Hegseth Confirmation Hearings, TikTok Sunday Ban, Bill Burr Wildfire Backlash | PBD Podcast | Ep 535
Patrick Bet-David, Tom Ellsworth, Vincent Oshana, and Adam Sosnick cover Pete Hegseth's confirmation hearing, TikTok's ban going into effect, and Bill Burr's wildfire comments sparking backlash!
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TIME STAMPS:
00:00 - Podcast intro
01:00 - PBD previews topics on the podcast
09:26 - LA insurance giant chilling predictions after fires.
32:06 - California landlords raise rent by 124%
40:48 - Pete Hegseth confirmation hearing.
1:07:33 - Bill Burr torches wildfire victims.
1:21:43 - TikTok banned starts Sunday.
1:34:18 - Trump tax cuts face expiration.
1:39:16 - Michelle Obama to skip Trump's inauguration.
2:00:28 - Gaza ceasefire reached.
2:07:06 - Woman scammed by Brad Pit scammer.
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ABOUT US:
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.
But Tom has to be the person that everybody listens to the song Thomas.
This is what we deal with on a daily basis.
Folks, you don't witness Tom's bullying behind closed.
Yeah, and they talk about us like we're bullying him, Tom.
Egomaniacs.
Seriously.
He just put a border here so I can't pass.
Listen, all right.
Let's let's let's get into it.
We got a lot of stuff to cover here with you.
As usual, California is getting nastier, and we have some new stories to talk about with California.
LA insurance giant makes prediction after devastating fire.
We'll cover that.
LA landlords jack up rent by as much as 124% floating.
Price gouging laws during deadly wildfires.
That's what's going on there.
Trump inauguration is around the corner on Monday.
Here's what to know about guest list, schedule, performance, and more.
Michelle Obama skipped Jimmy Carter's funeral.
Michelle Obama is also skipping the inauguration.
Obviously, Vinnie has the most creative speculations on why he thinks, but we'll process why that is and we'll talk about that.
GOP tax leaders, U.S. small business could pay more tax than small businesses do in China if Trump cut expires.
Small business optimism surges to six-year high based on Trump's policies.
Iran never plotted to kill Trump during campaign.
Iran's president tells NBC News.
Okay.
Denmark opens back channel to Trump to discuss Greenland.
That's a Wall Street Journal story.
Takeaway from Pam Bondi and Pete Hex said their confirmation hearing.
Pam and Adam Schiff had a very friendly conversation together.
Elizabeth Warren asked a question from Pete Hex said about being a general.
His response is beautiful.
We'll talk about that.
Bill Burr eviscerates effing idiot internet trolls who say the LA wildfire were mismanaged.
He actually says they're doing a good job.
The people that are doing a great job.
Yeah, Bill Burr saying that TikTok responds to rumors China wants to ask Musk to buy the platform pure fiction.
TikTok faces a ban Sunday.
Today is Thursday in three days.
Tom, Sunday's the last day for TikTok.
Is that what it's looking like?
According to the federal legislation on the books right now, they've got a deadline.
Here we go.
Okay.
TikTok faces a ban Sunday.
TikTok preparing for you a Sunday shutdown.
Everybody's talking about that.
We'll address that as well.
But the pen will show up Monday.
Wall Street Journal.
Even Harvard's NBAs are struggling to land jobs.
Starbucks major reversal in policy that will force customers to pay nine suspected Tren de Aragua gangbangers charged for brutal kidnapping.
That's from Daily Caller.
Gaza Sears ceasefire deal reached between Israel Hamas, truce to begin Sunday, and Joe Biden took credit for it.
Eagles fan who cursed out this other lady at insults at the Packer supporters, fired from DEI-focused consulting job.
And then why 2025 will be the year of the alpha male.
Adam has a lot of stuff to say about that.
As an alpha male, he claims he is.
And then Brad Pitt, this guy, it's just, folks, what Vinny told me with this story, we have to cover this.
A man claims to be Brad Pitt, sends pictures and messages to a lady who is married to a very wealthy man, and she actually decides to leave him for Brad.
If this thing is true, hold on.
I double fact checked it, but wait till you see the photos.
I can't wait for this.
And then we got a couple other things on the addendum as well.
But before we get into this, maybe even a Diddy story that we got to cover on the freak off tapes with the documentaries coming out.
So one thing I do like to do here, if you're at Valley Timmy, we like to make predictions, okay?
And we have a lot of fun with predictions.
If you watch the podcast, we make predictions.
We play the game of predictions.
So do you think you're pretty good at making predictions?
Do you yourself?
You're like, I'm very good at making predictions.
Well, guess what?
We're playing a game, and it's the first 100 days of Donald Trump as a president.
And we're playing this game on vtnews.ai with a leader's bulletin, with a contest, with recognition at the end, with prizes at the end.
And here's how it works.
Every day, vtnews.ai is going to post a prediction for you to make on the website, and you go out there and make the predictions yourself.
And by the way, to participate, all you have to do is put your email there.
It's free.
You don't have to do anything else.
For some of you that want to take advantage of all the features that VTNews.ai gives, upgrade, use it.
We use VTNews.ai for our podcast all the time.
