen, I was always deeply opposed to Ronald Reagan. I mean, even to the point, and I've told this story many times, that 1972 when I was about to graduate from UCLA, I refused to take my diploma because I didn't want Ronald Reagan's signature on it. Now that was silly, but that's what I did. And then it took, you know, maybe a decade in order to get Jerry Brown's signature on my diploma. And I thought that was kind of cool. And so I did that. But the point is, I'm way to the left of American politics. For example, I don't have to tell this very much, but clearly, I want people to come across that border. It's not a matter of that I'd like to see the border defended properly, and that I'd like to see it done humanely. No, that's not it at all. I want people to come across the border. Now I'm a little shocked that turns out Ronald Reagan said the same thing, but that's, you know, anybody could be surprised, and I've been surprised by that one. But, you know, I'm to the left of the Democratic Party, but I always vote for Democrats. Now, Donald, it's not even a discussion of Democrats and Republicans, and I think that's what the Chinese are putting in front of everybody. This is not about that. They don't vote for Democrats. They vote for Republicans, but they couldn't vote for a fascist neo-Nazi. They couldn't do it. I give the guy credit for that one. I do. I suspect that Liz Cheney will be on the other side of all the Democrats a few years from now, but in a civil way, not with this lunacy, not dealing with Donald Trump, and by the way, DJT, yeah, that stock is hanging around $17 a share, and, you know, a month to go, well, not a month, 14 days, two weeks, and in two weeks, Donald can unlock that thing, and in two weeks, he might be selling it for one, and he may be happy to get his $100 million, which is what he'd get at $1. Right now, he's got about $1.7 billion down from 10. So he's on his way to nothing. He's getting there. He's working on it, but not today. Today, still got 1.7, and he's got 14 days. Okay, so, you know, I don't think I've said that much about Dick Cheney, except that I appreciate what he did. I'm not madly in love with him. I'm not ascribing something to this that isn't really there. I don't want to go too far, but I think it was certainly the right thing to do, not so courageous for him. At his age, he's not going into any more political contests, but certainly his daughter is, and I guess he supported her. So I'll move on from there. I don't see this as the greatest move in history, but I do see it as a great move. It was excellent. I appreciate it. Now, we talk about Judge Mershan, and I was really concerned yesterday that Judge Mershan could be frightened by Donald, that he could think that Donald would send people to kill his family, and therefore he could do something crazy in the case, or even put Donald on probation. But as it turns out, it looks like Mershan did something that both protected him from Donald's crazies, and at the same time, put Donald in a lot more jeopardy than he probably realizes at this point. And as an example, here's where it is. Mershan says he's not going to sentence Donald until November, November 26th, and that's an interesting time because it would allow the election to be out of the way, and it would set up an opportunity to really put Donald in jail, because once the election is gone and Donald has lost, he's going to lose, once the election is over and Donald has lost, Judge Mershan can really do anything, anything that's fair, anything that's right, and it's right and fair for Donald to be in jail. We've talked about this a hundred times, it's not over, do it, but a hundred anyway. And we have said, and correctly, that most people would get probation for where Donald is, except that you can't show that you're ready to break the law again. And Donald is, and he's shown it. He mouths off all the time about it. He's a criminal. That's it. Oh, so this is today. How is Trump a Nazi? He reads mine comf before he goes to sleep at night. His arm goes up in the air, sort of like Dr. Strangelove, and he has to beat it down. And on top of that, he's already announced that his administration, if he ever got elected, would be the unified Reich. And I think if you check American words, Reich is not a word that we normally use unless we're Nazis. The man's a Nazi. There's my proof. His wife says that he used to read those speeches from Hitler at night, that mine comf is on his bedside area, you know, next to his table. I would say that's a pretty good example of how this guy is a Nazi. So he's a Nazi. He loves Nazis. He hangs around Nazis. He says that Nazis are some, some of them are good people. Greg, he's a Nazi. That's all. You know, it's so easy to say now. I mean, back four or five years ago, even I hesitated to say it because I thought, well, it's not fair. How do we know he's a Nazi? Well, it turns out he's a Nazi. And now he's out saying bad things about Jews. So he's even brought Jews into this. So