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Jan. 17, 2025 - The David Knight Show

01:25:18

Gov’t Hammers US Automakers

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	Let's get the thoughts of a great guest who has been with us throughout this administration on the David Knight Show.
	And he was with David just recently, and he's been waiting.
	And I appreciate him coming on on very short notice.
	And Eric Peters of Eric Peters Autos is here on the David Knight Show.
	Eric, nice to have you here.
	And, of course, this being the last business day of the Biden administration, hopefully people will be able to make some money in their businesses to pay their taxes.
	But then again, maybe they can't because they might be shut down for environmental regulations or other things.
	How are you, my friend?
	Well, it looks like you're not coming through on your mic.
	Hold on a second.
	There you go.
	Are you there?
	How about now?
	Am I good?
	Yeah.
	All right.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Yes, indeed.
	Thank you for having me on, and I'm sorry if I looked a little derelict, the Zoolander reference.
	I got your text asking me to come on the show, and I hadn't yet taken a shower, so excuse me.
	Well, I appreciate you doing so, and I know that there, of course, you're in deepest, darkest Siberia, so it's rough.
	You're coming from a long distance to spread that Russian propaganda, so thanks for doing so.
	Well, the nice thing about doing what I do is that I do it at home.
	So I don't have to go into an office per se, or I do.
	Well, my office is just down the hall from my bedroom.
	So I have that luxury, which I indulge in.
	But I wanted to make an observation about what you were talking about just a moment ago, which is this, what would you call it?
	This lunatic despicability of these people, of the entire Biden regime, and all of these freaks that are part of that.
	I listened.
	As much as I could tolerate to Biden's farewell address in which, among other things, he talked about how it's very, very important that people pay their fair share of taxes and don't get away with not paying taxes.
	And this is the man who just pardoned his son for federal tax evasion, among other things.
	Absolutely.
	And of course, he'll define what fair share is as he steals from you.
	I hope that this is simply...
	A case of a senile elderly man.
	Because the alternative?
	That he's that unbelievably vicious?
	You know, I mean, how could you even do that?
	What kind of person do you have to be to lecture others about how they need to pay the taxes that whatever they are, however high they are, that the IRS imposes?
	At the same time, he uses his power, the power of the office, to excuse his son from paying taxes.
	Wouldn't you have a problem at the table if you had even this much conscience?
	How could you get in front of a camera and say such a thing?
	Absolutely.
	It's amazing how they'll continue to try to spout that rhetoric that makes them try to look like they identify with the little guy when they are part of the cronyist, upper-class, political control grid that not only forces all the little guys to pay the taxes, also...
	Games the system so that their friends can do great and not pay the taxes.
	It's incredible.
	And I think it also is dependent upon this short attention span that people have combined with, what's a good word for it?
	This reflexive ideological posture that rank and file people have on both sides.
	Not just the left, but also on the right.
	You know, Trump can say or do something execrable and people who are, you know, the most virulent red hat MAGA people will excuse it, rationalize it, ignore it.
	You know, because it's their guy who's saying it.
	Move on to the next thing.
	You know, it's always urgent.
	We move on to the next thing.
	And just have a piece psychologically with what the people on the left side do.
	And so people like you and I, who still sort of have our sanity, are kind of caught in the middle of all of this.
	Oh, and you know, Eric, I'm glad you brought up Trump because I think it's very important to fold in Trump every once in a while as one gives...
	What I believe is very appropriate opprobrium, offers that opprobrium, looking at Joe Biden.
	When we talk about things like free speech and we see people like Sam or Max literally being pulled out or pushed out of a room where Anthony Blinken, who literally sat in a pizza joint with Nazi regalia on the wall in Ukraine and shakes hands with a man.
	Whom he is giving weapons to slaughter people in Gaza.
	They, simply asking questions, Anthony Blinken is seen as the respectable one as they silence them and gag them just like Planet of the Apes with Charlton Heston on trial.
	Yeah, it could have been Charlton Heston, you know, it's like, Dr. Zayas, you can't stop me!
	That's what it was like!
	Well, I've got another reference that's even darker, and, you know, it seems to be where we're headed.
	Do you remember back in the, I guess it was probably in the 80s or 90s, Saddam Hussein convened his parliament, and he sat there, you know, like a gloating demon as he identified and called out his political opponents that were in the audience, and I think it was the parliament.
	I don't remember what the term is in Iraq for whatever their legislative...
	Yeah, I remember that.
	I remember that.
	Because, of course, those people were being dragged out to be put in front of a ditch in a firing squad and killed.
	Absolutely.
	And they were put out there on camera as an example to others.
	You know, so they had that they had the double action.
	That's exactly it.
	That's exactly it.
	It serves multiple purposes.
	And Donald Trump, What amazes me is what's curious here is you actually might see some of the MAGA folks who support Trump and especially the Christian Zionists like the Mike Huckabees out there or the Pete Hegsess out there applauding not only what CNN was saying, but what was done to those reporters
	because those reporters were calling out a very clear genocide being conducted by the IDA.
	and Netanyahu, but they don't They somehow think that they're constitutionalists, while they're dragging reporters out of the State Department, that they're constitutionalists while the United States has no declared war and is sending weapons abroad.
	They think they're constitutionalists, and this is where we're going, while the Congress recently voted to sanction The individual members of the International Criminal Court and while Congress, except for a couple like the people on the squad and Thomas Massey, voted literally to say that criticism of a state called Israel is anti-Semitism.
	This is very potent because of something that occurred, what, about 100 years ago.
	I'm sure you're familiar with the Schofield Bible and Harvey.
	And these people managed to...
	Effectively rewrite the Bible in a way such that the veneration of Israel uber alis is the prime directive.
	And thus, we have arrived at a point now where a lot of Christians believe that to criticize, as you say, the state of Israel, not Jews, you know, not attacking Jews as individual human beings, but to criticize Israel, the state, that constitutes, as you say, anti-Semitism, and that's synonymous with being anti-Jewish.
	Absolutely.
	And you know, Eric, David brings it up often.
	There's a difference between political Israel and biblical Israel.
	And of course, with the New Covenant, with Christ coming, the followers of Christ are part of that line of Israel.
	But regardless of that, of course, is the fact of these people swearing their oaths to the Constitution and the supporters of Trump all along the line.
	As Biden would silence people, as we heard more from Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberger, and I was reporting at MRCTV starting in 2016 about the Portman Murphy countering foreign propaganda bill.
	I said, this is the United States government funding news agencies and censorship organizations.
	This is what's coming.
	And conservatives, some, paid attention to it.
	But now, when they're in Congress voting to say, you know what?
	It's anti-Semitism to do this.
	When people are standing up against this genocide and when Donald Trump says and Pam Bondi, I call her Bondi, Bondi says, yes, we should make sure that no university gets federal money if they allow for pro-terrorist, otherwise known in most we should make sure that no university gets federal money if they allow for pro-terrorist, otherwise known in most cases They portray that as, well, that means you're pro-Hamas.
	That means you're pro-terrorist.
	Is the United States government?
	Is the Israeli government pro-terrorist?
	Because they funded Hamas.
	Yeah, I mean, it's another example of this mind diddling that they do, this gaslighting that they do, this blaming of the victim that they do.
	And we have seen some authoritarian shots across the bow with regard to this issue.
	Where they have said, effectively, that they're going to start prosecuting people for, quote-unquote, anti-Semitism, anti-Semitic activities, which means, you know, if I, as a journalist, write an article that says, you know, there's something really fishy and wrong morally about what's going on over there, maybe we shouldn't be funding it, or maybe, at the very least, we should be looking into it and asking some questions.
	All of a sudden, I'm a Nazi.
	All of a sudden, I'm an anti-Semite.
	You know, I'm somebody who wants to put people in gas chambers.
	Absolutely.
	That's what they're going to try to do.
	And by the way, there's a related issue.
	I don't know whether you have been following any of this, because on one level, it's so juvenile and cartoonish, you just want to turn off the TV. I'm going to do my bad Trump impersonation now.
	We're going to have the Gulf of America.
	It's going to be the greatest Gulf ever.
	In the America Canal, and Canada is the 51st state.
	Now, it occurred to me that what they're doing here is setting the psychological groundwork for something.