And here's how it works.
It's starting today.
And the way the scoring system works is the sooner you make the predictions, like Tom is doing it right now to get the highest scores, like he's doing it right now.
He's not even waiting for us.
Tom's been doing this so fast because he wants to be ahead of everybody.
But we're going to show you how this works.
So here's 14 predictions that are officially available on the website.
Some of them are going to be funny.
Some of them are not.
And some of them are going to tell you exactly how many points you can get on those if you get them right.
There is more points if you answer faster.
So if you want to put a reminder on your phone in the morning, each prediction will be posted on the website at 9 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.
So Rob, let's read some of these predictions on VTNews.ai from the top to bottom.
And Vinny, Tom, Adam, if you guys want to score your predictions now, you can.
Let's go through them.
I'm going to go.
Okay.
So number one, I'm not logged in, but we can start it here right now.
So number one, how many former presidents do you think will attend Trump's inauguration?
Okay.
None.
One, two, three, or four.
Okay.
And if Michelle doesn't show up, it still counts as Obama showing up.
So four is everybody shows up.
Three is one of them doesn't show up, et cetera, et cetera.
Number two, Trump has stated he has 100 executive orders planned for day one.
How many executive orders will Trump execute by the end of January 21st?
That's a day after inauguration.
You have the breakdown on how many he's going to do.
Go to the next one, Rob.
Okay.
Which Trump cabinet appointee confirmation hearing process will take the longest if they are all confirmed at all?
You can pick and choose which one those are.
They're right there.
Go to the next one, Rob.
What will the state of U.S. border security look like at the end of Trump's first week in office?
It gives you options on what to do.
Five, what will happen to Truth Social one month after Trump takes office?
Six, will Trump pardon Snowden the first 100 days?
Seven, will Trump restart the Keystone pipeline the first hundred days?
Eight, how many of Trump's core cabinet members will change within the first hundred days?
Will Trump once again remove the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accords in his first 100 days?
10, how will inflation compare on the day 100 versus his first day?
11.
Will Trump evoke an executive order in his first 100 days to resume construction on the southern border, the wall that he wanted to build?
12, who will receive executive pardons during Trump's first 100 days?
Rob, can you open that one up?
Because that's 800 points.
And you got a few of them right there.
Who do you think is going to get that?
Will be Biden, January 6th Riders, himself, Fauci, Mallorcas, or none of the above.
Go to 13.
I've got two more to go.
Will an incident that creates a security concern happen during Trump's inauguration?
And last but not least, will Trump take executive action against TikTok in his first 100 days?
If you are good at it, by the way, behind closed doors, I just want to prepare you guys.
Because Tom is an MBA and the rest of us don't, Tom's been talking shit that is going to kill us in this game because Tom is very good at these types of games.
So if you want to join us, we're going to go all the way to the 100th day, which means the 100th day will be 100 days from January 20th.
So it's not going to be done till February, March, April, end of April.
Okay, maybe May 1st.
And then the winners will have some special surprise and prizes for you guys.
So go to vtnews.ai and start posting your predictions now.
You do get points the earlier you post.
So the second person gets fewer, third fewer, fourth fewer.
And the leaders bulletin will be posted with your name there.
Make sure your name is there so we can track you.
You will see the leaders bulletin of people with the highest scores on their predictions.
All right.
So let's get right into it.
Again, go to vtnews.ai, vtnews.ai to become the news tradamis.
News tradamis.
News.
News tradamis.
News.
The Trump Tradamis.
Okay.
All right.
So the things that's taking place right now, I want to start off with this first story, Tom.
And the first story is Los Angeles insurance giants makes prediction after devastating fire in LA.
Watch this, folks.
Okay.
And we've been talking about this.
Mike Zuckerman, CEO of CSAA Insurance Group, highlighted the grave risk to California if homeowner insurance available becomes unavailable due to wildfire, stating not being able to insure homes in California against these kinds of risks will completely upend the state.
CSAA is the third largest insurer in California, continues to write new policies, but declined to renew 5,500 policies in 2024.
Okay?
Just 1.2% of its total policies due to wildfires.
Zuckerman emphasized the necessity of adjusting insurance prices.
I'm going to read this one more time, folks.
He emphasized the necessity of adjusting insurance prices to match what?
The increased wildfire risks.
Explaining, this is not a sign that wildfires aren't insurable.
It is a sign that insurance companies need to be allowed to charge the prices that match the increased risk in order to ensure.
While CSAA raises home insurance rates by 6.9% this year, other insurance, such as All State and State Farm, have implemented double-digit increases or left the California market in its entirety.
Tom.
Well, I got a couple things on this.
And what he's talking about is the overall market.
So CEO of insurance company, you would expect him to talk about the overall market.
But I've got some stats down underneath this.
He's right that if they have increased risk, they increase the price.
Anybody that has a teenage driver and they got two tickets in their first 18 months of having a driver's license, your car insurance goes up.
And then you tell your kid, hey, you're on my insurance policy, but you can't get any more tickets.
And you went to traffic school for that one.
You can't do that because take a look.
Your mom and I are paying higher car insurance.
People in America, American families know about this.
