Showdown
Showdown Episode 69 5-24-24
[ Music ] >> Welcome to Showdown. I'm Mark Casein and we are at Friday, May 24th. We have just a week left this month but more important than anything else, we are on the last lap going straight into deliberations at the trial. And the thing that's interesting to me is that I guess that since Donald does not have his trial going on right now, he decided that he would find something to do, I guess he was just bored. And so essentially what he has done is started, which he always does anyway, but started lying and making up stories which are so bizarre and really bad. I mean, he's saying things that are so hurtful within our political system, hurtful to individuals who have nothing to do with the political system. Just craziness. So here let's start off first with something that I think points directly to Donald's connection with the Russians and that of course is the Gerskovich case which Evan Gerskovich is a writer for the Wall Street Journal who is currently in Russia being held there for crimes that he didn't commit. So that's very disturbing. Of course there's another guy there, Paul Weyland and everybody wants to see those two people out of Russia. Russia's in no hurry to do it, but here's what Trump says. Now you tell me what this means because he's either lying or he knows something that we shouldn't know, but we will eventually know I'm positive. And here's the lie. He says that Gerskovich would be released immediately if he were president and he is suggesting that this guy not be released unless Trump is the president. So the first question that might strike you certainly hits me, who's he talking to? He's not talking to the American people because the American people don't have anything to say about whether Evan comes home or doesn't come home. Only one person has anything to say on this subject. And of course that's Donald's boss of Vladimir Putin. And that really is disturbing. I mean maybe I'm kidding but not kidding about this being his boss because we don't have any direct evidence yet that that's true. But I can tell you right now that I'm very sure that it's true. Put me on a jury. I think I can say without any doubt that this is what's going on because you know in a trial which we're learning more and more, one of the things that's important is circumstantial evidence. A lot of times on TV it's treated like it's not valuable evidence but it is. And it is usable evidence. And in this case I think we've got a ton of it. And I think it tells us that Donald is making deals with Russia which is illegal. Of course what does that mean to Donald Trump? Absolutely nothing. Everything he does is illegal which is why he's got four trials coming up including 88 felony indictments because he doesn't understand that you have to follow the law. And I know he thinks somehow that he can skate through this. And I know his people think it. And I hate to tell you if we did a poll, I think we'd find that a vast majority of the American people believe it. A lot of people think Donald has superpowers in this regard that he can just say anything, do anything. Things that other people could never get away with. And then it would just be okay because it's Donald J. Trump. He thinks that. But there are people in our country who surely do not agree. Many of them are in our justice system. And they're coming after Donald Trump as a result of it. He has broken too many laws. He has gotten away with everything up until now as people say. But you got to realize trials take time. Of course they especially take time if you've got a judge that would be in the Mar-a-Lago case. If you've got a judge in your pocket, well, that's going to help a lot. And so we know what's going on down there. The case related to the documents continues to be indefinitely postponed indefinitely. How do they come up with indefinitely? A lot of people have said, and I've talked about this specifically here earlier, like a couple of months ago, that you would expect one of these cases to be heard around 11 or so months after filed. That certainly was the case in Manhattan. And now we've gone through the trial and we're coming up to closing arguments and then the jury deliberation, but down in Florida, what's the story down there? It's well past 11 months. We're out to almost probably 13, maybe almost 14 months. And we're still looking at a postponement indefinitely. That means they're not thinking about a date. They're not considering a date. They're not looking at anything in terms of this actually going to trial. All Aline Cannon is doing is trying to find ways to continue to move this forward so that as she sees it, I guess, if Donald were to become president, then he could just toss everything. Of course, he can't toss Manhattan. He can't do that. That's a state, local situation. So that one's not getting tossed. Trust me. That one is going to be one way or the other. Guilty or not guilty? Now I say it will be guilty because I don't think and I know everybody