California Wildfires, Gulf of America, Zuckerberg Kills Meta Fact-Checking | PBD Podcast | Ep. 530
Patrick Bet-David, Tom Ellsworth, Vincent Oshana, and Adam Sosnick cover Donald Trump's plan to re-name the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, Mark Zuckerberg ends Meta's fact-checking, LA county is on fire as California wildfires rage, and Joe Biden has BIG news!
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TIME STAMPS:
00:00 - Show intro
00:29 - PBD previews topics on the podcast.
05:06 - 👕2025 INAUGURAL MERCH: https://bit.ly/4fSrX6W
08:49 - California wildfires destroy Malibu.
55:35 - Sunny Hostin's husband indicted.
1:01:43 - Trump to rename Gulf of Mexico.
1:11:51 - Trump Jr. goes to Greenland.
1:22:56 - Zuckerberg ends Meta's fact-changing.
1:33:28 - Trump and Obama at Carter's funeral.
1:47:15 - Kevin O'Leary to buy TikTok.
2:05:30 - Gen Z scared to take phone calls.
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Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller “Your Next Five Moves” (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
All right, so episode 530, folks, the people of California.
If you're in communication with many of my friends, family, devastating scene, everything that's going on there.
Our prayers goes out to you.
We have an announcement today to make that specific to the people of California.
We want to help hang tight for that.
Obviously, we have a lot of things to talk about with California, the videos.
We've seen him, James Woods, Whitney Cummings.
We've seen a bunch of different things that's going on.
The mayor and so many people menected me.
My pastor texted me.
I texted him, checking on him, texted me last night, late, 2 o'clock in the morning, this morning, giving me an update on what's going on.
I want to give you an update on what's going on with how many people are being affected by the homeowners insurance of California.
Like, that's the real issue that people are not even talking about, which is maybe the scariest thing of what's happening.
Then Adam Corolla said something about permits that I think is the best thing.
I think that's going to be the biggest civil war in California coming very soon.
It's going to be very nasty for them the next few years.
But in the meantime, five, Rob, is the number updated?
As of this morning, it's still five dead, 2,000 buildings destroyed.
Five dead, 2,000 buildings destroyed.
Malibu looks like a movie.
It doesn't even make any sense when you watch these videos.
And zero containment in Malibu.
And zero containment.
And water was apparently down for God knows how many hours based on what a lot of people are talking about.
But we'll get to that.
A few stories to go through.
Obviously, we'll address the fire.
We will talk about the Greenland conversation with what the president's doing, his son going over there to Greenland with Charlie Kirk, and then what Federant said about Greenland, comparing it to Louisiana, which was very interesting.
And then President Trump came out and called the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
And the president of Mexico responded.
You have to hear what she said.
And then we can obviously have a good conversation about it.
Trump warns Hamas all hell will break out if it doesn't release hostages before he takes office.
So he's letting them know directly for them to respond or else.
Tattoo artist sparks outrage for inking a nine-year-old girl who asked for a portrait of Trump but got an American flag instead.
A nine-year-old girl got a tattoo.
I don't know how you feel about it.
I want your thoughts.
I want us to talk about this.
We will hear you, obviously.
Harris announced a ruling removing billions in medical debt from credit reports.
That's very important.
Tom said something about this yesterday.
That is a very, very good point.
We'll address that here in a minute.
Meta ends fact-checking program.
Zuck vows to restore free expression on Facebook, Instagram.
Vinny's got some thoughts on that.
Kevin O'Leary says he's nearing a deal to buy TikTok as banned looms.
And here's what we know.
That's from Forbes.
We'll talk about that.
Sonny Hostin has had a rough last couple months.
He's had to read legal letters, apologies.
I mean, she just, and she looks so polished, a lawyer, all this stuff.
However, Sonny Hostin's husband accused of committing federal insurance fraud in lawsuit.
Okay.
So we'll address that.
Sean, Diddy's a little bit pissed off, folks.
It's very important you know about this.
He's throwing tantrums over attention cues, accused United Healthcare CEO killer Luigi Mangioni receives behind bars on his shit list.
Okay, meaning he's upset that he has a better place than Diddy does on U.S. corporate bankruptcy said 14-year high as interest rates take toll.
California fast food restaurant warned that hiking $20 minimum wage will cripple them.
By the way, this isn't people just complaining.
They're actually finally coming together and saying, this is not going to work.
What do you want to do?
We have to raise the prices.
And it's like 600 and something, something restaurants that came together.
We'll talk about that here in a minute.
Phone call make Gen Z's nervous.
That's a real story.
New York Post.
Oh, yeah.
A new college course aims to help them conquer their fears.
It sounds like a joke.
It sounds like a joke.
I mean, I understand if you said the average salesperson is afraid of making phone calls.
Got it.
Gen Z getting phone calls, they're afraid.
If we have time, we may talk about it.
This next one here, this is Adam's favorite story.
Can 35 roommates cure loneliness?
And whole living housing firm thinks so.
Okay, and this is WAPO store.
If we get a chance at the end, we'll talk about it.
Then there's a bunch of other stories here that we got that we'll get into that is on the addendum: Denise Richards and her husband, Mark Zuckerberg's evolution of politics, what Gavin Newsom, what Trump called Gavin Newsome, the reaction back and forth.
Obviously, we'll go through that and a few other stories that we got here.
Having said that, let me tell you why today's a special day and what we just decided 30 minutes ago to do.
This morning, we're announcing limited edition hats because inauguration is on the 20th.
Not this Monday, but it's the following Monday.
These hats are hats that we've been working on having for a while.
It's the 4547 Future Looks Bright hat with the American flag on the side and the VT logo on the side.
And it's numbered.
And if you look at the inside, it's the limited edition ones are the only ones where you see Future Looks Bright everywhere on the inside.
And they're numbered one out of 50.
These are going to go for 99, 99.
These will go in no time and they'll sell on eBay.
We see them all the time for $500,000, $2,000.
Some of them sell for $3,000.
This will go for in no time, the $250,000, numbered in no time.
Okay.
Now, there's matching shirts that come with this.
Okay.
With $45.47, Future Looks Bright with the American flag on the back with Valutaine.
Rob has the one with white $45.47 on it.
If the camera can zoom in on Rob, okay.
Vinny's got the one with the gray.
If you can put this over there, Vinny, with you.
And he's got the sweater.
So we have the shirt, the sweater, and then there's additional, these are the numbered ones.
Then we have these additional ones that's 45.47, red, white, and blue.
This is not a lot of supply.
But here's what we're doing.
The shirts are also here with it.
For those of you that are proud that this victory took place and you supported him and you believe the future looks bright and you like all these challenges he's putting out there with folks reacting saying, wait a minute, we should call Gulf of Mexico Gulf America.
Yes.
What's going on with Greenland?
All these policies coming up with, if you support him and you support Value Tayment, you may want to go get the skier.
And anything you purchase today, we just made this announcement 30 minutes ago.
I had a call with our VP Finance, Tom and Chris from March.
100% of all purchase.
Guys, we're going to have probably one of the biggest, it's going to be the biggest day of 2025 in purchases today because we've been working to launch these hats in a long time, the 4547.
100% of purchases made all day today, 24 hours, will go to families that are being affected by the fires in California.
By the way, we're not giving the money to a charity and then, hey, here, do whatever you want to do with it.
We want families that are being affected.
You're saying, somebody, your mother lost that.
I'm getting stories that are coming in right now.
It just doesn't make sense what's going on there.
The worst fire they've had ever in Southern California.
People are being decimated, devastated.
Stories, people that build houses that have been living there for 20, 30, 40 years, generationally living in Palestinians are being affected by it.
But I'm talking average day-to-day families, folks that are affected, send us a story, Manect, whatever other way you want to get a hold of us.
If there's stories that we want directly hearing those testimonies, whatever we sell today, 100% is going to families affected by the fire in California.
So if you watch Value Tim, you watch PBD podcasts, you're a fan of this, whatever you purchase, you're not just purchasing that.
And I'm not saying profits, 100% of revenue today from merch, not just profit.
That could be a very big number.
100% of revenue is going to go to families in California.
Support the cause.
I lived there for 24 years of my life.
Everywhere I've lived, I've never lived in a place more than California.
It's a very special place for me.
I have some of my favorite people in the world that live over there.
Some of my favorite memories over there.
I got married in California too.
My boys weren't born in California.
Tom and I met in California.
My wife and I met in California.
Relationships, all of those memories.
I want to make sure we do our part to support those in California.
Thank you for your support.
Having said that, let's get right into the story, Rob, with California.
So story comes out, and we talked about this, I think, maybe last week, if not this Tuesday.
Strong winds in California, possibly deadly winds.
Rob, if you can pull this up, story comes out saying deadly winds in California.
I'm reading it, deadly winds in California.
What do you mean deadly winds in California?
This was about a week ago when it said deadly winds in California.
The story was all over the place.
This is not from two hours ago.
This is from a week ago when the story came out.
It's fine, Rob.
So if story comes out about a week ago, deadly winds, four or five days ago, deadly winds, deadly winds, deadly winds.
I'm like, okay, this is not good because anytime you hear deadly winds and you combine it with fire, then you have a messy situation that's going on.
And then you start seeing the videos.
And then one by one by one, you're like, wait a minute, this is getting worse and worse and worse.
And then you hear stories about California.
Where's the story, Rob, that says the worst in 16 years?
There's one story that says the worst, not in 16 years.
On the addendum.
Yeah, there is one story that says specifically, let me see this one here.
Are all the fire stories in the future?
It's on the first page of the addendum, Pat.
Yeah, it says the worst.
Okay, so.
Page four, Pacific Palisades fire burns into the history books.
Pacific Palisades fire burns into the history books as most destructive blaze in the history of LA with 16,000 acres reduced to rubble.
Okay.
Rob, if you can find a clip to show what's going on, there's a ton of them to rubble.
Okay.
So Pacific Palisades fired fuel by 100 mile per hour.
Santa Ana winds became LA's most destructive blaze with within 36 hours scorching nearly 16,000 acres and destroying over 1,100 structures.
Entire neighborhoods, including celebrity homes and landmark-like palisades, high school and Sunset Boulevard were reduced to ash.
Heroin footage showing entire blocks reduced to a little more than building foundations resembling something out of a post-apocalyptic movie.
The Inferno displaced 70,000 residents, including celebrities like Anthony Hopkins, Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Mandy Moore, whose homes were obliterated.
Paris Hilton Express being heartbroken beyond words as her Malibu vacation home burned.
Ben Affleck sought refuge at Jennifer Garner's house while Adam Brody and Leighton Meester, $6.5 million property was destroyed.
Chet Hanks mourned the loss of his childhood home, urging pray for the Palisades.
And by the way, look at that video right there.
That doesn't make any sense.
It looks like literal Armageddon.
No, that doesn't make it.
That looks like a movie.
That's insane.
Okay.
That looks like a movie.
For people who've never seen it, this is what a California wildfire looks like with the dry, with the wind.
You know, if you've ever started a campfire and you blow on a few embers to start a campfire, 70 mile an hour winds and dry, dry January, that's what you get.
Rob, can you go on some of the streets of Malibu showing what that was looked like?
And maybe even if you can go to James Woods' clip, which I posted on Twitter.
If you want to go to, just go to my personal account and you'll see James Woods.
Yeah, if you go there, if you go up, you'll see, I think there's a second one right there on CNN, by the way.
Okay.
He's speaking.
And I'll just, again, James Woods, one of the greatest actors of all time, incredible work that he's done.
Somebody that's been living in California his entire life, loves the state.
Watch this clip here.
Go for it.
I'm 77 years old, man.
I can't walk up these hills.
It's like Mount Everest here.
It's like, you know, pretty steep.
So, you know, it's just you.
I posted this on Expo, but Sarah was on with her eight-year-old niece last night.
She came out.
I'm sorry.
She's crying.
One day you're swimming in the pool.
And the next day, it's all gone.
But she came out with her little Yeti piggy bank for us to rebuild our house.
Oh my gosh.
James Woods, we all hope that you will be able to rebuild your house, maybe starting with that little Yeti piggy bank.
And we're just glad that you're okay.
He's in a hotel bus.
Yeah, no, I mean, this is real and it's raw.
You don't need you are.
You know what?
Strength is not measured by whether you hold in crying or not.
Strength is what you are doing now and helping your neighbors and shining a light on the great, amazing work of all those firefighters and emergency crews out there.
You have so much strength and we appreciate you coming on to reflect what so many others just like you are experiencing in that raw emotion right now.
We wish you the best, you and your wife, as you rebuild your lives.
So many people are doing that right now and trying to process what's going on.
So, James, and also keep us posted on your 94-year-old neighbor and everything going there.
We're going to continue to talk and we wish you the best.
He's okay because he's okay.
They found him.
He's in the hospital.
He's okay.
I just worry, if anybody knows where Robert Trinketer is, you know, call me and let me know.
All right.
That's an important message.
And also, there's this app that's really important.
So, Tom, you're a California neighbor.
You lived there.
I don't know what part of your life, but I think majority of your life you lived in California out there.
Yeah, you were born out there.
So when you see this yourself, I mean, obviously, we're going to go through a bunch of different angles of what's going on here.
How do you process this?
I kind of feel like James Wood a little bit.
I remember getting my MBA at Pepperdine and I would go down to PCH, and that's Lost Virginies and PCH, and then drive south through Malibu.
And I saw on the cover of the Wall Street Journal a fire chief narrating for the Wall Street Journal Reporter about what had happened.
And there was this place called Alice's Restaurant.
It was out on the pier.
It changed hands over time, but everybody knew where that was, the Malibu Pier, Alice's, and then Moonshadows.
And I was just looking at all that.
And I said, wait, I remember that.
I remember that.
I remember that whole strip of houses there.
I remember this.
And then the gap, then you get down to downtown Malibu where the city hall is.
And then you go further and you're all the way down to Gladstone's and Sunset.
And I saw this and it was driving.
It's like, I've driven that so many times and it's all gone.
You could see from PCH to the ocean for a mile and a half.
And there's just what's left of phone poles, chimneys.
And that was shocking.
Then I saw, you know, you have the Alphabet streets and you have the that are up in Palisades.
I remember going up there to see friends and stuff that had done well and bought a place up there.
And I'm looking at these streets and I'm like, I can't believe this.
This is all gone.
Everything above the Brentwood curve, you know, you would take sunset down and there's like this big curve through Brentwood.
And then I look up there and I'm like, wow.
And then you start to see things about hydrants running dry.
And then you would see things about the insurance, these side stories that were on there.
