Showdown
Showdown Episode 102 7-12-24
[music] Welcome to Showdown. I'm Mark Casein, and a little bit different today, just a little. No video. I'm just right here in front of a microphone, as I have done for so many years, but it's a little different because you don't have the camera on you, but nevertheless, it's the same mess out there. Nothing changed. Everything's up in the air, upside down, backward and forward, and who knows where all of this is going, except for, I think I have a pretty good idea of where it's going. So we'll talk about that, and some other things as well, but it's not live, so you'll find that when you click into this thing, you'll say, "Wow, how come I couldn't hear it live?" Well, just, you couldn't. Don't worry about it. In fact, I'll even say it this way. In the decades that I have spent in studios, I've always told everybody, equipment doesn't always work right. Things happen, and when I say that, there's another area that's very similar, and I was involved in that too, and I was a water skier and a person that was around motorboats, and let me assure you that it doesn't matter whether it's a brand new boat or an old boat or whatever it is. You go out on a boat, they don't work. Something goes wrong. That's just the way it is. They just don't always work. In fact, you can pretty much expect that they're not going to work from time to time, and so it's the same thing in broadcast studios. Things break down, so you're going to hear all of this. This is more of a radio experience, which I've done for 35 years and enjoy. I don't care if the camera's on or not, but just wanted to bring that up so you know what's going on here and why you're going to hear this program late, but not live, but late, and we'll be back on Monday with everything working beautifully because we've got the greatest expert of all time in this studio, and that's Joe who makes things work. He's just good. Anyway, you need somebody like that, just like when you're water skiing, you need somebody that can keep that boat working, and I obviously can't put up any pictures or clips or anything today, but I was supposed to bring a picture of me wearing a suit when I was about 17 years old with my ponytail, so now I'm going to add to that one of my water skiing pictures, so now that I've told that story, we can get that on there as well. You could actually see it if you go to my website, which is talkstl.net, and you go to the place where they have all the pictures, it's a big place on there, click it, and one of my water skiing pictures is there, but that's all right. I'm not going to force you to go there. You can do this any number of ways if you want to pretend you're on skis. One of the places that I will be next week, and I'm going to be with Washington University for two weeks, and we are going to be dealing with issues related to black studies put on by the black studies department at WashU, and so one of the things that you'll see is things that we do that are connected to black studies, and one of those is next Tuesday, which is also on the water, and we're going to be out on the Mississippi River with some paddle boat situation, and so I'll be out paddling my way down the Mississippi. So that's another thing coming up next week, and then I'll have people from the conference that come on the air in order to participate. There'll be teachers and professors and various people, so that'll sort of be a little different than what we've been doing, but kind of interesting, and that's coming up next week when all of the equipment reverts to normal, but right now, like I said, this is radio, and it's good, fun, radio's nice, you know, it just is, you don't know what suit I have on, you don't know what tie I have on, you don't know anything, but you don't need to know, because I'm going to tell you what you need to know. So let's talk about the President of the United States, Joe Biden, and there's been a period over the last six, eight, ten months where you know the people on the right have done some of the things like Let's Go Brandon, you know, that kind of business, and just all sorts of ways of trying to make Joe Biden look like a fool. Now the truth is, he's old. He says it. Everybody says it because Joe Biden is old. He's not just 82, but he's an old 82. He's probably not happy about it, but he is an old 82 years old. And he thought that he could get through this and get another term in. And I understand why he wants to. He talked about it at length last night. He was asked, you know, why after he talked about a bridge to a new generation, why did he insist on running? And his answer was that first, he felt that he brought some important skills to the table in terms of going after Donald Trump. And by the way, in talking about the skills of Joe Biden and his flaws, he is well known. Everybody says, oh, this man has all these gaffes. He makes mistakes. So yesterday, for example, he called Zalinski Putin for a minute, then he said, oh, you know, he made a joke out of it. But he made a mistake. And then he made a mistake talking about his vice president, of course, being Kamala Harris. And he said, vice president Trump. And of course, Trump went nuts, posting stupidity all over the internet, trying to make Joe Biden look dumb, trying to make him look old and decrepit and unable to speak properly. But here's the funny part about that. You've got all these commentators in the background who are discussing Trump and his criticisms of the Joe Biden gaffes. And then you've got Joe