	That if it hadn't been Trump doing it, if it had been Kamala or if it had been Clinton or anybody on the left, there would be great hues and cries and wailing and gnashing of teeth from people on our side, so-called, the conservatives.
	Because they're talking essentially about the North American Union.
	They're talking about making a block out of this hemispheric block that is one more step toward this global form of government that they want, where we're all subsumed under one central world authority.
	But Trump's doing it.
	You know, and he's doing it with the rhetoric of patriotism.
	It's going to be great.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	And, you know, Eric, I got word.
	Evidently, there was something that we weren't getting audio on.
	So I do want to play, and I apologize for that, everybody.
	That's disappointing.
	There was something that happened.
	So it's coming through now.
	I do want to play at least this little bit.
	From these folks, you got to hear my interpretations of these things, but you didn't get to hear the audio starting things off.
	So let me just go back for you here a little bit and just show you what we got to see from folks like Max Blumenthal as he actually spoke up.
	So here's Max versus Blinken.
	And I'll play this again, and I apologize for that, everybody.
	So it's disappointing that that was the case.
	I apologize about that.
	It's frustrating.
	Why did you keep the bombs flowing when we had a deal in May?
	We all knew we had a deal.
	Everyone in this room knows we had a deal, Tony, and you kept the bombs flowing.
	Why did you sacrifice the rules-based order on the mantle of your commitment to Zionism?
	Why did you allow my friends to be massacred?
	Why did you allow my friends' homes in Gaza to be destroyed when we had a deal in May?
	You helped destroy our religion, Judaism, by associating it with fascism.
	You waved the white flag before Netanyahu.
	You waved the white flag before Israeli fascism.
	Your father-in-law was an Israel lobbyist.
	Your grandfather was an Israel lobbyist.
	Are you compromised by Israel?
	Why did you allow the Holocaust of our time to happen?
	How does it feel to have your legacy be genocide?
	How does it feel to have your legacy be genocide?
	You too, Matt.
	You smirked through the whole thing every day.
	He smirked through a genocide.
	Thank you.
	So there's that, Eric.
	And I'll play one other segment for you.
	And again, thank you to Steve Swan for giving me the heads up about the audio.
	And I was hoping that I would get the signal.
	I got the signal, but I didn't quite see it.
	And there had been a problem, it looked like, for the mic connection on that.
	And it had to get rejiggered inside the system, which is very frustrating.
	But I also want to show you this one.
	As they pulled away Sam.
	And let's go with this right now.
	This is Sam as they pulled him away.
	Jimmy Dore has this report.
	Here we are.
	Two or three people.
	You pontificate about a free press.
	You pontificate about a free press.
	You are hurting me.
	I'm asking questions after being told by Matt Miller that he will not answer my questions until I'm asking questions.
	It's shameful.
	Absolutely shameful.
	The concept of the United States is the land of the free when they do something like that to those reporters.
	And then the CNN people framed it in such a way, obviously, as I described.
	But you'll see this as...
	These people being activists, when the people who are daily engaging in activism, at least they can try to be fair.
	They're not even aware of who these reporters are.
	At least when Max gets out there, he tells people what he stands for.
	He's pro-peace.
	He's written nonfiction books about the Middle East.
	And here's the way CNN portrayed it.
	As you heard, he was repeatedly interrupted by some cringeworthy heckling by activists.
	We were both sitting here pretty stunned, frankly.
	This is supposed to be a press conference with a room of journalists.
	Those were activists who were interrupting the secretary.
	And then they had the gall to say that, well, this actually shows the openness of the Biden administration for journalism.
	Because they allowed people like that into the room.
	Those people had press credentials.
	Just amazing.
	In the meantime, when Donald Trump just said, even though he didn't stop people from coming into the meetings, when he just said that the pop media is the enemy of America, they claimed that Donald Trump wanted to shut down free speech while members of the deep state were actively working to shut down free speech during the Trump administration and then ramped it up during the Biden administration.
	Amazing.
	Hey, Gard, a couple of things about that.
	First of all, I really like the term that Paul Craig Roberts The former Secretary of the Treasury back during the Reagan era has for these people that you just showed on CNN. He calls them prostitutes, and that's exactly what they are.
	They will say whatever the teleprompter tells them to say in return for a paycheck.
	They're high-paid, low-rent people is what they are.
	The other thing with regard to what's going on in this country, I'm reminded of a story, and it may or may not be apocryphal, but you and I both love to read about the World War II era.
	Hitler was talking before the war to a British politician who was expressing exasperation about what was going on in Mirage, in India, you know, and the rabble rousing.
	And Hitler said, shoot Gandhi.
	Easy.
	That's how you solve the problem.
	You know, and that's exactly it.
	That's this thuggish authoritarian instinct that we are seeing manifest as this country descends into kind of a medieval barbarism.
	You know, there's no longer any give and take back and forth.
	You know, it is hysterical, violent reaction when authority is questioned.
	And it's amazing how dismissive they are of honest questions and honest dealing, even as they say, as Sam said, pontificate and puff themselves up.
	You know, it's so childish, Eric.
	Eric Peters is with us, and I greatly appreciate you joining us, Eric.
	It's been interesting finding out that those segments weren't playing, but it's great to have you here.
	And I'd like to get your thoughts as we see.
	We'll sort of wrap this up about what's been going on as far as the Israeli-Gaza situation goes.
	I do want to mention that we've got the vote coming.
	As Netanyahu appears to have agreed to this, Netanyahu's office says the hostage deal is now agreed.
	So, what do you think?
	Do you think, and this is mere speculation, but based on the agreement, it looks to me like the Israelis can resume attacking people at any time.
	There's supposed to be a release of hostages, sort of a three-for-one.
	The Israelis are holding thousands, while the Hamas group is holding over 100, just over 100. And this is something that, you know, the last I looked, there was a report that Israel, up until July last year, was holding upwards of 20,000 people on various things, oftentimes not even charging them.
	And they do that every year.
	They'll just pull hundreds of people off the streets, not charge them with anything, and then just bring them in.
	They just basically kidnap them.
	And of course, before October 7th, Netanyahu was cited by the International Criminal Court for activities that they had or crimes that they had committed against prisoners that they had pulled in and not charged as well.
	So that's already an illegitimate justice system there.
	What do you think about this agreement?
	And they say on Friday morning, his office said Netanyahu had been informed by the negotiating team that agreements on the deal had been reached.
	Or do you think that it's just something to allow for some time and allow for Trump to look like he's done something really positive?
	Well, let's start by that great mugshot that you just posted, because it's perfectly apropos of that literally indicted war criminal.
	That's exactly what has happened.
	He's literally wanted for the things that he's done, the horrific things that he's done over there.
	And the next thing that I'll say is what Chamberlain said.
	I have here in my hand the document that assures peace in our time.
	It bears his signature.
	Does anybody believe that this government, the government of Israel and Netanyahu, are going to be restrained in any way whatsoever by this quote-unquote agreement?
	It's absurd.
	Absolutely.
	And, you know, David played something.
	With Mike Waltz coming in, he's going to be the new national security advisor, it looks like, talking about Hamas.
	And I'd love to get your thoughts on this one, because as David played it...
	It just shows that they are ready for Israel to basically do anything.
	Jeremy Scahill posted, Trump's national security advisor, Mike Waltz, lays out a plan Netanyahu has hinted at.
	Israel views this deal as only one phase to get the Israeli and U.S. hostages out.
	He says Hamas will be destroyed and Gaza totally demilitarized.
	But here is the cut, and this actually will play.
	Here he is describing Hamas again.
	And from your perspective, if this deal goes through and we enter what's characterized as the first phase, does that effectively mean the war is over?
	Does a ceasefire mean that Israel's work is done in Gaza for the foreseeable future?
	Well, I certainly think Hamas would like...
	To believe that.
	But we've been clear that Gaza has to be fully demilitarized.
	Hamas has to be destroyed to the point that it cannot reconstitute and that Israel has every right to fully protect itself.
	So, you know, all of those pieces, all of those objectives are still very much in place.
	Look, I mean, October 7th was a terrible day.
	They put everybody in a terrible position, including the Palestinian people of Gaza, whom they regularly hide behind and are willing to sacrifice and have sacrificed for their own...