that that's a Nazi. But, but look, he's doing it to to Muslims, Blacks, Asians. In fact, anybody that's not from Norway, he likes Norway. That's a good one. Now Donald's a sick puppy. Very sick. And unfortunately for him, he's also a Nazi. Just the way it is. Okay. So, so let me move on further into Mershan, who is actually setting Donald up for some real trouble. Because not only can he put Donald in jail without blinking an eye because Donald won't be a candidate for anything. So then just put him in jail. That's all. So he can do that. But, but there's an additional part to this. And that is between now and the election, instead of somebody being able to say, this guy's on probation, it's now a situation where he's a convicted felon and perhaps on his way to jail on November 26th. So I have to tell you, Mershan was pretty clever here in a way. I say clever. Clever in that he got himself off the hook. So it wasn't exactly a courageous thing to do, but he also put Donald in an extremely bad position, which will not only hurt his election chances, but also make it easier to put the guy in jail. Let's see. Greg says, yes, and the entire market is down because of the jobs report. No, actually that's not true. The entire market is down for the reasons that I've been giving you for the last at least month and a half. It was a, a narrow up market that was increasingly looking like it was in trouble. Every time it went up, it was a few stocks, even fewer every, every time it rose. And every time it went down, everything was caving in. That's what makes a bear market. And I think we're headed into one, not happy about it for Kamala. It'll create some trouble for her. But, but the other side is that when that, that report came out this morning, the market rallied immediately and it rallied sharply. In fact, I'll give you a number S and P from 546 to 553 or 4. That's, that's 700 points. The market rallied about 700 points on the news this morning and then caved in. And in fact, is currently about a thousand points lower for the day. If you add in the little bit extra, it's dropped after the close. And I can tell you right now, watching the prices, things fell pretty easily. Doesn't look so hot. In fact, it, it looks pretty, pretty bad in a lot of ways. I wonder what Monday will do. Monday could cave in or it could hold on for a week and then cave in after that. But I think it's getting there. It's getting close to the cave in point. And you can see that in stocks like Amazon and KLA-C, JP Morgan got slaughtered today, Google, Netflix, Microsoft was pretty much slaughtered down about $9. I mean, a lot of stocks got hurt. So they're going down, but only after that sharp rise on the news. So no, you're not right about that. But it, it was certainly a great opportunity to sell short into that rebound on the news. That news wasn't anything anyway. Wasn't that good? It was good enough. 140,000 new jobs, down tick on unemployment to 4.2%. Nobody's going to vote against you because the, the unemployment rate is 4.2. I mean, they'll vote against you because they don't like you. Greg, you're wrong. Greg says, market dropped immediately down on an announcement of jobs report, absolutely false. And see, that is something that can be so easily verified. No, you must have been watching on a delayed program because you don't have the, the current numbers or something. I'm just teasing you now, Greg, but I, I am saying that I, I can tell you right now, the market rallied sharply on that news and then caved in. I mean, that's the way this often works and it worked that way today. And the weakness in the market throughout the day is more evidence of, of a bear market than anything else. I mean, and this has been brewing for a while, quite a while. Okay. So back to my good friend, Mershan, who got himself off the hook. So I, I wasn't thrilled about that part. And, and then he set Donald up for unbelievable trouble, including the opportunity to put Donald in jail when Donald moths off around election time. And he's going to, you know, he's going to. In fact, that's an interesting point in itself. You know, you're not supposed to break the law if you're a convicted felon and you get on probation. And if he starts breaking the law around the time of the election, November 5th, well, Mershan could use that to put him in jail. I'm just telling you, this is not good for Donald Trump, not at all. It did give Mershan an opportunity to sidestep the, the death threats. So that's, that's nice. That's a nice thing. Okay. So the next thing that we need to talk about, and this is just a really short one before the break, this is, this is Donald's brilliant comment. You know, he was asked by, you know, an expert interviewer, what do, what are your thoughts on, on childcare? How would you handle that issue in the country? And Donald said, and I'm not going to go through the whole thing that he said, because a lot that he said was ridiculous. But Donald said that child care is child care. That