Showdown
Showdown Episode 84 6-17-24
(upbeat music) - Welcome to Showdown. I'm Mark casein' and this is the 17th of June, a very important date because in 10 days, I think you're gonna see some things that you will begin to understand when you see this debate on the 27th of June, 10 days away. So we're down to really just under a week and a half and what you're gonna see is going to be startling. But not for the reason that many people would have expected and that is people thinking that Joe Biden is gonna come across as some kind of a moron or dementia-suffering something. No, that's not what they're gonna see. They're gonna see a man who is completely out of control, unhinged and certainly on the verge of personal disaster. And I don't know, I can't say this for sure but I can tell you that he's probably looking at his net worth every day, Donald Trump being who he is and I sort of described this on Friday as broadcasting paradise because first, this great birthday present that Donald got. And secondly, there were so many things going on that really illustrated the mess that this man is facing. And here we are essentially on part two of what I'm talking about because this man is in serious trouble. Now, one of the areas that is most problematic for Donald is of course his money. And when I talk about his money, I'm talking specifically about something that I have brought up on the air a number of times. And this is something that we know of and describe in the securities industry as a dead cat bounce, you know, sometimes it doesn't come across the right way because it's pretty mean to cats but 200 years it's been out there. So I wouldn't get too excited about it. It's not my idea but essentially the idea is is that you take a cat up to the top of the Empire State Building, not Trump Tower, the Empire State Building, and you drop that cat off the top of the building and it goes all the way down to the bottom. And when it hits the bottom, it bounces. Well, not much, not much and not for long. So what I'm talking about of course is Donald's company. I mean, to call it a company is extraordinarily generous. Whatever it is, it brought in five million dollars worth of revenue last year, five million. And it lost over the last three years, a total of 58 million dollars. And based on that, at one point, the valuation was somewhere around, I don't know, eight billion, something like that. Well, maybe it was 10 billion and Donald's value was eight billion. Something in that area, don't worry about it. It's plunging, it plunged from 80 down to 22 and then we got what we are talking about here. A dead cat bounce, the dead cat bounce took it from 22 to about 50, which here's where you get the birthday present for Donald. On Friday, Donald lost about 450 million dollars out of however many billions he's got left. And today is the stock known as Trump Media, what a joke, fell additionally to $34 a share and so he lost today another 350 million. So on Friday, 450, today, 350. So put it together and he's lost himself a neat $800 million, sort of getting up in the vicinity of that $1 trillion area, close to where, I'm sorry, $1 billion, $1 billion area, close to what was required to be paid by Murdoch, when he defamed everybody in sight, the people with the election machines. And here's the deal, $800 million in two days and here's what you got to look forward to. That guy's heading on down to one, I'm telling you, I might be generous with one, I mean it might be 50 cents, but that sucker's going to one, trust me. So Donald, you could have made a lot of money if you had chosen instead of waiting around to see if you could unlock your money in September, if instead you had secretly and quietly gone out like Joe Kennedy did in 1929 when Joe Kennedy went out and sold everything short at the top of the market and made himself multi-millions of dollars, which of course today continues to fund the Kennedy family. I understand some of that money came from bootlegging, that's fine. And then he went out and he sold short and he made multi-millions. So when the market went down, he became even wealthier. Unfortunately for Donald, he didn't have the foresight that a Kennedy had and instead he's just taken it on the chin so far in the last two days totaling $800 million. And by the way, that's plenty interesting because the stock market closed at a new all-time high today as Donald's company is sinking far into the sunset. Yeah, I'm pleased, of course. Yeah, you think I'm saying this for, yeah, I'm pleased. This guy's getting just what he deserves. He's a criminal, you know, for years I said he was a criminal and people looked at me and they said, well, you can't say he's a criminal. Well, now I could say he's a criminal. He is a convicted felon, the man's a criminal. You could say, well, it's only Stormy Daniels. No, it's not. It's election interference led by David Pecker. David Pecker backed up the stories that were told by Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen. But David Pecker wasn't even really cross-examined because the Trump people didn't wanna mess with him and that's probably another story that we're gonna find out. What it is that Pecker's got on Trump, we'll find out because when they're picking through Trump's bones at the end of all of this, we're gonna find out everything. We're gonna find out the Pecker deal, the reason that Trump has left him alone. We're gonna find out the Vladimir Putin deal, the reason that Trump has left him alone. There's some stories out here that are yet to be found. We'll get them. Somebody'll tell these things. Of course, you know, many of us said they would tell the story about Kennedy and how he was killed and so far, 60 some years