	Okay, so I just want to stop there, Eric, because again, we know that the United States and Israel supported Hamas, that Netanyahu openly said that he wanted Hamas in there to make sure they got the millions to the Hamas leadership in Qatar, because he knew that they would be oppositional to any negotiations, because of course, they are the militant wing of resistance against the Israeli, the immoral.
	Illegal Israeli occupation of the land.
	So who's initiating the aggression?
	The Israeli forces and the Western forces.
	It's very clear.
	And as we know, members of the Knesset and the Likud party and the IDF have openly stated that they consider every child in Palestine to be a potential member of Hamas.
	And they say that they're all potential targets.
	So when this man, Mike Waltz, says this, he's saying that more children can be slaughtered because the Israeli forces...
	Consider them to be a danger, too.
	Sure, they're all but saying it.
	There's a German word, Wernichtungskrieg, which means a war of annihilation.
	And that's what the Germans attempted to do when they invaded the Soviet Union and Ukraine, interestingly enough, along the way.
	And that's essentially what's happening here.
	And another way to look at this, it's sort of like you've seen the videos of cops arriving at a house, domestic disturbance.
	And the guy comes out after beating his wife to a pulp and says, look what you made me do.
	Right?
	And I wanted to add something else, too, which just sticks in my craw because I guess I'm irritable, but I'm so tired of seeing these thuggy clowns wearing their stupid party pins, whatever the pin is.
	You know, enough with this stuff.
	It's nauseating.
	It just makes you want to, if only we could figure out a way to sort of, I don't know, take a scissors and just kind of cut and divide ourselves from these people and put a gigantic ocean between us and them.
	Absolutely.
	And I would refer to basketball, where they were wearing ribbons for a child who was sick, and every time they came back, the sportscaster's ribbons were getting bigger and bigger and bigger, until they just took up half their shoulder.
	Eric, let's talk a little bit about what's going on for you and your website, ericpetersautos.com, and on X. Very interesting developments on X. I'd like to show everybody your...
	New presence on X, which is Eric the Apostate.
	Do you like that?
	And I love that.
	I'm riffing on the whole X communication thing that happened to me a couple of weeks ago.
	Yeah.
	Well, you're back in, and people can find your post if they just look up Eric the Apostate, but the actual X handle is at apostate.
	27832. So tell us, how's it been going?
	I know you're just starting and you only have a certain number of followers, but hopefully we'll get more people to approach Eric the Apostate and see some of your posts.
	Obviously, you've got a lot of information on your website, and I hope people will spread the word by going to the website and sending the links out themselves.
	What's your thought on...
	Elon Musk and how honest he is about freedom of speech.
	I'll give you a very specific example that shows exactly how disingenuous the man is.
	I got blocked, banned, my old handle, because I used what was called abusive language with regard to Keir Starmer, the pedophile suppressing a prime minister of the UK. You and I know all about him.
	Jimmy Seville and everything else that's been going on there.
	And I got a little irritated with it.
	I saw somebody...
	And so essentially, I wrote something to the effect that I hope that the things that have been happening to children over there under his watch happened to him, and that he's left bleeding in the streets.
	I said that, and I granted it was coarse language, but I thought it was appropriate.
	Anyway, that was the basis for my being kicked off of X, or at least blocked.
	And yet, Elon Musk, when people started posting their objections to his pushing of the H-1B visa thing, He said, F you in the face, is what he said, to people who would dare to do that.
	And he will purge their accounts, silence them, and all of that.
	So here you go.
	You know, abusive content, hateful content.
	You know, again, we don't have a piece with the press conference that we saw.
	It all depends on who's got the power to decide what constitutes abuse, right?
	Right, right.
	Wow, that's really interesting.
	Yeah, sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander.
	But you're back on.
	Are you worried that they'll try to dump you again?
	I really don't care.
	It was actually an interesting experiment in that I didn't really notice any kind of diminution of the traffic that I have at EP Autos.
	Generally, I only used X to put links to my stuff on there so that the people who follow me could see it.
	But they all know where I am, so they go there anyhow.
	I did it mainly for the amusement value of it.
	That's it.
	I'll tell you something else about it.
	Initially, I was a little upset about my having been kicked off.
	When anything happens, I think the natural human response to that is to feel bad about it.
	But I actually began to feel really good about it.
	And I remembered how I felt when I got kicked out of that coffee shop that I used to go to back during the pandemic.
	I got kicked out of that because I wouldn't bow knee to sickness kabuki and wear a mask.
	And I loved going to that place.
	I used to go there all the time with my laptop and sit and work.
	I enjoyed the atmosphere.
	So initially I thought, man, this really sucks.
	I'm not going to get to ever go here again.
	But after about 24 hours, I started to feel really good because I had my self-respect intact.
	I didn't kowtow to these people.
	And I'm not going to kowtow to Elon Musk either.
	I really don't care if he ends up kicking me off the platform for good.
	Permanent ban.
	It doesn't matter to me.
	And I think it's a take-home lesson for all of us to not bend the knee to these authoritarian, technocratic people.
	Let's talk amongst ourselves and deal with ourselves and exclude in pariah eyes these thuggy, hypocritical people who want to direct and control our lives.
	One other thing, if I may, I know I'm rambling, but another thing that occurred to me when all of this happened was It's a really insidious thing.
	When we use these social media platforms, whether it's X, Facebook, or whatever it is, don't we engage in self-censorship?
	We're very careful.
	I mean, I know I found myself with my hands above the keyboard thinking, well, should I use that word?
	Should I express that sentiment?
	Because we all know there's kind of an anvil hanging over our heads, that if we affront the algorithm, if somebody out there who knows who it is, says that what we're saying is hateful.
	Yeah.
	And they report us or whatever that, you know, that we'll get kicked off.
	So we're very careful about what we say.
	And that's so insidious because, again, we're diminishing our own brains.
	It's not even the blunt instrument of Elon Musk and his algorithm coming in and suppressing us.
	We're doing it to ourselves.
	Yeah.
	You don't want to say anything indelicate.
	You're careful to see what is indelicate versus what would be acceptable.
	And, you know, it's...
	This is the sort of thing that obviously many of us do in many social situations.
	If we're walking into a room at a party, there might be acceptable behavior and unacceptable behavior.
	So we try to behave in certain ways that way.
	But this is different in a way.
	Because in a way, when we're going out there, we're broadcasting to a number of other folks.
	We're entering someone else's realm.
	So in the back of our heads, or many of us, I'm sure, we're thinking, how can I phrase this the best so that I'll still get my point across, but I won't be shut away?
	And yeah, it really does affect people, I think.
	It's a difficult area to navigate.
	But you've done a great job, I think, in testing that.
	So that now, as an example, you've been an example to other people, and you can get that information out there and show the hypocrisy.
	And maybe things will change.
	Maybe it'll be a momentary bit of hypocrisy.
	But that sort of thing does pop up often.
	And, you know, as a person who was censored over and over again, NewsGuard would come and give us that busy work and not click on the links, you know, that sort of thing.
	The last time I had to write a letter back to NewsGuard, I said, If you have some opinions about climate change and you think that I'm not addressing these things, I've given you all the information.
	Let's have a debate.
	It could be a fruitful conversation.
	We could have an audience.
	We could do it for charity.
	What do you say?
	I was very pleasant about it and we have never heard from them.
	Yeah, exactly.
	We know that they are afraid to allow a lot of this information out there.
	And I think it's been very interesting because many people, when it came to choosing between Elon Musk supporting H-1B visas and Donald Trump...
	Maybe want to be more restrictive on this or more populist people who are saying, well, I don't like those people stealing American jobs.
	They started to turn on Elon Musk a little bit.
	Now, the idea of someone telling me or you or anybody else that we can't freely contract with anyone with whom we want to associate is an offensive idea.
	And they get into groupthink, thinking, well, we've got to do this to protect American jobs for the American worker, whatever it might be.
	I should be free to be able to hire whomever I want.
	And I'm not stealing an American job away from someone by doing that.
	If that's the case, then I should never be able to buy the product I want to buy.
	I should never be able to talk with the person with whom I want to talk to.
	Just never date the girl I want to date.
	Because somebody else will be telling me, I'm stealing that date opportunity from another girl.
	I mean, it's just absurd.
	Third, not like the girls would want to go out with me in the first place.