Biden making fun of himself, you know, a little self deprecating humor. And then you've got sort of the experts really breaking down all the things that have been said and all the problems and all the issues and the criticisms. And what's interesting is, if you listen to the experts who are mostly younger, 45, 50, 55 years old, every one of them was making mistakes here and there. And let me say, that's not unusual. I was listening again today. I was listening on the way in here to Yamisha El-Sindor on on MSNBC. And she didn't even catch it, but she said the wrong name. It just went on. Everybody knew what she meant. I remember which one it was. There have been so many of these people who don't even have any cognitive issues and who aren't old that talk and make mistakes when they talk. Every time I make a mistake, and I've done it maybe five, six, seven times in the last couple of weeks. And when I do, I say the wrong word, you know, I make the joke, oh, well, I'm Joe Biden. You know, this is stupid. The country is focused on things that are so wasting time. They're wasteful and they're cruel. They are cruel. I mean, this man is 82 years old. He's got issues speaking anyway because, you know, he had that stutter that went all the way back to when he was a kid. He overcame it for a while and it's sort of coming back to Hanuman. Honestly, it's nothing. It's nothing at all. But here's the thing, the Democratic Party is scared because they watched that debate and we all did. And that debate, we know that it just made Joe Biden look ridiculous. And, you know, I listened to part of it and I watched part of it. And the part that you heard was not quite as bad as the part that you watched, because if you watched him, there were points in that debate where he was like staring in the space, looked like he was lost. I don't know, maybe he was lost. He's 82 years old. And if you were wise or wiser, I think he would have done exactly as he had promised and said, look, I got you this far. We beat Donald Trump. We've passed a lot of really good laws, everything from the chips act to the thing that he called inflation reduction, but it wasn't really that anyway. But it doesn't matter. It was good law. It put a lot of money to different programs and it was smart. And then originally at the time when he got into office, they had passed this law to create child care credits for couples or even mothers without a husband, whatever, people that needed their kids taken care of during the day and they just didn't know what to do. And they didn't have the money because it costs a minimum of $1,500 a month to take care of these kids in these child care programs and the better the programs, the more it costs, you can get up to 2,000 or more per month. And if you've got two kids in the program, now what do you do? You're looking at maybe four grand a month to take care of kids. So Joe Biden stepped up and he said, look, we're going to fix this. The government is going to provide assistance to people with children so that they can work, be productive for the country, and the kids can be taken well, care of well. So anyway, that's, you know, Joe Biden, there's more, he's done a lot. But let's talk about this. Yesterday he was there at the press conference for one reason. And that was because he was just finishing up with NATO. And by the way, let's back up on this one. And again, no clips today. I don't have any video, anything like that. But if I, if I did, I would have played for you the clip of Donald Trump saying, when I was first elected, I never even heard a NATO. I didn't even know what it was. And I don't know if that's true or not, but I'll say this, it's the words that he spoke and to tell people that you didn't even know what NATO was, you got to be pretty stupid. And, and you know, here's another thing. His ex-wife, Marla Maples, has told the story that Donald Trump would read the speeches of Adolf Hitler every night when he went to sleep. A lot of people assumed that Maples was out to get Trump. But Maples has stepped up and said, look, not only am I not trying to get him, but I'd like to help him. And if he'll, he'll let me come in and be part of what's going on there, I will help him. So you can forget the, the, the story of trying to deny that this guy was reading the, the speeches of, of Adolf Hitler every night because his wife obviously was proud of it. Okay. That's her business. But the point is we're dealing with a guy who is very ill, according to his psychologist, niece, Mary Trump, she talks a great deal about his psychopathology and it's well worth listening to because even if you don't agree with it, you ought to hear it because she is an expert now. She's a psychologist and she's talking about things that she knows about. She's observed this man over the years. But let's go back to Joe Biden. He does know something about NATO. In fact, he knows a lot. In fact, he knows a great deal about foreign policy. And you know that because last night, you heard one of the most masterful press conferences done by any president on any subject. And the reason it's masterful is because he got very tough questions and let last evening, when we were talking, I said, you know, first, I thought maybe they take him two hours. They only took him for an hour. They'd have gone on, but they cut it off after one hour. But they asked some very tough questions, especially David Sanger from the New York Times, who's a foreign policy expert. And he really put it to Joe Biden, tough. And Biden answered