Rex Gray and Tim Tompkins dissect the Iran conflict, dismissing claims Trump was excluded from command as disinformation while analyzing the economic fallout of military escalation. They critique proposals to use illegal immigrants as disposable troops and detail a record job market crisis driven by federal cuts, high tariffs, and corporate stock buybacks rather than just AI. The hosts condemn dehumanizing AI interviews and ghost jobs, linking rising living costs to a fraudulent political system that prioritizes elites over ordinary Americans. Ultimately, they champion a nonpartisan "America First" movement uniting citizens against the Democrat-Republican duopoly amidst societal collapse. [Automatically generated summary]
And it's also a thing as like we go on shows and whatnot, or even like when we do this one, and like you are someone where like you're not totally absorbed in like.
Constant like media cycle, right?
You're not constantly on YouTube.
So for me, like when I watch a lot of people do shows, like if I see a new show or whatnot pop up on like TikTok or like Instagram or like YouTube, it's always like the same type of formulaic thing, right?
It's just like someone regurgitating a message that they had heard before.
They had this thing where it was like a claw machine where it had fake gold nuggets inside of it that had, I guess, money inside or a ticket inside or whatever.
And that is the most degen thing that I have seen in such a long time.
And it was popular.
All the people over the age of 80 were over there.
You do need money to do like most of the stuff in Vegas, and you're spending like a minimum $50 to $100 on like a real experience.
Like just to go to the sphere to watch like the whole graphic thing, you expect to pay like $130 just to go watch like a 20 minute immersive experience inside of the sphere.
I haven't slept, so I went to bed in the Phoenix airport.
But I was like trapped at the casino all day yesterday, and they had this entire like WWE themed like bar and whatnot.
They're trying to get you to buy like $55 drinks because it's named after a wrestler.
They got the lights, and they got the John Cena makes you disappear not even midgets, but they got like people that are like five foot five, like running around in like full, like, not gimp suit, but like some sort of character.
I don't know what it is.
It's weird, it's weird.
And if you just look at the prices of these things, yeah, you got it up there.
Let's go ahead and look at this really quick $500 for that, for like a $15 piece of meat, maybe.
But just wanted to point that out because that's the sickness in the society.
Let's go ahead and go to the first thing in there, which is the Wall Street Journal report Trump versus generals.
I want to read this to you, Tim.
I want to get your take.
I have a take on this as well.
It's probably not what you think.
So I'm going to go ahead and read this now.
A stunning new report in the Wall Street Journal.
Journal reveals that military advisors intentionally excluded Donald Trump from the command room during the recent high stakes operation to extract a downed U.S. airman in Iran because they figured his erratic behavior could jeopardize the mission.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump was in such a volatile state, I'm crashing out.
After Iran shot down a U.S. jet, he spent hours screaming at aides in the West Wing, obsessing over the political fallout, invoking Jimmy Carter in the 1979 hostage crisis.
Officials made the call to limit his access.
Only briefing him at meaningful moments, quote unquote, instead of giving him real time control.
Go ahead and scroll down a little bit.
Just hours later, Trump woke up and fired off his profanity-laced threat online, warning Iran it would be left living in hell.
Like, there's a lot of misinformation, disinformation, lying you can do by just saying, oh, like, this is a different bad thing that's happening as to the real bad thing that's going on.
So, like, if you're going to do some sort of like troop operation, you have to basically do it now.
You're not allowed to wait.
Like, you're what do you mean?
Well, I mean, you're talking about sandstorms, you're talking about incredible like desert conditions, you're talking about do they have like a storm season?
Yeah, they got all kinds of crazy stuff.
I mean, it's huge, it's like the size of Western Europe.
So, imagine like, we don't even have the concept of what they got.
But I think we've come to the conclusion, I think there's a big consensus that we probably can't put troops on the ground and they're very well prepared.
Well, yeah, but like, what does the strike constitute of?
Because the Air Force has already hit 10,000 targets and the straight is closed.
You know, so like, what they, my thing is, they, like, I just, I think back to this call often because I think it was very prescient when the Marine called in on my dad's show and the Marine said, They would never use us as a pawn.
They would never throw our lives away.
And I was like, huh, well, that is interesting.
I think you're wrong.
I think you're damn wrong about that.
I think they absolutely are totally willing to throw your lives away.
And what I saw, Muhammad Roddy says, like, yeah, maybe we let them take a couple islands.