I would take my eyes last night off of the fire stories for a little bit and look at these, you know, the stories that were accompanying.
And then seeing Karen Bass was coming back and not talking to the media and seeing that the budget cuts that had helped come for the fire department.
And I started to get really angry.
And I see five people died.
And I said, that's tragedy.
But oh my gosh, I'm so glad neighbors are getting people out.
And that number is not higher.
When you see all that up there and you see how the wildfires have affected San Diego and the telegraph fire and all the things that have happened over the last six years, I was just, I was really overcome because I remember all of it.
And then I see, and that's just Malibu, and that's what I know about, but the Altadena fire above Pasadena is actually, I think, going to be worse in terms of number of homes.
Can you pull up a map, Rob, of what areas are affected?
That was the one, by the way, but can you pull up the map about areas affected by fire in California?
There's a map that actually shows it if you got it.
They keep going.
That's the right to stop.
Look at that Malibu fire.
Now look above Pasadena.
That's the Eaton fire, but that's Altadena, but Pasadena.
Those neighborhoods up there, Pat, the houses are close together.
They're not giant, you know, multi-million dollar things that you have in Malibu.
Those houses are closing together.
So the number of residents, look at the size of that.
That's three times the size of the city of Pasadena up there.
It's horrifying.
And the 101.
Granada Hills, by the way, Tom, Granada Hills is being evacuated.
Correct.
People who live in Granada Hills are being evacuated.
People who live in Glendale, Pasadena, they're like, you know, messaging me saying, Pat, we don't know what's going to be happening right now.
Some people are being asked to leave and go stay at hotels.
I mean, this is not just one fire.
This is multiple going at the same time because of the strong winds that they're experiencing.
And Rob, if you can go a little bit lower to expand on the map of Palisades.
So look at how wide that is.
Santa Monica's right there to the right.
I don't know how much of it's gone to Santa Monica.
They're saying the wind is going to slow down by Friday, which is still a long time.
That's a long time.
And it's zero contained in Malibu.
They can't stop it.
It's not stopping.
And my brother, my mother, my sister, the whole family, they're like sagas and they're warning because the winds aren't stopping and that the power lines, it takes one cigarette, one cigarette onto the thing, one power line causing electric fire.
It's not good.
It's really not good.
They're all packed, ready to go.
There's a very famous street called Topanga Canyon, and you can see it right there on the left side of the map.
It goes all the way down, and then you can see it at the top.
It wiggles and it goes out to the Woodland Hills, West Hills, Calabasas area.
This fire has crossed Topanga Canyon.
And if you go in that area, Malibu, the next stop there is Pepperdine University and literally the downtown Malibu, core Malibu.
This is so horrifying.
So that's this.
That's this that's taking place.
Now, meanwhile, the governor of the state is a guy named Governor Newsom.
We speak about him a lot, right?
Because of the state of California.
Trump just tweeted out, I think, nine hours ago, 10 hours ago on Truth Social, asking him to step down, okay?
Good.
Asking him to step down.
I believe if you just go up on Twitter and you type, you should see it.
There's a tweet all over the place saying that he may be needing to step down.
Is that the one?
Yeah, there you go.
One of the best and most beautiful parts of the United States in America is burning down to the ground.
It's ashes and Gavin Newsom should resign.
This is all his fault.
Resign.
By the way, then you have Zach Levi, the actor from Shazam, who was the actor playing Kurt Warner.
He's been in a lot of different movies, phenomenal actor.
He goes out there and he says, Do we not do an investigation on this?
Don't we find out and see what's going on with this here?
I mean, some people have responsibilities on what's going on here.
What happened here?
How do you get here?
Then there's a clip of Trump from 2018 standing right next to Newsom, telling him of how this in Denmark, they're able to prevent this from happening.
Rob, if you can play this clip, go for it.
Cleaned out and protected.
You've got to take care of the floors.
You know, the floors of the forest, very important.
You look at other countries where they do it differently, and it's a whole different story.
It was with the president of Finland and he said, we have much different.
We're a forest nation.
He called it a forest nation.
And they spend a lot of time on rinking and cleaning and doing things.
And they don't have any problem.
And when it is, it's a very small problem.
So I know everybody's looking at that to that end.
And it's going to work out.
So that's how many years ago, Rob?
That's, I think, from 2018, if I'm not mistaken.
Okay.
Then bring the clip from yesterday, Newsom in Tears.
I retweeted it.
So if you just, if you have it, great.
It's easier.
Did he actually cry back?
Oh, you should see this here.
If this is the clip on Anderson Cooper, Rob.
Yep.
Okay, go ahead and play this clip.
We're in the public safety phase.
I hate to even ask this question, but the president-elect chose to attack you, blame you for that.
One can't even respond to it.
I mean, it's people are literally fleeing.
People have lost their lives.
Why though?
Kids lost their schools.
Families completely torn asunder.
Churches burned down.
This guy wanted to politicize it.
I have a lot of thoughts, and I know what I want to say.
I won't.
I stood next to a president of the United States of America today, and I was proud to be with Joe Biden.
And he had the backs of every single person in this community.
He didn't play politics, didn't try to divide any of us.
So if you can pull up the clip of Trump, what he said about Newsom yesterday while he's being asked about it, I don't know if you have that or not, but I'll find it.
Here's the point.
While this is taking place, this is where the part about DeSantis that I love, he may not be the best marketer.
He may not be a guy that even likes to be around a lot of people where he just wants to be with his family and his kids.
He doesn't want to be out there doing the shaking hands and all that other stuff.
But oh my God, that guy gets shit done, right?
DeSantis.
So DeSantis' team offers help to California.
How can we help?
But I want you to think about this, folks.
So this is the part that irritates me the most with Newsom.
So can you tell me what state in America is known for having the best startup founders?
What state, Tom, in America has the most startup founders that build the most billion-dollar companies that's a startup?
Silicon Valley.
And it's not even close.
Not even close.
You have a little bit in Austin, a little bit of Boston, a little bit of New York.
What do you mean?
What level of thinking do you need for that?
Like, what's the one skill set you need to build a billion-dollar company?
You sit in a room with two or three people and you say, here's a problem.
How are they fixing it today?
How can we do it better?
Vision, creativity, innovation.
Period.
Okay.
And problem-solving skills.
Guess what?
By the way, the one thing you have to give credit to Trump, I was thinking about this last night.
The job of a president is to bring around people who are smarter than you in areas that you don't have topics on.
Who did Trump bring around him?
Vivek, Musk, Tulsi, RFK, all these people that maybe in certain areas they know more than you do, right?
That is the reflection of a great leader.
Newsome has access to all these people.
Who's smarter than you sitting around trying to fix this problem right now in the state of California?
Who?
Who have you brought in?
FYI.
Do you know, Rob, if you Google the following thing here, Google what percentage of fires in California are man-made?
And watch what PBS says.
What percentage of fires in California are man-made?
Look at the number all the way at the top, Rob.
Just go all the way to the top.
Zoom in.
Look at that right there.
Calmatters.org.
Whether purposeful, reckless, or simply careless, people are responsible for 95% of California's wildfires.
That's from six months ago.
Let me explain to you what this means.
A hurricane.
Is it man-made?
No, it's called a natural disaster.
So Florida deals with hurricanes that are not man-made.
For those of you guys that go into some of the thinking, stay with me here.
But it's a natural disaster comes and hits it and boom, twice.
Tampa, Tampa got hit twice in a span of a week and a half, two weeks, right?
DeSantis can't sit there and be like, well, it's laws we got to create against the water and Mother Nature, stop it.
Stop it, Mother Nature.
But Newsom, 95% of these fires are man-made.
95%.
How much of this can be prevented?
You're on the flipping coast.
You're on the coast.
What do you have access to?
Smartest brains.
You have the water.
And you hear a video that they're talking about the fish, these small little fish that they want to save.
Do you have that video there that they're so proud to save the fish and they're using the water that it's not that one, Rob, because that's one with Rogan from two months ago.
There's one with that he's talking about a fish and he's standing right next to it.
You just put Newsome Fish California, Newsome Fish, California, and he's standing with a group of people and they're celebrating.
I think it's that one right there to your left.
Is that just a picture or video?
I'll find the video.
So while this has happened, while all this stuff is going on, this is one part of it, right?
With Newsome.
Adam, you're seeing a story like this in California.
You've seen the stuff with, you know, Florida getting hit by hurricanes.
Florida's getting hit by all this stuff.
And then you see California fires, Newsome.
How do you process this?
I'm just so grateful that I am born and raised and live in Florida at this point.
I mean, leadership matters.
And policies, as you always say, PBD, bad policies have consequences.
You've lived in California 24 years?
24 years.
Vinny, you lived there a decade?
15 years.
Okay, Tom?
I lived there over 40 years.
Okay, 40 years.
All right.
I used to go to LA every summer.
I remember the first time I went back to LA during COVID with you, 2020, people were coming up.
Don't walk around in Venice.
Don't even do it.
Why?
What's wrong?
Homeless, it's crime.
Everything.
What?
Okay.
Didn't we go to Venice that?
We did.
We did.
And then we went to go see our friend Tom out there as well, different Tom.
But I used to go to LA every summer.
It's so funny.
The last time that I was there, not with you, 2022, my buddy, born and raised in Miami, Bhakti, he said, I'm living in California.
I don't like the city life.
I moved to this cool little area called Topanga Canyon.
Yep.
And he's like, you listen, there's no Uber up here, so best of luck.
I'm like, all right, let me figure it out.
I go up to his place.
He's living in a yurt.
Do you know what a yurt is?
No.
Google that.
It's like, you'll see, he's just, he's just kind of like this dude that is very artistic, wants to be away from the world.
There it is right there.
Living in something like this, just sort of like lives on his own.
Where else do you have?
Is it artistic, dude?
He's doing his thing.
I text him, dude, how are you?
He's like, oh, my entire life burnt down and everything's gone.
And every single one of my neighbors, and we went through the list of all the celebrities' houses that burnt down.
Whether it was James Woods and whatever, you know, Whitney Cummings, the list goes on.
For every one celebrity, there's a thousand people that are now homeless.
Speaking of homeless, how much money did Gavin Newsom unaccount for?
$24 billion.
$24 billion gone.
And apparently, the mayor of L.A., Karen Bass, who apparently was in Ghana doing what?
Doing what?
Doing what?
Apparently, she cut the firefighting budget.
This beautiful person right here.
Watch what she says here.
It's incredible.
One of the best speeches I've ever heard in my life.
She asked the universe.
She cut the L.A. budget, the fire budget by 20 million bucks.
Almost 20 million bucks.
And then the L.A. fire chief just last week.
Not to interrupt you.
I'm sorry to interrupt you on a serious subject.
That was just last week.
Last week.
Amazing.
Play this clip, Rob.
Yeah, imagine, look what she has to say here.
Incredible.
Inspirational.
Do you regret cutting the fire department budget by millions of dollars, Madam Mayor?
Look at her go.
That's your leadership.
That's your leadership, LA.
Have you absolutely nothing to say to the citizens today?
Maybe she's a jealous from her confident.
Are you considering your position?
What do you have to say to your constituency?
What do you have to say to your people?
Madam Mayor, have you absolutely nothing to say to me?
Listen what she says here.
This one's a good one right here.
Watch.
Well, look, she just got off the airplane, which is wild.
I don't know how he's in there.
Right, Tom?
This is her apology.
Shout out to him for doing his job.
Oh, I love it.
She doesn't even know what to do.
Do you think I should have funding analog when this was unfortunately?
I can't hear you.
You guys are talking.
Back up a little bit.
I can't hear what he's asking.
He's just like, what the hell do you have to do?
Go back a little bit.
Not that long.
Go a little bit further down, further down, further down.
When she's asking about Ghana, right there.
Okay, play this, and then we'll stop it.
Go ahead.
No apology for them.
Do you think you should have been visiting Ghana while this was unfolding back home?
You can pause it right there.
Let me ask you, did she leave after the fire?
No, she was there.
She was in Ghana.
She flew back.
No, no, that's what I'm asking.
What I'm asking is, was she, fire happened, then she left?
Or then she flew back because of the fires.
Correct.
But do you know why?
What is she doing about something?
Yeah, go ahead, Rob.
She left town on Saturday.
So just five days ago, six days ago.
I want to see speeches today that the fire was going to be happening.
When did we know warnings about things that's going to happen in LA?
Look up Santa Ana Wind warnings.
By the way, while you're looking this up, did you see who the LA fire chief is?
Yeah, LGBTQ.
That's all she is.
I know we throw around, oh, it's a DEIR or just a DIR.
Literally, this person right here, Crowley, she became the first lesbian woman.
Did you see what Alex Jones had to say?
I don't care if you can eat.
Do your job.
She took time out of her already busy schedule to tell us about her vision for the department's future, one that includes a three-year strategic plan to increase diversity.
People ask me, well, what number are you looking for?
I said, I'm not looking for a number.
It's never enough.
Out of 3,300 city firefighters, only 115 are women right now.
She's already looking at ways to change that.
She's quick to point out that doing so has a greater purpose, attracting the best and brightest for the job.
They feel included, they feel valued, and they feel part of a cohesive team.
Which is a lot of people.
Which is way more important than saving lives.
And here's my thing.
And preventing fires.
You're the mayor of LA.
You are in Ghana to attend the inauguration of President John Dromani Mahama.
What?
Why?
Why are Californians paying for that?
Like, unbelievable.
Whenever Gavin Newsom or any of these Democrat leftists say, don't politicize it, that's code for don't criticize our terrible decisions, okay?
Let's talk about California.
Cal Fire, the state's firefighting agency, has spent over $30 billion.
It's funny that we just throw that word around now.
$30 billion on battling and preventing wildfires since 2017.
That's about $750 per California resident.
Their budget has gone 72% in that time.
Yet, despite all that spending, what do we have to show for it?
A mismanagement with water and the poor results.
And then Gavin Newsom's handling of wildfire.
Rob, I sent you this article.
In 2021, Cap Radio exposed that Gavin Newsom, look at the headline of it, Rob, misled the public about his efforts, claiming that the project covered 90,000 acres.
The state's own data showed that it was only 11,399.
And where's the rest of that money going?
His parties are where they should be, okay?
Billions to fight homelessness, like Adam said, and it's disappeared into a black hole.
And then he's busy campaigning for Joe Biden.
He's doing like diversity of no IDs, illegals.
And then if you think about it, Californians had a chance.
You guys had a chance to get his ass out with Larry Elder.
Okay.
And it's, I'm curious to ask you guys.
And it wasn't even close.
No, like, what is it going to take?