his questions in six to 10 minute intervals, which included very complicated strategies dealing with Russia, dealing with China, dealing with the Middle East. He brought them all up. He brought them all together. I sat there and listened to it. And I wondered, what is somebody going to say against this? Because he took all of this information and he put it together in a way that might not have been understandable to the average person, probably not. But certainly it would be understandable to the average political science professor of which I'm one. And certainly it would have been understandable to a number of historians. And certainly it would have been understandable to people who had operated in government. He was just brilliant. Now I admit that if you know nothing about political science or foreign policy or very little, you could have listened to it and thought, this is a bunch of junk. What's he talking about? But no, that's not what it was. It was actually masterful, which was the word I was using with people minutes after that discussion of China and Russia and the Middle East. And a couple hours later, I was listening to Lawrence O'Donnell and he immediately got to that point. He said the first thing out of his mouth, the responses from Joe Biden were masterful. Now that was repeated all night long and all morning this morning. And especially coming from Richard Haas and Richard Haas, I've mentioned before, he was the head of the Council on Foreign Relations, which publishes Foreign Affairs Magazine, which is the number one Foreign Affairs Magazine in the world. And it's been published since 1922. That's 102 years. And Haas is one of the top people from that magazine. And currently he is considered to be President Emeritus retired, but still important at the Council on Foreign Relations. They're not a wildly liberal group. They're sort of middle of the road. And it so happens that Haas is a strong supporter and friend of Joe Biden. And he talked all about how phenomenal Biden's answers were, but even as a supporter, even as a friend, Haas has been saying for a week, it's probably time for Joe Biden to leave. And that's his friend. In fact, Haas got in trouble early on because he was helping Biden to write some speeches. He was editing words and going through all this with Biden, along with his regular speech writers. And everybody said, look, if you're going to be a commentator on MSNBC, you need to really reveal this relationship. And he did. He told everybody and he does it all the time. He tells that that he worked officially and unofficially for Joe Biden over time, which by the way, you know, people on the left, I hate to say this because it sounds ridiculous, but they tend to tell the truth about themselves when they make mistakes. I could tell you right now, a perfect example too, over on on MSNBC, Chris Matthews, but am I losing my mind? See, I'm being Joe Biden. We all do it. Anyway, Chris Matthews, the guy who did hardball for many years, very excellent broadcaster worked for Tip O'Neill years ago and good friend of Joe Biden. And he's out there saying the same thing. You know, this is your smart man. The things that Biden says, I mean, they're just great. He's really smart. You really need to listen to see how smart he is. But it's no longer an argument in favor of the Democratic Party. It's just a discussion of a man who's 82 years old and who's about to leave the political arena, I believe. And I've said this for two weeks. I said it the first day coming out of that debate, it's time for Joe Biden to move on, not because he's a bad person. He's brilliant. He has done unbelievably great things for the country. But what happened here is that he got himself into a rut and he's being described by the Republican Party, by people on the right in a way that's very harmful to the Democrats in this election. However, and wow, is this interesting. Everybody expected the coming out of that debate that Joe Biden's numbers were going to tumble. So first of all, there was a poll yesterday I talked about it. It was Ipsos, Washington Post poll. And it said that in this poll, Trump had been winning, but no longer. It's now dead even 46 a piece. And polls are coming out every day. So for example, there's a new one today. And this new one is an NPR poll, where again, Donald Trump was leading. Joe Biden is now ahead by two points. 50 to 48. Explain that one. Now, of course, Joe Biden wants to say my polls are going up. This is no time to get rid of me. But here's the thing. He's struggling. We all know he is. And we all know how this is scaring the Democratic Party. And here's the other side of the coin. Kamala Harris, who I also said the first day has got to be the candidate going forward. First day off off of the debate. And guess what? She is not only doing so well. I mean, speaking terrific. She's she's young. She's energetic. She's a former prosecutor who is talking every day about being a prosecutor and dealing with a criminal Donald Trump. He's a criminal is a convicted felon. And she is going to bring this story in a way that is dynamic. She's bringing it now as the vice president. And I think that she's going to do the same thing and more as the candidate for president. And by the way, she's beating Donald Trump in the latest polls because they're running polls like crazy now. They want to see, you know, where's Kamala? And she's beating Trump by more than Biden. Where Biden's by two, she's winning by three and four. She's winning in these polls. Now, this