Maybe we let them stay there.
Maybe the missiles start coming.
And then what do you do?
You have to resupply the people that are there.
You have to defend the people that are there.
And the people that are there, they have to complete some sort of objective, right?
So they already got a job to do.
It's just, it's crazy on multiple levels.
And I think the real lesson out of this war, like on America's part, we have to take from this is like air power is not, you can't affect the regime change you want with the air power alone.
Um, Iran has recently announced that they were closing the strait, which is strange because the blockade has already closed it.
They're helping us without knowing.
So that's like when Scott Besant said we were doing jujitsu on the Iranians by allowing them to sell their own oil and making them richer because we need the oil market to be stable.
And they're the ones that lose with the closed passage $500 million a day.
You think about it, it's not a bad trade, even if that number is correct.
But it's not true.
It's just on its face not true.
Ships are headed right now to the U.S., Texas, Louisiana, and Alaska to load up compliments to the IRGC, always wanting to be the tough guy.
We're offering a very clear and reasonable deal, and I hope they take it because if they don't, the United States is going to knock out every single power plant and every single bridge in Iran.
And it's like, you know, at some point we pushed them to that because what would you do if you were in the UN and the entire time you just got ripped apart and said you were no one without me?
Well, it shows the responsibility of being a greater power because these European states, like the stuff they've been involved with, especially it's like a you ever see like a Chihuahua try to attack like a Pitbull or a Rottweiler or something?
That's basically the EU countries without us trying to mess with Russia.
So you see that behavior, but you see that all get wiped away when they're like, Oh, the person or the empire we thought was taking care of us, they're schizo, and we can't rely on them coming to take care of us.
They're like, okay, all right, all right, we're sane.
Because you've got places like Ireland that literally are begging for economic change, and you see like the military, like, sorry, the police out there in the streets, the Russian troopers, right?
You've got other countries in Asia like the Philippines that are also at critical inflection.
I mean, guys.
You would start to feel the weight the moment they decided, hey, let's start saying you can't travel as much.
I don't want to be in the neocon club with all your former enemies that were never Trumpers and said, screw you, Lindsey Graham, and all the rest of them, and Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin.
I mean, it's just insane.
Totally insane to watch all this happen.
And now he just put out the True Social, basically a carbon copy no more Mr. Nice Guy.
I'm going to blow up all your bridges and all your power plants.
I'm going to huff and puff and blow down your house, three little pigs, if you don't do what I say.
The trade of hormones is still closed.
It just goes on and on and on, just stunt after stunt because he got trapped into a losing situation, a war of attrition.
I'll be on the air today, 4 p.m. Central, 5 p.m. Eastern.
Jackals, hyenas, they're barking at him, laughing at him.
They nip his toes and eat the food that's in his domain.
They do this and they get closer and closer and bolder and bolder until one day that lion gets up and tears the shit out of everybody, runs like the wind, eats everything in his path.
Because every once in a while, The lion has to show the jackets who he is.
Like, the thing is, like, a fighter did this a long time ago.
This is a Christopher Walken, like, monologue talking about the lion and the jackals.
They run up to him and the big lion stands up.
And ah, it's a metaphor for like, don't mess with the old tough guy because he'll get you.
He's really strong.
And seemingly everyone that uses this metaphor for some reason is retarded because Tito Ortiz, the guy who, uh, The guy who used this quote against Chelsea, and he famously said he wants to outlive his children.
Well, I just was saying, like, even beyond Trump, I mean, you think of guys who are like trying to achieve the highest echelon, there is a certain level of like, you got to have that.
They're going to have that chip on their shoulder because they consider themselves in the elite class.
I have a video much later on that I'll probably cover after the deep dive, but it's just, I had some real emotions today just watching this video and just realizing.
Sorry, I didn't quite answer his question correctly because I think he's actually, this is not me trying to divert.
Go ahead, go ahead.
You asked about, sorry, if you would.
Yeah, you asked about where we can get a design for this.
Basically, you can do this on your own.
You just get a graphic of like an image and you can just go on Amazon and you can find like these 8x10 custom backdrops and you just upload your image.
I mean, what if there was an alternative reality where people could just like actually have conversations and like concede just a little bit and everybody could win?
And I'm like, wait, in what realm is it justified if the person is not like a complete, you know, how do I say, unless they're like Hitler, where there was a necessity for it at that point.