You've heard about this from me, right?
So guess what?
It's the same thing if they think that your house is at risk, maybe because brush clearance hasn't happened properly or you're in a wildfire area and they're concerned about it.
So the insurance companies are acting, oh, here comes a word, rationally in a normal market.
Do they want your business?
Of course they do.
Do they want to raise the price so that you don't do business with them?
No.
No, they don't.
But if you're selling me bananas and fruit and it costs more to get here, the shipping, then you have to charge me more for a basket of bananas, right?
Because you say, well, the fuel was up, the shipping was up.
I don't know.
I went down to the dock and I bought it to my fruit wholesaler.
Tom had to raise a price.
Everyone seems to lose their sense of understanding that that's what's happening here.
And all these headlines are crazy.
But I'll tell you something else that's crazy.
When the rates were going up, people changed coverages of the policy.
You know, you can save on your car insurance policy.
You know how you do it?
I call the insurance company.
I go, you know what?
I don't need this.
I don't need like, I lower the cost of like, if somebody else gets injured on my accident.
The deductible.
Everything.
Maybe you say, well, you know what?
I got a little bit more money now.
I don't need 500 deductible.
I can do 2,000.
So the first 2,000 of a car crash is mine.
And guess what?
And they say, oh, that's great, Mr. Oshana.
You just saved 8% on your premium.
That's the way it works.
Well, check this out.
Yesterday, I dug into it.
Insurance Analysis Group says 74% of homeowners are underinsured for what's called the complete loss and ALE.
You know what ALE is?
Alternative living expenses.
Alternative living expenses are usually only 20% of the coverage you choose to have on your house.
So if your house is $700,000, your alternative living coverage is 20% of that, $140,000.
And if it takes three years to rebuild the house, you are going to blow through that.
Or if rents go up, and we're going to see that story a little bit, you're going to blow right through the lid on that.
And guess what you're going to have to do?
Decide to sell the property or figure out a way to self-finance.
So let me tell you guys what happened here, like a perfect example of a story.
Francis Buchetti in California, he owns a house in Palisades.
He's been there for decades.
He's been living in Palisades for 50 years on and off, but he's owned his house for a couple decades, give or take.
His insurance premium last year, he gets word that his premium just went from $4,500 to $18,000 a year.
$1,500 a month.
From $4,500.
Rob, if you want to pull up the story, Francis Buchetti, Brandon, if you guys can send it to Rob, so he has it to pull it up.
This is a Wall Street Journal story.
It went from $4,500 to $18,000 a year.
A year ago, he gets this letter.
Okay.
When he gets this letter, he sits there.
He says, there's no way in the freaking way I can afford to do this.
So he doesn't do anything with it.
He goes to the fair plan, which the fair plan is $3,200 a year, and they protect your house, I think, up to $3 million.
But when he goes to the fair plan to approve for it, they tell him to cut 10 trees on the side of his house.
He looks at the cost of cutting the 10 trees.
He says, I can't afford to do this.
So he decides to not cut the trees.
So he doesn't even get the fair plan.
Then he goes and does something in California.
They say going bare.
That means you don't have any insurance.
It's what it's called, going bare.
I'm going to go bare and I have nothing, not fair plan, not homeowner's insurance.
He has nothing.
And you can do it if you have no mortgage.
You can do it if you have no mortgage.
You know what ends up happening?
His house burned down.
Oh, man.
100% of his house burned down.
So guess what he doesn't have to do right now?
He has no insurance to pay for it, no fair plan, nothing to do anything with it.
By the way, the fair plan, I'm talking to a fellow yesterday who is a very successful real estate businessman.
And we're having this conversation.
He's here.
We've known each other for a long time.
You know who he is.
And I just want to keep it private because of the conversation that we had.
And he's here.
We're sitting in a hangar having a great conversation together.
His house burns down in Malibu.
Wow.
The guys next door, a lot of the people there whose houses burned down in Malibu, a lot of them had only the fair plan.
The fair plan apparently only protects up to $3 million.
And they have $15 million households.
So if you got a $20 million house with only a fair plan, That $20 million house is now only getting a $3 million insurance policy to rebuild.
That $17 million has to come out of whose pocket right there.
Look at this.
California's fair plan insure payments for natural disasters up to what?
$3 million for residential policyholders.
So imagine you're sitting there saying, where the hell am I going to come up with this other $17 million?
You're not.
But a guy is going to come to you and say, look, I know you kind of screwed here to rebuild it.
I'll give you $5 million.
And that's exactly what you were talking about.
That's awesome.
Which, by the way, watch what happened yesterday.
Gavin Newsom yesterday tweets out a video from the podcast.
If you can go to, if you can go, you can go right there.
This is Gavin Newsom, and he says, this is absolutely false.
It's from his account.
I signed an executive order to protect residents from predatory land speculators and developers.
Here's Vinny talking about this in this clip.
And Pat, look what he did.
They had those fact checkers.
Go on and say that.
I saw that.
Community notes.
So go a little, go a little.
We got to give credit to who posted this as well.
So Wall Street Apes posted.
And in the description, it says California Governor Newsome officially setting the stage for developers to come and buy up the devastated land in LA Pacific Palisades.