isn't a national race. So we got to look at state by state. But if you if you think about it right now, here's one of Joe Biden's biggest problems, Michigan. Because let's face it, there's a giant Arab population in Michigan and they're angry over Joe Biden's support of Israel in the ongoing battles over Hamas and Rafa. So what's going to happen? Well, if if Joe's in it, he's going to have a tough time winning Michigan because there are a lot of people there who are not happy with him. On the other hand, Kamala Harris is going to look a whole lot different. She's a woman. She's black. And by the way, here's a good one. I don't know if I mentioned this yesterday, there are people out here saying she's not black. And, and honestly, you're not winning any points with black people by trying to say the Kamala isn't black. It's the same, same stupidity that didn't work against Barack Obama when people said, you know, he's got a white mother and he was born somewhere else and all that. It doesn't work. I mean, you can keep doing it if you want to, but it won't help you because Kamala Harris is looking good. She's looking very good. And as, as somebody who is moving ahead in the polls, it's going to be really tough for people to stand up and say, well, we think somebody else should be the presidential candidate. I think Kamala is going to be the candidate, but let me show you how bad Donald Trump is with the public. And I've been saying this for a long, long time. They've got some other polls. And just for, for grins, they are running polls of Hillary Clinton. And guess what? Hillary Clinton is beating Donald Trump. In fact, Hillary is getting the stronger numbers like Kamala. Now, nobody thinks Hillary's running. That's not the issue. Kamala is running, I think. But I have to tell you, Trump is a disaster. And when I say he's a disaster, you know, I've, I've put some things up here. Thanks to, to the good work of, of Joe and the studio up here, I put up some clips to back up things that I'm saying. So for example, I played three times yesterday, the, the clip of Donald Trump explaining in April of 2022, how the Heritage Foundation has been chosen to develop this plan for him going forward into the next election, which in fact, they did. And it's now called Project 2025. And because there's some things in there that, that Donald feels that he would be criticized for, he claims he's never heard of these people. Now I also played a clip last week from Velshi because Velshi didn't just show Donald Trump. In fact, he didn't show them at all. What he did is he showed the chapters in Project 2025. And then he explained who was responsible for developing each of the chapters. And every one of the first seven chapters was one of Donald Trump's people, one of the people that Donald Trump had appointed in his administration. These are friends of Trump. And then there were about five or six others that were scattered through the rest of the report, friends of his people that, that had worked closely with Trump were well recognized as, as Trump supporters and even appointees. So to say that you never heard of any of this is ridiculous, not to mention the fact that Trump is very close to the Heritage Foundation, which by the way, has developed not only Project 2025, but also the official platform of the Republican Party. So you know, you can come up with all kinds of stories as to how this is a fake. It's not true. It's fake news. It's a lie. No, it's not. It's not because Trump is tied to all of these people in about 10 different ways at least. And then of course, there's his own words, which is what he's really good at. I mean, there's just no question. Donald's an expert when it comes to standing up and telling you what he's doing that's a lie and what he's doing that you don't want to hear, but you're going to hear it anyway. And then he goes forward with threats, all kinds of threats, you know, a bloodbath's coming. If Donald Trump Trump doesn't win, clips on that all over the place. Donald is a disaster for himself. And a lot of people said when he was quiet for about seven or eight days, gee, this is actually helping Trump. If he can just not say anything ever again, he might actually get a vote. But don't worry. He's back in prime time, screaming his guts out. And while Joe Biden is explaining complicated foreign policy theories, strategies for the United States government for today and going far into the future. What's Trump talking about? Hannibal Lecter, what's that about? I mean, if he just said it once, okay, he says it every time he's out there talking about Hannibal Lecter constantly and he even said just a couple of days ago, people are saying I'm rambling about Hannibal Lecter, but I'm not rambling. And then he went on and continued to ramble about Hannibal Lecter. Why? I mean, first of all, we know there is no Hannibal Lecter. I wonder if Donald knows that. And then the next thing is, what's his focus on cannibalism? Why is he like that? I don't know. I can't tell you. I don't think he could tell you. But I will say he's got more than that that he's talking about. He's not leaving it there. I mean, while Biden is out here trying to explain his administration's policies, Trump is talking about boats with batteries, electric batteries that will electrocute you when you're on the boat. And then also a lot of craziness about if you're out boating and you go in the water and the sharks start coming. He's talking about sharks. And then he started calling Chris Christie a fat pig. And