Political No-Brainer Podcast

Business and Politics: Navigating the Intersection - Featuring Derek Huizinga - Political No-Brainer - Episode #32

Broadcast on:: 26 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: other

In this episode of "Political No-Brainer," hosts Jeff Rabinowitz and Zak Zakaluk are joined by special guest Derek Huizinga to explore the intricate relationship between business and politics. Together, they discuss how political decisions impact the business landscape, from regulation to economic policy, and how businesses can influence political agendas. Derek offers his expert perspective on the challenges and opportunities that arise at this intersection, sharing insights on navigating the ever-changing environment as both a business leader and an informed citizen.

(upbeat music) - Hello America, and welcome to our podcast. We're two pals with different viewpoints and thoughts. We really don't know much. Discuss news, politics, conspiracy theories, and much, much more. One's a genius, and the other's an idiot. Or are they both idiots? Or are they both geniuses? You be the judge. Now live from beautiful central Florida, welcome to political no-brainer. Your hosts today are on your right. Hey Zach, and to your left. - Me, Coach Trippy, a.k.a. Jeff Robynwards. - I know we got a beautiful guest with us this evening. Our, my, soon to be your friend, but my friend Derek. - We're friends already. - He is a, he is a, a central Florida transplant come down from Michigan, correct? - You got it, man. - Yes. And- - I love Michigan. I have a visit. - I've never seen it, but I heard it's got the world's biggest Christmas store. - It just, we used to go there every Thanksgiving and, well, we would go there like Thanksgiving weekend. - Where is it? - Where's the Christmas store? - It's Frank and Move. So it's basically like maybe an hour north of kind of central Detroit. - Okay. - Yeah. - I've been to Grand Rapids and my mom was big in Amway back in the day. So we always had to go to Ada to go visit my friend. Our house was built like five miles from headquarters there. - Okay. - She was always like, "Why don't you be a truck driver for him?" 'Cause they always drove the nicest white clean trucks. It was pretty good. - Private businessman, that's, that's eight. That is the same, the same source of the arena, the Kia Center, the DeVos family, when it was Amway. - Yep, yep. - And we met a lot of Grand Rapids and a lot of Orlando. - And we will be discussing business because Derek is a business owner here in Orlando. He owns Turbo Tint in central Florida. And that's how I met him. We had our cars tinted and actually Derek, I'll be coming to see you very soon. We've got two new cars. And so if you are in Florida, I'm gonna tell you, there is no better tint shop. Not only is it the cleanest place I've ever been in, like he's got drinks for you, the owner like actually, that's how we met. The owner comes out and talks to you and hangs out. And they're just pumping cars out of there. It was a great, it was a great, very awesome. I mean, that's why we fell in love with Derek. That's what my wife and I are like, we will never do business anywhere else without tinting vehicles. And then he has some other businesses going on, which we're gonna discuss tonight. So we'll, I'm sure I'll do some more commercials for him as we go on. But if you want to get your all your tinting needs, come see Derek at Turbo Tint, tell him his accent you. And they'll price the face. - Thank you. - But-- - Those are 50. - Bob, Coach Trippie, he'll actually ask you to leave then. (laughing) So Derek, you moved down to Florida three years ago. You got sick of the snow? - So we moved July, 2021. Orlando was always a fantasy joke for us for six, seven years. My wife's brother, my brother-in-law moved here. They were, there's Cajun Club members growing up. I'd never been to like 2015. And then I kind of fell in love 'cause I'm like, oh, I missed this as a kid. We joked about it, we came down during COVID when everyone in Michigan's walking around with a business suit and a bowl cut 'cause it couldn't get her hair cut. Went down there and we're like, oh, okay. People are kind of like rational here, right? The state's really right. The county's really left, cool. They can get together and say, well, maybe we don't want to nuke all the businesses, at least we want to stay open. We're like, we kind of like that, we dig that. So meanwhile, Michigan's becoming really polarized, really ineffective of their state budget, income tax, and kind of you mix those all in a pot with driving around 5M with white knuckles, thinking you're going to die in the roads, and you're like, you know what? Let's do it. - Or add a job and a business at the time. And I said, well, we need another income source, so I bought this monstrosity down here and built it from scratch. And that was four and a half years ago and we started thinking about it in July, 2021 moved down. And here we are now, over three years. - That's awesome. - Made in the swamp, man. The first two years was hell on the health with the allergies and the COVID. This is a cesspool, but once you got back to the health barrier, it's like you bulletproof, it's nuts. - And I also find it quite hilarious where you opened your shop. Let's move to Florida and build right on OBT. - Well, it's very gentrified though, because as you know, that's an old Kmart center. Our specifically was the auto center. And when I came-- - Oh, I know who that is. - Yeah. - It's right by the Florida mall, okay? So in people directions, I always, I'm key in that. I'm like, OBT and San Lake, Florida mall, okay? So at least they're like, oh, okay, that's been improved. And they actually just leased out the last space in our shopping center. So we went from a drug infested, homeless needle pinching wasteland to actually, it needs all brand new long-term leases and everything's leased out, new restaurant on the corner. - That's awesome. - At least that little corner or slice of heaven, compared to going north a couple miles or whatnot. So it's, they did the right thing with that shopping center. - You gotta drive through the war zone to get to your place. But I mean, it actually is really nice down nicer. I still laugh at the fence they put in the middle of OBT 'cause it's already getting hit. I see people running into it. - It got hit, it got clobbered. - I told you the other day, I was telling you, the middle of the league it was falling over. - It's an opportunity for you to-- - I know, but the city-- - More offenses. - You know what? - He's not the commercial car. - No, but I know guys in the city, I've done jobs for the city actually. And they didn't call me on that one. But I laugh because I watch, they put all these humps in and lights where people are supposed to cross the streets. Nope. - They called you to install it. - They watch everybody just cross wherever. It's hilarious, but that's Orange Blossom Trail in Orlando. And if anybody has no idea what that is because they've never been to Orlando, it is definitely not Disney. It is definitely not Universal and it is definitely not anything you wanna, anything you expect. I really love when people come down here for Disney or for Universal or for SeaWorld and you chatting with them and they're like, "Dude Orlando's scary." I'm like, what do you think it was? - The young old man's savage. - Because he does in the fairies everywhere, come on. But I mean-- - Just an axle rust man, like near, we rented a year in kind of by the loop there, South Central and it's like, it was a near-death experience driving, great access to Disney, but then when we got our house in '22, worst time to buy ever, almost, value-wise. We went way out here, we're north of Magic Kingdom, like five miles, we're on a bubble. - So where do you guys look at you in the garden? - You know like Hamlin Girl area. - Oh, okay, well, with its winter garden. Now it's called Hamlin, they made it-- - Sort of, it's like Baldwin Parks or Orlando, I mean, come on. - Horizon West, kind of. Windermere Garden West. - It's Northern Windermere, that's what they call it. - Yeah. - Or then you come up to my area, which is a pop key, you know, we're just a bunch of good old boys up here driving a big jet. - I thought you'd put your hillbillies. - That's right, come on, the APK. - Heck yeah, so like Confederate flags up there and barn burning and-- - If you pull into my neighborhood, the first house has a big Trump and a Confederate flag and it's hilarious. - Listen, if you pull in my neighborhood, there's a hardy's gas station, they have people on horses with Confederate flags. Where are you at, Trippy? - I'm in Claremont, it's North. - Oh yeah. - It's a little bit south of the villages, which is completely another, it's another-- - Are you like Grovelin or Montverne? - Grovelin. - Miniola, Grovelin, but my address is Claremont. - Let me tell you what, there's a restaurant there that I absolutely love. - What one? - The Tiki Bar. - Oh yeah, I drive by there already. - Best burgers ever. I went there one time on a date. I, we park in the parking lot. It's over in Miniola, right? It's in Miniola, Trippy? - Yeah, yeah. - It's in the Miniola Inn behind it. And you park in there parking lot and I'm walking down this path and I'm like, what kind of redneck, swamp, hoot, nanny am I walking into? And all of a sudden you come around the corner and it's a bar right on the lake and boats are pulling up and families are there and they serve the best burgers. - We've never been there, we gotta take the kids. I've only lived here 23 years, so we're not rushing into that. - Yeah, don't rush into it bud. You know, don't go crazy. You've never been-- - I was actually, I was in Claremont on Sunday. - Everybody talks about it says it's absolutely wonderful. - I'm telling you, best burger you ever had. - I co-host. - Although I'm not gonna lie, I ate at the Hangry Bison today in Wintergarten. They made a really good burger. - The Hangry Bison. - Was it a bison burger? - I did not, I didn't go for the bison. I went for the short rib burger. Last time I got Buffalo, I was not, it was not that good. - Geyser Point, Wilderness Lodge, Bison Burger, thank you, you're welcome, Trippy. (laughing) - I gotta try that too. I don't get out much. - He doesn't go good. - He works 24 hours a day and then sleeps in the parking lot. - That's what you gotta do, man, that's what they got. I'm on a ball chain. - You know, are we ready for this? It's 'cause Biden did that. - Biden's right, that's why you gotta work. So much to pay your bills. - I remember the stickers on the gas pumps Biden did that. - I did that. (laughing) - That's awesome. - Yeah, I remember those. - And people, they actually got on the news or somewhere and was like, please stop putting stickers on the gas pumps. - That was like mid-2021 before it was even that bad before credit card debt was 1.4 trillion. - Oh. - That was like three years ago. - Yup. - We are. - Now look at it, it's like we're, you know, it's a mess. We're not going back. We're going a new way forward, allegedly. - We are. - Are you even though we're going back? - I'm acknowledging that statement, which is pure communism, but we'll talk about that later. So one of the reasons other than the fact, it's great to have you on the show and thank you so very much. But I wanted to get a local entrepreneur on the show to discuss, I don't care what side you sway. I want to hear how is when Trump was in office when you had your business versus by economics? - Well, I'll say what side I sway because I'm very open about it and I don't think it's a bad thing. I always tell people you need to vote and you need to vote based on the policies that help your family the best. And that's different for obviously for a small business owner or a large tech company entrepreneur, you know, a public health worker or a public health servant, I guess I'd say, or a school teacher. You know, it's going to be very different, you know? So I was raised extremely conservative. That's what West Michigan was when I was growing up, right? It was just, you just mom and dad voted for Bush. That must be the right guy, whatever it may be. - Right. - And I didn't really care about politics at all until Trump first ran in 2015 because it was entertaining, right? And then all of a sudden you're like, "Oh my gosh, this is real." And then you're like, "Oh." And then you started to think like, "Well, I don't know who I like from a personality, but from an establishment standpoint, but I believe is the government's too big." And that's not a belief. It's just look at our national debt and look at all the proposals