says you can't read a jury and that's true. You know, I understand, you know, there's 12 people there. How can you tell what 12 individual people think about anything? You can't. But in this case, you've got certain things happening that I think play strongly against Donald and very much in favor of the prosecution. For example, Trump's out here running around saying things which everybody knows are things that nobody running for president should be saying and no ex-president should be saying. I mean, the president should not be trying to prevent a hostage. That's what Gershkovich is, is a hostage. You should not be trying to prevent him from being released so that Donald can be a hero, certainly with Vladimir Putin working on his side, I shouldn't even say it on his side, but at his, at the top of his side, you know, Vladimir runs that and that's, that's the whole play that Putin has got going here. He's hoping that he can own the United States and, you know, when you think about irony, doesn't it be ironic if after, you know, 1922 Soviet Union was founded from 1922 to 1991. So that's 70 years roughly. And here we are, you know, it, it just spans Soviet Union, this bans. And by the way, a great article in Foreign Affairs magazine that everybody should read here, it's a 1947 article written by George Kennan. And in this long telegram which he signed as ex, Kennan explained that the Russians were so incompetent that all we had to do is contain them and over time they would implode. And in fact, that's exactly what happened. George Kennan was right. He lived to be like 103 years old, long enough to see the end of the, the Soviet Union, maybe thankfully for him, not long enough to see the final attempt of the Soviets. Vladimir Putin to see the final attempt of the Soviets to not only win the Cold War, but to do it in an unbelievable fashion by actually acquiring the United States of America as part of his empire. I know. You think that's crazy. And everybody hopes it's crazy. But if you read the Mueller report, you'll know that this is a long way from being crazy. Those 144 meetings illegal between Trump and the Russians meant something. Again, you don't believe it? Go read the Mueller report. It's all identified in there with corroboration. The problem is how many people are going to wake up on Saturday morning tomorrow and dig into the Mueller report for 448 pages. They weren't going to read it back in 2018. Well, they're not going to read it now again because the report said Donald Trump could not be exonerated. And Bill Barr said that the report said that he was exonerated. People believed Barr and that's where we stand in 2024 believing that Bill Barr was telling the truth. But considering the fact that his buddy Donald has never told the truth, well, you think about what's happening. But anyway, we start off with Evan Gurskovich being thrown into the mix of the 2024 presidential election in a way that's really horrible because I don't know that they could get him out any sooner and maybe they can't get him out at all because of this deal that has been made between Trump and Putin to only let Gurskovich out when Donald is elected. And then Donald turns over the United States to Russia and we become one of the Russian Soviets. Pretty crazy, but it's where we are because again, keep in mind, Donald has told you, he has told you very clearly, this is a Russian term, it's certainly the right term for Donald and that is, according to him, that we will on the day that he's elected become a unified Reich, unified Reich, that's, you know, like the great society, Lyndon Johnson. This is the unified Reich, Donald J. Trump, it's a sickness and we've got it. And I don't know of any vaccine that you can use. I don't think there's any tax-loved you can take. I think we've got a problem and we're gonna have to find a way out of it. One way, of course, would be next week, Donald is found guilty and I think that's coming. I think Donald will be found guilty and I think he'll be sentenced. My guest two to four years, four would be the maximum for what he's done, although they could make it 136 if they wanted to do it consecutive sentencing. But they'll do concurrent, two to four years is plenty because all you got to do is get but Donald behind bars and that's good enough, just any period of time that'll work. That better happen because I can tell you right now what else is going on out here is not pretty. So here's the next thing that Donald has come up with. I mean, this is all brilliant thinking on the part of a guy who is basically a television reality show host, a failed one and disgraced as well, but that's another issue. But here it is. Donald says that the FBI was sent to Mar-a-Lago by Joe Biden to kill him. Now, let's get that clear again. Donald says. Now, this is Donald. He's saying it. Donald has said the FBI was sent to Mar-a-Lago on the surface to get documents, but that really he was sent there to kill Trump. Now, the way they came up with this theory is there's