	But, you know, it is, and as Walter Williams said, when I asked my now wife to marry me, he said, I discriminated between my wife and other people.
	We all have to discriminate.
	And choosing the people with whom we want to work or converse or anything is a form of discrimination.
	All we ask is, or all I would ask is, those people who are opening up these platforms, if they just be consistent, About their forms of their preferences as they offer us the opportunities to go on their platforms.
	I understand it's their platform.
	I'll go by it, but please just be consistent, right?
	We touched on something interesting I wanted to get back to, which is on a civilized level, when you go to, let's say, somebody's home or you go to an event, of course.
	There are rules of civilized conduct in that context.
	But what we're talking about very specifically here is the discussion of ideas.
	And that should be a raucous, roiling conversation at times.
	You know, one of the things that I just love about reading about the colonial era, you know, before the revolution, there was incendiary speech.
	You know, they weren't pulling any punches.
	Read Sam Adams.
	And read Patrick Henry.
	You know, those are the kinds of things that made this country great.
	Of course, very quickly, you know, once we got the new government in place, we had the Alien and Sedition Act, where it became seditious to mention certain things.
	So this goes back a very long time.
	You know, during the World War I era under Woodrow Wilson, it became a criminal wrong thing act as a government.
	We had Attorney Mitchell Palmer going after people just like they do today for essentially the same kinds of things.
	Yeah, and it's amazing how they hold some of these people up as heroes.
	You know, they'll say something about Abraham Lincoln.
	Oh, he was a heroic figure.
	Abraham Lincoln tried to arrest an entire representative body in an assembly of a state just because they were going to choose to be neutral in the Civil War.
	He deported a sitting congressman.
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	And when a judge said that he couldn't do it, he sent magistrates to arrest the judge.
	It's stunning.
	As you mentioned, John Adams.
	You look at the Alien Act.
	Again, if we can just try to steer some of the Trump people on the immigration issue, again, to look at the fact that the word immigration isn't in the Constitution.
	So we have these instances where John Adams posts the Alien Act.
	The federal government is not supposed to have anything to do with aliens on the soil of any state, as Jefferson wrote in the Kentucky Resolution 4, as Madison wrote in the Virginia Resolves in 1798. It's up to the states.
	And I would just, again, talking about consistency in a very...
	I would like to engender some of the conservatives who hold on to these ideas, who hold on to the collectivist central command and control idea of things about immigration or things like, well, I'll support these people on X, Y, or Z with the FCC or the threats against colleges that the college campuses should shut down this protest.
	Look at what your supposed stance is, please.
	Am I really a constitutionalist?
	Am I really a conservative if I support even federal funding for colleges?
	If I support the federal government controlling the immigration situation when it's supposed to be a state issue?
	Do I really believe in federalism?
	Do I really believe in smaller government?
	I also can carve out sections of my mind and my moral stance to push away what actually is the Constitution and what it actually says and the concept of federalism.
	I would just ask for room to talk to people about that.
	And oftentimes, what's interesting is I find that conservatives...
	Just don't want to hear it on certain issues.
	When you're talking about Donald Trump, when you're critical of Donald Trump on things like sanctions or something like that.
	And I'd like to get your opinion on this one.
	It actually works as a really good transition.
	And I also want to talk to you about one of your big, big stories just out, the mafia's adjustments.
	As we look at the flames on so many people losing lives, houses, fortunes.
	The incoming Treasury Secretary had something to say how this man wants harsher sanctions against Russia.
	It's just unbelievable.
	Let me offer you this.
	This is the Trump pick for Treasury Secretary backing federal independence, the Federal Reserve independence, the dollar and sanctions on Russian oil.
	Now, I understand that it'll be a good idea to, again, idea to, again, conform with the Constitution and stop the federal government from controlling ANWR and all those areas that they've locked off away from coal, like the Grand Escalante National Monument that Clinton started, that they've locked off from like the Grand Escalante National Monument that Clinton started, that they've locked off
	To stop them from steering money into the green boondoggles that Biden has pushed so much that also J.D. Vance supported when he went into Michigan a few months ago and talked to people at a green EV car plant and said, well, the Biden administration is just not giving you enough.
	So I can see what their tactic here is, which is to continue shutting out Russian oil and Russian natural gas American generation of this.
	What I don't understand is how people can say that the first half of that is beneficial to American consumers.
	Why not allow for the natural gas to come in?
	What is a sanction but a threat against an American for engaging in peaceful activity?
	They want to increase tariffs.
	We'll talk about that.
	Also, they want literally To bring in more sanctions against Russia.
	What do you think of that?
	Well, what's a tariff?
	What's a sanction?
	It's just another euphemism for tax.
	And we're all going to pay it is what it comes down to.
	You remember that old Joan Didion book, Slouching Toward Bethlehem?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	It's kind of like this is why we are slouching toward authoritarianism.
	Well, we're already here.
	The right, and I just kind of use this as a general term, agrees with the left fundamentally.
	They bicker with each other about how they're going to use the authority, the power of the federal government.
	That's the source of their disagreement.
	It's not a disagreement about, well, should the federal government be doing these things at all, period.
	As a matter of principle, it's, well, we don't like the way you're using the power.
	We're going to use it this way.
	Exactly.
	And in fact, let me bring this up for you here.
	Said that U.S. sanctions against Russia's oil sector have been too weak.
	Too weak!
	In the meantime, what was Donald Trump saying about Joe Biden's policies?
	He was making energy much too expensive.
	That was one of his big campaign things.
	We've got to open up the oil.
	We've got to open up.
	But now the man who's coming in from a hedge fund corporation called Key Square Capital Management is saying that we have to, we, again, we have to stop more of, we have to impose harsher, harsher sanctions. we have to impose harsher, harsher sanctions.
	Scott Besant, amazing.
	He's openly saying, I think if any officials in the Russian Federation are watching this confirmation hearing...
	Oh, sorry, this is...
	Yeah, are watching this confirmation hearing.
	They should know that if I'm confirmed and if President Trump requests as part of his strategy to end the Ukraine war, that will be 100% on board.
	I will be 100% on board with taking sanctions up, especially on Russian oil majors.
	Now, thanks to the fact that we've got the audio going, and I appreciate it again, Steve, for what you've done.
	Here's what he said.
	I believe that the sanctions regime, especially, well, first of all, I would say in my adult life that the tragedy going on in Ukraine is one of the greatest tragedies of my adult life.
	And ending that as soon as possible, an inner role the Treasury can play in that, if confirmed, I would like to do.
	As we discussed, I believe that the sanctions were not fulsome enough.
	I believe that we...
	I believe that the previous administration was worried about raising U.S. energy prices during an election season.
	And I am...
	So I'll just stop here.
	He doesn't...
	Have a problem with raising U.S. energy prices.
	It's amazing.
	And he believes that energy prices should be higher?
	It doesn't matter because he's insulated from them in the sense that this guy is extraordinarily wealthy.
	Notice the commonality.
	Whether they're on the left or the right.
	These people are all fabulously wealthy, and therefore they are insulated from the consequences of the actions that they imposed on you and me, you know, the lumpen proletariat, the deplorables.
	You know, we're the ones for whom it really does matter if you're paying another dollar for a gallon of gas.
	For him, it matters?
	I mean, it's absurd.
	So, you know, that's part of, I think, what explains the way they operate.
	They're so disconnected, so divorced.
	From us and our reality.
	And that's why I think the people, and this includes people on the left and the right, are so furious and so enraged about everything that's going on.
	To bring it back to the car business, which is my little thief, this business of imposing a tax slash tariff on vehicles that are not made in the United States.
	Okay, GM and Ford both have major truck operations in Mexico just across the border.
	Why?
	They have them over there because the regulatory environment is a little less onerous.
	What do you think is going to happen to the cost of the trucks that come to this country?
	Do you think they're going to go down when Trump imposes tariffs?
	No, they're going to go up.
	If Trump understood economics at all, and if he understood the source of the problem, what he would do is attack the regulations that are making it impossibly expensive to produce anything in this country.
	Exactly.
	You know, I went through Trump's so-called external revenue service and how absurd that is.
	First, to, in an Orwellian way, try to claim that tariffs are paid by the foreign countries.
	They're paid by American consumers, whether they be the final end consumer or they be businesses that rely on trying to get the best bang for their buck and rely on foreign goods.