So if you don't escalate, if you don't engage in more violence than you're seen as weak, how about not starting the violence to begin with because we were the ones that initially escalated by starting the war?
Said that it would be hard to rally American sentiment, a 24 year old kid like me to want to enlist and go fight in Iran.
It's very hard to create an event that rallies Gen Z.
The idea of fighting this war is you need ground troops to soak up the air defense, you need ground troops to soak up the artillery.
This is the economics of war, meaning you're trying to win this war more efficiently than your opponent.
So if they are $50,000 Shaheed drones, you need a resource, a weapon that's cheaper than that.
So it's possible to use drones, but you also need Ground forces.
And so, where can you recruit extendable ground forces?
And it's going to be illegal immigrants.
The idea that you're going to have a national draft and all these Gen Z kids who have pretty comfortable lives compared with their parents' generation, and they're going to go off to a desert, a mountain fortress, and they're going to go and die.
That to me sounds a bit absurd.
But what you can do is you can organize a national draft and then have so much political fervor.
People are processing so much because, quite honestly, Gen Z would rather go to prison than go to Iran, I would think.
But then what you can do is you can transition and Say, fine, let's do a compromise.
Let's have the illegal immigrants do this.
It's your choice.
You can either go back to Latin America or you can go to Iran and win citizenship for your family.
Not just for you, but your immediate family, your children, your parents, your wife.
And quite honestly, I had to say this, but for a lot of illegal immigrants, this is actually a video.
We were already heavily involved in the recruitment of Afghani migrants to go fight in the Ukrainian military.
The guy that did the second Trump assassination, the guy that was waiting on the golf course, he was involved in a United States military intelligence program to do that.
We would possibly do something like this.
And the Democrats have talked about amnesty for people before based off of acts of service.
I could see it, not from the right, so to say, but from the left.
Well, they could make, and this is the thing, if you're serious about the illegal immigrant problem, which is why the whole ICE thing is bullshit, you would just make it so they can't buy a car or house here.
And, you know, you could just say anything in the internet with absolute conviction.
Like, this is what would have.
I made it up.
Like, the first part, he had me in the first half.
He's right.
He's like, if Gen Z people had to go and enlist, and like, we have pretty cozy, comfy lives, no one wants to be like in the desert of Iran with like your canister of water and it's 108 degrees out and you got bombs flying over your head.
Like, no one wants to do that after, you know, you just got your blankie and you can watch Netflix and Euphoria.
So it says, today, an Iranian flag cargo ship named Tosca, nearly 900 feet long and weighing almost as much as an aircraft carrier, tried getting past our naval blockade.
It did not go well for them.
The U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer USS Spruance.
Intercepted the Tusca in the Gulf of Oman and gave them a fair warning to stop.
The Iranian crew refused to listen, so our Navy ship stopped them right there in their tracks by blowing a hole in their engine room.
Right now, the U.S. Marines have custody of their vessel, and the Tusca is under U.S. Treasury sanctions because of their prior history of illegal activity.
We have Full custody of the ship, and we are seeing what's aboard.
That's, and the official term for a recession is negative GDP growth for two quarters, right?
And we haven't quite been there since COVID.
But again, if you're feeling it on a regular basis, I know a lot of people who have been laid off recently or people who are struggling to get jobs, and I wanted to shed light.
But I heard, I heard a little birdie told me it gets better as you get older as a man.
The 20s is rough, but when you hit your prime in your 30s, when you've kind of made something of yourself, when you've kind of really established yourself, that's kind of when it opens up.
I think there's a male epidemic of guys who also have issues.
There's a lot of interesting guys that do ruin it.
For the normal person that is actually trying to pursue the weird arm creepy guys that like do stuff they shouldn't be doing, or the narcissist, yeah, right.
So, yeah, there's that you got the F boy, or you got the weird guy that just makes women feel uncomfortable, and those two guys do exist, yeah.
So, it's just it's it's all I know women are feeling jaded too, so I can't just sit there and say, well, it's only women, like, there it is hard for women to find a good man sometimes, and we also expect to like have like the Disneyland, like, social media, Instagram, like, oh, we have the perfect.
Shout out to Ranger said that, and he's a military man, so he knows the truth.
All military relies heavily on retard maxing to do hard things that people think can't be done.
So, if you want to do something people think can't be done, have a healthy relationship, just retard max, do the best for yourself, and just don't even worry about it.
So let's talk about why it feels so hard to get a job today, right?
Right.