all this documentation that goes along with any kind of a search. And in this search, there was wording that talked about the possible use of force by the FBI. Now, the FBI has ever since yesterday made it very clear that the language in that document was simple boilerplate document, nothing else in there, boilerplate. This has absolutely nothing to do with the FBI coming to kill Donald Trump. In fact, the FBI people and prosecutors who were on the air this morning explained explicitly how this language has been used to actually reduce the chance that anybody would be hurt or that excessive force would be used. Nevertheless, Donald found something out suddenly, and so he grabbed on to it and he started screaming. But here's the other thing. This is the point. This really tells you what's going on here when the documents were put together to send the FBI to get the documents at Joe Biden's house. Same language. Now, it is possible that this was an attempt by Joe Biden to commit suicide and that he was sending the FBI there to kill him. I mean, a lot of things are possible, but I think we could all agree, not probable. So at any rate, yes, the FBI went to Mar-a-Lago to pick up those documents, which Donald hid, tried to destroy, lied to his lawyers, and then lied to the government and caused his lawyers to lie to the government, and I'm being generous here in saying that the lawyers were forced to lie by Donald because Donald lied to them. It's possible that they were told, but I'm going to assume that Donald lied to everybody because that's just how Donald does business. This is what he does. This is what he does. So there we go. Number one, Evan Gerskovich can't get out of Russia because Donald is the only one who can do it. And by the way, he wouldn't have even been picked up in Russia if Donald had been President of the United States, according to Donald. So it's a nice fairy tale for Trump, but, and probably, the people who follow him, they think this is great and they believe every bit of it, and they just go straight down the line, anybody that loves Trump, they're in on this, not that they came up with the ideas, but, you know, they're going to follow it because Trump says it. So if Trump says it, they're with it. Okay. So first, Gerskovich, second, yes, the FBI went to Mar-a-Lago to kill Donald and other people out here talking about an assassination plot, all of this is really bad business. Shouldn't be talking like this, and, and, you know, Donald, he thinks he's on TV and that all of this can be controlled and unfortunately for him, and possibly for us as well, not so simple. And the thing you got to worry about is if somebody would do something to him, of course, Donald wouldn't be around anymore, but it would certainly not go well for the country if Donald were harmed as a result of his own stupidity. But hey, that's where we are. Okay, so, furthermore, Trump is complaining because he says there's way too much news that follows Trump, see, just like tonight, right? Everybody, you could be a network, you could be a local person, doesn't matter. Everybody's talking about Trump, if it's political, because he's causing chaos. Now, he was causing much greater chaos when he was in Washington, D.C., and he was lying about COVID, which again, you know, we're, we're well aware he lied about COVID. Every bit of it was a lie. How do we know? Because we've got tapes, we've got tapes. He talked to Woodward for Woodward's book. Woodward has played those tapes. In fact, he's made them available in the book that he sold. Now, Trump is suing Woodward, or he did sue him. I don't know. Maybe that was thrown out. I don't know. I haven't really checked it, but he sued him because he said that Woodward had no right to reveal what was on those tapes. But here's the problem. He did reveal it. So whether he should have or shouldn't have, which actually, you know, Woodward's got a good argument for why he should have, but it doesn't matter because the fact is we know it. The Bible can try to put the genie back in the bottle, but the fact is he has been caught. He lied. And he said that he was lying because the American people might panic and he didn't want to cause devastation in the United States where we lost a million people anyway, but he didn't want to cause devastation. So he lied to us in order to protect us. Well, isn't that nice of him? It's not how we run the United States of America or at least it's not supposed to be. I admit other presidents have lied. Sure they have. We know for a fact that Lyndon Johnson lied in North Vietnam. So okay, it's happened. Richard Nixon lied about tapes and all the rest. Other people have lied. They've lied up and down the way Kennedy killed DM in South Vietnam after we installed them and then killed them. The CIA did it and Kennedy lied and said that we didn't do it, but we did it. We know now we did it. 60 years later, we know at the time it came out among the left wing people that the United States killed DM. After we placed