Play the clip if you can, Rob, from the podcast.
If you can go and play this clip, go for it.
Watch this.
Where Newsom is talking about calling Josh Green, the Maui fires, okay?
They exposed the same stuff that's happening right now, government failure, delayed response, ignored warnings, and all these pirates.
He says something about reimagining California where he calls the Maui guy.
And this is what bothers me, Tom.
Those people that you're talking about now that have nothing, okay, that the house was worth, let's say, 10 million in regard to insurance.
Now, if somebody comes and wants to buy up the land, Tom, they can offer them way less and say, listen, everything's gone.
You didn't have the right insurance.
We're going to give you this much money, cash, Tom.
Go about your business.
Am I right?
People had their house paid off.
Yes.
That for some of them that don't have the resources and were underinsured, that is their only choice.
Jeez.
Okay, so watch this.
So Tom and Vinny are talking about this.
Now, watch this.
Go back to my account, Rob.
Go back if you could to the Twitter.
You just go back.
Yeah, there you go.
Zoom in on that same thing.
Zoom in if you could.
His executive order, after the team looked at it, okay?
The executive order he said to not allow people of predatory land speculators and developers for people to come and pick it up is only for three months.
Weird.
And it mandates property offers that meet market value.
How long do you think when we're talking about how long you think it's going to take to clean out the debris alone for homeowners?
And then for people to say, I want to sell the house.
How often did you say, I want to sell my house?
90 days later, you sell the house.
How often have you done that?
It doesn't happen like that, unless you're like a peak, peak, peak, peak market where everything's going like this.
But in a situation like that, this is going to take six to 12 months.
So yeah, we put an executive order to protect on all the lip surface stuff.
No, this is just a public political PR stunt.
People are being impacted right now directly.
And this insurance could be the number one reason why it leads to the California exodus.
And by the way, here's the part.
You can sit there and try to spin it all you want.
You know how long it's going to take to clean this?
I'm having a conversation yesterday.
We're having a meeting with the mayor of Fort Lauderdale.
We're sitting having a conversation together.
And the amount of people right now that are looking at moving, like cities that like cities in Texas, cities in Nevada, places in here, like we're already getting people asking that they want to come down here.
We're already getting people interested that are leaving because how long, Tom?
And this could go to any one of you guys here.
This goes to everybody.
And folks, you're listening to this.
Comment, bro.
Rob, can you put a poll?
How long do you think it's going to take those areas to recover from this where it goes back to normal?
One to three years, three to five years, five to ten years, or ten years plus.
Run those numbers.
Tom, how long do you think it's going to take?
I did some research on this.
At the end of three years, less than 20% of the homes will be finished.
Less than 20%.
Three years from now, they estimate 17 to 20% of the homes will be finished three years from now.
And those will be some of the smaller ones.
These bigger ones in Malibu, these are five-year projects that are going to go through a thing called the Coastal Commission, advanced permitting.
So there it is: 17 to 20% in three years.
So I would say five to ten years.
And then, Peck, I asked you a question.
So let's say you had that.
How much was that guy's house?
15 million?
The one the Palisades that burned down?
And now they're only going to give him a hundred.
No, he's not saying the Malibu houses on the water that all burned down.
Most of them burned down.
If it's 20 million, you only get 3 million from the first.
Okay, so now, so now here's my question to you.
Now you have that 3 million.
You have to rebuild.
Listen, you're not going to have the 20 million.
So now that property, you're going to build a, let's say, you're not going to build a 20 million dollar house.
You're going to what?
Build a $3 million house now?
You can't.
That's not possible.
But that's what I'm saying.
So now, that's going to my point.
So now you're going to take that money.
That land, what are you going to do with that land?
You're just going to sell it?
Is that what you're going to do?
Do you just sell the land at all?
Listen, here's what it comes down to.
How many of those buyers bought it that have an additional $50,000 million sitting there?
How many people that, like, for example, when a person buys a million dollar house, just make it simpler, files?
Okay.
Bring it to a million dollar house.
If a person buys a million auto house, how many people have a million dollars in cash?
Very few.
Of course.
Very few.
How many, what percentage do you think?
How many, if you buy a million-dollar house, how many people that buy a million-dollar house have a million in cash?
Less than 5%.
Would you agree with that?
I think maybe even smaller than that.
Watch this.
I'll give it to you.
Give you the stats.
So home purchases were down 70% here in South Florida.
And of the remaining, so that means you're only selling 30% as much as two years prior.
Make sense?
70% down, 30%.
Of the 30%, they said that 50% were cash buyers.
So that's 15% of the original total.
So using stats from South Florida, it estimates sort of higher-end homes, about 15% of them are full cash buyers.
Okay, so then if you look at that, so let's say 15% of people have the cash to buy.
That sounds about right.
Okay, let's just say 5% to 15%.
So now that's at a million.
Go to the $20 million homes in Malibu.
What percentage of the people that bought a $20 million home have $20 million in cash?
It goes up.
It's probably $1%.
But it's probably only 30%.
It's going to go up.
That's the best.
To afford those houses.