later, we still don't know the answer. But we'll find out even that one and we're gonna find out the Trump stories a lot sooner than 60 years. Okay, enough of that. So let me go through some of the things in the last 24 hours that really are blockbuster stories. Really they are, every single one. And each one individually could be studied for some period of time in order to really understand what's happening to this country. But we haven't got 24 hours to do this, so let's do it in an hour. In the first place, I've mentioned this before, Project 2025. You know, Project 2025 is really cool. And the reason I say it's cool is because if you dig right down into it, you will find out that not only are these people, the Heritage Foundation and all these weirdo, right-wing, crazy groups, not only are all these groups attempting to put Donald Trump on a pedestal that is absolutely absurd, but besides all that, they're trying to turn the United States into a theocracy. And in case you need to look it up in the dictionary, when you say theocracy right next to it, you should have a picture of Iran, because that's what we're talking about. And that's the kind of dictatorship that these people are telling us almost daily that they're trying to create. I heard Donald specifically telling people in some Christian group, this was over the weekend, that he was going to bring power to Christianity. Well, in the first place, I think Christianity's got some considerable amount of power in the world. There are a whole lot of Christians out here. And more than two billion, more than that, because just one and a half billion alone are Catholics, and then all these other groups, I don't even know what they are. I don't know any of that, I'm Jewish. What do I know, nothing. Anyway, I can tell you that there are billions of these people running around on the planet, and Donald is telling them that he's going to give them power. And I'm saying he doesn't need to give them any power at all. They've got power. Now, if they're dumb enough to believe they need Donald to get some power, well, that's another story. The one thing they're not going to get is a reversal of what the United States believes in, which is a separation between church and state. And it doesn't mean that we try to destroy religion, nor does it mean we want to destroy Christianity. Has nothing to do with any of that. It has to do with the idea that whatever your religion is, take it to the building where you worship and love it. That's all. Love what you believe. Love the faith that you have. Just take it to your building, wherever that is, and do that. I can tell you, I know just a very little bit about the Jewish building, because it's a synagogue. And of course, I grew up in that. And I know that there's no one in that synagogue that's trying to create a vision for anybody that they should follow. Not at all, that's just not even a consideration. In fact, and this is something I learned just even in the last, say, 10 years by being involved over at a Yeshiva, which is a Jewish school here in Chesterfield. And what I learned is this whole idea when we talk about Jewish people, that there's this talk about Jews being the chosen people. And I always thought that that was kind of, I don't know, a rude thing to say, some 6 million or 13 million now, say 13 million Jews in the world, which is essentially nothing. And to say that they're the chosen people, it gives an impression of something that's really, in my view, unseemly. But don't worry, 'cause that's not what it means. Doesn't mean anything like what people say. What I've learned in these recent years at the Yeshiva is that calling the Jews the chosen people meant that they were chosen to have an obligation. That the obligation was to make the world a better place. And that that is what Jews saw themselves as being chosen for, chosen to make the world better. Not chosen because they were better, but chosen to make the world better. That doesn't mean other people can't work towards making the world better, but there's no question that there's a fundamental belief in Judaism, it's probably the number one view in all of being Jewish. It's very simple description. It's called Taconalom. And here's what it means to repair the world. Now, we all know what's going on right now in Israel and all those people that are being killed in Palestine is not repairing the world. Okay, so you do things that aren't right. And that's the issue here. Now, is it right to destroy Hamas? Guess it is. I don't know any other way to do it. I mean, here are people, when they say the river to the sea, they're not kidding. They mean wipe out every Jew on the planet. So if you wanna wipe out every Jew on the planet, and if your plan is to, kill Jewish women who you have raped in front of their children and then chop their children's heads off, well, that sounds to me like you might need to do something. So Jewish people in Israel are doing something. Yeah, if you don't want to get people all stirred up against you, don't kill their women after you rape them and then chop their babies' heads off. I mean, if you don't do that, you probably have a good chance of not bothering anybody. If you do that, you can probably figure that somebody is gonna come after you. So, you know, it's just use your head, don't do it. But some people just don't learn because they've been doing it since 1948 and getting the same result, which as we all know, Einstein had told us years ago that that is the definition of insanity, just saying what Einstein said. So, you know, you figure it out. I will tell you this, this does connect in another way to something that is immediately going on in the world, which I am very knowledgeable