them there, we killed them. But it didn't become official until years later. And here we are. We know it was a lie. So presidents do lie. Now does that make it okay for Donald to flat out lie? Because he's lying about everything, absolutely everything. He wakes up in the morning, he lies just every inch of the way. I remember back when he made a deal, supposedly with the Chinese, we were going to have this big trade deal with China. And he talked about signing it and the whole thing. There was no deal. There was no deal at all. The Chinese weren't going for any of that. Now ultimately, Trump put tariffs on the Chinese, which were terrible, very bad economics. And here we are in 2024, unfortunately, sorry to say that the Democrats have put tariffs on the Chinese because you know there is a widespread belief that the Chinese are coming to get us. Now you might remember that in 1960, 65, 68, 72, the Russians were coming. There was a movie that they made, the Russians are coming. Everybody thought the Russians were coming. In 1956, when the Russians put Sputnik up in the air, we thought they were coming right then. So we really thought that the Russians were coming and I can tell you today that people believe that the Chinese are coming. I can tell you they're not coming. Now, it's true that there are computer kinds of things, cyber things that can be done to harm us. That's a fact, sure. They can do it and then they can say it wasn't a, it wasn't them, it was someone else. I mean, everybody knows that trick. And of course, the United States can do it back to them. We're not without resources. We've got many resources. So the point is, yes, Trump is in the news and for good reason because he's affecting everything. He's making people come up with decisions that they're potentially very harmful to the United States. For example, terrorists, terrible, but he's there. He's definitely gotten that far. He's a failed reality television host, a carnival barker, and you know. Many people who support him today called him a carnival barker, but they have conveniently forgotten and Donald counts on that. And he's got everybody on his side just going with the flow. And yet in the same breath, this guy says, there's too much talk about him. He doesn't like it. It's really horrible. It's hurting him and hurting the country and he wishes it would stop. Yeah. He wishes it would stop okay. Every morning he wakes up and stokes it. He pushes it to the limit. He does everything he can do to gin up people against people in this country, all the way from talking about Gerstkovich to saying that the FBI was sent to kill him. All of this lies that are easy for Donald Trump to tell very, very simple lies. He can do it and he does and it works very effectively. And we need to figure out what we're going to do about it because that's one thing as a country. We have not figured out what to do about this except for to talk about it, try to reveal what this guy is up to and here we are. So here's another one, the hostages in Palestine. So we're finding out more and more that they're dead. Dead ones are being sent back just the remains and of course people are very unhappy. They're families, people within Israel, the United States knows that there may be some of our few people that are left over there who might not be coming back because they might be dead. Well, here's the thing, Donald says that the reason that they're dead is because he wasn't present in the United States. He says that the stealing of the election in 2020 is what killed these hostages. It's what created the hostages. All of it is because of Donald, because Donald wasn't there to stop it. If Donald had been there, none of this would have happened because Donald can stop everything. Remember what he said at one point, "I alone can fix this," and he's still telling that story, "I alone can fix it." It's what he believes and it's what he's doing, playing this card in order to try to win an election which probably impossible, probably impossible because of the result of the trial, which should come up next week or at the worst the week after because you're going to get additional summations, then you're going to get instructions to the jury, then they're going to deliberate. Could that end next week? It could. The jury could have the trial by Thursday and, or I'm sorry, could have the case by Thursday, and they could say guilty by Friday. Could be. Now the other side is they might want to take their time and really look through everything and make sure of it, but I think that's the direction it's going to go. One of the reasons that I think that it's headed in this direction is because jurors get together and they talk when they deliberate, they look at the problems and the issues on both sides and then they say to each other, what do you think about this and here's something to think about on that. And I think that what you're going to find is that when this jury gets together that what they're going to do is really put peer