of, let's give money here, there, and this will help these people out. Well, sure, well, today, but tomorrow it's going to screw everyone. So to me, I would always say like, okay, maybe I'm like a conservative base, but more of a libertarian kind of, I like hearing everyone's view. Honestly, I seriously do have had the best conversations with people in the opposite spectrum as me. And it used to be fun before COVID, right? Before it was like, I didn't do because you're politically different, which is the stupidest thing ever to-- Well, hang on. So a couple of points on that, and then I don't mean to interrupt, but one, the only president that ever shrunk the size of government, the only president is Clinton. He brought down Gore was in charge of the operation of shrinking the size of government. He did bring it down by a hundred thousand employees. But now back when Clinton was in office, that was a different Democrat. Okay, but I'm just saying the only president to bring down the size of government-- Well, he did a lot of good things. One president that promised to bring down the size of government was Ronald Reagan, and then I'm done on this here soapbox, was Ronald Reagan. He promised to close the Department of Education. He promised to close the Department of Energy. And both grew in size and scope on his eight years watch, and they never closed, as you know. So Donald Trump did not bring down the size of government. He did, when we talk about spending money here and spending money there, and not to get it to a whole other, I don't want to go left or right in center here, but the $1.5 trillion tax cut is historically very similar to Ronald Reagan's tax cut. It's one we can't afford. And when Ronald Reagan passed his tax cuts, which was pretty huge at the time, I think Donald Trump's was the biggest, ultimately Congress passed numerous tax increases to compensate for Ronald Reagan's tax cut, because there wasn't enough revenue coming into Washington, and Ronald Reagan signed all those new tax increases into law. So we're in that boat now. We've got a tax cut, we can't pay for it. There's not enough money coming in. It was promised that it would pay for itself, that the economy would just blossom, and the revenue would increase incrementally. It did not happen that way. So when Kamala Harris, for example, talks about raising the capital gains tax, it's significantly less than Biden would have raised it, but there is a need to bring in some new tax revenue. I don't think it's fair that we are raising the capital gains tax. I think we should repeal the tax cut that Donald Trump passed, but whatever it is, there's a genuine need to bring in more revenue into Washington. And we're gonna see it on September 30th, and it's probably gonna be a government shutdown again. I hadn't heard that. I didn't know, I mean-- - That's coming up. - They got so many other things going on that I-- - Mitch McConnell made it clear if this happens, we're gonna get blamed for it. And that will again, so to those elections-- - I mean, haven't we heard that how many times in the last two years about shutdown? How serious are we getting, you know what I'm saying? 'Cause that-- - Well, there's been shutdowns, and this is pretty serious. - You did shut down when Trump was in office a couple of times? - Couple of, I don't know, a couple of times, at least. - I don't know. - I remember. - I don't know. - But I have to agree with you, Derek. I had no interest in politics, other than I grew up in a very conservative house. And Reagan was our hero, and then Bush Jr. was my mom loved him. And Clinton was the bad man, 'cause he was dirty, as far as-- With his sexual promiscuity or whatever. Yeah, and so that was, in my house, being a very religious-based home, you know, that was bad. But I've seen some of the stuff he did that, like, if he was a Democrat, they just called him a politician, you might say, he was pretty much just like the rest of the guys, like right in the middle. It didn't get started going crazy. And where I really started getting interested was like when Obama started running, and then you see the great divide going on, and it just got ridiculous. And then, you know, our hero, Trump ran for office, and that was, you know, we were excited about that. So that's when I got involved, and then I've known Jeff for, you know, for 30 years, and we never, we never talked really politics, 'til we decided one day. Until I came up with the idea that Zack would be the greatest co-host ever on the greatest podcast ever. In the world, in the world, that's why our show is not-- You're gonna be bigly. Hello, American, now it's hello world. Huge, bigly. Bigly. So we started, you know, we started talking politics, and I said, I better start researching stuff, 'cause I don't wanna look like an idiot in front of a liberal. And, you know, that's where we went. So we try and get everybody on the show that we, I don't necessarily bring people on because they believe everything I believe, other than we have our greatest guest who ever has ever been on, my wife. And Ellen, we love having her on because she'll actually tell both of us to shut up and she handles business. She does. You know, but so we love hearing from everybody's sides, and we love to talk to educators and businessmen. And, you know, one of the things with you is that excites me is because in this political landscape of nonsense, I don't care who's in office, I think right now everything's nonsense. The little guy, the little businessman is really struggling. And we had this conversation. You were out of town last week because you were getting trained because you have to do a new business on the side to help support your business. - Number three. - Number three. - Oh, it's business though. What is number one? No, I know I'm one, it's tempting, right? And then it's down. - Badly. - I guess I'll extreme of a word you wanna use. So I have a digital marketing business and March, you know, big tech, central Google, big brother decided they were gonna basically award the biggest brands and the biggest companies with all the favorability. I should probably shouldn't be saying this, I'll probably show up missing tomorrow. So I'll be a little careful of it. You know, we went from billing out like 45K a week to like 25. And then by July, August like 12. I mean, it's, you know, we've done a lot of things. We've taken a lot of steps to improve that. There's a game plan, there's progress, et cetera. But while that was happening, actually the tent business was actually booming. You know, we've been business for two years and haven't really seen much of a profit. And then starting March or April, it was profit through July kind of defined what those economic bubble factors are that people talk about. But externals that happened in August actually is you saw new car sales plummet in combination with dealerships trying to compensate for that by basically selling the types of services that we do requiring that to go on vehicles. Like it went out the door. So we saw a 31% month over month decrease from July to August. In August, it should be one of your strongest months in a business like this down here because of the heat. So quite frankly, in terms of revenue, the revenue swing that was for us was net 60 grand. Small business, okay. When you're talking those numbers, you go from a modest profit to a major loss, major. In small guy terms, you know, five figure loss. And you just can't withstand that month over month. So in as a business, you have to do a SWOT analysis, right? You have to look at the externals and the internals. Every doing everything we can. And we have done, I mean, Zach, you talked about you liked our business when you came in. It's so much better, it's disgusting. It's so much better. It's so much cleaner. It's so much, we do so much more. Our shop is so much prettier. The floor so much better, the lights are so much better. The service is so much better. The speed so much better. The warranty, there's so much fewer. I mean, don't trust anyone. Just go to our group reviews 15. I think there's 1,595 star. I mean, it's just, it's bizarre how fast we did that in two and a half years because we took care of people. And it doesn't matter. I mean, you could be a rock star, but just the way the externals are right now, it's just, it's had a major effect. So, and I would say those externals would be, you know, stuff going on in new cars that you can't control. Stuff going on with credit card debt, you can't control inflation that you can't control. It's just consumer confidence that you can't control. Election people get nervous volatility-wise that you can't control. So there's all those things going on right now. And that's not uncommon for election years, but I would say, although my experience is limited with business and election years, I would say this is very extreme and many people would agree. And as a small business, you know, because of inflation, all those things, you're not gonna just go around and get money. You know, I mean, you can take an 840 credit score and they're like, oh yeah, hey, have a 14% APR. It's like, no, no, thank you. So I'm hearing that in my business also, where we're the largest company in what we do in America, 400 locations, 15,000 five star reviews. And this last two months, I've seen it decrease massively. People are scared to, people are scared to come out of pocket. I've actually had people who, I try not to ever talk politics when I don't believe mixing business with politics is a good thing. - No. - But if they bring it up, I'm not gonna be a schmuck. And I don't care which way they lean, you know, I'm just gonna chat with them. And I've had a lot of people say, you know, how long is this good for? I said, well, the estimate's good for 15 days. And I said, but I can open it up whenever, you know, if you decide to wait, if you have some projects, you're working on or whatever, and they're like, we have, project is we're waiting till the election's over. And I've heard it from both sides, not just Republicans, I'm hearing it from both sides. They're just like, we just wanna see. And I have people, I had a guy who, you know, 800 pecan score, whatever, perfect credit. Tell me, dude, your guy's credit, the lowest rate is 8.99, why would I do that? I said, I'm not telling you to go with me. I'm just saying, maybe get a better loan at your bank. He's like, no, I can't, that's the problem. So they don't wanna pony up their own cash because, you know, most people I know, especially, and I had this discussion with our good friend, Daniel is gonna come onto the show with us. Hopefully next week, maybe the week after we're gonna have Daniel on, and we'll have Derek on with him, that's gonna be a really good entrepreneur show. But Daniel was saying everybody he works with, 'cause, you know, he's in the housing market, and he's saying these people all use everyone else's money to own things. And he said, but the interest rates are getting ridiculous. But didn't the fed up the rate today? - Here's your options, here's your options right now. Let's not talk good economy, bad economy, left, right. Let's just put the options out here for business. Here's your options. Spend your cash and not know what the heck's gonna go on over the next few months and kill yourself, or have incredible credit and incredible business history and get a high interest rate loan. - Yeah. - So you know what the answer is in a lot of, their business-to-business decisions and business-to-consumer decisions, but those trickle up to business-to-business is let's just hold wait, see. Well, there's two things, one is like you said that Google transferred basically the main hits to big business, and that's really cannibalized your business. I remember 15 years ago, 20 years ago, maybe I had a commercial cleaning business, and all I had to do is buy a yellow page at for about $300 a month, and I got more calls that I could handle. And that was it, that was the flat rate. $300, $350 a month got me a dollar-size ad, and I remember I had gotten a call from every club in downtown Orlando, and I could only take about five at the time, and they were literally still calling because they either just wanted a quote or... Now today, I actually owned a small business, and it's a medical waste business, so I go to doctors' office, I pick up sharps boxes. I can't get any accounts other than the smaller dentist, because a lot of them are national accounts, a lot of the dentist are going through Google to get their lead, to get their, I guess recommendations are their people to call. - Were their corporate directed supply? - Yeah, were they corporate