about. Because, you know, you've got Donald Trump running around saying that he is the greatest friend of black people, that he's the greatest friend since Abraham Lincoln, and sometimes he says that he might be better than Lincoln, but it depends on what day you catch him. But basically he says he's the greatest since Lincoln for black people. And how do we know that or how does he know it? Pretty easy because he's got friends who are black. And of course, if you listen to the TV over the last two days since Donald said this, you'll hear black people explaining that that's the oldest nonsense that you could ever find. I cleaned up the word and that in fact, claiming that you've got a black friend does not qualify you as not being racist. Now, as you can see on the screen here, I am not black. But I can tell you all about Jews, 'cause I'm not black, but I am Jewish. And this is the same story that has been trotted out for as long as I've been alive about Jews, which is I'm not anti-Semitic or I don't hate Jews, I'm not anti-Jewish because I have some Jewish friends. So see, on this one, I do know. Now, personally, when I hear that, I chuckle because I know what I'm listening to. And I've been broadcasting for a long time, over 30 years. And about 25 or so years ago, I went to New Orleans on a business trip, and while I was there, I stopped in a studio 'cause I had made an arrangement in advance to meet with David Duke, a very famous Nazi in the United States, also Ku Klux Klan as well. So here's a man who hates both blacks and Jews, not surprising 'cause that often goes together. For whatever reason, I've had students say to me, "Why?" What's the connection? I have no idea, I can't tell you. I can't get into those people's heads. I'll tell you who can get into those people's heads though, and that is Donald. He can definitely get into those people's heads because Donald is currently promoting something called the Unified Reich. Now, I understand he doesn't say it anymore, but he said it. So in any event, let's take a couple of minutes here. Joe, are you able to take one of those clips and clip them for me here? So let's take a little listen in this first one. It doesn't matter which one. Yeah, it doesn't matter. They both have some nice Nazi references. This is the Lincoln Project, okay. - Will you tell your kids that you voted for a felon and a criminal, supported a man found guilty by a citizen jury, went into the voting booth, happy to pull the lever for the only former president in history to bear the mark of criminal shame? Will you tell them that breaking the law is how they should live their lives? That lying to their families about porn stars and hush money is how they should behave. Do you want your son to treat women like a man who was found to have committed sexual assault? Do you want your daughter to be a victim of a man like him? - You going up the escalator? - I'm gonna be dating her in 10 years. - And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. - Whatever you want. - Grabbed by the (beep) - Will you tell them that he was honest, that he was a good man. - Very fine people on both sides. - That he treated people the way you've taught them. - Like the punch him in the face, I'll tell you. - Will you tell them you're proud of his cruelty? Happy with the ugly insults. - I mean, I'd look right in that fat ugly face of hers. - The attacks on women and the endless lies that the chaos, death and danger he brought was worth it. We know it's hard to walk away and put country over party, but your kids are watching. You're not just voting for your future. You're voting for theirs. - Yeah, so thank you, Joe. And a little bit we'll put on the other one. The other one's a little more heavy on the Nazi part. This one had some Nazi part in it, but you had to look real quick when they were marching down the street with the candles and so forth. That was that Nazi group at neo-Nazis. And of course, Donald said that they were among the good people. There were good people on both sides, including among the Nazis. That's all right. In any event, so that's Donald. And by the way, I wanna say this. That kind of ad has enormous power in this country. I know there are people out here that worry, these are even people on my side, who worry that there are just too many of these neo-Nazis running around. And as a result, millions will vote for Trump and they will, except for just keep in mind, the numbers probably around 35, 38%, same number that supported Joe McCarthy when he was completely disgraced back in 1954. That's just a group out there in this country. We've got about a third of the people in this country who are totally out of this world. And by the way, it's about the number that elected Hitler in 1933 or right in there. So all I can tell you is, really don't get too upset over this because the vast majority will watch these ads, these very powerful ads. And they will say, I don't think I'm gonna vote for this guy. Maybe Joe Biden is doing something that I don't like. Maybe he's not getting the lead out of the water fast enough, which of course, Donald wasn't getting it out at all. Or maybe Joe Biden walks slowly because he's 80 some years old and he's just gone downhill faster than some other 80 year old people. But all I can tell you is, most people in this country are not going to say, give me some more of that. And the other thing is, which is what I started with here, and I think it's gonna be a powerful story as well. And that is when Donald's company, call it a company, when Donald's company, whatever you wanna call it, a suspect, special purpose acquisition company that has the name Trump Media, which is a joke. Anyway, when that thing is down to