Now, of the 30% that have the money to be able to pay for those houses, how many of them are going to say, yeah, yeah, honey, let's make this mistake again.
No one California is going to protect us.
Let's double down.
Hell to the no.
It's going to be a new person that wants to take the risk.
So they're going to sell at a discount.
How much is that discount?
Depends on how much insurance they had.
There's a lot of things that's going to come into play here.
But the reality of it is this is not done.
2,500 votes.
Most people said it's going to take five to 10 years.
Look, 72% of people say it's going to take more than five years for this thing to come back up.
72% is going to take that long for him to recover.
Adam, final thoughts.
Well, you know, it's funny because I get all these emails from insurance companies.
And so, you know, we're in this industry.
I got an email from the insurance department of California.
Now, typically, I just delete this.
What do I care about the insurance company?
I'm in Florida.
But what I found is interesting is this.
This is from, scroll all over to the bottom just so you see what this is from.
State of California.
If you go to the very bottom, this is signed from Ricardo Lara, the insurance commissioner of California.
I actually want to get your perspective on this.
If you've ever seen anything like this, it says, Whereas the dwellings of the thousands of California residents that have been destroyed or damaged, hundreds of businesses and structures have been destroyed, damaged, and tens of thousands of California residents that have been evacuated of their homes by the Palisades, eaten several fires.
Boom, boom, boom.
Whereas the magnitude of these fires are associated with insurance claims are likely to create a shortage of qualified insurance adjusters.
So now I, Ricardo LaRa, the insurance commissioner of the state of California, in accordance with the authority of the Vest in My Section, yada, yada, yada, hereby declare an emergency situation to exist with a respect to the adjustment of insurance claims arising from the wildfires.
And he gives three main points.
Therefore, I authorize the following.
Number one, the work performed by non-licensed adjusters is under the act of direction, control, charge, and/or management of qualified insurance adjuster, qualified manager.
That makes pretty much sense.
Qualified.
Here's where it gets weird.
Number two, the non-licensed adjuster register with the insurance commissioner within 15 days of the date to which the non-licensed adjuster commences the claims adjusting activity in connection with the wildfires.
So that scroll down, Rob.
All claims adjusters.
Basically, how I'm interpreting this, you tell me.
You don't even need license adjusters.
You don't even need to be quote unquote a person who has been vetted.
This is not something that there's such a shortage of this assurance adjustments, but they're basically making exceptions here.
And they're giving this, here's the final part: any qualified adjuster, qualified manager, insurer authorized to do business in California, activity directs, controls or charges, and or managers or non-licensed adjuster may be held liable.
Have you ever seen anything, Liz?
Yes.
Tell me if I'm wrong.
But let me tell you what this is.
If you don't have insurance license, let's say, hey, hey, guys, we need more life insurance in California.
We're underinsured.
Hey, you don't even need a license to go sell it.
I got you.
Okay.
I'm trying to understand this.
Go ahead.
But this is a Ricardo Lara.
You think he's a liberal or a conservative?
Most people that work in the Department of Insurance.
Rob, can you look up who this Ricardo Lara is, insurance commissioner, Ricardo Lara, and see who appointed him?
Okay.
Ricardo Laura, insurance commissioner, who appointed him?
He's in California, so you have to zoom in a little bit.
Speculate that he's on the ran for Senate as a Democrat in 2012, 2019.
Okay.
He served as California Senate.
Okay.
So guess what?
Here's a Democrat that is forced to deregulate.
This is a form of deregulation because think about it.
Pre-1929, people who sold stocks, they didn't have Series 7s.
You're just like, I want to sell stock.
No, there was no licensing.
There's no such licensing only came after all the people got caught manipulating the stock market, the big crash, and then FDR goes to Joseph Kennedy, brings him in to start SEC.
SEC gets started.
Then they start saying we need fingerprints because you're handling people's money.
Then does Series 7 take this test, take that test.
Then investment, you know, all these 1934, all this 1933, that's when all this stuff gets started, right?
So this is a form of deregulating to accelerate.
It's almost a contradiction for them.
They don't know they're doing this.
They're deregulating.
They're lowering regulations.
They're lowering the barrier of entry of doing something like this because their over-regulation has limited the amount of people they need as adjusters to come and help them out.
Sure.
Do you understand what I'm saying?
No.
In your mind, what you're saying is they're lowering standards to get anybody to come in.
Both could be true, but to them, it's a form of deregulation.
Tom, would you agree?
I completely agree.
And what they're trying to do is, let's say, Pat.
Does that make sense?
Let's say Patty.
Yeah, well, I guess my only question would be: there's over-regulation and there's under-regulation.
I mean, I've seen you.
I mean, how many, how many insurance agents has PHP?
Nearly 60,000 people licensed.
So you have standards there.
You have a fast start.
We do.
We do, but I can't.
I mean, you can't just, nobody can just start selling insurance.
But I tell you, okay, what do I need to do right now to sell?
What license do I need to do?
Facebook ads for your company of 10 million a year.
There's no license.
So why not?
But that's the point.
Is it a good thing or a bad thing?
It's a good thing.
I see what you're saying.
So do you necessarily need a license to sell insurance in some places?
Maybe, maybe not.
driving cars.