then after he was calling Chris Christie a fat pig, he turned around and said, oh, Chris Christie is not a fat pig. And that's another one of his games. So he thinks he can play you a clip that says Chris Christie isn't a fat pig. And then when he's accused of doing it, he'll say, no, listen, I said he's not one. Why is he even bringing it up? What's the, what's the reason for that? It's all crazy. And this is what you get from Donald Trump as opposed to what Joe Biden is doing, which makes all the sense in the world. Now I will also say, and I'm going to repeat this again. I do worry when I think about the historic historical facts of Paul von Hindenburg in Germany, who was an 84 year old chancellor who ran against Adolf Hitler and lost. And then helped Hitler to undo the Weimar Republic because that's the democratic system that they had developed in Germany, because I don't know if he loved Hitler or he just succumbed to Hitler because he was scared. A lot of people did that. I don't know the whole story. I know he ran against Hitler and Hitler beat him. And a lot of people said, you know, the last person that should have been going against Hitler was some 84 year old man who really was struggling, just like what we're dealing with. And so I'm not unhappy if Joe Biden goes, but I will say this. And then I'm going to talk about some business here. I feel bad for Joe Biden. He got to be president. That's great. It's better in Hillary. Feel bad for Hillary. Hillary was probably one of the best people qualified to be president that we can think of at any time in our modern times. And, you know, I feel bad for Joe. He's a good man. He obviously wants to continue in the presidency, but he can't. I don't think that again, it's not determined yet, but I don't think so. We're going to find out really quickly. And if I'm right, and Kamala Harris becomes the candidate for the Democratic Party, and we come up with a vice presidential candidate, maybe Josh Shapiro out of Pennsylvania, maybe Gretchen Whitmer from Michigan, which would be two women, but you know, a lot of people are saying, okay, two women, two young smart Democratic Party women, not a problem. That might work. This might be the time for something like that. But in any case, Donald at the same time is collapsing on himself, and he's doing it to himself. Anyway, we got more to talk about here. But the first thing I want to do is tell you where you can go to dinner any night, remembering that this isn't live tonight, but any night, any night, any day, whenever you want, the place to go is Wendy's dinner, lunch. It doesn't matter. Bring your friends, go make friends. It's just it's a great restaurant. It's at 18,000 Chesterfield Airport Road. It's in Chesterfield Valley. They've got terrific food. They got wings. They've got hamburgers and cheeseburgers, smoked meat. They've got one of my favorites, of course, baby back ribs, onion rings. I love all that pizza. Very good. This is a great place to eat. They've got salads. They've got everything, and it's a terrific atmosphere to enjoy your meal. So go to 18,000 Chesterfield Airport Road and enjoy Wendy's. And by the way, if you're tired of looking at the surroundings in Chesterfield, you can move on down the road to defiance, and you're going to get the the Wendy's Roadhouse in defiance, same great food, same great atmosphere, all nice people. It's it's it's a beautifully done business. And if you go to either the defiance or the Chesterfield location, you're going to love Wendy's. Now, if you're interested in jewelry, my friend Al and his son, AJ, they are at 4506 Hampton. And that's in St. Louis. And they have all kinds of jewelry, everything you can imagine. They have cases on top of cases, on top of cases filled with with fine jewelry that that they've either bought or they've designed it themselves. I'll tell you, these are extremely talented people. They know what they're doing in the jewelry business, and they will definitely help you and they're friendly. They're just good. That's it. Just good. Now, in addition to all of that, they will design things for you, different kinds of jewelry, either your way or maybe even their own way because they are extremely creative. And don't forget, if your watch needs to be repaired, you go to 4506 Hampton and jewels on Hampton will repair your watch, guaranteed they are excellent. And of course, in addition, all of that, they will buy and sell jewelry and coins at jewels on Hampton. Finally, let me take you to my good friend, Jay, who owns the St. Louis food company, his son, Nick, his whole family. They, they, they work there together. They make sure that all your clothes fit right. They'll help you like they help me so that, you know, you make sure that the colors all match. They sell suits. They sell ties, shirts, shoes, overcoats, straw hats in the summer time. Everything. Really great clothing store. And they've been there for 29 years. They've been extremely successful and Clayton on the corner of Forsyth and central. I mean, everybody knows it's there. It's, it's very popular. It's a great men's clothing store. And here we are in a time when people aren't just wearing traditional suits. They may wear a suit coat, shirt and tie. And then on top of that, maybe blue jeans, I wear chucks on top of all that. It's all considered fashionable. And I've been given the, the A.O.K. from the St. Louis food companies that I don't have people looking at me crazy when I'm walking around, you know, looking different, but still