Oh, it's coming.
It's because now it's affecting it's in the hills of like, and I'm, God, my heart goes out to everybody, but nobody cares when it's the regular person, Pat.
Nobody cares when it's homeless.
Now it's starting to hit the people that are up in the hills.
When do you think that that's going to happen?
When you say it's coming, I want to know what you mean by that.
Please.
Yeah, I got you.
So, and Tom, I'm sure you got a lot of stuff to say about this as well.
Before I give you my answer, Rob, can you pull up that one story about what Gavin Newsom does with the water and the fish?
I want to finish this first before we go to the next segment that has to do probably for me on how change is coming to California, Rob.
Play the clip of Newsom talking about the fish.
You just showed me the video and text.
You have it somewhere around there.
If you can just find that clip and show it.
Yeah, it should be a summary right there.
Is this the one about fish and what they did?
Yes, the dams.
Okay, the dams.
That's right.
Watch this here.
Go for it.
Governor Kate Brown, Governor Gavin Newsome, U.S. Secretary of Interior Deb Holland, and tribal leaders all coming together to celebrate the world's largest dam removal along the Klamath River Thursday.
The groups meeting at Iron Gate Fish Hatchery in Hornbrook.
Last month, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued the final approval of the historic plan to remove four dams on the Klamath River in California and Oregon.
The decision is a culmination of years of work on the project's licensee, Pacific Corps, Pacific Power's parent company, on the parts of Oregon and California and several state and local agencies, along with several tribes.
The folks out there that exercised your leadership every single day, that dialectic that we had throughout this process, where you expected and demanded more.
You expressed that at times.
Sometimes it was uncomfortable.
Other times it was absolutely justifiable.
This is in the clip.
It's the other clip you had at the top.
That's the fish, Rob.
The fish.
Yeah, go for it.
Watch this.
Largest damn removal project in U.S. history, and one of the most significant, if not the most significant, water restoration projects, bringing back salmon and steelhead into this basic.
This project could not have happened without partnerships with some nations.
And the North.
Watch for it.
Pause it and go to the article that was sent about the 55%, 50% of state water, 55% of state water was just sent your way.
Is this someone?
Okay, so watch this.
Gavin Newsom still agitating for urban water restrictions while ignoring 50% of state's water sent to the Pacific.
California reservoirs were designed to provide a steady five-year supply for all users and were filled up to the top in June of 2019.
He said, nah, we have to take care of fish.
That's what we have to do.
And by the way, some of the rumors came out about the fact that water wasn't there, not enough firefighters to fight the fires.
Caruso said it, Pat.
Caruso was on, called in, and goes, people, the fire department was showing up and they're like, there's no water in the there's no water in the fire hydrants.
Like, what the hell are we talking about?
And where's the accountability going to be?
What's his name was right?
The actor's right.
Because we're going to jump on to the next disaster whenever it comes.
Who's going to hold this guy accountable?
Is this the one that Caruso says there's no water?
Is this the Robbie?
Yeah, there's a great clip because they go, I'm going to find it, but they go from that phone call to the, and the news reporter says, well, we haven't seen any evidence that there is a lack of access to water.
Then they go straight to a field reporter who goes, they have no water.
There's no water.
Rob, I don't know if you can just do this real quick.
Pull up a map of the United States, if you don't mind.
Rob, hang on, let's while you're doing that.
I can only do one thing.
Yeah, let me assume that's a good question.
I'm sorry.
Find the Caruso clip if you can.
I mean, I see stuff here.
Is this a clip gives perspective to people in America who don't know about this stuff?
Excuse me.
Former LA mayoral candidate and real estate developer Rick Caruso criticizing the city's response to the windstorm and fires.
He says officials should have been more prepared.
The real issue to me is twofold.
We've had decades to go remove the brush in these hills that spread so quickly.
And the second is you got to have water.
And my understanding is the reservoir was not refilled in time and in a timely manner to keep the hydrants going.
So that's a failure, whether on DWP's part or another city agency.
But this is basic stuff.
This isn't high science here.
And it's all about leadership and management that we're seeing a failure of.
And all of these residents are paying the ultimate price for that.
So, okay.
Despite what you have heard from Caruso, no firefighters have told us that they are running out of water.
And let's go out to Gigi Graciette.
She is live in Pacific Palisades.
I know your signal's not the best, but Gigi, what can you tell us?
Well, firefighters have told me they have no water on this block.
And you may be able to make out the emberstorm that we're in the middle of right now.
Oh my God.
This house is going to be a total.
This is when you try to.
What a way to go that she says no firefighters have told us this.
Well, let's talk about what was that?
What was that reporter doing?
That reporter was politicizing the point.
Who is she trying to protect?
Protecting leadership.
There are two things.
There's just two things in California that are issues here.
Number one is power management.
And number two is forestry management.
Forestry management, cutting the lines.
You fly through air, you fly on an airplane and you see those power lines up there with those large like look like robots standing that are carrying power lines and you look at the way that there would be almost like little valleys cut the that is done intentionally to provide fire breaks and to provide access there the second thing that rick cruso brings up is right is there is proper brush management and with all of the loss in california and the budget Budget that's been used for everything but, right?
We're going to, you, you, you lose it.
Now, let's go.
Water.
Here's the impact.
What you didn't hear there, let me translate it for you, America.
When it snows in the mountains and it melts in the spring, all the water comes down, becomes a creek, becomes a river.
And where does the river ultimately go?
Out to the ocean.
And long ago, they said, maybe we should put reservoirs here because that's fresh water.
And we could collect the water so it doesn't just go into the ocean and collect it in reservoirs.
And then we could pump it for people.
We could use it for fire.
We could use it for a lot of things because there's a lot of people moving to California, a lot of people here.
That's what that Governor Newsom, in the name of some fish, said, we're removing these dams.
And when they remove the dams, the dams create the reservoirs.
So now go to LA and there's management of dams and reservoirs weren't refilled.
And if you fly into LA or Burbank, you look down and you'll see these great big, what are those lakes on top of the mountains?
Those are reservoirs there to feed and protect the people of Los Angeles.
And it is irresponsible management.
I take you back to the election.
Forget that it was about Trump.
Go look at the red versus blue.
It was bigger than just Trump.
The people of California are screaming for leadership.
Orange County went red.
Outside San Diego went red.
California got this huge squeeze in red.
If that election was held today, this isn't about whether Trump carries California or not.
It's about whether the people are screaming for new leadership or not.
And they had an opportunity under Larry Elder, but it just didn't get done.
But now we've had two more seasons of wildfire and this.
And you see that?
That red there, forget what it stands for.
Just say from 2020, 2024, people are getting increasingly unhappy and increasingly discontent with leadership.
They want something different.
Here's what's going to happen, though, Tom.
And, you know, all these clips you watch in your time like California, right?
I get a, you know, we start making videos about homeowners insurance in Florida and in California.
We've been making these homeowners insurance videos for the last few years.
Okay.
Many of you guys have seen it.
I just made one four months ago about the California homeowners insurance and what's going to be taking place, Rob.
Fair plan.
Yeah, it's called the California Insurance Time Bomb that I did from four months ago.
If you just go type in California Insurance Time Bomb, you'll see it that came up.
And just put Bed David.
Just put Bed David.
You'll see it come up.
Right there.
Zoom in a little bit, Rob.
That's how long ago?
Four months ago.
Okay.
And it explains what's about to happen with homeowners insurance in the state of California.
So watch this.
My pastor who married my wife and I, he runs a church, 20,000 members.
You met him.
We went to Universal Studios with him.
Love him.
Everybody who knows him loves him, right?
I'm checking on him and his family to make sure everything is right.
And he says, for 38 years, he's been paying homeowners insurance, always on time.
This is a responsible man, you know, solid guy, family guy, great guy.
One of the top five men that has influenced my life directly.
Okay.
And he says, just last week, just last week, this is before the fires, I got a notice last week that they are dropping my coverage.
Okay.
That they're dropping my coverage last week.
Now, I'm not going to give the insurance companies names.
All I'm telling you is, you know, there's a lot of names, State Farm, Farmers, Liberty.
There's a bunch of them that you can go through that are out there that are dropping it.
All state, it's all over the place, right?
That this is a real story that's going on.
Okay.
The question he asks, which is the question, you know, we ask on the video, is here's the following.
He says, he's not worried about himself.
He says, but what happens if after you are in your home and the rates get so high, you can't afford it anymore, does the loan company call the loan?
Do they repossess your house?
State farms stopped writing new policies for house insurance altogether in California a few years ago.
And that's a few years ago.
And now California's politicians are forcing insurance companies to insure houses in areas that are high risk.
And insurance companies are saying, no, why would I do it?
I'm leaving your state.
So here's where the problem is going to lie.
So imagine how many people lost their homeowners' insurance and then just this just happened.
How are you fixing a house?
Who has, and by the way, how much do you think these houses are in California?
Multi-million dollars.
But in California, you're not a multi-millionai.
It's not like the multi-millionaire people think.
It's like, oh, he's a, you know, what do you call it?
Woods.
James Woods can pay.
No, he can't.
And James Woods is an $8 million guy at 77 years old.
He's been acting for a long time and you lose the house.
And if you don't have insurance, what the hell are you doing?
And forget about you don't have insurance.
How long do you think?
This is the part that Adam Carolla broke it down, which was phenomenal the way he broke it down.
That's a six-minute video.
It's worth everybody watching.
We're not going to play the whole six minutes, but here's what he said.
He says, okay, what are you going to do when all of a sudden all of these Malibu people right there, he's saying that he's doing a podcast out of a Rob, if you can personally listen to it and go to the part where you're going to be able to do it.
You're coming up.
This is where he starts talking about people voting Democrat and how that's going to change in the future.
But I don't think that's the point.
No, that's not where I'm going.
Don't worry about it.
I'm just saying and, you know, it's fine.
So this is where he's going.
He says, what are you going to do when all of these rich people in the Palisades, in Malibu, in Pasadena?
Pasadena's got a lot of rich communities.
Pasadena's got $20, $30 million homes.
So what are you going to do when these guys, their house is burned down?
What is a rich person going to do?
You know what?
Go expedite the process of getting a permit.
Oh, really?
He says it's going to take, he says, the reason why Bill Maher finally flipped in California is because of a damn solar he wanted to put on his house that it took so long.
It's like, why the, it says we created a thousand-day countdown to see how long it's going to take for the solar to go out.
So finally, when he's talking to the other actress, what's the actress that was on just five weeks ago?
Jane Fonda.
You're not seeing the problem with all these permits?
So watch what happened.
One of the reasons why we left Oakland Park is we're trying to get a damn permit for a fence.
Two years, two and a half years for one permit.
And then go and amplify that with all of these builders.
How many builders do you have in California?
So now somebody says, hey, I want my permit.
And he's saying this person that's a lesbian working there, giving permits, all this stuff is going to sit there and use her power to make it harder for you to get the permit.
Now you're going to realize why deregulation is the way to go.
Liberals are going to realize the power of deregulation because regulations are slowing so much shit down.
And he's absolutely right.
Because what now takes place is I rebuild the house.
Hey, I'm willing to build $5 million to rebuild my house.
Great.
Let's go wait for a permit.
No, no, I need you to start building out.
It's not how this works.
We need a permit.
So the line for permits.
Imagine the line for permits.
What that's going to look.
So then imagine what permits are going to be put on pause.
So there's so many other permits right now that are pending.
So imagine you want a permit right now.
The city now has to decide which permit is more important.
Imagine the fights that are going to take place in cities of wanting permits.
He says, that's when you realize it's going to take three years until they put the first brick where they first come and break and start building your house three years after you're trying to get a permit.
He says that's when people are going to realize liberals are going to realize what the F are we voting for.
And he's 100% right.
By the way, you know who would be a good candidate?
I think if right now, I'm sure the way Trump works like this, he doesn't work slow.
He wants to find out solutions.
You know who could be a guy?
I just texted him earlier today to whisper this to him.
I don't know if he's going to want to do it or not.
There needs to be already a bunch of people being thought about of running over there.
And it's not going to be a guy that you think about.
Nominate, I'd be making a list of 20 names right now for us to make a phone call and saying, hey, what do you want to do with California?
And it's got to be somebody that can win both sides.
Zachary Levi was on Jesse Waters yesterday, giving his perspective on what's going on.
I just sent him a message here a minute ago.
A person like that, there's going to be so many people right now that are going to get a knock and saying, hey, are you thinking about doing something?
You're a Hollywood guy.
You're California based.
You love this place.
Are you thinking about doing something?
Are you thinking about doing something?
This is going to be a season.
This is probably the worst season ever.
If you thought Justin Trudeau resigned a week ago, imagine the amounts of pressures he is going to get.
And not from Trump, not from conservatives, not from those people.
You know when it flips?
When people who gave you money that are on your side, liberals are going to say, hey, Newsom, it's time.
You're out.
Step the F aside.
This is ridiculous what's going on right now.
I think that's where it's going to go where California is going to be like, this is a little bit too much.
And by the way, that could take a year or two or three years, but that day is coming.
In the meantime, guess what that doesn't fix?
You know what it doesn't fix?
Let's just say you get somebody else that's going to be on the red, okay?
That's going to have better policies.
That's going to say deregulation.
That's going to say speed things up.
How many people can afford to wait three, four, five years?
Not a lot.
How many people can afford to pay the homeowners insurance?
Do you know why so many people are moving to Nevada?
They're moving to Nevada because of this mess.
Mark Walberg goes straight to Nevada.
So many people are out.
They're like, I'm out of here.
Yes, Texas has grown because of people from California.
And it's not just the Rogans and the Musk.
We went to Texas.
A lot of people are going to Texas.
Florida, you're going to see things happening in the state of California.
It hasn't happened before.
But even to get there, they're still going to be paying the next 12, 24, 36 months, all because of this guy's bad policies, Tom.
And I'll put some stats behind it.
So I'm not going to mention any, everything that we talked about, Dudley.
I'm not talking about any companies that he mentioned.
I'm just looking at facts.
Facts.
State Farm and all states stopped selling insurance because of the California Fair Plan and Governor Newsom.
Fact.
State Farm announced last year they would non-renew 30,000 policies and what they called, ready for this?
Wildfire risk areas.
And you're thinking middle of nowhere, big bear, up in the forest?
Nope.
Guess what?
They non-renewed.
Here's the stat, Pat.
State Farm non-renewed 69% of the policies it had in Pacific Palisades.
Data point this morning confirmed.
State Farm said last year, we're non-renewing 69% of the homes we insure currently today in Palisades.
Why?