Is it good that we're giving people?
I agree.
So you see how this works?
I mean, I wouldn't know anything about that, but the point is in some area, it does.
In some area, it doesn't.
When you're dealing with people's finances, it's probably a good idea for you to go out there and learn some of the rules and regulations and stuff and learn.
You know, the continuing education is actually a very good thing that they're doing.
It's needed.
Trust me, because we had a lot of headaches with that, with some people.
But going back to you, Tom, form of deregulation.
Yeah.
So, Adam, let's say you're all state and I'm state farm.
The number of people, we have to send an adjuster out to take pictures.
Your car cuts in a crash.
A guy comes out with the camera, takes pictures, surveys your car, unless it's on a tow truck in a junkyard, right?
Okay, that's the adjuster.
So what they're saying is that you and me, we're like, how are we going to get, how do we set appointments?
It's going to be a month to set all these appointments for an adjuster to go out, take pictures, site survey.
They'll put a drone up.
You know, I read about this.
And that's what they need to do.
The chimney was standing.
The thing's completely done.
They see the rest of the street.
And then that now goes to Pat and Vinny, who are now in the claims office looking at it.
Okay, yeah, I just got from the adjusters here.
I see what your property was.
So they need, they're going to have the adjusters go out and do it.
Previously, the state put all these restrictions.
So you and me didn't have enough adjusters.
Now we've got emergency adjusters so we can get the information into the claims people and we can start helping them.
And I bet you that this was the insurance people, like you and me, the carriers, calling Sacramento and saying, listen, you've put a lot of restrictions on us on the past, but we need an emergency certification program so that we can get adjusters out taking pictures of property, meeting with our customers so that we can get their stuff into the claims office and start the process.
And so this is a liberal doing something that doesn't look liberal, but he's doing it because I think that the carriers are screaming.
Yeah.
So do you think so, Pat?
We're on the same page, but you're asking a very, very good question.
At a time like this, I think they're actually making the right choice.
They have to do this right now.
At a time like this, they're making a right choice.
Has insurance, the concept of insurance, whether it's home insurance, whether it's auto insurance, whether it's health insurance, whether it's life insurance, has it ever been this much on the forefront?
A month ago, the number one story in the world was Luigi Mangio about the concept and the situation.
I don't know.
But you're making a very good point with that.
Now, homeowners insurance.
I'll say this.
I see so many people that have car insurance, but they don't have life insurance.
I see people that have renter's insurance, but they don't have disability insurance.
The number one asset in your life is not your car.
It's not your house.
It's not your business.
It's you.
So this is why I think people are so roughed up about what you're doing.
I mean, look, the good thing with insurance, here's a good thing with insurance, specifically life insurance.
Not a lot of other stuff.
I've been in insurance for 25 years.
I can tell you how many times the death benefit wasn't paid out.
And each time the death benefit wasn't paid out, there was something to do with the beneficiary that they had somebody else pee for them, that that somebody else drew the blood for them, that there was some kind of first two years in contestability clause where something happened.
I guarantee it was very few.
But it's very few.
They pay out.
They pay out.
Now, when it comes on to auto insurance, other stuff, those guys will do anything and everything they can to not pay out.
So many people have bad experience of only getting $3,000 on a car being total.
It's like, what are you talking about?
It's $22,000.
What am I going to do with 3,000?
It's very different with life, than auto, than health, than homeowners.
We have to isolate all of these very important things.
Well, you can be, in my opinion, humble opinion, I know plenty of life insurance professionals.
I don't know too many like renters, insurance professionals.
Let's get to the next one.
That's a professional.
So check this out.
This kind of going still with LA.
I want to get to the story here.
LA fires causing landlords to jack up rent as much as 128% and flouting price gouging laws during deadly wildfires.
LA landlords are illegally raising rents above the 10% limit imposed during the state of emergency declared by Governor Newsom after wildfires destroyed.
12,000 structures, a five-bedroom Santa Monica home increased from $12,500 to $28,000 a month, 124% hike.
Chelsea Kirk from Strategic Actions just for a just economy compiled and crowdsourced spreadsheet documenting such violations.
While Jason Oppenheim at Netflix is selling Sunset called the practice illegal and immoral, real estate agents report widespread gouging with Samira Tapia finding nearly 100 listings out of 400 surveyed that violated the price cap cap.
In one case, a North Hollywood rental rose by $800 overnight to $5,700.
Laura Kate Jones noted that landlords are exploiting desperation.
People are so panicked and desperate to get into a house right now that they're throwing money into the wind.
Tom.
I think there's two sides that I feel on this.
First of all, I do think that if landlords are doing this much of a gouge just because they can, you know, there's a certain part of me that just doesn't like that.
But the other side of it, once again, consumers, this happens to us all the time.
Have you noticed what an Uber cost in New York City or LA between 5 and 7 p.m.?
Guess what?
Surge pricing.
What do you mean?
Surge in what?
Surge in demand.
Surge in demand goes up, prices go up.
So people understand we pay this in our lives all the time.
Guess what?
You know, you wait until a week before you travel, the plane tickets more.
Of course.
But you go to see your mom.
Do you get your plane tickets ahead of time?