As you can see, I am the guy who's giving you guys the interview where you probably are going against 100 different candidates and I probably might be selecting one or two of you.
I couldn't find current numbers, but this gives perspective.
We got at number two, we got retail about 80K.
We got technology about 80K.
And again, these numbers are definitely higher than they used to be.
Services at number four, consumer products at five, financial at seven, healthcare at six.
And you guys get the picture here.
Where you just see where the biggest layoffs.
And so as of 2024, we saw about 761K announced layoffs.
And then within the first six months of 2025 alone, there were 744,000 layoffs.
And so that's nearly a full year of layoffs in half the time if you look at 2025 compared to 2024.
And so, like we talked about, the government did their thing with Doge and the federal cuts and the agencies, tech and retail services, warehousing, all of those different things.
And so the The pain is not landing evenly.
And so, white collar jobs, you've got junior roles, entry level jobs, they're taking the heaviest hits right now.
What this means is the ladder is weakening exactly where people are trying to climb it as you're trying to get to your career and you're trying to get a job just to have experience.
Crazy, like you think about it, you go to college, you get like a four, eight year degree, whatever, and you go into a market and you're like, okay, I'm going to get paid $131,000 a year because I learned this skill and be able to pay off my debt and live in a nice place, can have a great car, it's going to be fine.
Oh, wait, bye bye tech job, that's going to be grok.
And not to diverge from my deep dive, but just think about this critically.
A lot of the dreams and visions that we had for the American dream, they're given and they're passed down from your previous generations, your parents, your grandparents.
One of the biggest economic shocks of 2025 came when the U.S. slapped a wide range of tariffs on both rivals and allies.
The aim was to boost domestic production and reduce trade deficits.
It didn't work.
Tariffs are essentially a tax on imports, and in this case, the US paid the price.
Small businesses felt the pinch, and slower hiring quickly became one of the biggest casualties.
The unemployment rate climbed over 0.4 percentage points over the course of 2025 to 4.4%.
But here's a deeper problem one that could hit far harder than anyone expected.
Tariffs aren't that unusual, they're one of the most common economic tools in the world.
Used by every major power.
Sure, they can shake things up in the short term, but over time, the economy usually finds its balance and stabilizes.
The problem with these more recent U.S. tariffs is that they're anything but stable.
The tariff policy has been shifting constantly in the recent years.
The latest projections hit lower income Americans the hardest, pushing the average federal tax rate for the bottom 20% up by 1.9 percentage points, more than the wealthier households.
In response to uncertainty, small businesses tend to avoid taking risks.
And economic experts across the board think this is a factor in why it's so hard to find a job these days.
Sean Snaith, economist and director of the University of Central Florida's Institute for Economic Forecasting, said There's no compelling reason to be out there hiring en masse.
That is a rational response when you're dealing with this kind of uncertainty.
Adding to this, Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said Companies are seeing higher prices depressing profitability.
They're hesitant because tariffs make a lot of investments that have been profitable unprofitable, and often new hires.
Who need weeks or months of training before they can truly contribute end up feeling just like another risky investment.
Few people are likely to be feeling the sting of tariffs on their employment prospects quite as much as the graduating class of 2025, about 2 million students.
Back in fall 2024, employers were optimistic, saying they planned to hire 7.3% more graduates than the year before.
But by 2025, that hope had almost vanished, dropping to just 0.6%.
And it's getting worse.
The cruel irony is that the tariffs were supposed to help the American.
So, there's multiple factors in that, but entry-level workers are like the lowest on the totem pole when it comes to a company's portfolio of people.
The experience, because you know what to expect.
You know that your ROI is going to be there.
With a new grad, with a new hire, you've got to spend the time to invest in that person to get them up to speed.
Also, part of it is.
There's so many factors.
But another one is like the level of trust in Gen Z new hires, especially as they've gone through COVID and had to work online, learn online and stuff.
There's a lot of job companies that are like, well, these probably aren't worth hiring too because there's a lazy, there's a stigma about Gen Z being lazy or the next generation after, which you could argue there's some play with that, but not everybody is lazy.
We're also like the first generation to grow up with understanding that there's something more than the nine to five.
There's a lot of quiet quitting that goes on as well, and people not wanting to work as hard because they're like, Well, I'm getting compensated, but like I'm not feeling fulfilled, right?
Because I guess it, I'm sorry, maybe you guys correct me.