Long-term brush risk and poor management of the common areas.
You can't blame them.
No, I'm not blaming you.
I know you're not, but what I'm saying is you cannot blame the business has to make profits.
And when the regulators make their life a living kill and make them look bad, what do you want us to do?
Take a loss every year?
Correct.
Now I'm going to the punchline.
Why did they do that?
Because the county of L.A. and the city of L.A. had suspended brush removal in Palisades.
This comes down to the county.
Are you joking?
Yeah, you can find it.
You can find it was suspended here.
Casual brush removal suspended here.
Limited brush removal suspended here.
This is all going to come out because Zach Levin said.
And Trump said he got to clean the floor.
And the floor that's exactly right.
And who did, by the way, to his credit, what do you say?
You said, get smarter people in the room with you.
Who did he praise?
You know, the people in Finland have had policies and they've been doing this for a while.
So he's not saying, hey, I'll fix it.
He's saying, you know, this problem has been solved.
There's another case study.
We have it.
They did it.
Why don't we learn from them and fix it?
That's exactly right.
And so I'm not down on the insurance companies.
I'm saying the insurance companies are at the bottom of the waterfall.
And at the top of the waterfall is the state with their policies and budget cuts on fire and brush suppression and all the things that they've done, despite the level of taxes they're collecting.
And now they collect the tax, they have the money.
Prices of homes are way up, so property tax is up.
But what are they doing with the money?
Pro homeless programs, sanctuary city programs.
They're wasting the money on non-citizen spends.
Citizen spends, you're keeping the valleys and the areas clear of brush, and you're working on that.
Non-citizen spend, you have all these pet DEI projects.
That's the upstream problem.
The money was spent on other stuff.
I just don't think that Gavin Newsom is going anywhere.
You compared him to Justin Trudeau.
I think he's the Justin Trudeau of California.
I think his ego is so much bigger.
And I still think he has his eye on 2028.
I think that's just who he is.
So, you know, you said that bad policies have consequences.
I constantly just go back to what DeSantis is doing in Florida versus what Newsom is doing in California.
So, you know, when DeSantis got re-elected, he said, come to Florida where Woke goes to die.
And we all know that in California, this is where Woke goes to live and prosper.
And it comes down to policies versus personality.
And you need to figure out and get someone in office in California that cares more about what needs to be done than what feels good.
So common sense policies.
The guy that's going to take over for Trudeau is likely to be this guy, Pierre Polyev.
And the one thing that he keeps saying, when they're like, what are you going to do?
What are you going to do?
He's like, common sense.
Just common sense, common sense conservatism.
And we're just going to do things that are common.
But as we've learned, common sense is not that okay.
You know, one last thing.
Yeah.
Pull up a map of Calif of the United States.
I feel like I'm living in the movie My Cousin Vinny.
Now, Rob, go to California.
What's that thing all the way next to California, Rob?
No, no, just right there on the map, right where you were.
I know it's a water.
It's water.
It's a huge ocean.
It's not like you're living in Kansas.
Do you remember the scene in My Cousin Vinny when he's like, Are these magic grits?
And the guy's like, Hey, the beanstalk beans.
The beanstalk.
He goes, What's this?
He's like, Oh, that's a window.
Okay, now when you saw out the window, what's in front of the window?
Trees.
Trees.
Now, what are all these little things near the trees?
Leaves and bushes.
There's a humongous ocean next to California.
It's not like you're in the breadbasket of the country and you're in Kansas or in Oklahoma.
How are we going to get water here?
You're on an ocean.
And what you said, I love what you said yesterday, PBD.
We have the brightest brains.
We have startups.
We have entrepreneurs.
Silicon Valley.
You're telling me if you invested $22 billion like they did in the Homeless Project, that went nowhere.
You gave that to a startup.
They couldn't figure this out.
But no.
Well, we'll see.
We'll see what's going to happen here.
Tupac, his song to live and die.
That's what I used to think of LA.
Now, when I think of to live and die in LA, you might just go down in a forest fire.
Yes.
Okay.
So listen to all the people in California.
Our prayers are with you.
And probably the best part I liked about what James Woods said, I think when he was on Fox, or I don't know if it was CNN or Fox, he said, listen, we're realizing with this fire and all my neighbors, all of us helping each other out.
Nobody cares if you're a Republican or a Democrat.
These moments bring everybody together because you realize the value of your neighbor and your community.
And I saw that with Laura Ingram.
Anyways, okay.
And last reminder, everything they buy today is heading to California.
100% of what they buy today is going to California.
And by the way, if you have families that are being affected, we're not looking at giving all the money to one person.
It's going to be $2,000 here, $3,000 here.
Put this person in a hotel.
Do that over here.
You know, we're going to be contributing to different families.
We'll hopefully find a way to get that money to the folks.
But 100% of whatever purchases are made today is going to families in California.
I think the numbered hat, there's less than 30 left of that numbered hat for those of you guys that want to get the 4547.
Let me continue.
Next story here.
Sonny Haustin.
Her husband accused of committing federal insurance fraud in a lawsuit.
Okay.
Now, let's read this.
Rob, is this a video?
Well, I have this.
I'll show you this.
Let me just read this and I'll come to you.
So, Dr. Emmanuel Manny Hostin, an orthopedic surgeon and husband of the View co-host, Sonny Hostin, is accused in December, lawsuit fraudulently billing insurance.
By the way, this is a Daily Caller story I'm reading.
The lawsuit alleges Hostin knowingly provided fraudulent medical and other health care services in exchange for kickbacks and or compensation and names him among nearly 200 defendants in one of New York's largest RICO cases.
Wow.
Hostin's attorney Daniel Twites denies the allegations, calling the lawsuit a meritless attempt by a near-bankrupt insurance carrier to intimidate doctors and restrict health care benefits.
The case involves claims that Hostin performs unnecessary surgeries on patients after minor accidents without exploring less invasive treatments with American Transit citing New York's 1974 no-fault laws contributing to widespread insurance fraud.
Vinny, what do you know about this?
So, oh man, it's just the view.
Just a person, the Sonny Hostin that we all love from one of my favorite shows on The View.
And it's always, Tom, what'd you always say?
It's always the people that always do the pointing, and it's always, it always comes back to them, all right?
So when you said this is the largest RICO case ever filed in the state of New York, you guys wrap that around your brain.
That's bigger than the mafia case.
Like the mafia one was number one.
This one takes it over.
So he was scamming insurance companies from taxi drivers, Uber drivers, and Lyft drivers.
He was performing unnecessary surgeries and then providing fraudulent medical services in exchange for the kickbacks.
Here's a clip I want you guys to see of Sonny Haustin on The View, Tom, basically implicating her husband in this type of a scheme.
Play the clip, Rob.
Hold on, let Sonny get in here.
I mean, I agree with mostly everything that's been said.
I mean, we know that, you know, only about 31% of Americans trust our health care system.
We have a terrible health care system.
And, you know, doctors suffer because of big corporations as well.
Doctors that want to do good, like my husband, you know, operates on someone even though they don't have insurance and then has to sue health insurance companies to get paid for the work that he's been trained his whole life to do.
So there are a lot of problems with it.
But the notion that we are in a violent country, this country was built on violence.
We're a very violent country.
Rob, yeah, you can stop it.
By the way, she's talking about the whole Luigi Mangioni and all that situation.
And like, mind you, I'm not, she is not implicated in the lawsuit at all, but it's just, I mean, you're married, Tom, you're married.
If your husband's doing something, if he's allegedly doing something like this, you guys would know if your wives were up to some nefarious stuff.
Let's just not forget who she is.
She's been for years lecturing America about morality, inequality, systemic failures.
And look at her track record.
How many times has she had to go on in the past two months and look at the camera and do a legal apology for all this stuff that she said on the show?
And then she also on Trump's win calling the loss because of uneducated white women that Trump's.
We have to know that.
This is accused.
All accused.
Yeah, all accused.
But he's in the RICO.
This is a big RICO case that her husband's in.
Tom, what are your thoughts on that?
Well, I think date night was Sonny and her husband are being a little interested.
How'd it go today?
Oh, it was terrible.
I had to read this legal statement into a camera and I do what they told me.
And her husband's like, so did I.
I had the same day.
Now he's just accused, and this accused in a lawsuit, after some time of investigation, could ultimately become a federal indictment.
That's the apparent path this is on.
We'll wait and see.
But it does not look well when your name ends up with 200 people in a RICO investigation.
This is the biggest investigation since Giuliani shook the tree and a bunch of mobsters fell out, right?
This is big stuff.
And so, and thank you for bringing that video.
It sure is ironic that she's up there.
So, but if she didn't really know what was going on, right?
Which is what she's probably going to say later.
Oh, I had no idea what my husband and his and his associates were doing.
We'll wait and see what that is.
But I think it's pretty freaking ironic.
I have a totally different perspective on this.
I don't really know what happened with this.
The facts will come out.
What I have a problem with is the core of who this woman is.
Unlike you, I don't wash a view, bro.
All I do is see clips.
It's like twice a day, twice a day.
Here's all I hear from her: America's violent, America's racist, America's bad.
Okay, I challenge you, Sonny.
And this is Constance Kissing actually was saying something about this: find me a country that's not racist.
Find me a country anywhere in the world that wasn't founded on violence.
Find me a country that is perfect.
Find me a country that doesn't have any issues.
So when you're comparing America to utopia, yeah, we're going to look pretty bad.
But if you compare America to literally every country on the history of the world, we're doing pretty damn good.
And not only are we pretty damn good, we're the greatest country to ever exist.
So this whole notion that all she wants to do is find the flaws in America, the flaws in America.
We're so bad.
We're so racist.
We're so violent.
Sonny and all the Sonny crew, find me the country that is just so perfect, and then you can go there.
Yeah.
And then you know what she said a few days ago about January 6th?
She compared it.
Are you ready for this, Adam?
The Holocaust, World War III, and slavery.
And I don't know if you guys forgot.
She was on that PBS show, Finding Your Roots.
They did the background check.
Her great-grandfather was slaves.
Oh, my God.
He's like the biggest hypocrite.
I don't want to spend too much time on this.
It's hypocrisy.
Let's just go to the next story here.
Let's talk about the Gulf of Mexico.
It's a beautiful name.
Trump announces Gulf of Mexico will get new pro-America revamp.
President Trump announced Gulf of Mexico is getting a new name.
We're going to be changing the name of Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America, which has a beautiful ring that covers a lot of territory.
Trump said on Tuesday, the Gulf of America.
What a beautiful name.
And it's appropriate.
Trump made the announcement in his first press conference since Congress certified his election win over Vice President Kamala Harris.
He opened a press event announcing the Mac properties will invest $20 billion.
And, you know, he broke that down with the data centers.
And Gulf of Mexico is partnering close to seed that border states such as Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, as well as Mexico.
So he's claiming, he is saying we should call a Gulf of Mexico, Gulf of America.
Now, Rob, is this the clip of him saying that?
Yes.
Okay, play this, and then we'll play the clip of the president of Mexico, her reaction to this.
Go ahead.
It's ours.
We're going to be changing sort of the opposite of Biden, where he's closing everything up, essentially getting rid of $50 to $60 trillion worth of assets.
We're going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which has a beautiful ring that covers a lot of territory.
The Gulf of America, what a beautiful name.
And it's appropriate.
It's appropriate.
And Mexico has to stop allowing millions of people to pour into our country.
They can stop them.
And we're going to put very serious tariffs on Mexico and Canada.
I love it.
Now, go to the president of Mexico and what she says about the Gulf of Mexico.
And she tries to take a shot at Trump going back.
And you're going to have to read the subtitles, folks, with this.
So, Rob, if you have the subtitles on this, go ahead.
Obviously, Gulfom X was recognized by the name by the U.N. What next?
Why not call it the Mexican-American?
Sounds pretty, doesn't it?
Verdad que sí.
Desde 1607.
Since 1607.
La Constitución de apacinga nera de américa mexicana.
Tosís?
We can call all of it Mexican America.
Sounds pretty, doesn't it?
You can pause it right there.
What's her point, Rob?
What's the point?
I mean, you, yes, we understand.
I mean, we're Assyrians.
We don't have a country right now.
We lost it a long time ago.
It's in Iraq.
There's a lot of places that had more territory, that it's not that anymore.
But the fact that Trump's pushing this, do you know when this debate also happened years ago with the Shah of Iran about the Persian Gulf, where Mike Wallace asks him the question?
I don't know if you've seen this or not, Rob, if you want to pull it up.
Mike Wallace, Pahlavi, let's see, Gulf, Persian Gulf.
It's a very similar, is this the one?
I think this is the one.
See if that's the one right there where they're debating the Persian Gulf.
Is that what it says up there?
Discussing.
No, this is discussing Israel.
Let me see if I can find it.
No, there is one where he's discussing the Persian Gulf.
While he's looking for that, Tom, what are your thoughts on this story?
I think she felt she had to run to the microphone and say something.
But I think she's a little tone deaf because the guy that's on the other side has got a whole set of programs and levers that he's going to pull levers and initiate programs.
And she needs to be playing nice with him.
I think she knows exactly what Trump was saying.
He was drawing a parallel to what Biden had been giving up assets and doing things.
And he's talking about strengthening America and makes a comment about renaming the Gulf of Mexico.
That is not something I think she should run to the microphone and be talking about.
I think it's really a misguided reaction on her part because you're about to sit at the negotiating table.
Such a royally dumb mistake when you sit across the table from him.
And that's the game you want to.
Rob, is that the one?
Did you listen to it or not?
Yeah.
You know, when she does something like that, do you notice?
That's exactly the one because I know it's body language.
That's the one.
Go back a little bit and play it.
I have been across the Gulf, the Gulf that you call Persian and they call Arabian.
Why do you call it Gulf?
You have been to school, or haven't you?
Yes.
What was the name that you have read during your school days?
All right.
But they do call it the Rabian because they can do many things.
So guess what?
Yeah, they can call it the Gulf of America.
However, you know, if you noticed her body language of her speaking, it was not only weak, but no one in the audience reacted to her the way she thought they were going to react to her.
She kept going, don't you think?
Don't you think?
Looking for validation.
It's from your own people that you would like to see a laughter.
You would like to see something, nothing.
Well, guess what, ma'am?
My recommendation to you is whatever you do today, cancel all your appointments.
Go read a book called Art of the Deal because you're about to see what he's going to do to you.
Tariff's coming your way if you play that game with this guy.
He's the wrong guy to try to play this game with.
It's coming your way.
Okay.
Adam, any thoughts on this?
Yeah, I think we're going to see so much more of this.