dressed up. And don't forget, if you're thinking about getting married or you're going to a wedding again, the St. Louis suit company is really big on wedding attire. And you will, you'll be happy if you go there. They, they'll take care of you. When it comes to men's clothing, don't worry. They are phenomenal. And of course, those $5 ties, well, that's ridiculous. The ties are, are silk. They've got beautiful designs on them. Just like any excellent tie that you could buy anywhere. Only problem is not for you, for them. They're only going to charge you $5. I don't know how they do it, but I'll tell you this. I wear their ties all the time. I have so many ties. No one can believe how many ties I have, because I get them at the St. Louis suit company in Clayton. Okay. So one of the things that, that I talked about yesterday and increasingly people are talking about this today. And it doesn't matter if it's Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. They all know what to do about it. And that is this business where, where Donald Trump met yesterday at Mar-a-Lago with one of the great dictators of the world. And when I say great, I mean, evil and great in that way, a lot of people over the years have gotten in trouble calling Hitler great. And they didn't mean he's great. They didn't mean he was a great man. They meant he was he was great when it comes to being evil. He was one of the greatest of evil people on the history of the planet. So yeah, here's Victor Orbon, first of all, from Hungary. And here's a good one. And this is, you know, you talk about Joe Biden and his mistakes. They're playing clips all over the place of Donald Trump saying that Victor Orbon is the head of Turkey. And of course he's not. The head of Turkey is Erdogan. So what the heck is Trump saying that Victor Orbon is? And the answer is anybody could make a mistake. But Trump doesn't have anything to say on any topic. He doesn't really know anything. He knows practically nothing. He doesn't know about foreign policy. He doesn't know about economics. He talks about how he went to Wharton. And of course, the Wharton people say he was one of the worst students they ever had. And anyway, look what he does. He takes whatever tiny bit of information that he got out of Wharton. And he connects it to one of the dumbest quacks on the planet. And that's this economic economist whose name is Steven Moore. And I was looking at some things. I was reading some economic pieces today. And Steven Moore was explaining how when Democrats say that Joe Biden created half of the debt that Donald Trump did. Because Donald Trump under Donald Trump, our debt went up eight billion dollars. I'm sorry. See, anybody can do it. Eight trillion dollars. Eight trillion. It went up four trillion under Joe Biden, half as much. Now I have to tell you that having debt as a country and especially for the United States of America, it's not the problem that you think it is. First of all, our debts, let's call it a hundred and twenty five hundred and thirty percent of GDP. Well, guess what? It was a hundred and forty percent of GDP at the end of World War II. And it was the start of one of the greatest periods of economic expansion in the history of our country, part of which occurred because we ran up some of that debt by creating what we call the GI Bill. And under that, we paid for every single person that came out of the military to go to college if they wanted to cost money. But wow, was it a successful policy? It was phenomenal. And it led to the 1950s and 60s, where a lot of people in the United States were worried that they called it, you know, there was a satellite that went up Sputnik from Russia. And there was this Sputnik fear that Russia was going to surpass us in every way having to do with technology. But guess what? It wasn't true. The United States had it all under control, even if we didn't know we did, we did. Because what happened is we sent all these people to college and they created a technology boom that led to even things that we've got today, including the internet and cell phones and every other thing you can think of all coming out of that 1950s and 60s period, where all of these former GIs went to jail. See, again, you can say, I love it. So again, okay, I made a mistake, not jail college. I don't know, I lost my mind. But here's the thing. Everybody does it. It's just something we do sometimes. You get excited, you say the wrong thing. Joe Biden says it. It's not a reason to get rid of them. Now, I think we've got to get rid of them. And I don't even want to say rid. I mean, I just think he's got to go. But everybody makes mistakes. Watch the political shows this weekend. People make mistakes all the time. Everybody. They can be 30 years old. They can be 80 years old. It doesn't matter. People misspeak. Sometimes they catch it. Sometimes they don't. Anyway, the point is clear. These people went to college. They became the forerunners of today's great technology people who have created things that nobody ever imagined possible. And we've got it today. Now, we're hoping that it's all going to be used for good. But in any case, we've got it. We've got all this new technology. And we're using it in ways. We're trying to use it in ways that could be productive for the country. And it could help young people, for example, to advance themselves in the world as they move up. I mean, this is all so simple. And we don't have to be fighting about it. There's no reason to be arguing about this. It's not like if you