was his comment. I, I heard him say it. So this, you know, don't, don't say he didn't say that. And, uh, so he said childcare is childcare. And, and I guess that's part of his weave, you know, that's an idiotic story of his that, that the English teacher said, you know, some English teacher nobody's ever heard of said that he was brilliant and that what he was doing should be called the weave because it's so brilliant. He's weaving in and out and accomplishing so much more than anybody could imagine because he's brilliant. Well, in any event, um, child care is childcare. And then he ended up by saying nothing's more important than tariffs. So that's what I'm going to go to next. When I come back from wenties for dinner, because I am going to have dinner at wenties right here. And I could think about all the different things that wenties has at 18,000 Chesterfield or airport road. I mean, I could be thinking about the, the wings, the smoked meat, the hamburgers, the cheeseburgers, the patty melts loaded with onions. I could be thinking about salads, pizza. How about baby back ribs with onion rings? That's got to be the best. All of those things at wenties, because it's a great place to eat, great atmosphere, terrific iced tea. Wenties is the place to go. And then after you eat there in Chesterfield, you just drive down the road to defiance and you get to the defiance wenties roadhouse. And then you can go eat it again because it's all the great food from wenties. They're excellent. And, you know, look, if you look in the eat, if you're hungry, you want dinner, that's where you go. Now, if you want jewelry, well, then you go to 4506 Hampton and that's in St. Louis. And you get yourself an afternoon filled with cases and cases and more cases of jewelry, the place is filled with jewelry. And it's really good jewelry. Allen is son, AJ. They know how to buy. They buy the right stuff at good prices, good prices for everybody. They do jewelry. They do coins buying and selling. They design jewelry. They're very excellent creative jewelry designers. And then on top of everything, when it's all finished, they'll fix your watch. So 4506 Hampton, that is Jules on Hampton. Now, the St. Louis suit company is in Clayton and it's been there for 30 years. So I guess somebody likes it. I know I do. Shirts, suits, shoes, overcoats, great overcoats, great prices. Maybe not the values that you could have gotten in the middle of summer when that fall weather was far off, all that cold stuff. Now it's so close, you're probably going to pay more like the regular price, but that's just the regular price at the St. Louis suit company, which is still well below anywhere else. And having said all of that, the ties are ridiculous. They're ridiculous. Five dollars for a tie, you got to be kidding. And really nice ties. So that's it. The St. Louis suit company 30 years in Clayton, you'll love them and don't forget the wedding attire because they're experts in weddings. There they are, corner of Forsyth and central. Okay, let's talk about tariffs. Dollar loves them. In fact, loves them so much. I guess that's some other mental disability this guy's got because it's true that in our past, we have sometimes used tariffs to defend our industries. We've done that. But in 1932, we threw on a bunch of tariffs. The smooth holly tariffs, everybody knows it. If you've ever gone to high school, you've heard of it. And the deal is that everybody knows that those tariffs extended the depression and turned it into a financial holocaust. I mean, if you doubt it, just go online. I mean, you can go to Google. You can go to scholar.google.com, put in smooth holly tariffs, 1932. And you'll read the entire story and you'll, you'll learn all the ways in which tariffs destroyed the fabric of American economics until in walked Franklin Roosevelt and saved the day. It was absolutely insane what this country did. And here we are again. Now, I don't know if we want to call it history repeating itself or if we want to just call it some people are stupid. But whatever it is, why in the heck would you take one of the worst policies that anybody can remember in our economic history and dumped that on the American public? You'd have to be crazy. Well, gee, what a surprise. He's crazy. I don't even know why he wants to do this, except for he's got this crazy idea in his head that he's punishing somebody. Well, he wants to punish foreign countries by making it difficult to sell their products. The problem is we buy lots of things from foreign countries by lots of things from China. We buy some things from certainly the EU a lot. And I can promise you that if we throw tariffs on all of these people all over the world, you know, Donald will say, what do I care about them? America first. Well, okay, they tried that in the depression leading up to the depression that is. And you know what? They sunk the entire world and came very close to destroying the United States through economic chaos. So are tariffs a great