Well, and when you see your peers riding around like a Lamborghini, it's not very enticing for certain people to like, Want to go out there and struggle because now there's alternative systems that are coming out where people are like, Well, I can make money this way.
Like, dude, when he was announcing tariffs, I remember having a distinct conversation with somebody and I said, This isn't going to be a good thing.
Before everyone knew what the impact of tariffs was, I'm like, This is going to do the complete opposite because I looked at the fundamentals of what a tariff does and I'm like, Well, if it's more expensive for them to import things, it's a tax on us.
Well, and they're also saying, like, all these countries have trade deficits with us and we hate them because they don't buy all American goods and we're buying all their goods.
And so, you know, here's where the story actually shifts because, you know, even when conditions are genuinely difficult, labor is like the first thing companies cut.
They cut headcount, they protect their margins, they reassure the investors, and they call it discipline.
And so workers are often not being cut because the business cannot survive.
They're being cut because headcount is the quickest way to protect the stock price.
And investors, when you're a stock, when you're working with a company that's public, the stock price and the investors is like second to God for these people.
This is something in which, if you guys don't know what a stock buyback is, the long story explained simple is a company makes profit, they can buy their own stock, and they can make the price go higher artificially because they're literally like churning the money back in.
It is the most ridiculous thing that I've ever seen, but these things do exist.
And here's the thing if it's the highest on record, while you also have like some of the biggest and quickest layoffs on record at the same time, then the numbers are like contrasting.
And so it just makes you understand that a lot of this also is to appeal to the shareholder in and of itself.
You know, like Amazon does answer to somebody and it's the people who hold the biggest amount of money within that stock.
And so another thing that I wanted to cover is, you know, so companies are not hiding about like, you know, laying people off, they're telling it directly.
And so let's pull up this article about the layoffs because I think we're looking at six out of 10 companies, 60% of companies are looking at laying off in 2026.
And we're kind of already going through that.
But 60% of employers, that's not a small number.
And they were reporting this last year.
And so now we're going to see that.
And we have no idea how this is going to turn out.
So, yeah, I mean, A lot of companies, just to clarify for you guys, they also hire using loans because when loans and interest rates were like damn near 0%, we had a hiring spree because they could afford to expand their programs.
They could make that money back because it's not a lot in interest that they're paying back and they could get that in profitability plus productivity.
So they were willing to hire at 0% to 2%.
You raise rates up to 5%, now it's starting to look a little dicey.
And so you've got to cut back because.
Taking a loan at 5% is risky.
Sure.
Okay, so let's go back and cut to me real quick.
And I'm just trying to lay this all out in an easy way.
And so, you know, this is only half the problem.
The other problem of this game is the AI itself.
And we've been hinting at this, but again, there are AIs taking job interviews now.
AI has been used to kind of help the recruiter sip through people.
And so, what you're going to find is a lot of the stuff used to be a more manual process.
You used to have the resume go through a recruiter and they would have to read.
The amount of people.
So it's two parts to this, right?
On one side, it really is people trying to optimize and make their lives easier for the recruiter because I've talked to recruiters.
It's not the easiest thing being a recruiter.
They're on deadlines, they're on time, they have time crunches, and they can only look at but so many resumes.
And there are some recruiters that report they will make a post and that post will have 600 applications within three hours.
With AI everywhere in today's job search, it seems inevitable that we'd eventually get here.
But still, AI avatars running job interviews is pretty next level.
It seems like the process is on the rise, and I wanted to understand why and whether they can ever be helpful.
So, you made it to the interview stage of your job search.
Congrats!
But plot twist before you meet with an actual human, you have to make it past an interview with an AI.
A ton of companies, apparently, from Meta and Netflix to MasterCard and Domino's, have started to use these AI interviewers as part of their initial screening processes.
The value add here, according to the creators of these AI tools, is that it allows some companies to talk in some way, shape, or form to virtually everyone who applies for a role instead of just some of those people.
All of them make the claim that these tools operate with less bias and prejudice because, after all, you're talking to an emotionless bot about why you deserve the job.
AI interviews usually look like a one on one video call with an AI agent.
I tried out one from Code Signal, which was a static photo of an AI avatar, kind of like when someone turns off their camera on Zoom and you just see their headshot.
Another one, Humanly, was a fully built out AI avatar designed to look like a human.
And it really is dehumanizing, honestly, to see stuff like this.