pressure on each other to make this final decision. That's it. This peer pressure, I think, will move this jury to a guilty verdict and they might take their time or maybe not, but they're going to make a decision fast because either going to happen at the end of the next week or then the following week. So we're close. One of the things that we had talked about is this thing started to move rapidly. The possibility for a June 1 conviction and we're pretty much on target for that. If it's not June 1st, it could be June 6th, 7th, somewhere in there, but that's where we are. But here again, you know, Donald says that the hostages are dying or dead because he had the election stolen from him. It's always about him and it's always something that somebody did to him. That's the story. Okay. So let's see. I see something here about New York loves Trump. So this is what Lizzie's got on here and I don't know, you know, maybe this is this afternoon. Maybe current, I'm not sure, but I will say this. Everybody's talking about what what Donald said about New York, Donald went to the Bronx and he gave a speech. You know, a lot of people show up, a lot of people, 6,000, 7,000, somewhere in there. Some of the people were saying that Donald lied about the numbers, but it really wouldn't matter. There's a bunch of people there, a bunch, but here's the other problem. There are always a bunch of people out there. So you know, you go to the Bronx in the middle of the day and you're Donald Trump and you're giving a speech, trust me in New York, you're going to get a bunch of people. I don't care who you are. The people are there. They're mulling around. They're living there. They're working there. They're traveling back and forth there. Everybody knows that New York crushed Trump, both in 2016 and in 2020. Donald Trump is not winning in New York. He is not getting a big crowd of Donald Trump lovers in New York. He got some people there, sure, because they were there. I mean, if you go into a crowd of people and start talking and then claim that you've created a crowd, good luck. But that's okay. Donald thought this was a clever way to say that New York loves him. No. New York hates Trump. And all of this is going to come out in the wash, but some of it probably later than other parts and it's never good for any of this to be delayed because the faster that everybody knows what's really going on here, the better we are, the better the election is. Let's have the evidence, let's know what's happening, but that's okay because we're going to know the result of this trial. And I am so confident that it is going to find Trump guilty. Now, some people say, well, what if he gets found guilty of one count out of 34? It's probably not likely because all 34 are very similar. But it's probably going to be guilty of all or guilty of none, which I think will be probably closer to guilty of all. They might let him off for a couple points and they might say, well, here's one that wasn't exactly proven, but the other 34 or 33 or 31, whatever it is. So I think that's the way it's going to go. And again, it's fun to say it now. It's no fun to talk about what's going to happen in five or 10 years because who knows that the planet will be here then, but the truth is this is a week away. We're going to know, I mean, either I'm going to come up here and say, I sure got that one wrong or it's going to be pretty apparent that Donald is on his way down the drain. I think that's where he's going straight down the drain. Now of course, that brings up another point because, you know, Donald sort of loves Drano. He wanted to use it to prevent COVID and maybe he can use it to prevent himself from going down the drain, but probably not. Okay. So where are we? We're at dinner time. That's where we are. In the best place I know for dinner on Friday night, May 24th is Wenties and you can go to Wenties at 18,000 Chesterfield Airport Road and that's Chesterfield Valley, awfully good food at Wenties. Of course, everybody loves the wings. They're great if you're a wing person. Which most people are wing people. They love wings. Well, guess what? Wenties has got them and they're great. If you love wings, that's not my thing. If you love pizza, Wenties is great. They've got outstanding pizza. I love pizza. Probably would love Wenties, but I just don't go for all those calories, hamburgers, cheeseburgers, patty melts, salads, you name it. It's all there at Wenties. All great food, but for me, it's the baby back ribs and it's the onion rings. I love those and I'm willing to take a little bit of a hit for them when it comes to the diet and hopefully you'll consider that as well because those baby back ribs are wonderful. Very good. Yeah. Try the ribs. That's excellent at Wenties and who knows? We got a Memorial Day weekend coming here so you may find that Ben could be there. He might be. You know, ask because it's always good to say hi to Ben. In the meantime, just go enjoy the great food at Wenties and I'm told that you