idea? Or are tariffs even a debatable idea? Well, the answer is not even debatable. It's lunacy. Anybody that would want to try it would have to be nuts. So why would you even play with any of this? It is stupid. Now we've got agencies out here that have analyzed all of this and they say that Donald would kill economic growth in the United States with those tariffs. And at the same time that the Kamala's projected economic program so far would create growth in the United States. But let me say you got to be careful with these guys because, you know, they're all experts and they say a lot of things. And I hate to tell you, all the things they say are not true. I mean, I've got Greg on here trying to convince me that somebody said something about something. But I'll tell you this. Really forget it because these experts are as capable of being wrong as anybody. And I'll give you the example, which I've talked about recently. And that's the dollar. I know many experts on US currency and they said for about the last 15 years that the dollar was on the verge of collapse, even to the point where because that quack Stephen Moore says it, you've got people like Donald running around saying that the dollar is in collapse. But the truth is the dollar is not in collapse. And in fact, it is relatively close to about a 10 year high. It's not as high as it's been in some times in the past, but it's high enough. It's high. High enough to put some pressure on economic activity because higher dollars do create pressure on economic activity. And a lower dollar is very supportive of economic growth. It just is. I can't do the whole story here right now because it's so complicated. Yeah, it'll make you crazy. Not going to do it. But I will say tariffs, you'd have to be crazy. Now, JD Vance had a good line yesterday. Where do these people come from? Donald says it on tariffs. Donald says it on childcare. And then JD Vance comes in and says it with regard to shootings. He says shootings are a fact of life. Now, to be fair, he said they were an unfortunate fact of life. But it came across sounding really dumb and really bad. And what did Kamala say? Allowing this gun business is nothing but a choice. We choose it and that's why we've got it. And I can tell you today, I talked with a bunch of students who all told me that everybody has to have a gun. So really, you know, students are usually pretty progressive, but they feel like they need a gun because they feel like they need to be protected. Because we saw the school resource officers in Georgia just yesterday, they were unable to stop that guy from killing four and wounding nine because of the guns that we give people. So at any rate, I just wanted to emphasize that again, the Donald Trump people sound like a bunch of morons making statements that everybody thinks are ridiculous. Shootings don't have to be a fact of life, whether unfortunate or anything else. Well, of course, everybody thinks it's unfortunate. But if you say it's a fact of life and we just have to live with it, you got to be kidding. We don't have to live with it at all. Let's take away everybody's guns and end this. Now, I would agree that if you want to take away everybody's guns, it could take 50 years. I don't know. Just made it up. But if it takes 50 years, that's fine. So in 50 years, people can stop worrying about these shootings because right now these shootings are out of control. And we know there's another one right around the corner. And we also know that we're running at about the rate of one of these shootings every day. Now, some of them get more attention, but the truth is they're all over the place. There are shootings in the United States of America. It is that simple. We need to stop it. I talked about it at length yesterday. And I'm just going to say it again that I have been saying it for 35 years. I've had people who have called on the air on various talk shows. And it's always the same thing. We need our protection. We need our Second Amendment rights. Well, there are no Second Amendment rights. That's the first thing. Reid Saul Cornell, in a book he wrote about the Second Amendment, he's written several, pull it up on Amazon by the book, read it. It's probably five bucks, 10 at most. It's paperback. And I can tell you right now, it's a history of the Second Amendment and it's not about guns. It's about the militia and the commander in chief of the militia, section two, article two of the, or article two, section two of the constitution. It's the commander in chief of the militia. It's the president. Come on, guys, wake up. This is not about guns. The Supreme Court can say it. They can make it real, but it doesn't make it true. Okay. Time to get out of here for the weekend. And I will say that the wenties and Jules on Hampton and the St. Louis suit company are, are very good friends who, who keep us doing this. And finally, I am headed out of here for a couple of days. This is showdown. I'm Mark Casein. Good night. [BLANK_AUDIO]