And like what AI is useful for, the reason why the government is in love with it as well as the corporations is it allows them to filter through all the data that they've collected over the years.
So they didn't have the means to filter through before.
So for the hiring process, you go, okay, this seems to make sense, right?
But you look at it and we watch that interview, it just doesn't work.
I love it for the fact that when it's used correctly, when it's used correctly, it can be the most fabulous thing to everybody and it helps, it can help out society massively.
But there also needs to be, it needs to be used as an extension, as a tool, not just the full solution to where everything gets filtered through this system because, again, there are nuances that it's not going to account for.
So, like, if a recruiter wants to help kind of.
Help themselves like look through a bunch of applications.
Maybe it's sifting through some of the ones that clearly are not applicable to that role.
Essentially, what happens when you have a ghost position is the application or the position is out there and they post it like it's a real job, but it's not actually a real job.
So they're giving you fluffy language here, but I kind of understand some of the reasons why they do ghost jobs.
So, one, there are metrics that they need to meet.
Sometimes when it comes to, I think, loans, sometimes it comes to some monetary compensation thing where they have to show that they're growing or that they're trying to expand the company.
And that comes down to their bottom line on certain things.
So, ghost jobs, which are listings for positions that don't exist, are already filled or haven't been actively hired for.
They exist for sometimes manipulative reasons.
So, companies use them to create the false illusion of growth to investors.
Oh, this is true.
Okay.
So, to boost employee morale by appealing, appearing to alleviate overwork.
Due to a build of pipeline applicants.
So, like, I know this firsthand.
I've seen this.
A lot of the time, when you have a small team that's either been gouged, people have left, people have been fired, a lot of that work doesn't just go into this dark ether.
It gets spread across your team.
And so, often to keep people in the job, they say, Well, we're still hiring for this role and we're trying to get people.
We've got applicants and it keeps you on the hamster wheel feeling like, Okay, help is on the way, guys.
You should clarify these skill jobs are about two years to get the cert, but they're working seven days a week, 12 hours a day on per diem out of state to make 200K a year.
Here's the thing that's objectively a much better deal than going to college and getting in $200,000 of debt.
Yeah, I would say not all trading jobs might be worth it.
Some legitimately do give you a work life balance, as I've seen.
It is a complex situation with that.
But again, I wouldn't say every job, like there are actual degrees that give you a good ROI.
But again, it's the people I don't have sympathy for the ones that didn't go to like the college that gave them like scholarships or like, you know, as much financial aid as possible.
And they either go for the having fun thing or they just want to go for the status.
And so they'll go to a school that will give them.
The school that seems cool on paper, but you realize when you get into the job market, Harvard doesn't give you as much as the same pull as you would expect in certain apps and certain environments.
Like, there are other colleges that have just as good degrees that come out of those schools where they're known in the workplace.
So, you know, companies want to plug and play workers with less training and overhead, like I talked to you about earlier.
And so lower level tasks are also being absorbed by software.
And we're seeing this in a lot of the tech companies.
So, AI, some of these bots have, not bots are, some of these softwares have gotten very good at doing a lot of the trivial things that used to be given to the least experienced coders.
That used to be just more data, busy, busy, busy work.
Now, this is also, you've got lawyers that are now offloading some of their paralegal stuff to AI too.
So, that is coming into play too.
But there's also another thing, and I call it this negative feedback loop of how.
The job market works.
And so they're putting these layoffs that exist, but it's also because people are spending less.
But they're also spending less because things cost more.
And some things just cost more and they make no sense.
And so, what Rex was alluding to, if you go to Disneyland, they have a meal, family of four bundle deal for the low price of $90.
And that's like not even, that's like per person, I feel like, right?
So, by the time you get the tickets, by the time you're like trapped inside the amusement park, because it takes a lot of F, they make it strategic to where you got to walk very far just to leave the amusement park.
So, you're not incentivized to go get lunch somewhere else.
Yeah, I mean, so pretty much, it's pretty much this is the last thing here.
And I just.
It's just this is the negative feedback loop that starts, right?
So, Disney is one of those companies that has done massive layoffs.
They've done it because their profitability, quote unquote, has not been as high as it has been.
But then, also, a lot of that's being driven off of the fact that people can't afford to go to Disney.
They can't afford the $90 pizza.
Consumers are spending less.
You understand what it's like when consumers spend less and what that does to your bottom line.
And so, it creates this negative feedback loop to where even the employee can't afford to get.
To make purchases.