directed? - Right. - One time I called Google AdWords, which is the local Google for a small business, it's more of a local thing, and I said, "How much is a click?" And the salesman said, "Well, that's the $64,000 question." I'm like, "Well, how much is a click?" I mean, can you just tell me, is it 10 cents? - Well, it can be anywhere from $0.40 to $0.51 a click. - True statement. - Yeah, and I'm like, so somebody's gonna click on my, and he's like, "But you spend what you want. "You tell me you want 75 bucks?" So sure, we have 15 clicks for 75 bucks, and then you're gonna send me an email that I need to go to $400 budget, and you're gonna click, and so it's changed significantly. Big business is taking control, and I don't think there was a government movement. I think Google found a niche and took over. - Well, obviously, right? The money's gonna go where they can get the money. - Right, so-- - Now you can mix in lobbying and government to that. There's an element to it, of course. - Right. - Business is gonna go where the money is in, especially when you're a publicly traded company, right? Talking about Amazon, or you talking about either Tesla, or Microsoft, or Google, or Disney, or whatever, you are answer to your stockholders. - Yeah. - Guess what the only acceptable answer to your stockholders is, oh. - We made money. - No, we made more money. - Okay, true. - Yeah, every quarter, it has to be better than the last quarter. They gotta beat every quarter, and every year-- - We'll talk about CEO salaries, it's so bloated this and that. Well, do you have a job where, if you don't grow 5%, you're fired tomorrow? - Right. - Right, so I mean-- - They are. - It's all an element, right? And I mean, when we grew my business, I actually, for a few months, I spent about 30 grand a month on Google Ads. Can you believe that, small business? - No, my entire ad budget is like 12 to 15, and that's still about 10% or so, but that's a completely different world. You can't put it all in one box, you don't know what you're gonna get, different campaigns are gonna generate different click rates. We were getting a cost of acquisition per vehicle when we had our ads really dial in of $30, $40, which is about 10%, which is really healthy, 'cause then you can, like Zach can come back and he's not gonna take any of my ad money to do that, you know what I'm saying? So his initial acquisition cost is gonna go down, but you take a month like August where people just aren't buying because there's no inventory, no new car sales and no confidence, actually, no matter, even if your clicks are doing good and people want your service, it's costing me a hundred bucks a car to get someone in. So how do I mitigate that? You can't, like you can't. You have to just like say, well, let's turn it off. - Well, I remember when I was in the car business, you know, as a GM and everything. - Yeah. - You start out in the sales side, or, you know, if you start in the car business, you learn on the sales floor and you never could understand why the managers get so mad if you brought, brooming up, we call it brooming. You broom somebody, you know, ah, they were just tire kickers, you know, they're nothing. No, you have to get them in the door, 'cause once you get into the GM side, you're learning every person who walks on your lot is $400, so I need to make that money back. So you better bring them to me and make, let me, let me close them if you can, you know? And, and, and so I get it and it's advertising is it. That's a heck of a game to be in, boy. That's where some money is right there. But if, if Google, and it's unfortunate, but I understand they're working off their bottom line. They're like, we're growing this bottom line. So guess what? We're going after big businesses. If Google said, maybe during COVID or whatever, like, you know what, why don't we go after small businesses and keep these guys afloat by pumping the snot out of them? I mean, who would, who would have known what would happen? But I'm listening every day here, and even big chains and little restaurants are closing left and right. I see it all the time. Big chains. - They just had one up in like a maitlin, some sandwich shop I remember. - No, but did you hear what happened with them? - No. - So, Capy's, Capy's subs has been around for 54 years. 54, 54 years. - Capy's, right? - Capy's, yeah. - Capy's best cheesesteaks ever. We'll have to go there sometime. - Yeah. - You don't sit inside 'cause you'll smell like a cheesesteak for the rest of the day. But they announced that they were closing 'cause they could not afford the new lease and the outpouring of the public. Actually, I'm lying to you. The people weren't gonna renew their lease. 54 years, well, how would you close the store that's been there for 54 years, but whatever? So the people were not gonna renew their lease of the property and the outpouring of the public. They literally sold out of food every single day. - And what the last day was till at noon, they had to shut the door. - They shut the doors at noon. And the people who owned the property said, you know what, we're not gonna do this. We're re-signing the lease. So they're back open. - But you have to realize though, that's the story that made the public eye. So I just talked, I told you my friend who runs this sports bar chain. They had a business in the villages, a restaurant in the villages. The business was booming. She said, we never missed a rent payment in 15 years. She gets a call, we're tearing down the shopping center and building condos. Then you gotta be out by December. She says, you know, if I buy the football package, I need to stay till February, it's $12,000. I need to play the Super Bowl. They said, okay, you got two weeks to clear out there. So she had to shut her, I mean, all over the place, business is getting just buffaloed small. - When they were booming, how many restaurants did they have? - They were at 26, but they split. But now they're down, they're down to maybe 17. - I think that's where Trippie and I met at that restaurant. We work together as restaurant managers. - Yeah, I mean, I opened a bunch and I closed a bunch. It was a fun run. But the truth is, small business, I always use this example of small business just getting killed. Amazon's the example. So Amazon had this drone program that essentially, supposedly, allegedly went nowhere. And now, suddenly it's resurfacing. So it's a drone that'll only carry a certain sized box. Then strangely enough, Amazon gets into pharmaceuticals. - Yeah, they do. - Literally, and I call this a full-blown conspiracy. So first, Amazon Warren Buffett and Jamie Diamond from JP Morgan team up to create a company to ensure just their 1 million employees collectively. The whole effort fails and it was called Haven and three of them agreed to just disband the whole effort. But I don't know where Amazon gets into pharmaceuticals. And little, so I literally get a prescription. My insurance company that informs me that I have to go through Amazon prescriptions who just started in business, essentially. Suddenly, they're in bed with a big, huge insurance company who's flooring a blue. And then I get an email from Amazon, the best way to get your prescriptions is to be a prime member. And I'm like, what the hell? And then I realized this drone program carries this little box, which essentially, I just put two and two together, will carry pharmaceuticals and only pharmaceuticals. But the only thing they talk about is if your dog's in the direction of a box falling, the drone will fly away and come back in another time. Well, that's just great, but the local pharmacies are gonna be done before once Amazon gets it all together in the pharmaceutical business. It's gonna be the CBS, - Oh yeah. - For Amazon. - You think so? - Absolutely. - I mean, maybe the mom pop pharmacies, but I don't know the public. - Yeah, that's right. - Can I ask a rhetorical question? - Sure. A company like Amazon, not the subject of more antitrust. - I don't understand it. - How is that not a monopoly? I mean, I use Amazon fluently more than anything. - My wife made Jeff Bezos rich, I'm telling you. - Oh yeah, oh, absolutely. You're not alone, but. - The people just lost their major antitrust law law soon. They just lost it bigly. I mean. - Bigly. - Yeah, but again, where's the enforcement? What's the, what's the, the, the, the repercussion, right? - So I don't know. - You, I don't know how old you are, Derek. - 38. - Okay. So you're a lot younger than me. When I was a kid, I remember the government stepping in and breaking up. - AT&T. - Bell, no, Bell telephone. - Bell telephone. - We called it the Ma Bell, which became AT&T. - Right. - But that was the monopoly. Bell was everywhere. So they had to break everything up and it couldn't be just one bell. It had to be Mountain Bell, Jersey Bell, Pennsylvania Bell, you know. - All the caller IDs, the first caller IDs, like in 2000. - And right, but it worked. If you look at the technology advances from that day till today, you went. - But that was, that was a cool thing. - There would still be headlines if that didn't happen. You would still have a phone, a big giant phone with 11 buttons right here. - No, no, I had the rotary. Shh, shh, shh. Anyway. - I mean, it worked. - It worked. - So people are anti-government intervening. - But no, but when they broke up the monopoly, that exploded little telephone companies. They're called C-LEX. So they provide telephone service from the pole to the house. And C-LEX came out and then, and then all of a sudden up sprouted in the early 90s 'cause I was in Texas, all these long distance companies. So you would pay your regular phone company for just the line coming to the house, but then you'd get either you'd have cards or you would have a certain company that you'd have to dial a certain number to get out on long distance 'cause they had the best rates. And it was, we were killing it. Like I got in the business, actually. I was in it, it was called XL, XL Telecommunications. And I would call my friends up and I'd be like, "Hey, how much are you paying for long distance a month?" They're like, blah, blah, blah, blah. I go, "What if I can cut it in half or save you money?" They're like, "How much does it cost me?" I'm like, "Nothing." They're like, "Sign me up." I mean, it was a no-brainer. Everybody was signing up. And then of course, the cell phone came out. Now, the cell phones, they came out in the late '80s, early '90s, but they were like, "This big." And you're like, "Hello?" And it cost, just to turn the thing on cost a thousand dollars, you know? - I'm not that young, that yes, I understand. I know that. - That was a rock star. I had beepers, man. We were, we were. We were pimping with beepers. - My first job, my co-worker, we all used to make fun of him. His name was Rob Cratt. I actually remember something. He had to leave his car for two days at the place to get his cell phone installed. - Oh, did he have a cell phone installed? One of the ones on the floor? - Yeah, cables under the car and under the carpets. And then we all would laugh 'cause he had no friends. And the only thing he would do with his cell phone is on the way from home to work, is call us and ask us if he wanted us to pick him up if he wanted him to pick us up food. And we were like, "Yeah, he really needed that cell phone for that." 'Cause he literally, he was a very big guy. I was actually the only person that was nice to him, but I would still be a part of that. - Oh, look at you. - I saw him every time he called, but. - No, I used to joke around. But one of my friends' dads was rich. And he had, I remember he had up, it was either a Mercedes or a BMW, I don't remember. I think it was a Mercedes. And he had one of those cell phones in the center. You know, you had to like click it to get it out. And I'd be in the car, gibber jabbing away. And Mr. B come out and be like, "Oh, you're funny, Zach, 'cause you know how much that cost per minute?" I'm like, "It's not even on, bro. I'm not using your cell phone." - Status symbol only. - Right, I'm looking like a pimp. - So what is on, there is so much going on this week, right? I mean, I was pissed last week I was on on 'cause you got to go over the debate. That's old news, right? But now you've got like, you've got the second assassination temp, you've got the Diddy sex trafficking, you've got. - What does he need a thousand bottles of baby oil for? Good lord. - I didn't. - He's done, right? He's been charged, right? - Now his lawyer said today, or yesterday he was, you told me. Didn't you tell me? Trippy? - No, he did. - Oh, I thought. - I don't know. - He's either a bond or a bail request denied. - But his lawyer says he's not guilty. That's all, you know, this is all made up. - Of course. - But I think, I think, did he's going to be like the next Epstein? They're scared of him because he's got dirt on everybody. I mean, he had cameras in his house for what, 12 years? - Look how long this took to come to light from the original allegations. - When did they raid his house? That was back in. - It was a while ago. - Yeah, I don't think it was last summer, but it was, yeah, it wasn't a year ago, but it was pretty far. - Yeah, it was a while. And then it's like, where did that go? - Right. 