I don't know if Trump is just trolling.
I don't know if this is actually part of his policy agenda, but I think that these types of things, we're buying Greenland.
Greenland, we own you now.
What?
Panama Canal, we're taking control.
Mexico, you're no longer the Gulf of Mexico.
I just think these things are being thrown out there.
Canada, 51st state, sorry.
And then see who reacts and see who basically moves.
Justin Trudeau reacted.
He's gone.
We're going to see what happened.
I think Pat Burke made a good point.
Let's see.
Why did she even respond to this?
What's going to happen with this?
You see what John Fetterman, who's inching closer and closer and closer and closer to being sort of a common sense independent, no longer a Democrat?
He said the following.
This is regarding Greenland, you know, because Donald Trump Jr., I think, was just in Greenland, basically saying, daddy's going to buy you.
Sorry, Denmark.
Fetterman urged the public to temper its reactions to Trump's statement saying, we really need to pace ourselves here, guys, if we're going to freak out over every single last tweet or every last conversation or press conference.
I think there's people are going to react and see, and Trump is going to basically see what happens there.
But here's my prediction.
Trump, you know, we had an agenda here at Value Taint, and they called it, what, B-hags.
Big, hairy, audacious goals, right?
I think Trump is just sitting there and he's like, let's go big or go home.
I think Trump has always had plans of doing this.
Well, the Greenland thing he brought up in 2019, I've never heard of the Gulf of Mexico thing ever.
I never heard of the Panama Camel thing ever, from Trump, at least.
I know that they brought it up.
But I think people are like, you know what we should do?
We should make Canada the 51st state.
He's like, oh, I like that.
I mean, it's incredibly impossible.
But you know what it is, though?
Let me tell you what great leaders and visionaries do.
You know what they do?
Cast a vision.
They cast a bold vision.
And everybody says, what?
That's crazy, man.
You're crazy.
And then either your existing people don't buy into it and they leave you because they think you're full of shit.
But then the people that are like, hell yeah, then they show up.
But the right people are going to show up.
And Trump's had plans of doing this for the longest time, but he just couldn't do it on his first term.
You're going to see this for four years straight.
My number one priority with the president is just the same way this business owner in California was hiring private firefighters.
Rob, is this the guy that was tweeting online?
I'm looking for private fire.
Imagine you're a rich entrepreneur and you're online saying, hey, I'm looking for a California entrepreneur asks for private firefighters to protect this home.
Keith Wasserman, does anyone have access to private firefighters to protect our home and Palisades?
Need to act faster.
All neighbors' house burning.
We'll pay any amount.
Thank you.
Wow.
Do you see that urgency?
I'm telling you, the administration needs to say, we're looking for private military contractors to protect the president in ways that we don't know the protection we're going to get till the 20th.
That includes what's today's date.
Is today the 9th or today's the 9th?
You know what's going on today?
Jimmy Carter ceremony that the president will be attending.
Who's in charge of the Secret Service protection that day?
Not Trump.
Not Trump.
Who's in charge of the prediction on the 19th?
Who's in charge until he's in, where you can replace anything you want to do with the Secret Service?
I'm having an urgency.
Like I've been saying this from day one, however many days we have today is what, the 9th?
The 11 days can't come fast enough for him to be in so we can swear everybody in and we move all the old guys there.
Don't be surprised if in the next 11 days they try to do anything and everything for these guys to be not be replaced.
It'll be one of the biggest shakedowns in politics ever.
If you think he's playing like this now, do you think he's playing 100% aggressive?
You think he's really pushing the envelope?
I don't think he is.
I think he's just getting, I think this is 30%.
When he's in and you see the 100% knowing, he does not give a shit about being re-elected.
You have nothing else to get done except whatever you ever had on the list of your first term to get done.
You just knew you wouldn't do it on your second term.
So, and then this leads me into Greenland, right?
Trump Jr. and Charlie Kirk and others fly out to Greenland.
So random.
Is this them, by the way?
So they fly out to Greenland and Trump says, hey, we should be doing something with Greenland.
They fly out.
If you want to play this clip, go for it.
This is Jr. in Greenland.
Guys, we're here in Nook, Greenland.
This is the founder, 1721.
That yellow house with the red top.
That was his original spot.
It's where he moves.
This is where it all started out here.
Just incredible scenery.
Super cool stuff.
I think the population in Greenland, if I'm not mistaken, is 56,000.
I don't know what the number is.
That is correct.
Is it?
Okay, so 56,000 Greenland.
While this is taking place, Fetterman is being interviewed.
Okay.
And Fetterman compares Trump's Greenland talk to Louisiana purchase.
What?
Yeah.
Wow, you know, it's not that big of a deal.
It's similar to that.
And then got people asking and saying, well, maybe he's got a point.
Rob, is this the one here?
Go ahead and play this clip here with Republican Fetterman.
I'm sorry, no, Democratic.
Yeah, go ahead.
Go ahead and play this clip here, bro.
I think there'll be more of this part of the public.
Go ahead.
Can we talk about like, there's a lot of talk about Greenland, for example.
And I know a lot of, there's a lot of freakouts, you know, and of course, I would never support taking it by force.
But I do think it's a responsible conversation if they were open to acquiring it and, you know, whether just buying it outright.
I mean, if anyone thinks that's bonkers, it's like, well, remember the Louisiana purchase?
I think Alaska was pretty great deal, too.
$50 million.
I think it was.
It was recorded.
It was referred to as Seward's Folly.
Replace that B with an R.
So, I mean, you know, open to having all kinds of conversations as well.
And now, I don't think it's not helpful to freak out.
But some things might work out, some may not.
But that's part of an ongoing dialogue.
But he hasn't even take office in two weeks.
And, you know, we really need to pace ourselves if we're going to freak out over every last tweet or every last conversation or press conference.
I like it.
I like it.
Bob is dressing like John Fetterman.
We are here to work together.
And some things you can agree or disagree, but I think that's how DC works.
You all have a great question.
Can I bring up Bob some of the financials?
I've always liked John Manchin.
I mean, Fetterman.
Joe Manchin.
Right over your head, dude.
Remember, Joe Mansion is his guy.
That's his guy.
He introduced him to us.
But go ahead.
Jesus for him.
Yep.
So there's a couple of things going on in Greenland, and let's talk about them.
Right now, Greenland is a—people look at the map, and it looks giant.
It's actually only about three times the size of Texas, and it's about 20% the size of the continental United States.
That's how big it is.
And it has, you're correct, that's the population.
And by the way, game one of the World Series was 53,300.
So Greenland's population was roughly game one of the World Series.
You always got to bring up the World Series.
No, no, no.
No, he has to, bro.
But Tom, you're saying that it's humongous and there's only 50,000 people living there.
No, I'm saying that.
Let me get to it.
Why?
Why all this discussion on it?
Because our president-elect is crazy like a fox.
China has been attempting to get mineral extraction rights in Greenland.
Greenland has massive quantities of the elements and minerals that are necessary for EVs and future battery production.
And what percent of light earth elements and heavy earth elements does the EU need from China?
81% of light minerals and elements and 90% of heavy elements.
That's the EU.
They need that stuff to make batteries and stuff.
They're getting 81% of one and 90% of the other from China.
China is looking to corner the world market on the things that make batteries for EVs and other precious metals that are needed in the future.
Greenland is rich and full of this stuff, but the 56,000 people and their and their government, they don't want what is estimated to be, ready for this?
75,000 immigrants over 10 years to come work in the mines and industrialize all this.
And the people of Greenland are like, wait, wait, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
They don't basically want to be overrun with workers and to have the countryside, you know, turned into open mining.
So Greenland doesn't want that.
Then the Dutch don't have the full bankroll to help all that because you're going to need, what are you going to need?
More fire stations, more police, more roads built, more infrastructure.
If you have that many people building, it's going to be a building boom.
So Trump is up there because of three reasons of strategic importance.
And here they are.
Take a look at this map today in the Wall Street Journal.
You have Greenland up there, and now it's shown that it is its actual size because on maps they get distorted.
Greenland looks big.
That's the actual size of Greenland.
You can see it.
Yeah, on maps, it looks bigger than the U.S., but it's not.
It's about the size of, what is it, Texas?
Two and a half Texas.
Yeah, two and a half Texas.
Right.
Exactly.
So now take care.
It's massive.
We have a space base.
There are rare earth deposits on the tip south of Nook, which is their capital, which is where Don Jr. was filming from.
And take a look at all the Northeast Passage and all the discussion we've had about, have we not heard about defense and the strategic Arctic submarine routes and that we want to make sure we have a presence there because the Russians just run around there without any.
So there is a military issue to it.
There is the mineral issue to it.
And there is national security because we don't want to be reliant on China.
Now, China's been rebuffed a couple of times by the government up there to start the big mining projects, but Trump is crazy like a fox.
He knows that this has strategic importance for the military and for the minerals.
And what Trump wants is a situation similar to Puerto Rico.
Denmark, if you can't afford this, you're a little light this week.
We've got all the money we need.
We'll take care of it.
Right.
So this is Adam, right?
We'll do it.
And that's what Trump is talking about.
So he is rationally talking about protecting something that would be really important.
But who else would it be important?
It would also be important to the EU that is 81 and 90% reliant on these heavy minerals and light earth minerals to China.
And so China may have a troubled economy here as we talk on Tuesday, Pat, but they're still playing the long game on this.
And they are desperate to control Greenland.
Trump wants to get there first and also not let the EU and Denmark sit around for 10 years.
What are we going to do?
I don't know.
What do you want to do?
He wants to say, no, no, no, let's make a decision.
Let's do this now.
And this is what's going on.
This is a very smart, strategic move.
And today, as I was putting this together today, the last thing I pulled up, June 9th, 4:30 a.m.
So I pulled everything.
I'm ready for today.
Article from the information.
The electric.
China wants to block the West from catching up in battery technology.
And I'm like, well, there you have it.
And how do you do that?
You cut off the supply of all the minerals it takes to make those batteries or you control where all the minerals are in the world.
I actually think Trump is very interested in this.
If you remember, he brought this up in 2019.
Some of this other stuff, Panama Canal, Canada, 50%, this is all sort of just, you know, bluster throwing it out there.
He threw this out there in 2019.
People are like, what is wrong with this guy?
But in reality, if you actually look at it, it's actually crazy like a fox.
You know, you're thinking, what's wrong with him?
Only Trump would think of this art of the deal.
No, there's actually a president called Harry Truman who actually made an offer for Greenland right after World War II in 1946.
He offered how much?
$100 million.
Okay.
So there's precedent for buying massive territory.
You brought up Alaska.
I think America bought Alaska off Russia in the 1860s for like $7 million, which is the equivalent of basically $140 million.
We know the Louisiana purchase in the early 1800s, I think, 1803.
Alexander Jackson, I want to say, 15 million bucks, which is the equivalent of 500 million bucks.
But, you know, if you sort of, they're trying to basically give an estimate of what it would be worth today.
They're basically saying it'd be worth anywhere between 200 billion to 1.7 trillion.
I think we have one of our air bases there, ham to the tool airbase, it's called, which is home to the missile defense system.
This is a massive strategic move by Trump.
You know, one of your favorite presidents was George W. Bitch.
It's called Strategery, guys.
My favorite thing, strategy.
You know, so we're going to see what happens.
You know what it was when you hire someone on your behalf?
You think about how to handle meetings when you're not there.
Okay.
So, you know, the last few weeks, I've been having every day.
It happened again yesterday.
Oh my God, I can't tell you how grateful I am because I've had a hard time getting a hold of you and papa because, you know, and I kept thinking maybe you just didn't want to talk to me.
I said, I don't even know if you're trying to get a hold of me.
Well, I would text you or a person and he would never get back to me.
I'm like, okay.
If I tell you this has happened 50 times, I'm giving you a small number, right?
So in your mind, you have to think about who is going to make you look good, look better, and negotiate and represent you on your behalf.
Do you remember when we talked about this 10 months ago, nine months ago, when you're voting for president, right?
Do you want Kamala negotiating for you or do you want Trump negotiating for you?
Do you want Biden negotiating for you or do you want Trump negotiating for you?
And you can go and add anybody else you want on this list negotiating on your behalf.
This is exactly why people voted for him because they're convinced he's going to negotiate on behalf of America, thinking about not just the next five moves, but the next 10, 15, 20, 30 moves of America for the next 40 years, not just the next four years, not just the next eight years, the next 40 years.
And he's proven it with the way he's coming out while he's just a president-elect.
Think about how much noise he's made just as a president-elect during this time.
I can only imagine what things he's going to be working on when he's actually in office.
Next story.
MetaN's fact-checking program at Zuckerberg vows to restore free expression on Facebook and Instagram.
Zuck made a video.
Rob, is this the video?
This is a short version.
The whole video is five minutes long.
Then play the short version of it.
Go ahead and play this clip.
We're going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms.
More specifically, we're going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X starting in the U.S.
And by the way, let me tell you what happened while in this video, Rob, that watch right there, people are saying he was wearing a $900,000 watch.
Yeah, he's worth $200 billion.
He's wearing a $900,000 watch.
That's not a lot of money to wear the $900,000 watch.
He is not the Zuckerberg of 20 years ago when the movie Social Network came out 15 years ago, depicting him as this nerd guy.
He can probably kick 99% of people's asses if he fights based on the training that he's been getting.
He's trying to become a man and he's becoming, you know, he's going through an evolution.
No, he is.
You know what he is right now?
Remember the scene?
You know, he just turned 40.
I know.
Remember the famous scene?
He's like, I'm a man.
I'm 40.
No, but the point is, I liked him recreating himself.
And while this happens this week, what does he do?
He announces Dana White that's going to be sitting on Facebook's board.
Okay.
That announcement happens at the same time.
Elon retweets this announcement that they're going to community notes.
And he says, cool, because it just means that he is following Elon's lead.
And yesterday, Brandon in a prep meeting asked us a question, says, do you know which website gets the most traffic out of all the social media websites, which one gets the most traffic?
Active users.
Everybody said, X, YouTube, TikTok.
Nope.
He said Facebook.
Get out of here.
Yes.
You're serious?
Yes.
Just put that chart, Rob, at the top, if you could.
That picture right there.
Yeah.
Zoom in a little bit if you could so the audience can see it.
So check this out.
YouTube is the views.
That's monthly visits.
This isn't the one.
It's the one that shows right there.
Facebook on a monthly basis, 3.06 billion monthly active users.
That's 37% of the population that uses Facebook at least once a month that they log on.
This is the owner of that app.
This is the owner of that company, the CEO of that company.
So he made this decision.