one and Donald's got nothing left of all that so-called wealth that he had acquired. See, they won't even look at him and say that he was great that way. They won't. And here's the real thing, and I've seen this talked about all weekend as well. Some of the programs, again on the left, point to the fact that Mark Burnett and Donald created this view of Trump as some kind of a brilliant business person through that idiotic television program that they ran for 10 years, which, as pointed out this morning by Joe Scarborough, little kids would walk around and yell, you're fired. That's how deeply this idea penetrated into the psyche of America because it's just something that caught on. But as I've pointed out, it's the same as you believing if you've got appendicitis that you can go to Marcus Welby and that Robert Young will take out your appendix because these are television people, people in front of a camera who can't do anything but give you an impression of something that they really aren't. And of course, the history of Trump has proven that in so many ways, including numerous bankruptcies, fines, convictions. I mean, you go through it. That's what that Lincoln Project ad was about, which again, like I say, is a very powerful, powerful ad. And it may not appeal to 35% of the people out here. They'll say it's all made up and so forth while they will not look at the things that are made up about Joe Biden stumbling around in Europe, which he did not do. We all know we've got the correct version of the video. And not the doctored video that made it into the right-wing media. And then also made it onto the front page of the New York Post, which is a Murdoch paper. But you've got to spend some time and dig into this in order to know what you're talking about, otherwise you get lost. And speaking of getting lost, one of the stories out here that's very complicated, and I mentioned this year already tonight, and I've mentioned it many times. And that's this Project 2025, which is a heritage foundation effort to bring power to Christianity as we create a theocracy in America. But see, that's what I already said a few minutes ago, but what's worse is what they're doing to something that Donald of course calls the deep state, which is absolute nonsense. Without what he calls the deep state, this country would be crushed. You've got tens of thousands and more of Americans who work for all the different agencies in the United States, FBI, CIA, FCC, EPA. I mean, keep going, it's all the way across the board. There's so many of these. And the reality of this is that each one of these agencies has expertise in an area which is vital to the operation of our economy. And Donald Trump's idea for 2025, his Project 2025, is to replace all the expertise with Christians who don't necessarily know anything about anything, except for Christianity, which is fine. Like I said before, take it to your building. You know, we take ours to our building. You take yours to your building and everybody will be wonderful. But you see, when you bring it to the White House and you try to turn Donald Trump into an ayatollah, then you've got a problem. And that's what they're trying to do. It's a 900 page document and this is one I have not read. I mean, I usually read these things in three, four, 500 pages, 900 I haven't read. I've read a good part of it, but I haven't read every word, not like the Mueller report. But I will tell you that over time I'm reading more and more and I'm learning more and more about what they would like to do to destroy the United States. You think I am being extreme and that I am telling you something that is just made up by Mark Kason. If you believe that, you better go out and get your hands on Project 2025, which you can get in about three minutes off the internet. You can get a PDF file, 900 pages, start reading. One of the problems that you might have is that you might not be able to understand what it says because in order to understand that I would suggest that you probably need a college education and there are a whole bunch of people in that 35% that support Trump who do not have a college education. But I will tell you that there was something this weekend in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, one of the newspapers I read daily. Yeah, why would he read the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, why? What's the purpose of all that? Well, it's to know something. So anyway, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has done some really good writing on the fear of universities in America. In fact, it's sort of a combination of fear and hatred against universities. And what they described this week in gigantic headlines, not quite as big as what they had last summer, but gigantic headlines describing this enrollment cliff that is crushing universities around the country. And of course, here in St. Louis, we know a bunch about it. We know, certainly by looking at Fontbonne, where I taught for 12 years, Fontbonne University is now out of business, gone, sold the campus to Washington University, Fontbonne is no more. Right behind that is Lindenwood, which is in trouble, and Webster, which is in trouble. And really, I can't speak so much to Lindenwood, even though I did get a master's from Lindenwood years ago, but I know a lot about Webster, and Webster's good. Webster's got a lot of really great things happening. But the problem is it's 2024 in the United States, and there is an enrollment cliff, and everybody's going off of it, and the universities are going down the tubes. And I can tell you right now, Webster has lost multi-millions of dollars in the last 10 years. Too much, by the way, a lot. And it's not that they are not