One month.
I think it's 20, 22 days is like the average.
And why do you do that?
Because it's cheaper.
Why is it cheaper?
Because all 300 seats are available.
Yeah, exactly.
When there's only 10 seats available and there's 11 people on the website trying to get the last seat, the price goes up.
So surge pricing happens all the time.
But I think somewhere between, you know, 175% hike and a natural increase because there's a shortage in available renters.
You know, there's also, you know, do you want to operate a business in a neighborhood and be known as a good and friendly business person?
Of course.
Do you want to have customers like that?
Sure, you do.
So there's going to be surge pricing.
There's going to be things like this.
But I do think some of this is, you know, in the realm of super spiking and alternative living expenses.
Pat, we were just talking about what if only 20% of your coverage was alternative living expenses and you forced the rent to go here?
You're going to be out of coverage quickly.
Yeah.
So part of me with this rate hikes that are taking place, there's words you can say to them on what they're doing.
And, you know, it's, it's, but at the same time, in my opinion, I want them to do it.
Yeah.
Do you know why I want them to do it?
I want them to be able to do it because you learn about, you know, you learn about what they're like and who they are.
Yeah, you want to learn to say that this is what they're doing now, right?
And, you know, this is an operation.
Like, remember the guy, the mattress, Houston guy, what's his guy's name?
Mattress Mac?
Mattress Mac.
Mattress Mac, right?
The Super Bowl.
Hurricane hits.
Mattress Mac.
Jim, what does he say?
He opens it up and he helps people out.
Mattress Mag.
This guy is loved in a city.
Mattress Mac.
When Hurricane hits, he opens it up.
Do you remember what happened in Houston when Hurricane hit what Joel Austin's church did?
They wouldn't let it go.
They closed the door.
Anybody come in and sleep with the Lord.
No, no, no.
They should have.
Let's just talk facts.
The facts were they closed their doors rather than open them as a relief center because they didn't want all those people and potential damage or all the cleanup they were going to have to do.
They closed the doors.
That's a fact.
There you go.
And then he has to come back and explain himself a couple of days later.
But they did.
And guess what?
You know what?
That's a mistake.
It doesn't mean he's a bad person.
It just means we learned.
You made a bad mistake.
Hey, look, that's what that's about.
You'll learn.
You'll learn about these types of moments.
But at the same time, when you're looking at what's going on right now with California and businesses are doing that, what else do you think is going to happen now?
What do you think construction companies are going to do?
You think they're going to give a discount?
Hell no.
Here's what a construction company is going to say.
He's going to be like, hey, man, Johnny, I want you to help me rebuild my Malibu home the fastest.
Tom, respectfully, I have 80 other people that are asking me to do it.
And I'm all about to go into contract.
What's the guy offering you?
He's offering me $600 a scorefoot.
He's going to, I'll do $800.
Okay.
So now he calls him.
He says, hey, man, Pat's wanting to do it for $800.
I'll do $900.
What do you think this construction guy is, which job you think he's going to take?
Honestly, actually think about it.
The one that's going to get you.
What do you think he's going to take?
Like, what do you think happens when war happens?
Are weapons of mass destruction discounted?
No.
Like, when war happens, do you think they're selling planes for one of the sun?
Hey, guess what?
These missiles are on discount because there's more.
No.
No.
They sell.
Tom, what's what?
No, Tom, I'm looking at Vinny like he's an idiot.
He's going like this.
He knows what he's talking about.
Do you want to say something?
Go ahead.
No, go ahead and say something.
Yes.
No, I think you want to say something, though.
Go ahead.
No, I don't.
I don't have anything.
Tom says I'm reacting.
So it's like, yeah, I'm sorry for you.
So when this happens, when this happens, the market goes higher.
The demand goes higher.
Whether that's a good thing or not, it's what the hand you're dealt.
It's the hand you're dealt.
You're dealt that hand.
You know what I'm saying?
So what are you going to do in that moment?
You don't know.
I mean, this is a bigger travesty than people are thinking about.
People are going to leave.
They're going to sit there and have to make a decision on what they're going to do.
Here's what they're going to do.
Say to people that want to stay in California.
You're like, I'm not leaving California.
What area in California do you want to live in?
After this, what is an area in California that has no trees or no wildlife, no any of that stuff?
Where would you go to?
Downtown.
Mojave Desert.
Lancaster.
That's what that's where.
Yeah.
Because you're not downtown.
It's expensive as shit.
You're going to go to a place that's going to be from everybody.
Oh, my God.
You're going to go to a place that's away from everybody.
You're going to have to make some changes because it's going to keep repeating itself.
This is a bigger thing than people are thinking about.
And Exodus is around the corner and a massive one.
Adam, final thoughts?
Well, you know, obviously we're focused on California right now, but we dealt with this during COVID.
I mean, I moved from Miami to one of the greatest cities on the planet, Addison, Texas, to join PBD and Valutaine and started the PBD podcast.
And a year and a half later, after I left Miami, I called my landlord.
Here's actually a perspective.
I was paying about $4,000 in rent for a sick condo downtown Miami.
Views, views, views, amazing.
During COVID, my lease was up.