	And all of that money in the aggregate.
	I was speaking with a...
	A 13-year-old girl, the daughter of a friend of mine, Who's a professor?
	And she said, yeah, you know, the money that Americans should be able to save based on their choices is money that they could spend on other things.
	And I was like, yeah, that would start other jobs.
	Those are the jobs that aren't seen.
	And she is familiar with Frederick Bastier's What is Seen and What is Not Seen, how these opportunities are smothered by the politicians.
	And the other thing is the idea that this is somehow...
	Appropriate to help American businesses, you know, the American jobs.
	And again, these are jobs that won't be created now because you're forcing people to pay the tax to the government.
	And I'll just mention sanctions, as you mentioned.
	Sanctions are a threat of violence by the government against peaceful people engaging in voluntary contract.
	There is no other way to describe that.
	And this guy's idea of this Scott Bessett, the Treasury Secretary nominee, saying that somehow he should have a role in using the power of the government to hit us in order to affect some change between Russia and Ukraine is so perverse and so...
	Disgustingly sick that they can actually think we, the all-inclusive we, have a place in deciding what happens over there and you're going to be part of it.
	Your life will be affected by my interest in affecting change there.
	If he wants to affect change there, he can move there.
	Why does he have to make everybody else abide by his diktat in this, the supposed land of the free, Eric?
	Yeah, well, that's just it.
	These central planners, these industrial managers, it's astounding, and they get away with it because people don't really understand what's going on.
	I'll give you another example of something that amounts to the same thing as a sanction.
	Have you heard of the chicken tax?
	What's that?
	Okay, this is something that dates back to LBJ. And it's the reason why we don't have in this country access to small, affordable pickup trucks.
	There was a tit-for-tat tariff that was imposed on small trucks that are made outside of the United States that makes it uneconomic for a company such as Toyota, let's say, to bring a vehicle like that into this country because the federal government applies a very onerous tax.
	That pushes the price of a basic, no-frills, small truck to the point where people look at it and go, why would I buy this little truck without that much capability when it's almost the same price as this bigger, more powerful, more well-equipped truck?
	This is a measure of the way we're impoverished for the sake of these industrial managers.
	Because per your friend's daughter, if I could buy a truck for $15,000 rather than $30,000, that means I've got $15,000 in my pocket.
	You know, rather than being spent somewhere else.
	So now I can use that money, not only for my own benefit, but for the benefit of other people that I might hire to do something for me, you know, or for some product that I might buy.
	And that brings us back to Bastion.
	You know, isn't it a shame that kids don't get to read those things any longer in the government schools?
	And of course, there's a reason for that.
	Yes, absolutely.
	There's a reason for that.
	And, you know, when I start my classes, I've mentioned this once before on David's show, Eric, you know, I always start with the simple machines.
	I have the students come up and say, I say, can anybody draw me any, out of your memory, can you remember what the simple machines are?
	Did you get any of that in science class or physics or anything?
	And so somebody might draw the inclined plane or the lever or something like that.
	And I said, what we're talking about here is...
	We stand on the shoulders of giants economically, and they're just average people.
	Those giants came up with ideas, they tested the ideas, and then those were translated.
	Every one of the things that we use today has been tested by somebody in the past that has been beneficial, is something that was done through freedom.
	That people got to test.
	I said, so let's give an example just to be clunky about it.
	I said, let's talk about the simple machines.
	You got the inclined plane.
	I was like...
	Let's look at the inclined plane and talk about what the inclined plane did.
	In the past, let's say, ancient man, not settled agriculture.
	It was pre-history man.
	They would have developed ways to use levers, just like monkeys use little twigs to get the ants.
	They would use tools.
	And these tools, if they helped them, they would keep the tools.
	If they hindered them and make them work harder, not get the food that they wanted, they would...
	Discard the tools.
	So if they found that by pushing something up a ramp, by increasing the distance, rather than going straight vertical up, they increased the distance at an angle.
	That allowed one man to do the work of two men.
	So they might have something that was a hill.
	They might push something up a slope that's slightly slippery.
	They would learn to say, you know what?
	If I... Can plane this board.
	I've got something where I can now get something up.
	That frees someone else to go.
	It used to take two people to do the work.
	Now one person can do the work with the tool.
	A contemporary tariff supporter or someone who is supportive of these so-called American jobs would look at it the other way rather than saying, wow, that's great.
	Now you've freed up somebody else.
	One person can do the work of two people.
	Instead, they're saying, you just made the second man unemployed.
	That's what they're saying.
	They're saying, get rid of that tool that can help you because that's putting somebody else out of work when the work could be maximized by doing something else.
	It's amazing.
	And that gets to what I've often mentioned in class, division of labor.
	The ancient people would send the stronger people out on the hunt, while the maybe more frail or pregnant women would stay in the caves.
	Men who were older, they'd create spears, they'd tan, they'd hide, or whatever.
	And as they did repeated iterations of what they did well, they got a surplus.
	You have division of labor, and then you have a surplus.
	At a certain point, you reach the point of marginal.
	Marginal utility diminishing for every new thing that you make.
	It's not really worth your effort because you don't need it.
	So you've got a surplus.
	You can now realize that trade becomes valuable.
	Why should we stop that trade between some arbitrary political border that's drawn by politicians?
	And how do we even know anybody wants that border there if people are forced to pay for it by the politicians?
	Political borders are just mandates that people pay for a wall.
	They're just mandates that people pay for a policing somewhere.
	It doesn't mean that anybody even wants it there because they've been forced to pay for it.
	Maybe somebody else wants it policed more.
	Maybe somebody wants it policed less.
	Maybe they want it 50 feet further in or further away.
	We don't know.
	All of this is arbitrary.
	And all of these tools, including division of labor, that's a simple machine as well.
	And we have to allow individuals to decide these things to actually let them express their values.
	And the politicians claim that they represent our values.
	So that's my little soapbox.
	And we can't have all the things that people could have because they replace our decision-making.
	That's very well said.
	And I'd only add the following, which I think is also an important thing.
	This sets us at odds and sets us against each other.
	Whereas if you have a system that is a free market system, a voluntary system, it diffuses this pressure.
	I'm not your economic enemy and you're not mine.
	You know, if this works, great, I'll pursue it.
	If it doesn't work, I'll do something else because I know there's a reward to it.
	You know, human beings are very clever, inventive and creative.
	And they figure things out.
	If they're free to do it, they figure out ways to engage in commerce with other people.
	And if it's free, it works really well.
	It's kind of counterintuitive because it's not predictable and organized.
	And I think that's part of why people think they have to have some sort of centralized control apparatus for economic activity because they want to see the five-year plan.
	What are we going to have at the end of the five-year plan?
	The beauty and the fearsome thing.
	To many people about the free market is we don't know.
	Who knew that Henry Ford was going to come along and figure out a way to standardize basic parts and basically stamp out cars at a fraction of the cost that it took previously to hand-build a coach, you know, body by Fisher, right?
	You know, so much that only a handful of people were able to do that.
	Before Henry Ford came along, you know, most people just assumed, well, I'll never have a car.
	That's for rich people.
	And boom, all of a sudden, just like that, anybody could afford a car.
	Yes, yes, absolutely.
	You know, this applies in so many areas.
	And you had the recent one with the fat car.
	That was excellent over at Eric Peters Autos.
	And I'd like to, if I can, ask you a question about one of your most recent pieces, Eric, at Eric Peters Autos.
	He's our guest on the David Knight Show.
	I want to talk to you a little bit about the California fires and get into this subject.
	Yeah, if I can get into it by over in California, they're already saying that the so-called insurer of last resort is facing potential shortfalls.
	And so I'll just show you what NBC News is playing here.
	This is the insurer of last resort.
	Facing pitfalls.
	And then we'll talk about what that even means.
	These were the harrowing moments the Edwards family saw their Alcadena home of 30 years go up in flames.
	It feels like a bomb just came and exploded upon our town.
	Everything's gone.
	Across town in the Pacific Palisades, the Andonian family stunned by the complete devastation of their community too.
	I froze.
	Literally.
	When you saw your home.
	Sorry.
	And then the next house, and the next house, and the next house.
	Two different neighborhoods, two different life stories, but similar in one way.