trying to run a good university, they're not out doing things that are corrupt, but they are struggling with a demographic problem that faces the entire United States. And we, as citizens of the United States, instead of fighting back to support universities, we have created this idea that universities are the problem, that we should get our kids out of them, that going to these elite, educational institutions is harmful, and that you can do fine in the, I don't know, school of hard knocks or some nonsensical description like that, when the truth is, our universities are the best in the world, and they are very valuable in the way that they help people in our country to be better people. I'm telling you, they do, you don't believe it? Okay. You might believe this though, you might believe that if you're hungry at 430, 435, 440 in the afternoon, you ought to be thinking about wenties. Wenties is a great restaurant. Nobody's going off the cliff at wenties. You go to wenties and you get everything you can imagine, but you probably don't want to eat it all in one night, but you can get wings, you can get smoked meat, you can get hamburgers, cheeseburgers, patty melts, pizza, salad, and my favorites, baby back ribs and onion rings. All of this at wenties on 18,000 Chesterfield Airport Road, they have drinks, they have great people, they have a great atmosphere, they have great owners, been in his wife, they've really done a great job, and don't forget if you're out of town, you're not here in Chesterfield Valley, you might take a look to see where you are in Missouri, you might be able to make it out to defiance because in defiance they also have a wenties in the same great food, excellent. You can't go wrong with wenties. Now if you want jewelry, and there are a lot of people who do, you can go to 4506 Hampton and find all the jewelry in the world, no one else has got any, it's all there, sort of looks like it to tell you the truth, that place is filled with different cases filled with jewelry, really nice pieces. You can get it, great jewelry, at Jules on Hampton, 4506 Hampton, where they buy and sell coins and jewelry, they design jewelry using their creative abilities and also following other people's interests and aspirations for their Jules, and you can get it all at Jules on Hampton and listen. If you walk in there with a watch that you want fixed, that doesn't have to be worth a million, but it could be worth a million to you, and you want it to be fixed. So you go straight in to Jules on Hampton and tell them to fix your watch, and they'll do it, and they'll do it well. You've got Al, you've got AJ, his son, they're the owners, they're on site, they do a great job, they know what they're doing when it comes to jewelry, and they are really nice people. Jules on Hampton, 4506 Hampton, and finally I'll take you to Clayton, where you can get outstanding men's clothes at the St. Louis Suit Company, which is on the corner of Forsyth and Central, and I can tell you right now, you see on the picture, lots of suits all the way through the store, they have those, they've also got lots of sports jackets because as Jay has explained to me, Jay's the father, Nick's the son, and the rest of the family working there as well, but they've explained that in 2024 all of a sudden, people are hot on sport jackets without the suit pants, but it's all available anyway you cut it at the St. Louis Suit Company in Clayton, there for 29 years, overcoats, shoes, shirts, ties, OMG, those ties, $5 for a gorgeous tie. If you didn't buy some father a $5 tie for this weekend, for Father's Day, you were missing the boat, you probably paid $50 for who knows what. Instead you could have gone to St. Louis Suit Company, you could have bought a great tie for $5, silk, gorgeous, gorgeous designs, very expensive looking, but inexpensive prices. And finally, if you happen to be getting married or you're going to a wedding, go to St. Louis Suit Company because they definitely take care of men's attire for weddings, they're really good, they know what they're doing, they'll help you out big time, and all you have to do is go talk to Jay and Nick, they know it all. St. Louis Suit Company, 29 years in Clayton. Clayton. Okay. So, what else is going on this weekend? I'll give you one, one of my favorites. Donald claimed that Joe Biden was freaking out during his meeting with the Pope. But the truth is, that Donald was freaking out over the meeting between Joe Biden and the Pope. And leave it to some very sick people to take the picture of Biden with the Pope, where Biden, you know, bends over and gets close to the Pope to talk to him in his ear about just some, you know, Catholic things. Joseph Catholic, the Pope's obviously the number one Catholic. And Joe is trying to talk in a little bit of privacy to the Pope, but there's no privacy for Joe Biden, so he just leans over next to the Pope. And then of course, leave it to these very sick people to come forward and try to suggest that Joe Biden was trying to do something inappropriate with the Pope, you know, sort of like when they claim that Joe Biden's sniffing kids. It's really sad and it's so untrue. And I understand there's 35% of the country is gonna believe it, no matter what you say, or what I say, or what anybody says. If the Pope says it's okay, they won't believe it and they especially won't believe him because they think he's a radical communist anyway, because actually what is he? Well, he's something sort of interesting in Catholicism. He's a Jesuit and the Jesuits are extremely progressive. So what does that mean? Essentially, it means this. They love people. They're very progressive in their belief that poor people should be taken care of at