'Cause he disappeared. - Now you're minor. - He already ran away. - I wonder what's going on here. What is the involvement, right? What is- - Why is he like, every time a story like this breaks, you know, we're talking about Dee Dee, we're talking about Jeffrey Epstein. - There was a guy named Castro, and he had girls in his basement locked in there for 25 years. - Oh, obviously not, obviously not Fidel. - In Cleveland. - Yeah, in Cleveland. - Oh God, that's the one. - And one girl broke out. And then the story broke loose, that somebody called the police and said, I saw this blue car drive past them, making you turn, and they were off the street, and the police never reacted to the call. And then, so I always felt the police were in on the, in on the whole thing because, and maybe even taken advantage of the girls, the times, because when he was finally charged, and like Epstein, he hung himself in prison, it was really strange how it happened. He was unattended for three minutes, and he managed to put together 20 sheets, and hang himself, and all that. - We all know the answer to that. - And- - Was Hillary the jailer? - The demolition of the house, they dug out the basement no less, so the chain of evidence is completely gone, and you know, and it's just, historically sex trafficking, and all this kind of kidnapping and stuff, is always surprisingly never assolved. And I just, I don't understand it. You know, and it's not just Jeffrey Epstein, like I said, a guy in Cleveland, I mean, he was no billionaire, he literally had the girls, they broke, they broke a board out of the window, he had- - Was that the one where the black guy found the girl, 'cause he's like, this is weird, white girl coming up to a black guy, I knew something was wrong. I don't know, I just, anyway, but yeah. - Don't recall that part. So here's up, I have to tell you really- - Don't worry if he's proud of his press secretary, 'cause he said- - That's all you took from that. - I remember the video, when they were- - They're eating their dogs, they're eating their cats, they're eating their cats. - Did you see the news flash, that they're eating their pets or pets or pets? - I mean, I saw plenty of videos, so now I'm not gonna- - Trippies, well, trippies. - I'm not gonna belch on the validity or the accuracy, but all I'm gonna say is I saw a lot of videos, so. - Trippies on the same page as Pierre Jean-Claude Van Damme, or whatever her name is, and the three green junk beer. KJP. - KJP. - They counted the whole four years though. - No, we just, no, no, Jen- - No, no, no, Saki was there. - It's always two and two, man. - Oh, yeah, but everybody's not seen- - Trumpy had Huckabee Sanders and McEnany and then for, or vice versa, maybe, I don't remember- - Right, right, right, yeah. - KJP. - Who was the blonde with Trump? - McEnany. - I ain't gonna lie, I liked her a lot. - Do you know, hey, do you know that, Trump? - Did Gutfeld today, dude? - Dude. - Oh, did he really? - Oh, you watched Gutfeld, Jen? - That's the guy on the five. - Right, but he has some podcast or whatever. - He recorded every day at like 2 p.m. We actually went to a show in New York when we were there last year, but it airs at 10, but Trump was on it today. I'm not kidding you, which is crazy, because that actually is a pretty, I mean, obviously, it's extremely conservative, libertarian leaning, you know, a humor show, but they've had like Bill Maher on there. They've had- - Well, you know who's Trump? - Charlemagne and God, it's kind of a, there are a lot of independent and stuff that watch it, and it does have a nightly viewership over 2 million, so it is one of the top late night stuff, but that's gonna be kind of interesting, so I'm gonna watch that tonight. - We're almost at tonight. - Oh, that's on tonight? - Yeah, 10 o'clock. I mean, I know Trippy, you don't get Fox News, but if you can go to the bar, like, you know- - No, my TV's short circuits. I don't know how that is, it's an anomaly. - It's the only- - Yeah, you heard when I put on some of the big mainstream news- - It's like the old- - Well, did you see Trump- - No, he's when the wind blew and he had 10 on the roof, like, that's the time every time I turn on Fox News. - Did you see, did you see Trump was on Theo Vonshow? - Uh-huh. - Yep. - He did a podcast with Theo. - Oh, Theo was there, yeah. - Or, well, yeah, obviously he didn't come to his house. (laughs) - But Trump was in New York because Trump had a rally and God, they were in Michigan last night and then they were in, they were outside of New York City in New York tonight. - Yeah, but did you see there was a bomb threat there? They found a bomb. - I did not, no. - Yeah, they found a bomb in a car. - Well, I'm just saying that the guy- - And here's a funny thing, Jeff. - Your golf course, how's he gonna secure the border? - Not for nothing, Jeff. Yeah, look, I want to touch on that, so you know I'm coming to that. - They got it. - Your is golf course, how's he gonna secure the border? - I'm just curious. - You know what, that's because the Secret Service or Homeland Security, whoever's protected and did a terrible job. - On the golf course, too. - How did they not find a dude laying in the weeds for 12 hours? - If I never found it, anybody want to- - I think there's some objective elements to this. One, I mean, there's a bus stop not far from that little opening. It's also, God, I'm losing train of thought and what I heard about it. I mean, that is a known point of access to that perimeter. So I mean, they did shoot at him from a hole ahead, okay? So they, at least the guys who took care of it did their job, but conspiracy theories aside, my biggest interest is how on earth would anyone know he was going to be golfing that morning? - There was only like three people who knew, right? - Who would know other than him or Secret Service? - Maybe JD Vance. - No. - No, the staff, I mean, there's a whole staff 'cause I happen to have- - No, I think he keeps his golfing, like, top secret. - No, but let me make this point. - There was a term for it and it wasn't in prompt two. It was, it was considered a non-planned short in prompt two type of thing. So whoever did, there wasn't a lot of Vance notice. - 'Cause I had a friend that worked at Bethesda and they would tell everybody when the president was coming and they would tell everybody at this point, you're not going to be able to leave your rooms but at this time, you're gonna be able to leave your rooms but only for a short period of time. I know that- - But it's his course. - Yeah. - I mean, there's a limited amount of agencies that are involved with that if it's his and he's not a sitting president. - Right. - So there's a lot of funky stuff that- - Well, here's the- - This doesn't quite add up, right? And I mean, if you look into the sky, it's really bizarre, right? Because you got right news media reporting, this is a crazy liberal guy, you crying, all this stuff, which is true. And then he actually voted for Trump in 2016. And then he actually, when COVID hit, he made a donation from the zip code of, from the zip code that is Disney property Golden Oak. I'm not kidding you, for 25 bucks. The Democratic Party was the Biden campaign. And then in the last few years, he's been on all this ex-social media in Ukraine. It's bizarre, you can't dream this up, you can't come up with these people. - Well, here's the next one. - Well, here's the next one. - And he's just going, and he's got all the money and time in the world to be doing all this weird crap. I mean, that's not my budget to be doing that, right? I just, it's just, it's just something stinks so bad. And I don't care what you are politically, but it just smells. - I agree. And the other thing is- - I wouldn't doubt it. - I don't know if you knew that the first attempted assassin, and then this attempted assassin, both were in black rock commercials. - I did not know that. - Yeah. - Really? - Isn't the conspiracy that black rock's going to own every single house in the United States between you? - I heard that the other day. - But they own 44% right now or something? - Yes, they want to buy every house in America and make everybody pay rent. So what happens when you own your own home, if it's not even mortgaged, or they're going to make you an offer you can't refuse? - Oh, I don't know. I mean, look at the precedent. Has there been precedents? They own almost app already, so what happens? I mean, there's got to be precedents. I don't know if any of us can speak on that. - I am not educated enough on to speak on that, but why? Why do they want to own all the homes? That's the- - Well, that's a good business. - But every home in America? - No, I'm just saying single family, homes and condos and attached units. I mean, that's a good business to own. That's how I think that's sort of why, 'cause Warren Buffett has got about 300 billion cash on hand right now. And I think he's going to start buying up homes and well, he better step it up because China's buying everything. - Well, Zach, if someone, I mean, given the how home values have gone in the last couple of years, if someone came and offered you twice as what your value is now, which is probably three times of what it was when you bought it, what would you do? - The question is not what I do, where would I go? - I mean, I'm hearing people in Windermere who are like, yeah, I'm on my house 10 years ago and I just sold it for four times a value. Not so much the last year or so when values have been stagnant. - Don't get me wrong, I understand what you're saying, but we bought our house in 2016 and we had it appraised in 2021, maybe, or 20. I don't, whenever we were at the top of the bubble and it was, it went up three times what we bought it for. - Oh yeah. - So did I want to sell it, of course, but then reality continued, where do I go? - Then you don't even want to rent in Florida because there's no cap on rental increase. I mean, look at what happened to the COVID years, 21, I think it was, sorry if I misspeak, if it's either 20 to 21 or 21 to 22, but Miami rent prices went up 52%, 44% in Tampa, 38% in Orlando, we're talking one year, okay? So 38% on $1,000 is a 1380. - Yeah, that's what they went up. - I mean, that's one year, so bring it back to the point here. Now, someone gives you a two good offer to refuse to buy your house in Florida. Okay, maybe I'll take it, and maybe we'll go rent, but it ain't gonna be here. - Yeah, where are you gonna go? Florida, when I moved to Florida in number five, when I moved to Florida in 1995, it was like paradise for somebody from up north because I was used to houses being redonculus, you know, regular home in New Jersey. I mean, my mom sold her house that I grew up in, which was not, we didn't live in any mansion or anything, we lived in a nice four bedroom three, two and a half bath, you know, two storey, colonial with a basement and all this other stuff. She sold it for almost 900 grand, and she thought that was an okay deal. Well, imagine, I sell my house for 900 grand, and 95, I could have moved to Florida and bought nine homes. - Yep. - You know, 'cause they were selling for, I mean, I bought my first home, I bought now it's a month springs in a gated community, it's not gated, but the backside's gated, the front is it. But anyway, I lived in a nice cul-de-sac and everything I bought my house, it'd been on the market for two years, it was a rental and they couldn't sell it. My dad came in and me and him beat the guy up and we bought the house for a hundred grand. There was 2,000 square foot, four bedroom, three bath, you know, great neighborhood, great house, needed a little work here and there, whatever. And last time I saw it was selling for close to five. - Yeah. - I mean, that's just, Florida is not the place to live anymore. Actually, funny story, I lived in Texas and I moved here and my best friend stayed in Texas, he's a doctor there and he says the best place to buy right now is Oklahoma. And you could buy McMansions there for pennies on the dollar. And I'm like-- - It's a