	Both families are on California's fare plan, the state-created insurer of last resort that has more than doubled its number of residential policies in the past four years, as private insurers have either drastically raised homeowners' rates or simply...
	All right.
	So I want to pause it there, Eric.
	The Edwards family says they were dropped by their...
	There we go.
	Okay.
	So I want to pause it there because this story actually pertains to your latest story at Eric Peters Autos.
	Tell us a little bit about this as I bring this up on the screen for us.
	This one right here, the mafia's adjustments.
	Yeah.
	Well, let me preface it by explaining why I use that term to describe the insurance industry.
	It's not just a pejorative.
	I think it's factually correct.
	They are a mafia.
	What is a mafia?
	Well, you know, in the stereotype, the mobster comes into your place of business and says, you've got a great place here.
	It'd be a shame if something happened to it.
	They make you an offer you can't refuse, that classic line from The Godfather.
	And that's exactly what's happening here, only it's the government that's serving as Luca Brasi, you know, who was the Don's enforcer in the movie.
	You know, it's not a free market system where you're free to consider the purchase of this insurance policy.
	Does it make sense?
	Is the cost of it a good value relative to my risk and so on?
	You're compelled to purchase this thing because the government says you have to have it.
	And what happens then?
	You know, you've got a mafia that can tell you what you're going to pay.
	And, you know, pay and pay and pay.
	And then when the time comes that maybe you have a claim, like these poor people in California, they all of a sudden find that even though they've been paying for years, oh, we're not going to pay because they figured out some way to get out of having to pay.
	This is becoming a very, very common issue.
	And another thing that they do that's really, it's awful in and of itself, but it's also something that I think is going to become explosive, which is to transfer costs onto the people who are not.
	Incurring the costs.
	In the world of car insurance, last year, the typical premium for a car insurance policy went up by 25%.
	Now, that's everybody.
	And the reason it went up that much, chiefly, is because all of a sudden you've got all these electric vehicles and all these other vehicles that are extremely expensive to replace if they're totaled, and they're expensive to repair if they're in an accident.
	Now, it doesn't matter that I've got a 23-year-old truck that's very inexpensive to replace.
	Should that happen?
	Nor does it matter that I have a perfect driving record.
	I have had absolutely no claims filed against me, nor have I filed any for decades.
	Doesn't matter.
	My rate goes up.
	Well, why?
	Has my risk somehow gone up?
	Have I done something to justify this?
	Of course not.
	What's happened is that the mafia is figuring out a way to make you and me pay.
	They don't pay.
	I mean, it's absurd to think that, oh, this company is out there, it's a benevolent organization, you know, and they're going to, at their expense, pay you.
	No!
	It's just a wealth transfer scheme.
	That's all it is.
	Why do you suppose these companies have so much money such that every other commercial that you see on TV is for insurance?
	If they're so destitute and broke, how is it they can afford that?
	How is it that they can afford to pay their executives literally $10- $20 million a year?
	It's one of the most profitable businesses that there is, business, in the sense of mafia.
	It's just business.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And it's interesting, too, because part of it comes from the litigiousness of society and judges allowing all sorts of claims to go into courts that really shouldn't go into courts.
	And also, a lot of it comes from government activities for certain favorite...
	Insurance companies.
	And I'll give the example here in New Hampshire when they mandated that insurance companies have to offer policies to people with pre-existing conditions and that they couldn't charge over a certain amount.
	They had lobbyists from companies that already were doing that, like Blue Cross Blue Shield, which was the insurer of last resort for high-risk patients.
	They were saying...
	I'm going to Concord.
	I'm going to lobby for that because that will force all of our competition to have to do what we're already doing.
	And so the state imposes these things.
	And out in California, I was reporting on a number of insurance companies, MRCTV, we were mentioning a lot of these companies are stopping their policies for people in California because of the higher and higher risk of fire, which is brought about because of government.
	And dependency on government, government ownership of lands, the government running the power line system with PG&E, running the power lines over those dry lands, a lack of private property initiatives, lack of real liability for private property owners.
	If I own the land and a fire is on my land and it spreads elsewhere, I'm liable for that.
	So these are the types of things where government involvement ends up...
	Increasing the risks, increasing the negative externalities in these areas, and then you see insurance companies pulling out, and only the ones that are close to the government will get the favors, which is where we go for this high-risk pool thing in California,
	because the government said to the insurance companies, You will put money together and a new government insurance system called the high risk pool will be brought about because we've created such high risks for fire.
	Some people can't afford the regular policies from the companies.
	So we're going to tell the companies that you have to fund this new government run high risk home insurance pool.
	Just like many other government organizations, it now is over bloated and in the red, and there's no way they're going to be able to pay out for all the people who already signed on for it because they've been hit by, yes, the effects of the badly managed government lands.
	They didn't expect it would all come at once, and here it is.
	It's a real mess, isn't it?
	I'd like to get back to what I consider to be the underlying viciousness of this.
	What do I mean?
	You know, you mentioned before the pre-existing condition thing.
	Of course, on a human level, every one of us is sympathetic to somebody else who has got an underlying condition, who has a problem of some kind.
	But what's happened is this has become an obligation enforceable effectively at gunpoint on us, an open-ended one.
	So, you know, if I or A, whoever it is, is very careful about the way they live.
	They eat modestly and healthily, and they exercise and all of that.
	And so they greatly reduce the chance that they'll ever have a chronic medical problem.
	Instead of being rewarded for that, which they should be, with a low-cost insurance policy, they end up having to pay more because some other person, whether through their actions or their misfortune, didn't do those things, and their costs are higher, and now you get to pay them.
	And what does that do?
	Doesn't it not make us resent other people?
	And then we get gaslit because somehow we're selfish because we're supposed to accept literally open-ended, without restriction, obligations that are incurred by other people we don't even know.
	In New Hampshire, at the same time that they forced the insurance companies to accept people with pre-existing conditions for individual policies, they established what was called community rating, where younger, healthier people were then thrown into age categories with older, relatively sicker people, and that would cause the younger people's rates to rise because the older, sicker people are making more claims.
	Because when I was a young guy back in the 90s, You didn't have to buy health insurance.
	You know, that was optional.
	And so when I began my career, when I got my first salary job at The Washington Times back in the day, you know, when you fill out all the paperwork and everything, they gave me the opportunity to enroll in the company-provided health care plan for, you know, an amount of, I can't remember the exact figure, it was probably a couple hundred bucks a month, whatever it was.
	And I thought to myself, you know, I'm 25 years old and there's nothing wrong with me.
	And I take good care of myself.
	I don't need this.
	I do need the $200.
	So instead of being forced to buy the health insurance, I was able to save money, which was what chiefly enabled me to get the down payment money for my first house.
	Now look at today.
	These poor kids who are entering the workforce under this crushing burden.
	They have to pay for this.
	They have to pay for that.
	It's not possible for them to ever accumulate capital.
	And it's really vicious.
	And then they wind up...
	Going for communism and socialism, which I understand on an emotional level because they feel like they have no chance, that they're never going to be able to get a leg up.
	But it's precisely and ironically because of the kind of government that they want, that they're in this position to begin with.
	And also, I think, contributory to that is the acceptance of a central bank, which will feed even more money into the system, which this incoming Treasury secretary seems to have no problem with at all.
	And then feeding that money to the people who want their manna from the government to hand it to them, not realizing that when the government goes into this system handing out money and the Fed prints it up, they're diminishing the buying power of all the units of money they're diminishing the buying power of all the units of money that are out And they're harming themselves by actually going for this deficit spending and borrowing and debt and the Fed facilitating it by buying the bonds.
	They're so far from understanding real fundamental economics that it.
	It's stunning.
	And you mentioned North Carolina in this piece, Eric.
	I want to scroll down just a little bit because you say that's only part of the worst of it.
	Let me just start at the top here.
	Who's going to pay for the losses, probably in the billions, incurred in California as a result of the fires fueled by incompetence and malice as much as Santa Ana wins?
	It won't be the insurance mafia, which is a mafia in a literal as well as rhetorical sense because it makes people offers they cannot refuse.
	They face repercussions enforced by the state if they fail to hand over See also the recently dirty business in Western North Carolina after the hurricanes-related flooding that thousands of homeowners
	have discovered.
	Wasn't actually protected.
	That is, covered.