Now, there are some people that are having different views on this.
Some good, some bad, some ugly.
Some are trusting it.
Some are not.
Vinny, where are you at with this?
I don't trust him.
Let's just go over, and you mentioned it, the social network.
What are the odds?
Pat, last night, I just randomly started watching in the background when I was making dinner.
It raises a lot of questions about trust.
Let's start with the Winklevoss twins.
Tom, you remember this?
They created a social network.
This is what the movie is about.
It was called Connect You.
They hired Zuckerberg to work on it.
Instead, he allegedly took their idea and launched Facebook.
If you guys haven't seen the movie, go watch it.
This led to a lawsuit where they settled for $65 million, but compared to what Facebook is worth, that's pennies to the freaking dollar.
And then his friend, Eduardo Sendrin, Eduardo Severn, his very close friend, who provided $15,000 seed money to launch Facebook.
But as the company grew, his shares were diluted from 34 to 10%, shafting his freaking boy and pushing him out.
And he sued.
Severin sued Facebook and Zuckerberg.
And he got a stake in Facebook.
And now he's a multi-billionaire.
So follow me with who he is as a character.
Living in Singapore.
Living in Singapore.
And then Tom, think about it.
In 2020, they put how much?
$400 and some billion dollars to help Joe Biden and Kamala Harris win the election.
And look at what the damage has been done for this past four years and who knows what's to come.
And then these actions, I think they paint a picture of who he is as a position as a person.
He allegedly stole ideas for Facebook.
He sidelines his partners.
He influences elections.
And now, because he has hair gel and he's buff and he's friends with Dana White, we're supposed to forget all that.
No, no, no.
I still want accountability for what he's done.
The damage hasn't been done.
And now, oh, now all of a sudden, because a new boss is coming into town, everything is changing.
Everything is changing.
I don't trust it, Pat.
I think he's changing his tune because he knows Trump is coming in and he wrote the letter for Congress like, oh, I didn't know.
Bullshit.
Sorry for my language.
He knows everything that he's doing and now he's shifting because, well, he did push-ups now.
When you say you don't trust him, what do you mean by that?
I don't trust a guy with a track record like how he has.
That's me.
That's my opinion.
I just don't trust it.
Well, guess what?
You're not alone.
Okay.
And you know what I love about business and the marketplace?
You get to sit there and say, I don't trust that person for now.
I don't.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
However, Tom, for you, what do you stand with this, with what Zuck is doing?
What do you think about his evolution?
I think the evolution is being led by advanced intelligence.
Rob, I just sent you that.
Just go down to the chart.
So take a look at this chart.
This is the number of lobbyists and what they spend of all the social media networks.
Take a look at the big blue at the bottom.
Guess what?
That's Facebook.
Look at what Facebook is spending compared to other people on lobbyists, Pat.
Look at that.
The big blue at the bottom is Facebook spending.
Then there's Byte Dance and there's X and then there's Snap and Discord.
There you go.
So they have been very strategic about their lobbying, number one.
Number two, Facebook has learned an important lesson on two things.
One was Cambridge Analytics.
And the second was the changing face of Washington, that it doesn't matter how many lobbyists you have, that public opinion pushes hard.
And so he sends a letter to the Honorable Jim Jordan.
I think he's really trying to reinvent himself, but he is trying to be a CEO that saves his company.
He has, there are very, there are many people out there that have had problems with underage girls.
Zuckerberg's problem with underage girls has nothing to do with any actions by him.
He's got a problem because all of this data has come out and the hearings are going to restart.
As soon as everybody is sworn in in Washington, Pat, the hearings are going to restart on the impact of social media and what's called the constant comparison.
How many likes?
Am I cute enough?
All this.
And the impact it has on 11 to 16 year old girls during puberty and their development and psychologically.
And that they cut themselves and they're committing suicide.
And that Facebook knew about this and was feeding into it and forcing it.
So he's about to be in front of Congress because those are going to restart as soon as the new Congress is in and people are sworn in.
And so I think Facebook as an organization has been getting smarter and reacting.
And I think he's trying to save his company.
Is he reinventing himself?
Do I think there's a change of heart?
Or do I think there is a change of strategy?
And he's brought Dana White in and other people to be close to him as all of this activity is going to tune.
I think it's probably 80% change of strategy and 20% change of heart.
I think you bring up reinventing himself.
I don't think there's any doubt that's exactly what he's doing.
I'll give you a different perspective.
PBD, this is kind of coming for your world.
You say things all the time, out work, out-improve, out-strategize, outlast.
This guy's the cockroach of social media.
He's going nowhere.
He's outlasting.
Do you remember in 2021 during COVID?
Everyone's getting rich.
What happened to Facebook?
They changed their name to Meta.
This guy went from the top 10 richest person in the world to barely top 50.
His net worth got slashed in half.
He was basically on death's door.
People are like, is this the end of Facebook?
2022.
You can look at the stock price.
2025, this guy is now not top 10, not top five.
Just pass off.
He's third richest guy in the world at this point.
Okay.
And who did he give one shout out to?
What's the only name he mentioned in there?
Elon Musk.
He said, just like they do on X, just like Elon does, without, we talked about this before, without Elon buying Twitter and kind of giving accountability to other social media networks, who knows what would be going on out there.
But there's a lot of people that didn't fully recognize what he was doing.
He's going to have accountability.
PBD, you know, once a year, PBD maybe gives me a pow pow.
Once a year.
I would say three to four.
Once a year.
And I remember the first pow pow I ever got.
It was a great pow pow.
We were sitting in the office in Boca.
Do you remember?
And we were having a conversation.
I probably shouldn't bring this up, but and we were talking about like Facebook censoring or shadow banning and they're aligning with China.
And I was just a young, naive, hungry little 40-year-old man.
And I was like, yeah, I don't think, why would he do that?
You want to do that?
You're like, what do you mean?
This is what he's doing at Facebook.
I go, yeah, I don't see why he would do that.
He's like, what are you?
You can't be that naive.
I was like, yeah, I don't think so.
What's your point?
I was like, and you got mad at me.
Gave me a pow pow.
He made me go sit in the corner.
All right.
I never did it again.
But the point is this.
And you talked, and then we were watching the Jake Paul fight.
You're like, come here, sit over here.
But the point is, there's a lot of people didn't fully recognize and understand what they were doing behind the scenes, what they were doing to affect change politically, socially.
So there's accountability coming, no doubt.
So you don't have to like him.
You don't have to trust them.
But this guy's the third richest guy in the world at this point.
Facebook is the number one social media most viewed app in the world.
And this guy's not going anywhere.
And shout out to him for reinventing himself.
Yeah.
We'll see.
Again, that's the part about opinions.
And people get to say, I agree with Vinny.
I agree with Adam.
I agree with Tom.
By the way, Manect the guys.
Communicate with them.
This is a perfect opportunity.
Say, Vinny, I'm with you.
Adam, I'm with you.
You're wrong, Adam.
You're wrong, Tom.
You're this.
Whatever you have, this is an opportunity to communicate with them as well and exchange your messages with them and see what your opinions are.
And by the way, you may have certain findings.
You share it with us.
We may even be sharing it here on the podcast with us, but I appreciate that.
Let's go to the next story here.
Rap.
I think everyone's at the Jimmy Carter funeral right now, if I'm not mistaken.
And there's clips being shared.
There's a clip I just sent to you that Vinny shared with us as well of Trump and Obama speaking.
And while Trump and Obama are speaking, look around of who's sitting around Trump.
We're talking Mike Pence, Kamala in the front.
Kamala turns around to see the reaction of Trump and Obama, and you can tell she is not happy about it.
And they gave Kamala the front row.
But go ahead and play this clip rap.
Go for it.
Watch this.
Look at Kamala looking back at Obama when Obama whispers to Trump.
This just happened, folks.
Look at the husband, though.
Look at Doug Emhoff.
In what world should Doug Emhoff be sitting in front of Trump and Obama?
Yeah, I was talking about you.
I called you a piece of shit.
And yeah.
No.
I got to do a voiceover for this.
Yes?
Yes?
I called you a bunch of names.
What?
I had to do it.
Where is Michelle, by the way?
I don't see Michelle.
He's still playing basketball right now.
Just dunking on people.
By the way, look at Mike Pence right there.
Right there, Mike Pence.
Look at Hillary.
Look at Slick Willie.
Everybody's there.
Look at Slick Willie.
Everybody's there.
You can possibly.
Let me say something.
Who's in charge of the season?
I love this.
Why?
This is incredible.
I don't know if they've ever all been in a room together.
Have you ever seen them?
Yeah.
Yeah, the last funeral, a Bush Sr. with an envelope.
Trump showed up?
Trump, of course he was.
Trump was there?
Yes, Adam.
I want to fact check that.
I have to see Obama and Trump sitting together, honestly, just like this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What's up?
Listen, you know how many people have been sitting in the Oval Office?
Technically 47 people, but some people have done it twice.
It's a very rare club.
And they're at the funeral for a hundred-year-old who died apparently six months ago, according to Vinny, but he died again now.
Jimmy Carter.
Yeah, you know what?
He probably voted for Kamala.
That's probably good for the country.
If Obama and Trump can sit next to each other, voting for Kamala might have killed him, though, if you think about it.
You're saying this is a bad thing?
No, I'm not saying it's a bad thing.
Here's my thing.
I think it's a great look for Trump.
Here's my thing.
Looks aside.
No, no, no.
I'm a little bit more than a month.
Less than a month ago was talking shit about him, and they were calling him fucking Hitler.
Now you want to sit next to me and be cool?
That's not.
And you think that Trump never said anything bad about Obama?
Okay, timeout.
But that's the point.
Timeout as is America.
Let's start from the bottom.
That's the beautiful thing about America, Vinny.
We can disagree.
We can say all the most ridiculous stuff about each other.
How much did you and I fight?
How much?
We're going to fight.
Whatever.
We have a lot of people.
But then we'll go have lunch.
Have I ever called you Hitler?
Have I ever called you Hitler and called me a gay Jew?
No, I don't.
That's what the chat says.
I've never called you a gay Jew.
I was saying we have to say that.
The point is this.
But go ahead.
The beauty of America is we can squabble and beef and then sit together.
Other countries in the world, you know what they'll do?
Literal civil war.
Yeah.
So shout out to grown-ups being grown-ups and respecting a president whose funeral.
And I sent you out a video.
Rob, I sent you this video.
So bad, when he walks in, Mike Pence stands up.
He destroyed every, everybody.
It's like a victory.
Yeah, what's up?
I own all of you.
He should.
He beat all of them.
Mike Pence's, is it Karen Pence?
What a classless move.
Look at Mike Pence's?
Yeah, watch this.
And Al Gore, yeah, stand up, dog.
Stand up and give respect.
Now entering the room.
Stand up.
Yeah, you too, flyhead.
Watch this, Ben.
Look at his wife.
His wife.
Former President Trump.
His wife.
Nothing.
No handshake.
No, nothing.
Mike Pence cares about her.
To hell with her.
So where's the class?
Where's the class?
You know the kudos who it goes to?
Kudos goes to Trump because I remember Trump wouldn't show up to these things.
Trump wouldn't show up to a lot of these events.
Trump didn't show up, I think, to a few funerals, to a couple big events.
But Trump, he's playing with house money at this point.
I respect Trump for showing up.
Why wouldn't he at this point?
Well, Adam, you have to show up.
But first of all, the seating.
Who was in charge of the seating was like, you know what?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Right next to Obama, not next to Hillary, not next.
Where's Joe Biden?
Is Joe Biden in the front?
Is he going to be speaking?
And I get what you're talking about, Adam.
The smart person did that.
Yeah, okay.
He said, let's unify this country.
Tom, your thoughts.
So the tradition and the way it would have been set up here is that Biden and his wife and Kamala Harris, president, vice president, be in the front row.
And the prior presidents would be immediately behind.
So that's how the seating is set up.
I think it's been kind of funny.
I remember when Obama, Rob, you made me find this.
Remember when Obama was sitting next to like the Danish prime minister?
He's mugging for pictures.
I think they were at Nelson Mandela's funeral.
And he was sitting here at the Danish prime minister.
And she's very attractive.
And he's up there, took a selfie with her.
And Michelle, there it is.
Look at Michelle.
Michelle is not having any of this.
She's not liking it.
By the way, let me show you this.
Obama's the guy that gets distracted in class and starts talking to friends in the same row.
That's kind of the way I see this.
By the way, that's also Prime Minister of Britain, isn't it, David?
David Cameron.
Look how fired up Michelle Obama is in this picture.
But can you play this clip, Rob?
What I'm saying is Obama's done this a lot.
I know.
And this next clip, Rob, if you play, it's when Joe Biden.
I'm going to drop off some flowers here.
Let's go back to Smoke Asalem.
It's when Joe Biden and Kamala are sitting next to each other.
And look how friendly they are to each other, specifically Jill Biden.
And you can just tell and see the love and the passion for one another, Rob, if you can make this bigger.
So there is Kamala sitting down.
You see her face barely right in front of Jill.
You got Doug.
You got Clinton's.
You got Bush.
You got Obama turning to Laura.
But now look at Joe.
Joe has no idea.
Joe's like, well.
Joe's looking at the ice cream machine.
But watch this here.
But watch this funeral.
He pointed at the casket.
That's not for me, is it?
Watch Kamala and Jill.
Go ahead, Rob.
Body language experts, everybody.
The would-be Democratic presidential nominee.
And we all know what happened after that.
Yeah.
Again, Jill wants nothing to do with between the first couple and the second couple.
But again, we are at a funeral.
So one has to take that into account.
I got to go friendly.
I've got to read the body language of the individuals.
By the way, CNN is the same body language.
Go again, Rob.
Keep playing.
Go like 15 seconds in.
So watch this.
Yeah, right there.
Watch this.
First couple and the second couple.
But again, we are at a funeral.
So one has to take that into account when trying to read the body language of the individuals there.
Okay, pause it at the end picture.
Pause it at the end picture.
Did you see Clinton shortly?
Pause it all the way at the end.
Right there.
Pause it right there.
Let me ask you, out of all of these people here, Bill, Hillary, George, his wife, Obama, Michelle Missing, Donald, Melania, Biden's, who is disliked the most here?
Out of all.
Great quiet.
Oh, by everyone else.
By everyone else.
Who is disliked the most here?
I think Kamala wins that by a lap.
Believe it or not, the fact that she wins that beating Hillary says a lot.
She deserves an award for that.
Big time.
Hillary's upset about it.
Hillary's reading it.
Hillary just read a piece of paper and said, you're number two on the most hated leaderboard.