send people to college and pay for them that you're a communist. And that's what somebody's going to say. And that's so dumb. It's just dumb. There are things that we try to do to make this country work better. And some are good and some aren't. And you don't know. You take your chances and you find out. But if you get out here and start making up stories about debt and how we're in trouble, you're not helping anybody. And really at 130% of GDP, we're not even as high in debt as we were after World War II. And by the way, China has 250% of GDP as debt. Not so good. That's getting high twice what we've got. And people say, oh, China's coming to take care of us. They're going to own us. No, not at all. They're not so smart. Everybody tries to do the right thing. And the Chinese have tried to build something. They've done a great job of building. But they're not perfect. And they're certainly not as good as us. In the meantime, Stephen Moore, one of the greatest economic quacks of all time is out here saying that that Joe Biden racked up far more debt than Donald Trump. And the Trump is the, the, the, the great businessman, the great economist, and Joe Biden has ruined our country, which is why we all know that people are saying that the United States has got the greatest current level of economic growth of any industrialized country in the world. Everyone's saying it because it's true. Now, there was some inflation at one point. It's sort of spiked up. And it's spiked right back down. And you've got a lot of people out here saying things, promising disaster. Trump says that that the country is being destroyed by Joe Biden. But guess what? Pretty soon he won't have Joe Biden to kick around anymore, as Richard Nixon once said. And, and then let's see what Donald's got to say when a, a prosecutor, hopefully Kamala Harris is running for president. And she's out here talking about being a great candidate for this presidency, a woman, black woman, she's going to get the black vote. She's going to get the young vote. She's going to get the woman's vote. She's going to get it all. And here she is doing things and coming up with, with ideas. And she's got, you know, all the same people as Biden. It's, it's no different. The administration is made up of tens of thousands of people. One person doesn't run anything. Donald Trump thinks so because he's talking too much to Victor Orban and to Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping and it's just ridiculous. It's ridiculous. Now he reveres Kim Jong-un in, in North Korea. Do you? Do you really? Is that a great man that you want to follow that you think the United States should use his ideas to promote our success in the world? I mean, you got to be kidding. And, and I can tell you that, that if you think back, you don't have to be an expert historian. If you think back to the days after World War II, if somebody said that the United States during that war had been hooked up with Hitler and Mussolini and, and Franco in Spain, I mean, would, would you have been proud? And so we're trying to hook up with the modern day Hitler, the modern day Mussolini, the modern day European fascists following Vladimir Putin, endangering Ukraine, endangering Poland, and eventually for all we know, France, England, and go through NATO, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, we have a commitment to those people. If anybody comes after them, we're supposed to protect them, and Donald Trump's answer was, you've heard it, and you know this is true. He's still saying it, by the way, on the stump, that if they don't pay all their money, he's going to go tell Vladimir Putin to do whatever the hell he wants with them. Those are the words from Donald Trump. Is that what you support? In contrast to, to, to Joe Biden, who's nothing but an old man, that's it. He's old, okay, but he's awfully smart with lots of, of experience. And if you listen to what he said at that press conference yesterday, it was masterful. Next up, he's going to be talking to Lester Holt at NBC coming this Monday. And, and I can tell you that, that he is probably going to sound great. Now that doesn't mean he's, he's not going to sound old. He's going to be old, but, but I think he's really getting it together and he's answering questions and talking about issues. And I think he's going to show the country that on his way out, he's an awfully smart man. And, and I think the people that he's left behind to run this place who have been running it for the last three and a half years are going to acquit themselves quite well. I think they're, they're going to be outstanding. And, and I look forward to however they do it, whether it's Kamala or somebody else, but I think it will be Kamala. And we're going to hear a lot more of this all weekend. You know, this is all they're talking about. But I'll give you a chance to do some other things too. So you don't have to hear the same story. Repeat it over and over and over again. Yeah, that gets boring. But the country's trying to deal with this. We've got a president that's probably on his way out. It's unusual. So we're going to handle it. And that's coming up this weekend. Right now I'm going to go off into the weekend thinking about the great people like Wente's and Jules on Hampton and the St. Louis suit company and Clayton. Great friends who have helped us a lot. And we try to help them as well. And this is showdown without video tonight. But we'll be back next week with lots of great things. I'm Mark Casein. Good night.