	And never mind the years and even decades of paying for it.
	But that's only part of the worst of it.
	The other part will be arriving in the mailboxes of millions of people who don't live in California or North Carolina in the form of adjustments, which always means an increase in the cost of what they're obliged to pay for their policy, as if there were which always means an increase in the cost of what they're obliged to pay for their policy, as if there were a civilized transaction to offset
	So this is a very important point that you bring up that, you know, People outside these areas are going to be forced to pay for this in the form of more expensive policies.
	Their rates are going to go up because they have collectivized these systems.
	Sure, and there's something else, too, with regard specifically to California.
	You know, the cost of rebuilding is exorbitant there, probably higher than anywhere else in the country due to all of these.
	These endless regulations that govern what you're allowed to build and what materials you're allowed to use and the things that you have to do now.
	I think one of the requirements for new construction is that you have to have solar panels.
	You have to have the ability to charge an electric car.
	So many of these homes that burned down didn't have those things because they were built before these regulations came along.
	Now they're going to have to.
	This is going to add thousands, tens of thousands of dollars, maybe even hundreds of thousands to the cost of rebuilding the home.
	Somebody's going to pay for that.
	It's going to be us.
	Yep.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And it's amazing because I was talking a little bit to folks on my program about this shifting of costs and trying to explain to people a couple of weeks ago about how insurance companies are mandated to carry people and how they collectivize all these systems.
	And it's fascinating to me to think how inculcated people have become in the idea that the government should be essentially setting what is fair in any business.
	And, you know, the way that they do these things in California, they'll say, well, we've got this reason or that reason.
	California, they imposed new houses have to be 50% electric by solar.
	And then you discover...
	That most of the electric power that's being generated during the day is shuffled off by PG&E. The houses are reconnected to the systems and they don't utilize it.
	They end up selling it to other states because people don't need it when they're not at home.
	They need it.
	At night, when they're not getting it, and PG&E doesn't have the storage capacity to hold on to the battery.
	So all these things they're telling us are for our good.
	They're replacing our decisions, and then they're forcing more costs onto people.
	And now...
	In most states, it's illegal to disconnect from the grid.
	Now, wouldn't you think...
	If we take it face value that these people want us to have green energy and want us to use these technologies that don't entail the burning of horrible hydrocarbon fuels, wouldn't they love it if you on your own nickel went out and disconnected from the grid by having solar panels on your house?
	And so you're not dragging on the utilities at all.
	Therefore, your carbon footprint is zero.
	It's illegal to do that.
	Even if you buy a solar array and battery system that is sufficient to completely power your house all the time, they still require you to be hooked up to grid power and to pay a fee each month.
	Yes, absolutely.
	I think it's almost metaphorical to...
	How they force everybody to get attached to the tentacles in some way.
	How they collectivize everything.
	And you just can't escape from their grid.
	They want the bigger grid.
	If I can, Eric, I want to ask you about, in a way, how this in some ways has affected one of the former big auto manufacturers, Chrysler.
	Can we talk a little bit about that piece that you recently published on, Chrysler is over, January 15th.
	It's really quite sad.
	To just set the stage for it, Chrysler has had just one model, new model, available for sale now since 2023, and that's the Pacifica minivan, which is an aging model, and minivans aren't very popular.
	So you can imagine what it must be like to be a Chrysler dealer when you've got literally just one vehicle to offer people.
	That's it.
	They're no longer able to sell the car that they used to be able to sell that was very popular, the 300 sedan, which was one of the best sellers of the last 30 years.
	And the reason for that is because Stellantis, which is the parent company, not just of Chrysler, but also of Dodge, Jeep, and Ram, decided to go along, to get along, and to stop making combustion-powered vehicles like the 300, the Dodge Charger, and the Challenger.
	These are all related platform vehicles, and also the V8 engines that are popular in a number of the other models that I just mentioned.
	And the reason that decision was made chiefly was because the CEO of Stellantis Wanted to save money, money that he was having to spend to buy what are called carbon credits, which were payable to Elon Musk.
	And the way this works is, you know, the manufacturers are punished by the federal government.
	They're allowed to build a car like a V8 Hemi-powered 300, but the federal government applies punitive taxes.
	And they're also essentially required to produce a certain number of what are called zero-emissions vehicles to compensate.
	And they're given the alternative.
	That they can just buy carbon credits in lieu of making their own zero emissions vehicles.
	Well, who makes those things?
	Who could it be?
	It's Elon Musk and Tesla.
	So, you know, they're forced essentially in an extortionary way to hand over money to Elon Musk, which then funds Tesla.
	You know, it's a really it's an incredibly devilishly genius operation.
	Well, anyway, so they thought that that would be the prudent thing to do.
	They figured we don't have to pay Elon Musk anymore if we make our own zero-emissions battery-powered vehicles.
	The problem is nobody wants these things.
	There's no market for them.
	And particularly, particularly with regard to Chrysler and Dodge, you know, these are the brands that, above everything else, were sort of the complete diametric opposite of the whole electrification thing.
	They were popular because they made big American cars.
	Got the Challenger and, yeah.
	So this idea that they are going to somehow be able to pivot and pirouette and start selling basically the same thing as Tesla and make money that way has proven to be a fiasco.
	Here's some inside baseball that pertains to this.
	You know, it's been two years now since Dodge has had a Charger in the lineup because they pulled that model from the lineup.
	They were supposed to have had this battery-powered replacement called the Charger available sometime last year.
	It was supposed to have been out in the fall.
	It still isn't.
	Now, the interesting thing about it, it's been discovered that they actually have been producing them.
	They have thousands of these things, and they're sitting on distribution lots waiting to be sent out to the dealer network.
	You know why they haven't been sent out?
	Why?
	They're all bricked.
	Every last one, they don't work.
	They won't move.
	And instead of being able to send out an overview or update to fix whatever the glitch is, they are having to send out technicians and one by one try to boot up.
	Each one of those devices, and they succeeded in booting up a few of them, and then they put them into what's called ship mode, and they send them out to the dealer.
	My understanding is they've got about 100 of those that have been sent out.
	Well, they get to the dealer, and the dealer tries to unship mode them, change the setting or whatever it is, and then they brick again.
	This is probably the greatest automotive fiasco since the Edsel and the Yugo combined.
	When it actually becomes public and becomes something that people see is going on, it's going to kill off Dodge.
	Chrysler is already dead.
	The article that we started this discussion with was based on a memo that came out from Stellantis telling suppliers that effective immediately, we are putting on a definite hold future product.
	There had been another battery-powered device in the pipeline for Chrysler.
	There's a picture of it at the very top of the page.
	I think it was called the Airstream or something that harkens back to a Chrysler name that they used back in the 30s and 40s.
	And it was just another electric car, but they realized it's not going to sell.
	So we're not going to commit more resources into the sinkhole.
	We're just going to cut bait.
	So this is going to leave Chrysler with nothing to sell, except this aging minivan that isn't selling very well.
	So Chrysler is a dead man walking.
	It's over.
	And Dodge, more than likely, is going to follow suit because they've got nothing anymore.
	They have got this little Hornet crossover.
	It's not electric, but it's a little crossover.
	You know, they tried to imbue it with some sporty flair.
	It's not a bad car.
	I've test-driven it.
	But the point is, every other manufacturer out there is selling little crossovers.
	Yeah.
	They go to Toyota.
	They go to Honda.
	They go to Suzuki.
	They go to Subaru for those things.
	Nobody goes to Dodge for a small crossover.
	So that's it.
	You know, and now Ram, which was very, very successful selling the Ram truck, you know, big beefy 1500 truck.
	Now it has this problem prone, highly expensive turbo hybrid system that they're putting in there and people don't want it and it's not selling.
	And the Jeeps and all the rest of them, they're so overpriced now and so overcomplicated that sales are absolutely crashing through the floor.
	It's devastating.
	I think 2025 could be the year.
	That perhaps all of those brands just go away, just like Plymouth and Pontiac and Oldsmobile and Saturn before them.
	Well, I'm curious, Eric, with Chrysler and Dodge being in such trouble, is there the prospect of there still...
	Being any remaining value for them to be purchased by someone else, by some other corporate entity?
	Or have they made such a transition and bowed so much to, as you call it, environmental extortion that they're really worthless now?
	Maybe.