all times by government if necessary. The Jesuits are caring, thoughtful Catholics, not that the other ones aren't, but these are the more left-wing Catholics. They sort of follow the teachings, not the religious teachings, but the teachings of, for example, Paul O'Frayer, famous radical, all about decolonizing the world and trying to do good things. Another name too, Franz Fanon. Franz Fanon is a, he was black and a very famous black philosopher who followed Freire to tell you the truth. And they were all about helping poor people to live a better life. And really, it's not fair for me to even say some of the things that I could say because I've heard them from other Catholics who know what they're talking about and I would have to say to you that I have no idea what I'm talking about. But they like to talk about, you know, Christian values that look towards people at the bottom of our societies and try to lift them up and help them to do better. And they say that that has something to do with Jesus who only thing I know about is that he was a Jewish rabbi. But besides that, he certainly did care about poor people and the Jesuits love them as do other Catholics as well and other Christians. But the point is that a lot of people don't like the Pope because they say he's a communist and he's a Catholic Marxist and he's out to destroy something. They don't even know what they're talking about. But there's something that the Pope is trying to destroy and I guess that's why Joe Biden and he are quietly talking to each other in public but in a way which you can spin one way to make it some kind of inappropriate behavior or you could make it another way and say that they're working out of conspiracy to destroy America. But in any event you would be wrong that is not what the Pope is doing and certainly not what Joe Biden is doing with the Pope. By the way, there's somebody else out here and I'm not comparing him her rather to the Pope or anybody else. I am describing her however as extremely presidential. Somebody who acts with great authority, an ability to speak well, to access some of the better progressive ideas in our society, somebody who could be a president and I'm not talking about my favorite political woman, Hillary Clinton, I'm talking about my second favorite political woman and that would be Kamala Harris and you know, you got a bunch of people if you say Kamala Harris, they start laughing about her and what's the laugh? Well, okay, first of all, she was behind the scenes for a while and she wasn't really giving anybody much of an idea of what she was capable of because she was standing back as most vice presidents do. Now, the other thing they don't like about her is they don't like her laugh. And let me say this, if you're down to the point of criticizing somebody for the way they laugh, you've got trouble. You've really got trouble 'cause I hear laughs every day that aren't the best laughs but that's how some people laugh and Kamala has her way of laughing and I'll tell you the truth, I wouldn't have even thought anything of it if I hadn't heard these right wing crazies around and around making fun of her because of the way she laughs. But I've seen her in some events over the last two weeks where she wasn't laughing to the contrary. She was speaking very forcefully and very intelligently about some of the great problems that our country faces and I realize if you're busy watching the news reports on the weather over on Fox, or maybe they're updating you on how close Steve Bannon is to going to jail, might be something like that. If you're wasting your time with that, you probably haven't seen Kamala Harris and some of the great conversations that she's had on camera and some of the great conversations she's had with other people, the other leaders where she has shown a true presidential ability. A presidential ability to describe problems and to suggest possible solutions that could be talked about. She's a very smart woman. She's got great experience. Joe Biden has sent her out around the world to be a good vice president like he was because you know, a good vice president doesn't do much except for learn. That's what a vice president needs to do, is to learn because the day that you come out from the shadows and you become not a vice president, but a president, which sometimes happens, then you have to be prepared to move forward and do the things that other people would not either know how to do nor have the courage to do. And an example that would come to mind would be Harry Truman. Harry Truman was viewed as a nobody, a very quiet nothing, pretty much a failure in life who got into politics and somehow worked his way into the vice presidency under Franklin Roosevelt who had a number of vice presidents. The last one was Harry Truman. And the next thing you know, at a very young age in his middle 60s, Franklin Roosevelt dropped dead. Annualism. Now, it sure was a different time. People were older at younger ages, but still 65 was not that old, but at any rate, that was the end of him. And the next thing you know, Harry Truman is standing there in a position of having to represent the United States at the end of World War II at a time of monumental decision-making. And he lived up to it, thankfully, for the country. And part of what he did is bring us the society led by NATO that we're dealing with today where the world is protected against wild dictators, Trump, who would go out and try to take over other countries by force, which of course is against international law. Now, the next thing I'll say to you is, as I often say to my classes, who is responsible for implementing international law, for executing international law, for enforcing international