And if the purchases aren't driving the revenue, then it creates them wanting to create more cuts because they're like, we're still not making any money.
And so I'm pretty much done with this deep dive, but what I look at this is, I just feel bad when I see all of these things happening, and it's just the system's broken.
That's the only way that I can put it.
And the people at the top don't really care.
And, you know, the video, maybe I don't know if you have enough energy for it.
Well, I must have had amnesia because I didn't realize.
Like, I just thought about okay, each Tomahawk, we're launching them, it costs money to launch them, but I didn't realize a lot of that stuff was stuff we had for a very long time that we never used.
And so when I just think about how the system is built, Because we are a capitalistic society, and I'll never knock on people's ability to sell products, sell what they want.
So it's like one, you, a lot of people, you guys are educated.
The people that are watching the show are educated.
They understand the scams that are going on because these are the things that we cover.
But I'm telling you, I know an average person who does not care about anything that happens in this world and just lives on life by accident and just decides, well, it's just the way that it is and doesn't decide to educate themselves.
And because you're invested and because you're a business owner and working in these various fields, because of all those various factors, people don't realize this.
Like, we have to deal with a lot.
Like our cost has just, our cost has basically doubled, if not tripled over the past two years.
But when I looked at the math and the cost that it took to like repaint the walls, $4,000 for just repainting the four walls inside of the house, I was like, that's not sustainable.
Anytime you have something that breaks down, it's like a $300 cost there, $400 cost there.
And, And look, people can be like, well, you didn't have to choose to be a landlord, Tim.
No, I did because I'm trying to create an economic opportunity.
I'm not trying to be a slave to the system because I realize that you can either complain about it or you become an asset owner and you invest in what we have here in order to actually have some fight against the inflation.
Because every single person that's on the White House, the Capitol Hill, spending the money, like they're all millionaires, they don't care.
They're just going to spend the money like it's a blank check.
And so you're going to continue to get like literally railed every single day.
And here's the thing you really have no choice in today's age if you do not want to be affected by inflation, which you have zero control over, which you got to understand you really do have zero control over it.
You have to own the assets as they appreciate.
You also start to hedge inflation against those things.
It's all, it's felonious activity at every level of corporate, government, whatever you want to call it, leadership.
It's literally, they're just criminals.
They're committing fraud because they're saying they want to make things better when in fact they know they're making things worse for people, but they can make money off of it.
So I, in that moment today, just sitting there, I don't know how I'm going to do this.
This is what, this is my goal over the course of like as I grow up, as I become something.
My incentive is going to be to fight against these systems.
Okay.
Because I'm aware.
I don't care if it takes me that time, I'm like 45 to start making some type of difference, whether because everything that I'm doing, I'm going to be doing it to actually change the system because it's not sustainable.
And here's the thing it's like, there's going to be, it's like the guy talked about, like, oh, like the older people are leaving the trade jobs.
Like, it's an incredible time to get in on the ground floor and get the real experience.
Like, that's what we're experiencing too.
Like, the 2030s and the 2040s, especially, are going to be a time of incredible renewal, regrowth, healing in the country if we still have a country.
And it's our job as younger people to go through these tough times and to endure it and to not turn on the entire system that we were given just because the boomers may have done a boom.
We got to keep in mind, this is why I want to do more constitutional stuff.
I want to read the Federalist Papers, talk about that on air.
We have a good system.
We really do.
And it's not like, oh, we have to invent some new radical space civilization.
We don't have to do that.
We have to go back to what the country is supposed to be.
What is the country?
The country is a constitutional republic.
We are supposed to have elected representatives that represent you.
Does 80 year old, God knows who, Adam Schiff, did they represent you?
Absolutely not.
Does 80 year old Lindsey Graham represent you?
Absolutely not.
What about Blumenthal?
It's just, it's so insane.
And we talk about this all the time that we have.
And here's the thing we love our older audience.
If you're smart, you're wise, you're older, we respect you.
But if you're one of these people that has voted to make the country worse for 50 years and you're proud of it, I will use that.
I even throw some of the Gen X, I even throw some of the millennials, I even throw some of the new people that are getting in there, the AOCs and stuff.
You know, she's more interested in almost being like kind of popular and cool and position herself in the long run.
And maybe it's because they look at the system and they're like, ooh, I don't, I didn't realize how bad it was, and I can't actually really change anything.
So it's like the only thing I can think of is you have to change at the ground level.