She's like, what the fuck?
Wait, is that Al Gore's wife?
Is that Al Gore's wife behind Bill?
I don't know.
I think that's not that.
No, that's Mike Pan.
No, on the left.
No, on our left.
Al Gore got divorced, I believe.
Who's that on the left?
Okay, then that's no, it doesn't matter.
Don't discount whoever's in this room.
Trump might be up on top of the list as far as disliked the most.
Oh, of course.
Because he's a winner.
Because he's a winner.
But my thing is this, Adam, and going to just real fast, Pat, to the point.
I get it.
Trump went after everybody.
It was all at the beginning.
It was everybody went after him, so he fought back.
But the amount of stuff that Obama just recently said about this guy, to be able to sit there, if you don't apologize to me right off the rip, I would have given him this body language.
I'd be like, yo, you're listening.
And I tell you what.
But here's the question you got to ask yourself.
And I'm going to say it in the most interesting way for you to receive it.
So I've done my business plan and I finalized the three words for me for the year.
Okay.
The three words for me for the year.
Every year I choose a word, right?
One word is speed.
One word is product.
But the last word is signal.
Signal.
And the reason why I put that word there, signal, I broke down a few different things.
You know, and this is very, very important.
I'm just going to share this.
I don't usually share this publicly.
I'll share part of it.
Okay.
2025, mentally for 2025, key focus.
You are battle tested for me.
I'm saying it to myself.
But just like video games, there are levels to being battle tested.
This next one will be a big one.
If you make it through this next level, you will exponentially grow.
Few things you have to embrace, which fights to fight, which fights to ignore, prevent being provoked.
If you're going to fight, fight up, not down.
Negative, bitter, entitled victims with time on their hands will try to get under your skin.
This is their way of getting confirmation and validation.
Don't fall for this trap.
Mark Twain once said, you can't argue with stupid people.
They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
I have learned over the years that people like to verbally hit below the belt.
Be self-aware of this.
Be like water well.
You know, the other day I said 18 degrees.
It was Celsius, 64.4 Fahrenheit is what the whole, the guy that wrote it was about Celsius.
So focus on signal instead of noise.
One of the toughest things, I gave this message yesterday to one of my companies.
We're talking, Moral brought me up and Teekrin is if you can, if you can, and by the way, very few people ever reach this level of signal versus noise.
Very.
Signal is, what do I need to focus on to get the job done?
What are my duties?
Gossip.
Oh my God, did you hear they woke up?
Did you hear that guy got fired?
Did you hear this person did this?
Did you, ta-da, da-da-da-da?
All that stuff.
It's a little bit of noise, right?
And the noise is going to be there.
It doesn't mean like, listen, we're a podcast that talks about the different noise that's going on and you try to give your, you know, logical feedback on what's taking place, but you have a lot of noise.
Signal is focusing on solutions and improving your life, right?
The fact that Trump can go from noise at the high, every one of these guys at that table have trashed Trump one way or another, behind his back, to his face, backstabbed, starting with Hillary talking about the fact that he was tied to Russia.
Mike Pence not having his back after he chose him as a vice president.
None of us would have known who Mike Pence is if he doesn't choose him for vice president.
And we saw how bad he did at the debate that we were at in every single Republican debate that we went to.
It was embarrassing how bad he was doing, right?
Trump almost validated Pence to a different level.
And his wife doesn't even want to shake his hand or shake the wife's hand.
Melania was standing there to want to shake hands and you don't do it.
Guess what?
Signal versus noise.
So when you're saying I wouldn't be able to do it, that's an opportunity of growth.
This is what example he's setting.
When it comes down to stuff like this, America's more important than our ego.
America is more important than our own individual, what do you call it?
I can't believe what he said to me.
I can't believe he says, no problem.
I just know where you stand.
It doesn't mean I can't sit there and talk to you about traditions.
You know, the traditions came before us.
And I absolutely, when I tell you, I absolutely love this, I love this.
Do you know what, you know, when him not showing up to the inauguration, you know, to the, what do you call it, Joe Biden's?
Yes.
That was bitter.
That was upset.
That was a different Trump.
He was angry.
He felt like he had to win.
And, you know, the whole election interference, whatever that you want to talk about.
And maybe he was in the right when he felt that way, but I love traditions and I love the fact that this is maintaining tradition.
You don't have to agree.
The world has to see this.
And guess what the world says?
Look at these guys.
They're all in the same room.
Okay, good.
They're in the same room.
I like seeing this.
I think this is a very good sign.
And I think we're seeing a version of Trump we've never seen before and maybe more presidential than ever before.
And we have to celebrate that.
And every one of these guys in this room, you know what they're thinking?
Look at all of them real quick.
Look at all of them real quick.
Do you know what all of them are thinking?
Do you know why they're upset and angry and they don't want to talk?
Because they know, even though they're all alphas, there still is an alpha above all alphas.
In this group, Trump is the alpha of alpha.
Period.
And they know it.
You don't have to say anything when you're that guy.
It's known, period.
You walk in the room, everybody knows.
It has nothing to do with wealth.
There can be people that are richer than you.
It can be a bigger alpha.
There can be somebody that gets things.
Look at Bloomberg.
He's got more money than Trump times 30.
But who's the bigger alpha?
Trump.
It's a very different dynamic when it comes down to leadership.
And I actually love this moment.
I'm glad that we saw that we can react to it today.
So I'm glad the messages that were coming in left and right.
But let's wrap it up with a couple other stories.
And let's go to the next one here.
So next story I want to get into, Rob, which one the main ones?
Let's go to this one.
This one's actually interesting because I think you also have some thoughts on this, Tom.
I know you do as well.
Kevin O'Leary says he's nearing deal to buy TikTok as ban looms.
Here's what we know.
Okay.
Here's what we know.
So April 20th, 2024, House passed legislation against, by the way, is this one with Kevin O'Leary's breaking this down?
Yes.
Okay.
Why don't we play this clip first?
And then I'm going to go to Tom and we'll get some commentary.
Go for it.
That was one topic, but I had another agenda item that was very important to me.
And we announced that this morning.
I have joined with Frank McCourt to buy TikTok.
And this is a very complicated deal.
It's a multi-billion dollar deal.
We're going to have to work with President Trump.
This is a bipartisan situation.
We have to work initially with Biden, and we want to.
And then midday, 12.05, Trump will be who we have to work with to close the deal in the months ahead.
So I wanted to let him know, as well as others in his cabinet, that we're doing this, and we're going to need their help.
Well, that's going to be a very interesting story.
I have a timeline here.
Let me read the timeline.
Then Tom, I'll come to you.
April 20th, 2024, House passed legislation against TikTok in a decisive 360 to 58 vote.
Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries stated the bill was designed to address legitimate national security and privacy concerns.
Three days later, Senate voted 80 to 19, approved to bill Senate Maria Cantwell.
The legislation aimed to prevent foreign adversaries from conducting espionage surveillance, maligned operations, harming vulnerable Americans, our servicemen and women, and our U.S. government personnel.
Day later, President Joe Biden signed the bill into law requiring TikTok to be sold or banned.
TikTok responded, stating it had invested billions of dollars to keep U.S. safe data, data safe, and our platform free from outside influence and manipulation.
A month later, May 7th, TikTok filed a lawsuit against the federal government, arguing the ban violated the First Amendment rights of the app and its American users.
A week later, May 14th, eight TikTok users sued the federal government, claiming the ban was unconstitutionally overbroad and infringed on their First Amendment rights.
December 6th, 2024, a month ago, the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. District denied TikTok's petition to review the law ruling the national security concerns outweigh TikTok's First Amendment claims.
The court also declined TikTok's request to halt the ruling.
10 days later, December 16th, TikTok filed an emergency injunction request with the Supreme Court, arguing the pause was necessary to create breathing room for this court to conduct, to conduct an orderly review.
The CEO of TikTok, Shao Chu, met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago requesting support for an injunction that was ultimately not granted.
Two days later, December 18th, Supreme Court agreed to review TikTok's challenge, schedule, and oral arguments for January 10th, which is tomorrow, just days before law's effective date.
December 27th, Donald Trump opposed TikTok ban in a court filing, stating he could secure a political resolution to keep TikTok in the U.S. after his January 20 inauguration if Supreme Court intervenes.
January 3rd, the Justice Department asked Supreme Court to uphold the law mandating TikTok's ban or sale, arguing the app hadn't presented sufficient justification for a pause and that Trump's argument lacked visibility.
January 6th, Kevin O'Leary told Fox they're planning on buying it.
Tom, your thoughts with things going on right now with TikTok?
Yeah, so this all starts and people saw headlines.
This is the behind the scenes.
This is the deep dive and it's really helpful.
So it all started with TikTok is allowing China to get the data and they are sharing the data on U.S. consumers with people that we don't want it shared with and are violating U.S. privacy laws.
That's it.
So the government working together from April 20th to 24th, I don't think there was a single bill during the Biden administration that went that quick.
That in four days, it went from vote to vote to desk.
Not something that was this divisive.
I'm not talking about a negotiated resolution that had been going on for six months.
I'm saying from incidents, boom, boom, boom, that quick.
So now Trump is asking the Supreme Court, hang on a minute, but the Department of Justice is telling the Supreme Court, no, hang on a minute.
This appeal was brought forth by ByteDance.
So you go tell those guys, the law is the law and you need to sell it.
So what's happening is Kevin O'Leary is saying, hey, right now the law is on the books.
They say it's going to be that they have to divest and they've got timelines to do it.
So I've got another wealthy buyer, Frank McCourt, who wants to own the Dodgers until MLB told him he couldn't own them anymore and they conducted an auction.
So what is going on?
TikTok is in play because someone's going to get to buy it in the U.S. to be in compliant with the law and Byte Dance is going to have to let go of it.
And then in the U.S., they're going to have to figure about data and everything else and then find out, okay, now that you own it, can you confirm there's no data leaking out the back from all of our users?
That's going to be a lot of rebuild and a lot of things.
I happen to think that Kevin O'Leary is not the last name you're going to hear here.
I believe my gut, and there's been no announcement, but this is how I read the tea leaves.
I think Trump is saying, I want to figure something out.
Who right next to Trump is a very large owner of social media?
Elon Musk.
Big time.
If Elon Musk then made the move and said, well, maybe I'll buy this and then I'll own both.
Then I'll control.
Then the ad the ad cost will go up and they'll probably both be profitable.
But now you got one guy owning both.
And that kind of makes me kind of nervous.
I like the idea that Kevin O'Leary and a neutral U.S. partner fulfill the law, but Kevin O'Leary and Frank McCourt do not have experience with social media.
And the real issue with this is all the tentacles and all the leaking of U.S. user data out the back.
They would have to shut all that down because that was the point of the law.
The servers are in China.
The data is going to China.
There's surveillance of U.S. citizens in China now.
That's why in four days in April, people went so quick.
But I think there could be another name, and that's Elon Musk.
And I don't know what kind of experience Kevin O'Leary is.
Would you like to see Elon Musk, who owns X, also own TikTok?
Do you think that is good for him to own both?
I'm going to think in terms of Federal Trade Commission, I'm going to say no, because you have too much power in one space.
And the ad cost, I am a capitalist, but I'm against monopolies that then corner, just like I'm against China cornering the world market on minerals and using that leverage.
I also am against monopolies cornering the market and extending leverage.
Yeah, I wouldn't want to see Elon Musk buy TikTok, although it is definitely possible.
For me, it comes down to one thing.
How much do you trust China and the CCP?
For me, it's very close to this number I'm holding up right here.
Zero.
So, you know, in China, they have something called the Great Firewall, right?
It restricts the internet.
It restricts social media.
Their citizens can't go on and say, you know, you can probably try to get through with the VPN, but it's very restrictive.
Do you know what American apps, social media apps are allowed in China?
YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, even one of the greatest apps ever created called Manect.
Do you know how many are allowed in China?
Zero.
So we're going to let this super algorithm, super app owned by ByteDance, Byte Dance, definitely by the CCP, infiltrate our youth and just basically indoctrinate them to whatever they want China for our kids to be educated on.
I don't think so.
I'm very uncomfortable with this.
Even Charlie Kirk said, maybe I'm actually considering understanding why we should keep TikTok here.
Trump is even sort of warming up to the idea.
I don't know.
This is a national security problem that I hope gets rectified.
Vimi, your thoughts?
Musk owning both?
That's the main question.
X and TikTok.
I mean, I'm not a big fan of monopolies when it comes to that.
My one thing is anything that China doesn't have any involvement with it.
Like you were talking about brainwashing our youth and doing all the crazy stuff that they're doing.
I'm all for it.
But, you know, capitalism and business, it is what it is.
PBD, what are the pros and cons of Elon hypothetically acquiring TikTok?
Or hypothetically.
That's Tom.
That's one of Tom's top 10 predictions.
I was watching his video yesterday, which I actually thought was very good.
But to me, I would say I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know if it's something that he will do or not.
I think if there's any guy that can handle multiple companies that he's running at the same time, by the way, you know, the other day I made a claim about Musk, you know, about me as a founder working 80 hours a week for God knows how many years.
Nobody works 80 hours a week and all this stuff that came out.
Do you know there's a video of Musk?
They ask him how many hours a week you're working.
Do you know what his answer was?
What did he say?
Have you guys seen this or no?
So let me know.
I've seen it, but I'm not going to say that loud.
Okay, so if you've seen it, let me show this clip to you, Rob.
He's being interviewed, and they're asking him about what your schedule looks like right now.
I found it.
Oh, is this it, Rob?
This is it.
What's your schedule look like right now with all the businesses you're running?
Look what he says.
Go ahead.
Yeah, my workload went up from about, I don't know, 70 to 80 hours a week to probably 120.
So by the way, pause it.
Yeah.
Notice, pause it.
Audience was laughing.
He's not laughing.
Just to tell you what 120 is, I've worked 100 hours in a week.
Tom, I think we've even worked 110 hours in a week on some of the weeks.
You and I know what weeks these were.
Yep.
120 in a week, you have 168 total hours in a week.
120 means 48 is left for everything else.
48 divided by seven is seven hours.
You're working every day to run all your businesses.
This is while he has 10, 11 kids.
Go ahead and play the clip rom.
Yeah, I go to sleep.
I wake up.
I work.
Go to sleep.
Wake up, work, do that seven days a week.
I'll have to do that for a while.
Now, watch what he says.
Watch what he says here.
But I think eventually, once Twitter is set on the right path, I think it is a much easier thing to manage than SpaceX or Tesla.
So keyword is what?