lot, it's a lot less expensive. - Well, he wants to live in Oklahoma. - Not many people, I mean, I was in Oklahoma City, like I wanna say three years ago and I mean, a son of a friend had a, you know, wasn't big, it was like 1,800 square feet, but all brick home, brand new neighborhood, you know, maybe five years old and I've got that thing with like a buck 30 or something or it's crazy. Something where like if you were here it'd be like, oh, 600 grand, you know? It's pretty, don't take my numbers to the bank but it's pretty drastic. - Sure. And so, I mean, but you have that option. Now try convince my beloved to move to Oklahoma that's not gonna happen. So I guess we're staying in Florida. I don't know what I would do if someone came up to my house and said, hey, we'll give you 700 grand for your house. I would-- - Dig it, bye. - Yeah, hey mom, can I come live with you for a little while? It's me and the dogs. - And why not, man? - We're coming home. - No worries, no problems. - We're coming up to Pennsylvania. Now it's just, so we had the second assassination attempt which the left is saying was Trump's fault. He's bringing it on because he's talking about they're eating dogs and cats. - What do you feel about that trippy, the fact that you've got a former president shot at twice, but we gotta make sure he's not a threat to anybody. Isn't that kind of weird? Do we really-- - We're gonna talk about two different threats. - And why is it always directed democracy? We're not a democracy. We're a constitutional republic, okay? A democratic constitution. It's always a threat to, like, I get it. Like there's gotta be an underlined theme and rhetoric in, you know, like a, I guess, for lack of better term, a theme to the campaign, but it's just, how does anyone logically say, this guy gets shot at two separate times, so please stop being such a threat to people. - Well, there's two different thoughts that-- - Come on, man. - That's a democracy. - And the thought and the theme, it comes with Zach's gonna argue, but let me just finish my point. That's based on January 6th. - Yeah, okay, here we go. - So here, okay, that's what I said, Zach just came with. Here's the thing, okay, circumstantial evidence. You go out to your car, you see raindrops on your car, you know it rained. It's not raining right now, but you can assume it rained earlier. So there was call locks that painted at the White House. They claimed the executive privilege, and they went in the opposite direction and they asked certain proud boys and certain oath keepers, can we have your call records? Those were not kept under executive privilege. And there was direct calls to the president and to his chief of staff whose name I now forget, but-- - No, it wasn't him. - No, no, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. So there is evidence. Then there was a January 6th committee, whether you're likely as Cheney or not, the idea of it was it was a bipartisan committee. A dedicated Republican, up until the point she became a rhino or hated by all Republicans, but for the, at the time she was appointed to the committee, she was known to be a staunch Republican. So it was meant to be a bipartisan committee, just like the line 11 commission. They presented where Trump was directly involved in bringing to Washington, T.C. that riot. I don't believe Trump instructed them to break into federal buildings. And I've heard the theory, especially from Zach, that they're our-- - 'Cause he didn't. - No, but it went wild. - They are our buildings. - And then came the argument. Now there's literally a lady with a hatchet breaking into a federal building window. That's an issue. So whatever I've visited quite a house, there's fences, there's you would even just to see the area where visitors are allowed is very secure. So the issue of January 6th is where the premise of him being a threat to democracy came from. Him being shot twice, there's the theories, but there is no hardcore evidence that this is Democrat sponsoring these shootings. - Oh, I'm not even saying that. I'm not getting into that because regardless of your gut, so that's true or not, that's not even the concept. It's just the concept that the person who gets shot at is not the one shooting the bullets. I mean, in January 6th, everyone has their opinion on it. That's all fine and dandy, but all I saw there is a committee that was wasting my tax dollars, honestly, because at the end of the day, when you looked at the damage, people to people, what happened there, what those people did versus what goes on every day here with violent crime, terribly, terribly funded government programs and just horrible enforcement by district attorneys with just horrible things. It's like, you know, I gotta be honest with you, if some guy shoots and kills someone in New York and he's on the street in a week and we're spending with gillions of dollars talking about people that did granted a really stupid thing, right? I mean, I'm not saying that this is the, you know, good for them, you know. But where are our priorities? It's ridiculous. And just to watch this charade parade back and forth. It just made me sick. It's like, you know what? I vote and I don't want you doing this. Just get out. Like, well, he said that, no, he did not tell them to do that. You can argue back and forth all day long, you know, what he should have done. - No, but I didn't say that. - There was an element of National Guard that was not accepted and approved by yours, truly, Speaker of the House. And here we are and we had a really stupid event. But the only person who died was actually one of the people on the offensive, if you wanna call it that. And then you have all of this other violent crime that's not prosecuted or dealt with every day and no one wants to talk about it because it's intentional. And that's, to me, that's what the bigger deal is. And at the end of the day, at the end of the day, I agree with this, I agree with that. Are you like these policies? I just look at how that four years was for me or where I felt we were going versus how the four years has been for me and where I feel we're going. And to me, it's really easy. It's like, okay. And they've both been president and they've both. And he's left office, right? Oh, he'll never leave, he left, he left. - Yeah, he didn't become a dictator like everybody said he was gonna do it. - He wanted to contest things, you know? And he was very vocal about that. But at the end of the day, he left and he's not in. - So I think, you know, I kind of try to cover everything we're covering here. He did contest things. He brought 60 cases to the courts. They were all, he lost every one. - Yep. - To a very, he lost every one. And whatever made it to Supreme Court, all 60 did not. I'm not trying to say that, but whatever it did, he lost those. - Sure. - He lacked in three conservative judges. Even the two conservative judges, who he didn't elect, they're more conservative than the ones he did elect. And that's Daniel, you know, and Clarence Thomas never saw it his way. So the argument of the election being skewed is just, in my eyes, it's just, it's not. It's Scott, I keep telling Zach it's the same origin of error as every other election process. - Well, I'm gonna say three things. Number one, everyone saw a lot of video that was not right, okay? Let's put that aside. Number two, 81 million people didn't vote for Biden, they voted against Trump. - Right. - And number three why I say that is if you go back like a hundred years and you look, election year over election year over election year and total voting as a percentage, how it goes up and the excitement of candidates, how many counties people won. And you look at like Obama's, what is his second term? Or whatever one he got the more more enthusiasm was, what, 68 million votes, okay? The greatest election to election swing in terms of overall populist vote increasing was not much more than 5%. So now you're gonna somehow tell me, and I forget conspiracy theory, but just explain to me just this, how a guy can win with 72 million votes, which is crazy, that's a spike. And they get 75 and lose to a guy with 81, which is like a 20% win spike that no one even wants to vote for, they just don't like the other guy. Now, maybe the answer is that many people truly hate him. - Well, you're not elected-- - But that is statistically freaking impossible. - It's not because you're not elected by the popular vote, you're elected by the electoral college and that's why they play the game they play. So for example, you'll never see Kamala Harris campaign in Texas, she's gotta get to 270. She doesn't have to win the popular vote. - Right. - She's gotta win Pennsylvania. She probably has to win something like Michigan or Arizona, but it's not people she has to win. She has to win certain states, certainly-- - In actually certain districts, yeah. - And then comes the argument, well then the electoral college is flawed. Well then it's if the president is elected by popular vote, well then California will elect every president from here moving forward. - Right, right now I don't believe the electoral college is flawed, but I do-- - No, but-- - Statistically the numbers that I saw last time were not statistically possible. - So like you said, to give your point, extreme validity, I've never thought a president has won election. I've always thought a candidate has lost the election. So Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump. - Right. - Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden. He lost. And here's what I'm gonna say about that. It was Lindsey Graham who I will quote, "You fucked up your presidency." There wasn't much he had to do to win the next election. It doesn't take much for an incumbent to win the presidency. And there's only two in recent years that will, two in recent years and three in the longest time, Jimmy Carter, George Bush senior and Donald Trump. Donald Trump's loss was based on his handling of COVID. So instead of him acting like a childish fool when Fauci was on the podium, he should have said, "I have no respect or I don't believe in Fauci's word. I can't fire him because it can't be done. It's not, he's not as far away." - I am actually gonna pause you right there and agree with you in terms of the way those things were communicated. - Right. - There was, there was a point during that time. And I don't think from a policy standpoint, Trump, panel COVID, I think handled it good from that standpoint, right? - And he developed a vaccine. - Or standing in the broad and the rhetoric. I understand that stuff. But what I'm saying is there was a period in time where I'm like, please just don't say anything. You'll get reelected. Just don't, just don't talk today. And what sucks is that, you know, policy-wise from a small business owner, those are the policies that helped me. And now I have people voting on feeling and rhetoric in, in, in, in, in, you know, ways we communicate and I understand they affect things. But everyone just has to say, what is candidate today's policies? What is candidate these policies? Which candidate's policies help my family? Trade it like the hand of the marketplace, like Adam Smith and please vote for the policies that will help your family, or at least that you believe will help your family and everything will be good. - And I, you know, I still go on and not agree. - I thoroughly agree with you on that because I really believe right now listening to the younger generation, even younger than you, 18 to 24, they are voting specifically on feeling. They have no knowledge of policy. - I don't, I'll be taking back a notch whenever you guys are ready. Tom, are you ready? Okay. - I'm fine. - As far as voting on feeling, my feeling is Trump could have easily got reelected. The only point I was gonna make to that is in saying, we don't have faith in Fauci. My, myself and my administration don't have faith in Fauci. 