law. Who is responsible? I mean, I could go around the studio here and I could tell you right now, nobody would have the answers, not the chairs, not the lamps, not the sofas, nobody would know, because actually, the answer is nobody, because there is no enforcement procedure. We have international law, for sure, there are things you're supposed to do and things you're not supposed to do. Unfortunately, there's no one to enforce it. Part of the reason is because the way the United Nations was set up in the first place, those five initial countries that became the standing leaders of the United Nations that have a veto over everything. They will often stand up in veto any attempt to enforce international law. So you're really kind of stuck. You're sort of caught in the middle and you just got to hope that you can come up with some answers that can be navigated by the leaders of the world. It's not easy, because there's no enforcement procedure. But there is international law and sometimes it becomes very important, naturally, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there was a problem because we killed so many people, so many innocent civilians in order to try to prevent battles that probably would have killed millions of soldiers in trying to take over Japan. But two bombs, and that was the end of the conversation. Japan said, "You know, we're not going to win this one." And they said, "We quit." End of the war. Was Harry Truman's behavior, was his decision moral? You've got to decide. There's no answer. You've got to think about it. You can do that in university classrooms, which is a good place to do it. You learn all about international relations, and then you debate things like the use of nuclear weapons. And for example, I mean, I can tell you right now, I've got students who absolutely know that when you're talking about a debate over nuclear weapons, that there are two names that you need to know about. And see, you could go out on the street and you could interview everybody in Clayton and ask, "Who are those two people?" Pick Clayton because a lot of educated business people there. And you go out and you ask them, "Who are the two names that would be studied in order to come up with an understanding of the theories behind the use of nuclear weapons?" Well, you're never going to have heard of these people before. Sagan and Waltz. Scott Sagan, Kenneth Waltz. I know Kenneth Waltz is dead. I'm not sure about Sagan, but I can tell you right now, they have written some of the most important things about nuclear weapons and the theory of having nuclear weapons, with each one of these guys on the opposite side, and you have the opportunity to read what they have to say about the two ideas behind nuclear weapons, one being we should have more nuclear weapons in the world in order to prevent anybody from attacking anybody else. The other one is we should have less nuclear weapons in the world so that nobody will ever be tempted to use them and destroy the planet. So far, the answer has been that we have so many nuclear weapons, nine countries have them, and therefore nobody has used them. But there's always been the theory that there could be an accident or somebody could lose their mind. And of course, if anybody ever thought about a leader with nuclear weapons who might lose their mind, we all know that that name, and of course that's Donald J. Trump. A lot of people worried about that, including people in our own government. And one of those people was the chief of staff of the military, joined chief of staff, Mark Millie, and of course, Donald said that Mark Millie should be executed. And that's where I'm gonna end today is just emphasizing this idea about execution because Donald has been having some conversations recently about executing Americans who don't agree with him. And this has been pretty common for him to go around saying this, and there's actually a woman, and she's a White House staffer under Trump former, and her name was Alyssa Griffin. And Alyssa Griffin said that Donald Trump had been known in the White House to run around telling people that White House staffers should be executed, and others in government who don't support Trump should be executed. And of course, we've got Evan Gurskovich sitting out in Russia who, you know, that's the kind of guy you worry that the Russians would execute, but Trump says don't worry if he becomes president, then Gurskovich comes back because, well, because. Of course, we know why, we know what the because is. The because is, is there some kind of a relationship between Trump and his puppet master, Vladimir Putin, and whatever that relationship is, as they say in the vernacular, it ain't good. So all I can tell you is that, you know, Trump, and there's a lot of talk about this now, about people who know about Trump and is wanting to execute people. And one of the leaders that popped up today talking about this was Bill Barr, his attorney general who spoke against Trump until he spoke for him, which now he spoke speaking for him. And Bill Barr explained that he couldn't verify that Trump wanted to kill one person or another, but that he had to admit that Trump would get pretty angry at times and say things about executing people in the government and political people. And then he said, but you can't take them literally because there are too many people who want to take them literally. And all I've got to say is, if you've got a president of the United States talking about executing people like, hang my pants, you've got a problem. So once again, I say, for the St. Louis suit company in Clayton, for Winties in Chesterfield Valley and Defiance, and for Jules on Hampton, i'm mark asin this is showdown