And so you got Jake Shields, which you're a good buddy.
I'm sure there are a bunch more people.
Bunch more people.
But the whole point of this is, you know, Amy came on the show.
She was like, we're doing this because there's people on the right and left that have these grassroots positions in which they're not part of the establishment and they know what the average American needs.
And they're like, we need to shine some more light on these political issues because you're going against like a.
Byron Donald, who's got like millions of dollars in his bank account, and all the support from the mainstream of Congress.
And you've got, you know, he's going against a fishback, and fishback is not going to be as well financed for that.
Okay, it's about changing the country and realizing we all have to be united.
Okay, and like these things that divide us, whether that's being a Democrat, whether it's being a Republican, we're not playing that anymore.
I honestly think it needs to be more parliamentary, not in the system, but in like we need to have a bunch of different groups where people can actually pick and choose.
But okay, what do we actually want our government to look like?
Is it just going to be two different groups of people that pretend to hate each other but both stand up for Netanyahu?
Like, I would like to see some diversity of political thought.
I would rather support people and their mission and their ideology for making the country better rather than some party they have to sign up for for like political donations.
And so, like, you know, like Rex coming back to the mic is a clear representation.
This stuff matters to him too.
You know, he's gassed, but he needs to throw his other two cents because these are the things that.
This is the only thing you can do right now is speak out about it.
This is a real care.
And I think I realized that you guys care too.
And one of the things that I look at when I do all of this is, you know, what am I going to do with what I'm trying to do in terms of like gathering influence?
I thought about it a lot of people when they want to be like famous on social media or they want to like make a bunch of money, they're like, I want the cool car, I want the Lambo, I want the flashy things.
If you were to ask me years ago when I was just kind of starting out and thinking about it, I selfishly had those ideas when I started my own shop.
I'm like, oh, this is a way for me to like make money and do something.
And then, you know, as you grow up, you gain a little bit more knowledge.
You realize, well, if you've got resources and you have the ability to impact some sort of change, then you almost do have a duty to do the right thing for the people who do not have that or who may not be brave enough to actually step out.
And that's why, like, I remember Rex talking about this earlier.
He said, Fuentes said, Don't start a show.
Do not do this.
This is not something that you want to do.
It's super hard.
And Rex was like, Hold on, hold on.
No, you should be able to do that.
And everyone should, because every single person that you see on the internet today started out that way because they took the leap, they took the test of time to actually go out and speak on something that they were passionate about.
I see Nimrod Pod.
He's out there grinding.
He's out there trying to get candidates.
He's out there trying to push his show.
However, they.
However, you want to put your voice out there, I encourage everybody if you want to start a show, it is hard work.
But if you get through all the noise, you get through, like we had like 30 people watching us at the beginning of this.
I don't know who it was, original 30 people, but it was small.
Okay.
But knowing that your voice is going out there into the void and you don't know if anyone's listening, it takes time.
It takes a lot of time and a lot of patience.
And that is my mission.
After I watched that video that we watched earlier today, it clicked for me.
I say, I got to do something.
I don't care if it takes me 10 years.
I don't care if it takes me 15 years.
I don't care if it takes me 20 years.
And so you're going to see if I gain any power, any influence, I'm going to be trying to undo the system.
And they might kill me for it.
That's what they do to every single person who tries to push back against the system and they try to put enough fear.
But strength in numbers, and I'm going to find people who are aligned with my mission, our mission here on the gray area to get away from this.
Stupid system that does not serve the average person.
So it's not about MAGA.
It's not about the woke left transgender shit.
Like it is none of that.
We just bare minimum essentials and that's what we're focused on.
So I appreciate you guys staying tuned, sticking with me.
I just wanted to spend a little bit more time.
Oh, Wes has the newsletter that's up.
This isn't me trying to like pitch you guys.
Wes has it up.
I'll show you guys this newsletter real quick.
You do not have to, but if you want to support, this is one of the things that I did because I wanted to contribute back.
The things that I just spoke about were real for me.
Okay.
I wanted to find a way that I could deliver information to you guys in a nonpartisan way that you guys could spend time reading something, educating yourself when I'm not doing the deep dives.
Okay.
Because I'm only on twice a week.
Sometimes it gets canceled because we're doing something, but this is the way that you stay up to date every single week.
I'm going to try to start getting contributors for this, but this is the gray area files.
This is a newsletter for less than a cup of coffee a week.