'Cause COVID was the deciding factor in the way he handled COVID. - But the sad thing was COVID was like nine months. All I have to say, I'm hiring a COVID liaison. He's who I'm gonna do my COVID press conferences with. He's who's gonna provide you the information. And the reason I say that is just because it's a matter of sharing best practices. So we had the same example in two states doing the exact opposite thing. We had Florida and California, you were two and say major businesses as well. And our governor conveyed a message that this is how we're gonna handle COVID and this is why. And a part of the message was there's people in New York who are staying home and getting infected because of the recycled air in these big buildings. So we're no longer gonna order you to stay home. We're gonna pause any COVID caution and open the state. - So you actually, so you actually liked DeSantis' policy during- - For opening the state. - Prior to that, let's get in a bunch of drama with Disney just to do it. And let's run for president 'cause I'm popular. We love them till then. And that's when it kind of was like, dude, stop. - He opened the state and it worked for me. I was directly in the restaurant business. - Yeah. - Like the decision. - Right, right. - But he doesn't take one decision to make you a great governor and it doesn't make you a great governor to be the governor of an easy state to be great at being governing. So, but he did get that. He did get that point across very well. - Yep. - And Trump, when it took him as an example and said, we're gonna reopen America. And here's why, I engaged in the war of power. Is it like to develop a vaccine. Take it if you want though, take it if you don't want. But it works, it worked for me. I even got a treatment from my COVID that the church is absolutely upset. Do not, they do not want you to have because it's made of stem cells. It worked for me. Convey some message. And he would have been reelected. But COVID was the deciding factor. So the election that I was saying, how can you say he won the, he lost the election when he won the popular vote is simple. Biden played the electoral college game to the point. - Well, he didn't win the popular vote. - He didn't, but he did. - That's what, all I'm saying is statistically to go from a excited 72 million to 81 year over year statistically has never happened. And you have the most uninspiring candidate on the Democratic Party. Like, he was very long time. And so, all I'm saying is regardless of what, I don't believe that Convey was 81. I believe it was much, much lower. But regardless, he won. And I think it's a fair statement from either side to say, those were votes against Trump much more than they were votes for Biden. - I've always believed no president has won an election. Other than Ronald Reagan in the second term, no president has won an election. Every candidate-- - I was gonna ask you about Reagan versus Mondale. - Bush, dude, Bush Jr. I mean, he had the highest approval rating after 9/11 of anyone ever. I mean-- - Right, but it didn't last into the election year. 9/11. - I mean, it wasn't that far off. It was still high. It was still like 60. - Bush Sr. had a 92 or 93 approval rating after Iraq invasion 'cause it went so well allegedly. And he made it clear, this will not be another Vietnam War. And all he was basing that on is Vietnam was such an unpopular war because it was the first time War was televised. So he was gonna be clear that it ain't gonna be televised like before. We're not gonna see soldiers with napalm getting hit by napalm or civilians getting hit by napalm. What we're gonna see is really need bombs going down chimneys perfectly like they're supposed to. And we're not gonna see what we're not gonna see as the bricks flying off and hitting an old lady across the street. - Right, right, right, right. - So, so there's a lot of the same thing for Trump. There's a lot of learning from your mistakes and sharing best practices. But to ask how he lost, I say Lindsey Graham phrased it best when I said what I said. He told Trump in a private phone, called it Trump-ing-dollar, you effed up your presidency. It's not hard for an incumbent to get re-elected. It's the main thing it takes. And the only incumbent that wouldn't have got elected to get in this cycle was Biden. But he played that. He has, his team has no foresight, his team has no understanding of how the Democrats are gonna play him. And that's him and his illiteracy and his incompetency and it's his team's illiteracy and competency to not see that coming. If anybody thought the Democratic Party, the hierarchy, the curious, I call it an example of the church, is gonna allow Biden to go to whole cycle in this election process. I think it was all pre-planned for an office game. And then get a candidate who Karl Rove 12 years ago said she's the one you need to look out for. And nobody else in the Democratic Party, before, even before John F. Kennedy died, Karl Rove was saying, be careful of Kamala Harris. She's the one you need to look out for. - She's the best puppet for the job, man. - She's, and she's done a great job of being whatever she is. But the fact of the matter is I, and so if there's, if there's election deniers, when she wins, if she wins, they're fooling themselves and they're creating the riots in their head, they're letting Trump's live, Trump is the greatest squatter of all time. He lives in more people's heads rent free than anybody in history in a world. - Yeah. - And- - And most of those people is the liberals. - No. - He lives in everyone's head. - They said his name more times at the DNC. - They do. And it's the Howard Stern effect. It was the same thing that people had hated him, watched him more and talked about it more and they're the ones that made him famous. - You know how I felt after that first assassination attempt when he came out the first night at the RNC and he was really somber and very thankful and very policy driven? I thought that's the ticket, man, you got it. It's just, I'm not sure, I know why he elaborates in cycles and loops and engages the way he does, but you know, just like we saw after COVID, it works against him in terms of, you know, independent, popular swing, all that type of stuff, where if he was very focused, policy driven, I think he would, you know, people would slowly, slowly start to like, not let that personality dictate how they want it to vote. If that makes sense, especially when RFK came out and like he came out and I'm like, oh boy, I don't know if this is gonna be good or bad for no one said anything about this, but the key factor was who was these VP pick was and she was actually extremely progressive. So I'm like, oh, that's gonna be good for Trump. People on the fence are gonna be like, hey, and then he came out and supported him and then, you know, Trump got shot and all these things happened and I was like, okay, all Trump's gotta do is just somberly preach policy and I think he's got this one. And especially with Biden, it would have been, I mean, if you put those factors in the bag, right? Biden running after that debate, Trump being somber, policy driven, in RFK supporting Trump, it would have been a white. - Okay, I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what would have done the job correctly. And this is what I always say. The thing that made Ronald Reagan great was when he got shot, 'cause prior to him getting shot, he was a drunk puppy walking around the Rose Garden, asking Nancy and talking about giving the Russians our nuclear secrets and our space secrets and our this and that. But when after Reagan got shot, he didn't go to a political rally, he went to Congress. And Trump should have went to Mike Johnson and said, "Let me speak to Congress tomorrow." Not a political rally that he loves, that he knew after being shot would show up with 70,000. If he went to Congress and spoke about making America together, making America work together again, he would have got the resounding applause like Ronald Reagan got when he went to Congress after getting, there was a bipartisan standing ovation. Everybody stood up in class. - That's 'cause your opponents disarmed because you can't really not applaud a guy who's got shot. - Well, you can if he, the first thing he does is go to a political rally. - No, no, I'm saying if he, if he takes that route, if he goes to Congress, right? I mean, your AOC, you know, oh, Trump. - Okay, but you know, it would have worked. - No, no, I'm supporting you. I'm saying if you go to Congress. - And he doesn't do that. - You can't be AOC that hates you because the guy just got shot. Like, at least you have to just stand there somberly and listen. - Right, just like you said exactly what you said, but you don't do it at a rally. You don't do it at the RNC. You go to Congress, you talk to the lawmakers that your guys are bashing every day. And you say, "Let's just join hands and sink home by y'all." I just got shot. I just took a bullet for America. I blew my whole business load on America. I could have stayed and played golf every day, but I decided to run for president and do it all for America. Make a speech like that. And he would have had this campaign no matter who did it. - In the bag. - In the bag. But no, he's Donald Trump. He got shot, he got to do a rally. And that rally's gonna have not 70,000 people. It's gonna have 80,000 people. Even though there's no big down there. He'll say it's 90,000 people. - Zach was there. (laughs) - Well, Zach was 91, 90,000 and one. But he doesn't stop. - That was right. That was right, baby. - So for me to quote Lindsey Graham, "Mr. Trump, you fucked up your campaign." And it's gonna bite him in the ass because he could have shared best practice again, but he didn't. He did it his way. And he rehired Corey Lewinsky, who coined the phrase, "Let Trump be Trump." Well, everything Trump is failing at is Trump being Trump. - Didn't he fire 411 Dowsky before? - Yeah, he fires and now he's bringing him back. And I don't understand that because he's the guy that fires people. So he fired John Kelly. That's why John Kelly talks bad about it. - Well, at least he fires someone. (laughs) - Well, he loves this. - Get back on the political moderate here and say, "Hey, there's a few people that could go "in this current administration. "I think we'd all be it better off." This kind of administration isn't gonna move a finger. They're gonna let Kamala be the candidate and Biden be the president. And it doesn't, you've got 50 days for a recession. This country not to fall into a deep, deep recession. You got the feds that just cut the interest rate. We were talking about how it's affecting everybody. They just cut the interest rate. - So are you thinking the interest rate getting cut is a good thing? - There's a good and bad element to it. - It's a good and bad element. It could drive up inflation if money's cheaper, but there's a good and bad element. And it goes against-- - But is a half a percent? - Yeah, how much is significant? - That goes to the middle half a percent. - Well, they've been touched in two years and usually it's a quarter when they do. - And it's usually a quarter, exactly. And you know why? Because Biden hasn't direct lying to the feds, whereas Trump, I'm sure, never even knew the phone number. So he didn't even know how to play the game. But any time-- - Why did you have inflation on our chart? - We didn't have inflation, yeah. - Well, like I always say in everybody's disagreements, we were in deflation. We were in a country that was in deflation, which is even worse than inflation, because warehouses were producing products they couldn't even put on trucks anymore and get to stores anymore, 'cause everything was full and it was the same thing with fuel. There was ships out at sea that had nowhere to unload. There was refineries that couldn't process the fuel that's sitting there for two weeks. So prices dropped dramatically. - I think you're talking about during COVID, which was the last nine months. - Huh? - And I said, I think you were talking about during COVID, which was the last nine months of his presidency. - No, we were in deflation when the country shut down. And again-- - During COVID. - During COVID. - Right, that's what I'm saying. That's why they had over everything. - There was a way to handle COVID. And even if he went against all odds, if he would have handled it like a grown adult, he would have been a victor in his reelection ban. - Okay, two questions. Do you think if he had done one of two things, either said, all right, the COVID situation is up to each individual state. You guys handle it. Or should he have just made like, this is the way it is across the boards? - I mean-- - Which would have won? Which would have been a better way? - My, what I would have said, and I don't know if this will answer your question, I'm not into indoctrination. I think the vaccine works. I'm the president. I've gotten the vaccine. You make your decision. But we're stopping all mandates. I'm gonna do whatever I can via executive order, a legislation to stop all mandates. - And who's-- - You're a guy that's gonna convey a message that I approve of about COVID. I'm not gonna stand here on the podium with a guy that I don't believe in, and laugh when he said something I don't believe in it like a six-year-old child. And I think that would have made a big