	There might be some residual value left in some of the models.
	The problem is, though, I think more general.
	We're not going to comply our way out of this.
	Whatever salvageable parts remain.
	Would still have to be compliant, wouldn't they?
	So what we're going to see, I think, going forward, unless there is a sea change shift in the way things are done, is a continued consolidation of the car industry into a handful, maybe two or three big players, you know, that offer sort of the universal garret, you know, the universal transportation appliance.
	You know, it's going to be very Soviet, you know, except it's going to be expensive, you know, at least in the Soviet Union, when you finally got your Trabant.
	Remember the Trabant?
	Yeah.
	Years and years of waiting for it.
	At least the thing was cheap.
	You know, what's going to happen here is, you know, the cars are going to be so expensive.
	Most people won't be able to afford them.
	And that's deliberate.
	You know, it's now out of the closet.
	They come out and say that in the future, they're going to be mobility companies.
	And they're going to sell what's called transportation as a service.
	They're shifting away from this idea that you go out and buy the car.
	You make your payments.
	You write a check.
	And then after a certain point, it's your vehicle.
	You own it.
	It's your property.
	Instead of that, you're going to pay for the ride, for the ride.
	And it's kind of like the Bill Gates model, you know, where you don't buy the software.
	You don't buy the box that's got the CV in it.
	Now you have your Adobe or Quark or whatever the thing is that you can keep.
	And, you know, maybe it's not the latest version, but it's yours.
	You know, when you get your kid for school or whatever, now you have to pay a license fee and, you know, to continue to be allowed to use it ongoing.
	That's what they want.
	And that literally is the meaning of you will own nothing and be happy.
	It's all about putting everybody on this debt treadmill where you're just constantly making payments in order to be allowed to use things.
	Well, and this, as you say, with the consolidation of the industry, and obviously there are mixed signals that I've been seeing from the Trump administration and J.D. Vance about whether or not they will stop these...
	Regulatory burdens and demands.
	Trump recently said that he was opposed to any more wind farms.
	Windmills are a bad idea.
	But again, I'm not seeing signals from Trump to say the entire regulatory schema of the United States telling auto manufacturers what they must sell.
	Or the EPA giving the okay for California to claim that in order to sell a car, You have to comply with this emission standards.
	They recently gave the exception to long-haul big-rig truck engines that they're going to wait on those diesels, and the same thing for railroad engines.
	And I think that applies also to things like fire engines, because those are diesel trucks.
	What's that?
	Yeah, for now.
	And that's the problem.
	You know, philosophically, people still buy into the climate canard and they're still pushing this sort of thing.
	So it's going to take a lot of effort for people to overcome the already established massive government PR spin and data manipulation from people like Michael Mann and the IPCC and the University of East Anglia and others.
	To push their climate canard, their data manipulation, their lack of honesty about where their temperature readers are.
	The very idea that someone can compare a temperature reader now to something from 200 years ago or 300 years ago.
	All their various theories and estimates about tree rings size pertaining to the actual temperature of the earth when it could be something else.
	It's going to take a lot of work, and much of what we're seeing with the regulatory schema on automobile manufacturers and energy exploration and refining and delivery, much of that is...
	Hinged on this political game that they play, which is serve up rhetoric to the consumer, serve up rhetoric to the public about so-called climate change, regardless of any of the data, constantly game the terminology, rework things, use verbal ledger domain when you failed in one way, claim that it's something else.
	Oh, we have more damaging storms now.
	Well, how much more valuable is the property?
	How many more people live in those areas?
	Are you telling us that the storms...
	Are you telling us they're just affecting more property because there's more property there?
	These types of things, they don't want to deal honestly with people at the same time that they still have the subsidy powers, which also are unconstitutional.
	So it takes, I think, a lot of education or conversation with people on a positive way to say, hey, I'm trying to give you the signal.
	What do you think about this?
	And the pop media has bought into it so much that at least maybe now through the breakup of some of those dinosaurs, we can still get that information out.
	I don't know what you think about it, but, you know, fighting against a guy like Elon Musk on X is a very...
	It's noble and it's a very isolating endeavor.
	And hopefully you'll be able to continue to get your word out there, Eric.
	And I want to give you the final word on this, on what you think you might see from the Trump administration regarding some of these regulations and whether or not you can even come to any determination.
	Because from my eyes, he's been all over the map on a lot of this stuff.
	Yeah, exactly.
	You anticipated what I was going to say.
	One of the things about Trump that disturbs me is that he just appears to be a very thoughtless and uninformed man in a lot of measures, in a lot of ways.
	For example, he talks about how he's going to end the EV mandate.
	There is no EV mandate.
	Biden's right about that when he says that.
	What there are are regulations that serve as a de facto mandate, regulations that only electric vehicles can comply with.
	And the point is, it's really subtle.
	They don't formally outlaw vehicles.
	That aren't electric.
	They just make it so that's all you can build as a manufacturer.
	So Trump does not seem to comprehend that.
	He doesn't seem to understand that the problem isn't the mandate, it's the regulations.
	And you've got to go after the regulations.
	And I don't think he really understands the nitty-gritty of those regulations either.
	I've yet to see him parse out and explain what we mean when we're talking about emissions, for example.
	And the way emissions have come to encompass something that for the last...
	75 years has never been considered an emission because it's not a pollutant.
	And of course, I'm talking about carbon dioxide.
	You know, it's an inert non-reactive gas that has absolutely nothing to do with air quality.
	You know, we can have the discussion about the climate changing, but it's very manipulative and disingenuous, deliberately misleading to frame carbon dioxide as being synonymous with the blue smoke, you know, people imagine when they hear the word emission or pollutant.
	I don't think so.
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	Eric, thank you so much for being here.
	You supply great energy to the David Knight Show after, as I mentioned, and the audience is just terrific when we talk about the audio not playing at the start, and that's a little frustrating, but it's so gratifying to know that there are good people in the audience that give you the tips as you're filling in, and you being here is just great.
	It was last minute.
	As we switch away from the Biden administration and start to look at the Trump administration.
	And I think that that assessment is 100% correct.
	And the only thing that I'm going to do is just continue trying to get out the real facts and information about some of these canards.
	Some of the spurious ways that they make these claims, the ways that they have a sort of fascist system, and try to tell people, at least if you call yourself a constitutionalist, look at what the government is doing and try to see many of the areas where maybe you've sort of turned a blind eye.
	Or if you call yourself anti-fascist on a left-wing side, maybe you might want to look at what the government's been doing on the climate change front and see that maybe they're We're engaging in fascism.
	You know, that sort of thing.
	That would be beneficial.
	Let's be careful about the words that we use.
	Let's understand what those words mean before we even have a discussion.
	Let's not be flippant about things.
	And let's not engage in this sort of mindless juvenile soundbite argument kind of thing that we typically see out there.
	Let's discuss things like intelligent adults.
	And if we do that and we respect facts and we respect truth and we acknowledge it when somebody points out a fact to us that's inconvenient, that contradicts what we thought we knew, then we can have a civilized society again.
	Eric, thank you.
	You bring the civilization in your office and getting in there.
	I know it was a long trip.
	You did a great job.
	I really appreciate you coming in, Eric.
	You made a good day even better, and I'm just gratified to know you.
	I hope people will go to ericpetersautos.com, ericpetersautos.com.
	Check it out.
	See what he has to say.
	Click on those stories and get into the forum and drop some of your messages in there.
	Thanks, Eric.
	This is great.
	And again, awesome stuff.
	You got it.
	You got it.
	Eric Peters.
	Thank you, Eric.
	We'll talk to you soon.
	Okay.
	Take care.
	Hello, it's me, Volodymyr Zelensky.
	I'm so tired of wearing these same t-shirts everywhere for years.
	You'd think with all the billions I've skimmed off America, I could dress better.
	And I could...
	If only David Knight would send me one of his beautiful grey MacGuffin hoodies or a new black t-shirt with the MacGuffin logo in blue.
	But he told me to get lost.
	Maybe one of you American suckers can buy me some at thedavidknightshow.com.
	And David is giving a 10% discount to listeners from now until 2025. At that price, you should be able to buy me several hundred.
	Those amazing sand-colored microphone hoodies are so beautiful.
	I'd wear something other than green military cosplay to my various galas and social events.

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