Once it is established and systems are in place, it'll be easier to manage than Tesla and SpaceX, right?
So let me finish my thoughts.
So to me, if there's a guy that could pull it off, it's him, although he is stretching himself thin.
I think there's two things.
Being able to operate.
And then the other side is the other side is he may be sitting there and saying, why do I even need TikTok?
I'm building an app for everything.
Why do I even need a TikTok?
I don't know if I need a TikTok.
But then there's the FTC part, which I don't care whoever it is.
I don't care who it is.
You don't want, I remember one of my guys in the insurance company, at the beginning stages when I started the company, he was the biggest asshole to me.
Biggest.
Because the biggest portion of revenue in the business was coming from him.
Indirectly, whether you're the most humble person in the world or not, he became so arrogant, so entitled, so much of an asshole that he was unbearable to work with, and he was indirectly being a bully.
Because he could.
It's like, well, you know, what about this?
And what about that?
And what about this?
And there's a statement that says, if you want to test someone's character, give them what?
Give them power.
No, power, not money.
Lincoln said this.
If you want to test someone's character, give them power.
Okay.
Rob, if you can validate this quote, I think Lincoln said it.
Watch it be somebody else.
But I think it is Lincoln that said, if you want to test someone's character, give them power.
So what ended up happening is when I saw that, I did whatever I could.
If you want to test a man's character, give him power.
Yeah, Lincoln said this.
So I realized that's not good because if anybody had too much, and then there was other people that that happened to as well, a lot of them flirted with that power.
Okay.
You will flirt if you have that much power.
And half the time, you're not even aware of it.
Okay.
When you're going through this.
And it's an element of arrogance, power, and moments that you know you can bully to destroy someone's life.
And I just don't know if that's a good idea to have one person have that much power with any kind of a business.
I do think the monopoly law is a good law to have, no matter what business it is.
So that is one thing that is up for discussion with this taking place.
Do I think it can happen?
I think it can.
I think if Musk, his relationship being close to Trump impacted to be able to purchase TikTok, it is a great move.
But this is the part-time.
Do you think Trump himself would support Musk owning TikTok?
At the moment, I think he might.
I think longer term, I'm not sure if he would.
Because I think the longer term, you got to see where this is all going to go.
Right now, there's a lot of people that found ways to use TikTok and to make it work for them, to make it work in terms of getting out your message, grassroots, campaigning in the election, also commerce.
A lot of people have made TikTok work for them.
And guess what?
The Trump campaign was one of them.
They very strategically and very smartly made TikTok work for them during the election as a campaign tool.
And they used it straight up.
And by the way, Trump's campaign had to do all this with people hiding in the background trying to push levers the other way against them.
Well, one of the biggest investors in TikTok is an ally of Trump, Tom.
One of the biggest investors of TikTok is an ally of Trump.
Rob, if you want to pull this up, $2 billion, $2 billion of ownership and TikTok, Trump supporters, something like that, if you want to put it in there.
So there is a person like that already in there.
And as Trump can go with $2 billion social media, if you type in news, just go to news.
No, on the bottom, just go under news.
Yeah, let's see if it comes up.
Tech mobile is what I'm saying.
Trump can tap into a $2 billion.
No, there's a guy who owns $2 billion.
He invested, I believe, $2 billion in TikTok.
Yeah, remember we talked about this like a moment ago.
He's in there, and he's a player.
Rob?
Yes, I think his name is.
No, there's another name.
Anyways, there is somebody in there.
That's a part of that.
Pull that up.
I just want to revisit one thing with you, PBD, because maybe I want to understand this.
And I think a lot of the entrepreneurs out there might be able to learn something here.
Everything you just said about a power, if you want to test a man's character, you give them power.
Yes.
Right.
Lincoln, there's also another quote.
Power tends to corrupt.
You know, absolute power corrupts.
Absolutely.
Right.
So you did the video about working 80-hour weeks.
Yeah.
100-hour weeks.
You said you worked one time.
Elon said he worked 120-hour weeks.
How many hours in a week?
168 hours?
Yeah.
What I want to understand is this.
When you were working those 100-hour weeks, you're on the come up, right?
I mean, even now, you're probably working 70 hours.
Jennifer said I'm working back to working like PHP because now I'm running eight companies and PHP.
So what I want to understand, Elon, richest man in the world, he could literally never work a day in his life, but it's obviously not built that way.
What I want to understand is the following.
What motivates somebody when they've already reached the pinnacle of the pinnacle of the pinnacle?
You know, you're saying there's always levels to things?
He's reached the richest man in the world.
What else is there to reach?
What motivates someone like him or even someone like you to say, nope, 120-hour weeks, let's go?
What is that?
It's got to be a real vision.
It's not money.
That's what we were talking about three weeks ago.
It's got to be real vision, not money.
And for me, I'm with that.
All I'm saying is, if I'm the president of the United States, okay, which I'm not, I'm a guy that's an operator, business owner, entrepreneur.
But if I was, even if it's a guy on your own side, it's not good for business and the economy if one person has way too much control.
That's not good for anybody.
It's not.
It's not good on the left.
It's not good on the right.
I wouldn't mind having nine people having control of these companies that are separately or competing against each other.
Yes.
But one, that's never good.
Never.
It's never good.
When we sold our business and the company said, what are you going to do?
What if we buy the business and one of your big players quits?
I said, that's a great question you asked.
The biggest organization, our company, is only 23% of the revenue.
The other company that they bought, Tom, you know the other company that they bought, nearly 90% of the revenue of that company was coming from one agency.
You understand what the risk there is.
Diversification.
You don't want that.
You don't want.
And we thought about this for a long time after we got to this point.
Anyways, good question.
Let's follow up.
Let's do one fun story here before we wrap up.
And you guys can choose which one you want to do.
The Gen Z's being afraid of making phone calls.
That one.
35 roommates.
Or what men will look like in 30 years?
Or you want to do that?
Let's go through that.
Okay.
Phone calls make Gen Z's anxious.
A new college course aims to help them conquer their fears.
All right.
Let's see what this course is and if we need to take it or not.
All right.
So here we go.
Nottingham College in UK is addressing Jane Z's widespread telephonobia.
I didn't even know that was something.
A few are making and receiving phone calls by offering coaching sessions.
Liz Baxter, career advisor at college, explains that many young people simply don't have the confidence to use the telephone and symptoms ranging from nausea and muscular tensions to a fear of judgment or humiliation during calls.
Practical classroom exercises help students build phone confidence through role-playing scenarios like answering interview questions, calling restaurants to inquire about hours and contacting stores.
This is comical.
Stores to check inventory.
Baxter describes these as bite-sized ways to push boundaries with students reporting anxiety as phone calls feel formal and often associated with emergencies.
Adam, we have three minutes, but give your side.
Okay.
So you know how every generation they always give the speech of back in my day, back in my day, like the old story, back in my day, I used to walk to school uphill 20 miles.
And well, I used to have no shoes.
Well, back in my day, if you wanted to talk to somebody, there was no cell phones.
There was no DMs.
You had to pick up the phone.
Now, let's say, hypothetically, you're a 15-year-old boy and you want to ask a girl out on a date.
Well, there's no DMs, homie.
You're not sliding in the DM.
There's no, there's no, you got to call the house.
And she doesn't have a cell phone.
You got to call the house phone.
You remember this?
You remember this?
And here's what happens when you call the house phone.
Kelly's not picking up.
Kelly's dad's picking up.
Kelly laughed.
And he goes, Hello?
And you're 15.
Hello.
Could I speak to Kelly, please?
Who's this?
This is Adam.
You want to talk about being scared?
You want to talk about being nauseous?
You want to talk about not knowing what to do?
Call a girl's dad and ask to talk and take her girl on a date.
You have no idea how easy you have.
So you have two daughters.
They're in the dating age range.
No one's calling Tom to ask for permission.
They're messaging.
They're texting.
So that's just a small byproduct of how easy kids have.
And they're scared to pick up the phone.
Well, I think what has happened is we parents, aunts, uncles have allowed these kids to grow up in a digital generation without human interactions.
Or not without human interaction, but with more limited interaction.
And they're sitting there with their head in the phone and they're texting.
That's their form of communication.
And when they have to have a human-to-human discussion, and this course really isn't about, I'm looking at it, it's kind of funny when they talk about call a restaurant and ask them what hours are open.
Why would I do that?
I can just go on Google Maps, click on reviews, and see the hours.
See?
See, they don't have interaction with people and they don't have to solve it.
And so this is the fault of parents that have allowed that phone to be a digital pacifier.
And rather than have your kid having great social skills, you know, I used to, we would go to the airport and I gave Bailey her passport.
She had a passport early, as soon as so she could travel.
I would say, okay, go walk up and tell them where you're going.
And she had a printed out boarding pass.
I remember she walks up to this thing.
She goes, Hi, I'm Bailey Ellsworth and I'm going to Mammoth.
And she hands him the boarding path.
And I'm standing back deliberately because I wanted her to do it and be confident and talk to people.
And I remember the TSA guy go, who are you going with?
And she says, my dad, but that's my boarding pass.
She didn't even look back and see my dad over here.
She said, that's my boarding pass.
Because I told her, This is what you're going to say.
You're very good at that.
You do that with our boys as well.
Because I wanted her to be comfortable.
And guess what?
With the digital pacifier, you lose interaction.
So you're losing early the ability to coach people, to ability to have a job where you're going to be, oh my gosh, not texting.
I love that.
Sitting next to a human being.
Yeah, and you know what, you make the point about phones.
You know what Tico is about to turn 13 years old in three weeks, okay, on the first.
And do you know he still doesn't have a phone?
He's the only kid.
Dylan's 11.
Every one of his friends have a phone.
He doesn't have a phone.
Senna's eight.
Most of her friends have a phone.
She doesn't have a phone, okay?
When they see people, how you doing?
How are you?
I was just going to say that they're the most like you sit and there's a conversation.
It's not.
But they have you guys around them.
Of course.
They're having real conversations with you guys.
You're helping him out.
You're building a relationship with them.
He loves being around you.
Like I always talk about, folks, if you see Tico and Vinny together, it's like two grown men talking to each other.
They're best friends.
He's hilarious.
Yeah.
He's hilarious.
Same maturity level.
100%.
He might be a little bit ahead of me.
And I will tell you this.
You know what I mean?
What are you doing over whether Adam's gay?
It's true.
You never know.
By the way, one time I try to set a good example as a man to let people know that I would never judge Adam and Tom keep bringing Tom.
Come on.
But I want to show you guys this.
This whole story, Adam, you know what it made me think about?
Here's what it made me think about.
It made me think about this progressive commercial.
This commercial, I love this commercial.
Have you guys ever seen this where he's telling people how to become parents, like what things not to do?
Play this clip.
It's so, so good.
Go ahead, Rob.
I got into this because I was a sufferer.
I turned into my dad.
But I came back.
We need to silence our phone.
Who knows where that button is?
I don't have silent.
Everyone does, right up here.
Doesn't live, laugh, and love?
Yes.
The answer is no.
I can't help your homeowners not become their parents.
No fussing, no cussing, and no.
Remember, they're not programs.
They're TV shows.
You woke up early.
No one cares.
Guess what?
The waiter doesn't need to know your name.
Play the other one.
Play the other one.
It's so stupid that I love it because it reminds me of this story.
Watch this next one here with Progressive.
They're in the elevator.
This is the next one that he's in the elevator.
I don't know if you've seen this one.
How old is it?
These are old, huh?
These are not newest ones, but they do such a good job.
I used to only have Progressive.
Go ahead and watch this one here.
To you, it may just be an elevator.
Here goes nothing.
But for a young homeowner becoming their parents, it's a learning opportunity.
Come on, Ed.
The more the merrier.
Paris, huh?
Bonjour.
We got any out-of-towners in the elevator?
Tom, it is not the 10th floor, huh?
Must be a heck of a view.
Okay.
See how everyone else is facing this way?
Progressive can't save you from becoming a bad person.
Shout out to the merchants of the day.
Anyways, look, I mean, obviously, some of this stuff, sometimes you have to teach, you know, young men who maybe didn't have a father figure to do certain things.
And I can see why people would be afraid of making phone calls today because all they're doing is texting and DMing and all that stuff.
But, you know, I'm so glad we grew up in a phase that we talk to people.
And as funny as this story is, do you actually give some credence to the story?
I do.
Do you actually think people are afraid of making phone calls?
I actually think they are.
I don't think this is a joke.
I think this is a real thing.
I don't know if they need a class for it, but it is what it is.
Gang, I just want to tell you guys, it's fantastic because we're almost at $50,000 that we're going to give to families in California.
I love the fact that you guys are doing this.
I hope this is a quarter of a million dollars for us to send a check to people in California to help them out at a time that they need help.
And if you have any stories, send us emails.
If you have anyone that's directly impacted, info at vt.com.
Send us a story.
This morning you talked about this.
XYZ, here's a family.
Here's this.
Here's that.
And we will obviously process them.
We're not going to be able to get to everybody, but we're going to do our part to try to contribute in the smallest ways possible on how we do this.
Tom and our VP of Finance right now are working to see how we're going to make this happen.
I think that hat is already sold out.
Chris just texted me saying it is.
Yeah, it is sold out.
But everything else, anything else you purchase there, the backpacks, this shirt that I have on, I wear this polo shirt three times a week.
I wear this.
Some of you guys, go sport the gear, go whatever you have, place your orders.
We will give 100% of today's, anything we make today, not just net gross revenue, will go to families in California.
We love you guys.
We appreciate you guys.
We will do this again next week.
We do have a lot of other podcasts that are coming up.
And Chase Hughes is going to come out tomorrow.
Very, very interesting interview with Chase Hughes.
I had a fellow that came in here from California yesterday, late at night.
We finished the podcast.
He was a man that lived on Skid Row for seven years, okay?
A homeless man who used fentanyl, who used meth, who used heroin, whose parents, a mother died at 14 years old from heroin, who broke down the different charities with all the money, which ones work, which ones don't.
Cry help, all of these different things that we went through.
I want to find out how to address the homeless situation.
That podcast is, I think, going out sometime next week.
Wes Huff, the gentleman that debated Billy Carson, came here with the fellow that hosted the podcast with Wes Huff.
The interview that just went out with Rogan, phenomenal.
Wes came here as well.
His podcast goes out on Monday morning.
And then we have a few other surprises that I will not be disclosing, but I may be doing a surprise podcast on Saturday morning, 9 a.m.
If this happens, you'll find out what it is.
And it's a very current topic that a lot of people have questions for him.
And we can't wait to have that conversation with him on Saturday.