difference in his presidency. - Now, when it comes to the vaccine, who shoved that down our throats? - Well, that was, but again, Trump developed it. - I don't know if Trump was-- - So it wouldn't have been jumped out of it. It wouldn't even have been a-- If it wasn't in place, it couldn't have been shoved down our throats. But who went overboard with it? And it still is going overboard. - It didn't. The problem with all these conversations is they're all in hindsight, right? It couldn't have been shoved down or thought of Trump enveloped it. Well, if Trump didn't develop it, wouldn't the backlash be worse, right? - I appreciate the fact that he developed it. - He didn't care! Well, okay, so let's just, I'm, you know what I'm saying, take things objectively, like a lot of this. What would you have done in the first three months? Well, no one would have done the right thing 'cause it was totally unprecedented. - Absolutely not. - I mean, I mean, I totally understand the initial shutdown we don't even know what we're dealing with. - Right. - We never dealt with anything like before. - We kind of got a handle on what we were dealing, had an idea for a game plan. You can't just lock in your loss and kill every, I mean, there was a point where it came where a lot of, you know, even elderly people were like, you know, I'd rather die from COVID than never see my family again and die alone in my room. - Right. - Is this, are we at a point here of diminishing return where the risk is actually lesser than the risk of not returning to somewhat? I mean, and hey, if you have underlined conditions and you have risk and you're able to stay on, absolutely for sure. Put sanitizer at all, like, you know, you know buffets, right? I mean, put sanitizer at the buffet, that's a great thing. Like they do that in Europe, they do that in other countries. Like there's some, a few, not many, but a few things that were great that developed out of COVID, you know? Like, you should have to wash your hands. I mean, you see all the people that eat crap off the floor and lick their hands in public places and eat stuff off. That's stupid, that's how you get that, right? But I mean, if you do some really basic, use your brain hygienic things. You can really conquer a lot. I'm not saying the world's gonna be perfect, but wash your dang hands, don't sneeze on me. Be, just give me a little space tap spitting in me. And, you know, and then beyond that, I think I can get over and figure out a way. Don't eat, don't eat, don't eat your neighbors. I think all this handling handler stuff is very hindsight, right? - But isn't that the wrong answer? - Make sure you don't eat your neighbor's cat. - That's what Ron DeSantis did. - Right. - Exactly that. You walked into a restaurant and you saw half the chairs stacked in the corner of the restaurant 'cause there was tables being, you could only sit at every other table. - Sure. - I remember we went to concerts. We talked about this when I went to a Dr. Philip Center, the concerts were outside and we were in little booths where it was four to a booth. - And you do wear a mask outside? - No, no, no, I didn't wear it. - No, you had to just marry it. - When Disney Springs first opened in May of 2020, you do wear a mask outside. So it's like, dude, it's 95, I'm not doing this. I'm gonna walk around with a drink. Am I, I'm sorry, man, I'm having a drink. I flew, I like, Lorraine. - Oh, no, no, no! Remember the mask had actually had a small hole and you lifted the lid and you can put your straw and the hole into your mouth? - You know, I just was never that into it, Trippy. I always tried not to wear my mask. - I saw people, I didn't wear a mask. - Come on, Trippy. Trippy had like 30 hand knit, like I ran into pair right there. - I still have it right here. I've been using it all week. - No, Lorraine and I flew up to Chicago for a wedding during COVID and first of all, we were like ostracized. It was her best friend's wedding and everybody knew we weren't vaccinated and you know, there are Chicago's a different world up there. Sam from Florida, I've had it four times already, I'm good. - Exactly, I've had it three times actually. - I've never had it. My wife had it really bad. - We didn't get it till we moved here and we got every single variation of Omicron over the course of like a three, four or whatever, how many month period that they were. - Never, never. - The first, I got it at the end of 2020, hit me like a ton of bricks. I slept for like 10 days straight. I mean, I wasn't sick. I was just exhausted, just wiped out. It didn't affect me like physically breathing or anything like that. Like everybody was terrified of, you know, you're gonna, anyway, then the second time it was a headache and a sore throat and the third time was the flu basically. But anyway, we flew up to Chicago and you had to wear your mask on the plane. First of all, you should wear a mask on a plane and back from 1970, probably should wear a mask 'cause that's nasty air in that plane. But so we had to wear a mask. - Not today's planes, that's the cleanest air in the frickin', I mean, that's a medical room grade air. I mean, I think the way people breathe and frickin' - You can smell people's disgusting air. - Yeah. - But in terms of the recycled air cabin quality, it's actually one of the best. That's what the executive said, is like the story. - But that was the issue in New York is that it's in the building. - What I was saying is we flew up and I did exactly what you said at Disney Springs. I sat there with my mask down and I had a soda in front of me the whole flight. I never, never put it down, never put my mask on. - Had to straw on your mouth. - He's sleeping, like got a camel back on. (laughing) - So, you know, I was one of those guys though. I was a really, look, I was in the industry, this is prior to the fence industry, I was in the moving industry. And we were considered essential. So we were allowed to work. - Yeah. - And every customer's house, when I walked up to the front door, I'd say, "How you doing? "I'm here to do your survey for your moving. "I have a mask, would you like me to wear it?" And I would say 95% of my customers? Nah, don't worry about it, we're good. The elderly always said yes, look, it's just fine. I was not offended by that. It's your house. - I think some people wanted you two and were like scared to say not to. I had one lady complain 'cause she was-- - They have a really warm mask, I hate them. - You had to wear it at the restaurant, didn't you? - I cleaned out my bag, I cleaned out my backpack like a week ago and I found one. I wanted to like blow it up. I'm like, this is the worst memory. - You should have put it on Instagram as a memory. - Oh, we had a few times, I mean-- - I should have wore it, I should have wore it tonight. (laughing) - We had great time though, we were riding bikes every day. - My wife and I, like everybody was getting the COVID weight gain, you know? Orian and I actually lost weight during COVID. We walked every day around the-- - Right, that was gonna say we lost weight. - I mean, and one of the things that I realized, I talked to a lot of doctors, I have friends who are doctors, holistic and functional and regular, and everybody said the best thing to do is get outside and breathe, breathe the air. - They're saying they're still effects. - Unless of course you lived in Minnesota under Tim Walts and then you got shot at by rubber bullets. - Yeah, then you can't go outside, so. - Can't go outside. I wish, oh, (laughing) - Trippy wants to live in Minneapolis. - He does. - I wanna live in, where was it now I have a fascination with? - Well, Detroit's one place. - Detroit. - You wanna live in Detroit, dude? - Have you been to Detroit? - Have you ever been to Detroit? - Oh, now, have you ever seen the movie Batman? Well, there, okay, so make a long, long story. - Oh, because I used to go to Detroit, Detroit sucks. Oh, wait, wait, come out. Detroit was awesome until about the late '90s and then-- - Okay, it's coming back though. - No, you go by property. You go by property-- - It's a bunch of yuppy bars and crappy burnout, it's junk. - No, because that movie Batman, this train station comes blowed up and all crumbling down. Well, that's in Detroit. Well, now that's Ford Motor Company Center for Automation and Technology, Corktown. It's kind of-- - Yeah, yeah, and they redid the Union Station and stuff. - Yeah, yeah, I wanna live there. - No, you don't, dude. - I heard it's really neat. And then-- - That's really neat if you don't wanna not live. - And it's got, and somewhere around there within an hour's drive is Frankenmooth. - Yeah, a Frankenmooth is awesome. You need to go to Frankenmooth, like even in the summer, it's fun. - Yeah. - 'Cause they'll do like a Bavarian, they'll do Oktoberfest there. - We were just in L.A.J. Georgia, and we were in a German town, and then we'll be-- - Go to Frankenmooth in the summer when it sucked here. No, seriously, go like July 4th, man, it's a blast. - Speaking of my buddy lives in Michigan, he lives right by the, what is it, the Mackinaw Bridge? - Mackinaw Island is awesome in the summer. Which is the Upper Peninsula, but you gotta go over that bridge. - It's sort of, it's between, yeah. - What's that bridge, though, that is like hard. - Mackinaw Bridge, it's the longest suspension bridge, I swear, it's five miles long. - A car, a car blew off of it. - Well, yeah, cars can blow off of it, dude. It's five miles long. It's like, that was built in the '50s, too. That's like one of the modern engineering marvels of all time. - I'm not going across it. - I'm not probably-- - And they're probably-- - They do like a Labor Day run across it, man, it's sweet. - Really? - Yeah. - It's a great bridge, too, right? It's graded, like it's not asphalt, it's great, yeah. - Yeah, it feels like you're driving over chain links. - Right, my friends say they used to ride their motorcycle over and it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. (laughing) - No, no, I'm all anti-Michigan everything, but there are places in Michigan in the summer that are unbeatable. - I 100% agree-- - But it's not Detroit, Trippy. It would be Frankenmuth, it'd be Mackinaw Island, it'd be-- - But I want to see Corktown. - Like Sleeping Bear Dunes at night, guys. - Oh, crap, you can go like Northwest Lower and there's-- I mean, go ahead, they need more of you there, I guess. I mean, they need something-- - Not moving-- - They need more bodies, so. - Maybe I can sell my house for a million dollars to black stuff. - Yeah, you could buy one there for 50 grand. - You could buy a whole street block there for 50 grand. - You could buy a street block! - No, every house-- - No, I actually, I dated a girl in high school who was from Gross Point Shores. - Well, that's the nice part of Detroit. - That's where all the fords live and-- - No, the suburbs, the Detroit suburbs, are actually extremely wealthy, Birmingham and all the Rochester Hills, Brighton. And that's 'cause that's all the tier one automotive, executives making six figures. And that's, I'm just talking downtown is crap, but they have this little yuppy revival, where there's the guy owns little Caesars, whatever, but they have the arena there and they have all the bars they're building in for. And that's cool, but in general-- - That was the pistons in the Red Wings play, right? - Well, the pistons used to play out on Auburn Hills, but now they play downtown, yeah. - Yeah, 'cause they redid the whole stadium, didn't they? - They moved it, they closed down the Palace of Auburn Hills. That Palace of Auburn Hills was back in the day. - Is that where you used to go to all the concerts back in the day and everything? - My grandpa owned a manufacturing company and our steel suppliers, since we were a pretty good top customer there, is they had seasoned sweet tickets on the lowest level suite at Center Court with seats behind the visitors bench. So I saw Grant Hills first triple double. I saw Shaq and Anthony Hardaway when they came to town sat right behind him, but they sucked back then too. It was like post-bad boy era. So we only got-- - They were playing for the magic then, right? - Huh? - They were playing for the magic then, correct? Shaq and-- - Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm talking like 94, man, like with the magic. So really, really long time ago, that's when all that area, that's when Detroit Motor City frickin' Auburn, that's when it was bumpin', man. And then-- - That's when you're buddy Eminem and Kid Rocker from. - Yeah. - Yeah. - I like Kid Rock. I'm not in Eminem. - He built a house, dude. - Kid Rock? - Yeah. - Did Kid Rock not