no longer have to say I believe or any of those other possible ways of thinking about it that maybe aren't true because in this case, apparently it is true that you can go to Wenties in defiance. This Missouri, Wenties is now open there too. So defiance and Chesterfield, Wenties, great, great food. You know, my friend Al has a jewelry store at 4506 Hampton in St. Louis. Although I got to say, you know, you say jewelry store and you think, well, it's more than just jewelry. First of all, they buy and sell coins and jewelry. Secondly, they design jewelry. So it's a design place also. Also, this place is great when it comes to fixing your watch and I'm not just saying, you know, if you've got a, you know, $5 watch going there and they'll give you a battery. I'm talking about you got a really valuable watch and you need to fix. You got a Jules on Hampton and they will fix your watch. So Jules on Hampton is a great place for lots of things having to do with jewelry. And so we will tell you again, 4506 Hampton is the address and you definitely want to look for Al and his son, AJ, they run a great business. They are really nice people and they just, they make it fun to shop for jewelry and to think about what it is that you want. I've been there and watched the people with them. It really is a great place and fun if you're a jewelry lover. Okay. Finally, and everybody knows I'm a suit lover. So that's going to be the St. Louis suit company and they're in Clayton. They're on the corner of Forsyth and Central. You walk in the door, you climb the stairs and boom. You look in it, what you see on the television right now, which on the screen, which is the suits and they got lots of suits all over, all different sizes, everything is great. But again, one of the things that Jay pointed out to me, he's one of the owners, he's the dad who started this and owns it 29 years. And he told me that a lot of people are buying sport codes. So I understand that's fashion, they're buying sport codes, I'm wearing chucks, things change. This is 2024 and 2034, I'm sure they'll change some more. It's always changing, but it's not mattered in the case of the St. Louis suit company because they've been here 29 years and they've navigated every change, not a problem. Great men's clothing. And when it comes to weddings, the place to go is the St. Louis suit company in Clayton because they will navigate you right through that wedding when it comes to men's clothing for all of the people in your wedding party. And St. Louis suit company in Clayton, Forsyth and Central, you definitely want to check with Jay and Nick, Nick's the son, they're nice, they're again, all nice people. Okay, so what else has Donald done to cause chaos in America? Well, you know I'm sure that while Donald was attracting this huge audience of people and again, it's so important to emphasize this, he didn't attract anything, he attracted people who were already walking up and down the street, I mean, this isn't a place where he went that was empty and Donald stood up there and said, come to me and suddenly thousands of people showed up, no, no. Oh, contrary, as the French say, what it was is Donald shows up in the middle of a crowd and suddenly he's got 7,000 people staring at him or six, but six or seven, no, it's a difference, it's fine, but he's got these people staring at him and he claims that he's attracted this giant crowd, this is one of his favorite stories. He's always attracting crowds, numbers are always false, I mean, the man is a liar, but in this case, the people were there and if Donald had never shown up, the people were there, you know, they got a lot of people in New York, they live there, they work there, they travel there, they walk up and down the streets, again, I'm not making this up, this is the people from New York who have explained what was going on there and what Donald actually created or didn't create and let me maybe back it up a second and maybe this will help you to see the problem behind what he's saying. You know, there's a trial that's been going on for what is it, six weeks? And at that trial, Donald asked people, just regular people, he said, come to my trial, stand out in front, protest this kangaroo court, this horrible thing that's being done to me. So, how did that go? Well, after six weeks, the only people who showed up, and I mean the only people because nobody came, that he got nobody, there were no crowds, there were no people, there was nothing zero. I think there was one guy who lit himself on fire, but besides that, no one showed up. They were reporting this all the time, all the way through the trial because Donald kept saying, come to my trial and nobody came, zero, including Melania. Notice she didn't go. You notice that Ivanka didn't go, you notice Jared didn't go. Well, yeah, those two crazy kids of his showed up, which is funny in itself because they call them kids. Well, okay, you can call them kids. I call my grown kids kids too, but they're grownups, they're not