build a house outside of Detroit that looks like the White House? - I think he's cool. - I don't know. - I saw a video, he built like one that's a replica of the White House. - Could it be like, "Kid Rock?" - I like it. I think-- - You? (laughs) - I do. Why is it shocking? - And with that. (laughs) Because you're just so polar opposite. That's awesome. No, I like, it's a pleasant surprise. - I like Kid Rock. I like-- - It is an extreme. - And it represents me as an absolute liberal, and I say I'm center right. I got a good view. - I do it to bring ratings to the show, Trippy. Come on. - I know, we need ratings. - We gotta keep the crowd happy. - They need the great conservative and the Libertard. (laughs) - Die Hard Libertard. - Die Hard Libertard. Now, listen, I see a lot of cities such as Detroit that are trying to regentrify Orlando's doing it in a big way. I'm in Orlando all day long, that's my territory. And there are some neighborhoods that I think a couple of years ago, I probably would have never drove in. And now, that's my territory. I go there all the time. It's not a bad gig, you know? Do you think we will ever change that because of the president? No, I think the communities are just evolving themselves. I don't know if the economy's gonna have anything to do with, you know, but that being said, then you look at big cities like New York and San Francisco and Philly that have just become complete utter rubbish. I mean, just, you know, trash. And they're all under the worst cities in America. And I, you know, it's your beloved party, Trippy. They're all democratic run. No, I was just gonna say something about my beloved party. During COVID, of course, there was the PPE that paid me the payroll protection program. Oh, yeah. Why isn't there without COVID? Why isn't there something like that for Derek? The PPP loans? Well, I mean, I actually got PPE during COVID and that was... Right, but... But I'm honestly though, and I'm just gonna shock you about me now. Honestly now, I don't want it because the... And this was a flaw that came out of Trump's COVID areas, the amount of expenditure that $2 trillion spent, that that was... We had a much better economy under Trump in terms of inflation, but that was kind of the kickstart to where we let everything go out of control, right? And said, hey, let's just keep spending. And spending, spending, spending, spending all this money, we'll just, oh, it's all free. It'll all be there forever. So I'm just not, yeah, sure. Give me 30 grand, whatever you want to do, but I know it's not gonna help me long term. And I know... Everybody know it'll help me today, but I know long term, it's just adding more and more and more and more fuel. Now, if you wanna take some of the leftover money piles from COVID and surplus money that Florida had that gave to the federal government to give to states like Michigan to waste that money, anything still laying around in all these agency funds and crap that's not accounted for or all this money we're sending overseas. If you wanna give me some of that, I'll take it. But I wouldn't want additional government expenditure from it. I would say it could be reallocated and help knock on me a lot. - I think that next palliative cash done. - Well, there was a trillion and a half dollar tax cut that went to big business just like you said the PPE long went to you. - Right. - I don't think the big business needed that trillion and a half dollars, but I do know struggling small businesses that could use 30%, it could have been 500 billion to a lot of small businesses in America. - Yep. - And problem with that. - You might basically just brief for all first come first serve. - Well, no, it's based on big business having big influence. And that's where I disagree with that tax cut. - Well, why don't we just actually ask your buddy, your uncle Zelensky to have him send over that money back to us? - Yeah, I keep it. - I will take that money back. I want some of those Bentley's over there. - Yes. - Or some of his yachts. - He has his yacht. - And I keep saying the amount of-- - Oh, he needed to hear me so. - I was waiting for him. - Maybe we should just turn on our pipeline and shut theirs off. And I think the money would sway the right way in a matter of about two weeks. - Well, there's this entirely different in ours. I don't think Biden should have shut down the Keystone pipeline, but the one that's allegedly running from Russia to Europe that was not-- - Nord Stream, yeah. - Nord Stream. - It makes money off that. And what do they do with that money? - It's blown up. I think it's dysfunctional still for two years now. It's been blown up. - Nah. - And Putin keeps saying it was us that blew it up. - Might have been. - I hope it was. - Well, we keep denying it. - Are you not a fan of Vladimir? - No. - I'm not a fan of him having money to just screw the world up and make us send money overseas to get spent on God knows what? No. - No, we don't give money. - No, no, no, I'm talking about Putin. - Am I a fan? I don't think anyone's a fan of Putin's a monster. I mean, there's some-- - I actually like, I like Putin's. - He likes the micron. - Okay, let's break, let's compartmentalize it. His demeanor can be funny sometimes, right? And his direction and authority can be admiral at some point, but obviously his ethical and morale is in the toilet, right? So I mean, to just separate him, that's all. No, I don't like Putin, but he's entertaining. It's like some people don't like Trump, but you can't deny his entertainment or lives in your head, right? - Well, here's the thing about the fascination with Russia that generally the conservative party has. America's a country of 300 million. In order for us to compete with China of two billion people, their internal consumption can beat our economy. So we need a partner. The idea is that Western Europe's not a good partner. They're big on entitlement, they never have no money, they're not really good security partners as far as NATO allies go. So if we had this partnership with Putin, Eastern Europe, which Trump had this relationship, this business relationship, all his career, and he was able to build golf courses, even when nobody else was building, because the money was coming in from Russian oligarchs, the investors were Russian oligarchs, that would pop up America's economy to the point of success, eternalist success. That's a great theory and it works. The only one issue what it is is Putin, 'cause you can't trust him and you can't do business with him. - You can trust he's gonna do what's in the best interest of his country at all times. - And he's gonna screw you in the end. So Warren Buffett tells the story of how he was investing in oil fields inside the area. Big money and they were drilling oil and Warren Buffett was sending over to equipment and staff and they were doing just great view, what was coming out of ground was great. When Warren Buffett wanted to take the oil to America and sell it, Putin said, no, and if you try taking your equipment or the oil, your staff is gonna die on our soil. So he pulled his staff and the deal went to Putin. And that's an issue. - Why would you go to a communist country? - Well, apparently that's what Trump does and that's the fascination that Republican conservatives and Trump have with Russia. Let's partner with it. - You know, again, simplify it. Putin's gonna do what's in the interest of Putin's country. - And he's gonna rob the investors, which is a substitute for Trump, though. - Obviously, just like Xi Jinping is gonna do in China. Just like, you know, just like we should do from an ethical standpoint, and I'm saying from an ethical standpoint with our country too, and how you do that is you just say, well, I'm not gonna allow your investors in our country. - Well, that could be. - I'm not gonna take your investors and steal your investors. I'm just not gonna allow it in. - Well, we shouldn't allow Chinese investment, but no administration has ever tried to stop because we all-- - Speaking of Chinese investments, did you know that every parking meter in the city of Chicago is owned by China? - No. - Well, there's toll roads there owned by China. They build the roads-- - They do bridges, yeah. They do bridges and collect the money, yeah, yeah, absolutely. - But you know why? Because like, you keep talking about the 60 billion and we sent it to Ukraine, it has nothing to do with the 60 billion or it does have something to do with it. But the fact of the matter is, America's been a country at war for the last 50 years and China's been a country at peace for the last 50 years. And we've spent trillions of dollars on war and they've spent trillions of dollars on growing their economy. And there was this great story about China building this 12-lane highway and you could ride a bicycle and weave in and out of all 12 lanes for the first year. But as the economy grew now, this highway is packed with cars because they have the money to invest in highways and roadways prematurely. - But they didn't invest in their own people. Their economy is blowing right now. And you know how much there are so many, there are so many empty, four million people cities themed by every crazy stuff in China that you would never see. And part of it too was their reproduction limitations and their early 2000s that went on for years and now they're actually like they're screwed. So from an economic standpoint, it wouldn't take much to kind of maim them in terms of control, ownership of land and you know, anything we talk about that's scary biologically or ownership-based. I don't think it's that difficult. I really don't-- - We don't have the money to do it though, we owe them trillions. I mean, we-- - Well, that's the problem. But if we owned everything here, made everything here, yeah, prices would go up, but you would have such great wage growth. You'd have such independence. They wouldn't have any support. You would, more good would happen than bad. It might take some time, but I think that's a different subject for a different night. - Yeah, I agree, yeah. I mean, yeah, I mean, like I saw-- - Plus I gotta eat dinner, dude. (laughing) - I always think of that too, actually. - I gotta go to bed. I'm an old man. - You ate before the show, didn't you? - I did. - You saw it. - Little chips and salsa. Watching TV. - Not to have that for dinner. - Me and my wife are watching, have you watched that show "Bad Monkey"? - No. - Oh, it's hilarious. It's on Apple TV, it's hilarious with Vince Vaughn. Funny and funny show, check it out. Anyway, so we can go on for hours, obviously, 'cause we have lots to talk about, lots to discuss. I think the topics tonight were great. We got some insight. Trippy's still voting for camel toe, so we're already-- - Not after next week, trust me. - Over 22nd, on my birthday. - For sure. - I call it. That gave me seeing a Kevin Costner movie game day. On October 22nd, I build my team, and on November-- - Is that the baseball movie? - I have the team I always dreamed of. - Yeah. - Can't wait. - Oh boy. - There we go. (laughing) - But listen, guys, we gotta wrap this up. - Yep. - Obviously, we got a special thanks to our very cool visitor this evening who we're gonna have on. Hopefully, much more. Do some more shows. - Yeah, no, this is fun to me, honestly. This is really enjoyable. I like looking at things, I like compartmentalizing and balancing and looking at more objective, even though, obviously, we all have our emotions, feelings, but anyways, go ahead. - Sure. - No, no, no. But this has been a great show, and I think, fingers crossed, we're gonna get you and Daniel on next week. - This'll be great, I'm here. - That's gonna be a beast. - But-- - But-- - You guys broke me off the island. - Yeah, you might get both of y'all. You called me your co-host today. I'm the host, pal. I'm just kidding. - Oh, that's right. That's right. - Well, we're gonna snuff your torch, pal. - Nothing right now. (laughing) You're co-host. - He's the ghost of Christmas, man. - I'm messing with ya. Rabu, relax. - Plus the three of you are gonna vote me off the island. - He's gonna start crying. He's gonna be texting me really, man. I'm off the coast. - He's gonna spot for five squares 'cause Laurie Anken-- - We can't, we can't. I can do as many as we want. - Do it, man. - We'll get Coach Darryl on, too. - Let's do it. - We appreciate you coming on tonight, Derek. Trippy, as always, we love ya. And we love you guys for watching us. Thank you so much. Make sure you like, subscribe, share, tell a friend, tell a phone, tell everybody. Get 'em on, and until next time, much lovin' peace. - Peace, juices. (upbeat music) (dramatic music)