kids. Anyway, so Donald Jr. and Eric with his blank stare showed up, but the rest of them, nobody, nothing. Okay, so he gets nobody at the trial, and then he goes somewhere where they got about 7,000 people hanging around and he starts talking and he says, oh, I got a crowd. So that's how that one works. But the key to what Donald said in addition about that so-called crowd was that they were black or a lot of them were. And Donald is claiming that black people are just streaming to him in enormous numbers because black people love Donald Trump. I'm sure they love the fact that Trump wanted to execute the kids, the central park five. I'm sure I'm sure that the black community really appreciates that one since they were found to be not guilty, but it didn't matter because not guilty or guilty. He didn't care whichever it was. Kill them. That's Donald. In any event, this was not a giant crowd of black people who came to New York in order to hear Donald Trump mouth off about insanity. And speaking of insanity, get this one. Now, I can't tell you how this landed with the crowd, but I can tell you that he's been saying these things all over the United States. You can hear them on Google. If you just go right to Google, they'll play it for you. So he says that there's an army that is coming from Africa that is trying to kill Americans. This last couple of days was Donald was into killing. Lots of killing conversations. Joe Biden was trying to kill him. And the FBI were the ones who were sent to kill him. And then the hostages were killed because he wasn't president. So there was killing because he wasn't there because we all know that Donald could have stopped at all. But that's the story there. So now there's an army of Africans coming to the United States. This is the immigration fantasy that Donald has. And these people are coming to the United States and they want to kill us Africans. I guess he thinks that this might attract some black vote. I guess he thinks that. But honestly, I think it's the opposite. I don't know. This is this is Donald's own special variety of of psychosis. Want to read about it? Read Mary Trump. Mary Trump's got a lot out there about how Donald is a psychopath. And she's a psychologist who has lots of good evidence of that because she's part of the family and she's observed him at at very close distance for many years. And she's written about it. So you might find that interesting too. I understand the United States in 2024. We don't like to read. I don't know what we do. I guess we watch streaming movies and other things. Hardly anybody going to the movie theaters. I know that. That's another story. But you know, everything that's good. Donald did everything that's bad. Somebody did to Donald. It's one way or the other. Everything is Donald. And then he says, gee, why are you covering me so much? All this news tired of hearing this night and day. No, he's not tired of it. It's the only thing that keeps him going. He just wants to hear it every day. And then he wants to complain about it. But he wants to hear it. Imagine what he's going to say on that crazy replacement for Twitter that he's got this weekend. He'll say something about it. But he'll say he'll say all kinds of things. We'll come in here on Monday. It'll be off the wall. The things that Trump's got to say, but it's another story as well. So speaking of Donald Trump's non-existent business, that stock is selling right now around $44 to $45 a share. I didn't see it at the end of the day, but it's right in that range. It got up to $48, drop back to $42, sitting around $44. And there's no question that the stock market has got some potential problems. Short term. Everything's short term. The market's got some problems. And I've shown these pictures on the air in recent days. And basically what it amounts to is that there are about seven or eight stocks that have pushed the averages to enormous heights. And believe me, everybody's money is stuffed into those seven or eight stocks. And given the fact that that's true, the rising prices, they have an effect. They create enormous wealth for people. The problem is the day will come when everybody wants to get out of those seven or eight stocks. It just, it always comes. There's no doubt about it. And, and, and what are the ways that we have to, to consider the potential for that eventually coming is by looking at the rest of the market. Because the more the money becomes focused in seven or eight companies to the exclusion of thousands of companies, the more that that happens, you've got trouble. And it's happening. And people right now are looking at the numbers. They're, they're, they're seeing this market go up and they, and they're chasing Microsoft, NVIDIA, Apple computer, you name it. Alphabet, I was going to say Google, but alphabet, which is Google. And then of course, meta, meta is Facebook. And these stocks have gone to enormous heights. And they've held the, the market averages up, certainly the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones 30. They've been impacted tremendously by this limited number of stocks. I mentioned before the back in the 1960s. This was a famous thing. They talked about the go-go stocks in those days. And the stocks were called the, what they call them, the, hey, lost my mind. But anyway, 50 of them, there were 50. And everybody thought, Oh, nifty 50. That's what it was. And anyway, everybody wanted to be in the nifty 50 and eventually they got destroyed in the nifty 50. It's not to say the prices didn't come roaring back at a later date. Maybe some different companies were there. You know, that's the other thing about this. It's really a little misleading. You know, the Dow Jones industrial average has gone up, you know, from the beginning of time, one to now it's 40,000. But you've got to be careful because if you owned all the stocks in the 30 industrials back and say, let's call it 1900. A lot of those companies are out of business. There are new stocks in there now that have powered the index to higher levels, but there are older companies that are no longer around. I mean, I could tell you names, Bethlehem Steel, Hudson Motors, Woolworth. I mean, you know, all these things are gone. Lots of them. If you owned them, you're in trouble. If you owned the Dow Jones 30 industrials, you know, if there was some kind of a mythical number that you could follow. And there is sort of its ETFs today. So you can sort of do that. But trust me, you got to be careful because you don't want to be in one of those companies that doesn't make it and gets replaced by Microsoft or Apple or something like that, and then pushes the indexes on to all greater heights. It's very dangerous. You got to know what you're doing. And you can know, by the way, I mean, this is not something that's secret. This is not a secret society, but you got to take an economics course and you got to read some books. And again, like I said, it's 2024. We don't want to read any books. But let me also add to this because I know the right wing hates the Federal Reserve. You know, without the Federal Reserve, this country would be toast or cooked or whatever you want to call it, we'd be in a lot of trouble. They do a fabulous job of controlling the money supply. It's very important. It's it's one way that we make things work. Now, at the same time, it's not an exact science. So sometimes they missed the mark. And right now, they're trying to figure out inflation. And they're sort of struggling with it. But they always struggle with it. They they were trying to get inflation for 15 years to go above 2%, or to go to 2%. And they couldn't get it. They kept lowering rates and they held them down and the it wouldn't work. So now they've raised the rates not to dizzying heights, not at all, but certainly up there, five to five and a half percent on the short term money. And that's enough to put some pressure on an economy where 30 year bonds are four and a half percent. So you've got an inverted yield curve that puts pressure on everything. You've got the the Federal Reserve reducing its balance sheet, which puts pressure on everything. You've got the dollar strong. That puts pressure on everything. You've got a number of things going on out here. But that's not the end of it that the real end of it is is when you start seeing a limited number of stocks and increasingly limited that are moving the averages up, then you know, you've reached a trouble spot and we're there. We're definitely close. Now, it could last past the election. It could. Or it could blow up right now in Joe Biden's face and then he'd have to hope for a recovery somewhere in November that might bail him out. This is all complicated stuff. But I will say this yesterday after a short decline in interest rates, interest rates sort of spiked up again. There are ways to show you, but I'm not going to do that with a minute and a half left. But I will say that interest rates spiked up a little bit yesterday. No news. They just did it. Today, they were very calm and quiet. But you know, if you look at the chart of interest rates and you see that this is on the rise again, that will put pressure on everything. It's not the Fed doing it because the Fed is not raising rates right now. That's not what they're doing. This is just the market. The market has a way of affecting things and people try to come up with, you know, the boogie man's doing it. But that's not true. It's all economics, taking an economics court course, read a book, read the Wall Street Journal. Maybe you'll find out something and, you know, be able to talk about these things in a sensible way. Well, anyhow, we're going to do something very sensible. We're going to get out of here for the weekend. Have a great long weekend Memorial Day on Monday, Tuesday. Everybody's back to work. So here I am, Mark casein. And this is showdown brought to you by wentes and the St. Louis suit company and jewels on Hampton. And again, I'm Mark casein. This is showdown. Good night.