I was like, look, man, I'm out.
I'm moving to Dallas.
He's like, I will lower your rent.
Please stay.
I was like, I'm leaving.
He goes, I will cut your rent in half.
I was like, oh, my God.
Like, I don't think you understand.
I'm leaving.
I'm out.
A year and a half later, I call him.
You move back.
You get the office in Boca.
I call him, and then now we're get the office in Fort Lauderdale.
I say, hey, by the way, I'm moving back down.
Is that unit still available?
It is.
Oh, great.
What are you charging for rent now?
He goes, let me check real quick.
He goes, $8,000.
I said, what?
I said, a year and a half ago, I was paying $4,000.
You offered me two.
And now you're charging double.
He goes, hey, that's the market, bro.
What's my point?
Free market capitalism is prevailing.
Laissez-faire economics, it is what it is.
Just because there's disasters, just because there's COVID, just because the world is on fire, the market is going to be on the opposite side.
Exactly.
Very good point on the opposite side.
Supply and demand.
You have too much of it.
What do you do?
You're now discounted.
Yes.
Yeah.
Exactly.
I mean, we see in New York, they have rent control or there's price control.
These are all sort of forms of what?
Communism, socialism, collectivism.
So the free market at the end of the day is going to dictate how we're going to go.
Okay, let's go to the next story.
All right.
So, Rob, if you want to pull up Pete Hexett and Pam Bondi, when they're being sworn, when they're going through their hearings, maybe let's look at what happened here.
Some of these things, guys, it's so entertaining watching this.
Rob, I'll let you pick whichever ones you want to pick.
Maybe pick the one where Elizabeth Warren is saying, if you're a general, you know, and if you're going through this, go forward.
Watch this exchange here, folks.
In other words, you're quite sure that every general who serves should not go directly into the defense industry for 10 years.
You're not willing to make that same pledge?
I'm not a general.
Don't be so diverse.
Let us just be clear.
In charge of the generals.
Dude, did you see the guy next to her?
Hilarious.
Hilarious.
He almost had a heart attack.
Rob, what else, man?
What else do you have with?
Is this Bondi?
Yes.
Okay, let's see this because this is entertaining.
Go forward.
No one has asked me to investigate.
But the president has the president has called it.
You know what we should be worried about?
Ms. Bonnie, please answer my question.
We are aware of the roof.
Ms. Bonnie.
Your robberies are 87% higher than the national average.
That's what I want to say.
Do you have the power to say no to the president?
And what you're suggesting today by your non-answer is you don't have the independence to say no to the president.
So let me ask you a difference.
59.
Wow.
If you're going to be a good attorney, you must tell hard truths to the president.
So my questions now are, can you tell hard truths to the president?
So let me start with an easy truth that you can speak to the president.
Can you tell us, can you tell him that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election?
Can you say that?
Do you have the independence to say that?
Do you have the gravitas, the stature you need to get tested with fortitude to say, Donald Trump, you lost the 2020 election?
Can you tell us that here today?
Senator, what I can tell you is I will never play politics.
You're trying to engage me in a gotcha.
I will speak truth with any ongoing power.
So let me ask you another question's memo.
Yeah, bingo.
Look at the size of the ring on her.
I will look at every file.
I am asking.
Of course you won't.
So will you advise the president?
Can I answer the question?
I would have plenty of staff.
You said, of course, you won't.
You'll be able to review.
I'm not going to mislead this body nor you.
All right, let me ask another question.
You don't want to answer that?
Let me ask you.
You were censured by Congress, Senator, for comments just like this.
It will also be important.
Oh, this episode of Jerry Springer was one of my favorite.
No, but he's one of the worst.
He's in the top five of the worst, and he knows what's coming too.
He knows.
Is there another one, Rob?
Is there anything else with Pete you have or Pam?
I have a bunch of, so I have Pete Hegseth defending his seven-year-old daughter to Tim Kaine.
Pete Hegseth saying that he was the victim of a coordinated smear campaign.
I have Pete Hegseth with Kirsten Gillibrand, Kirsten Gillibrand.
And then I also have Pete Hegseth defending women in the military.
I think the Gillibrand.
Well, you know which one is good.
So play the one about women in the military, where, you know, the comments he made in a past before women shouldn't be in the front lines.
Yeah, this is the one.
And then there's a great clip to follow up where he explains his opportunity.
Okay, go for it.
Play this clip.
You said in your statement, you don't want politics in the DOD.
Everything you've said in these public statements is politics.
I don't want women.
I don't want moms.
What's wrong with a mom, by the way?
Once you have babies, you therefore are no longer able to be lethal.
I mean, you're basically saying women after they have children can't ever serve in the military in a combat role.
It's a silly thing to say.
It's a silly thing to say.
Beneath the position that you are aspiring to.
By the way, whoever was Pete's hairstylist, they did great.
You got to get a shout out.
Pete's an absolute stun.
And they're just trying to come up and basically rambass him and bring him down.
As Secretary of Defense, will you support women continuing to have the opportunity to serve in combat roles?
She's a Republican who serves.
Senator, first of all, thank you for your service as we discussed extensively as well.
That's my privilege.
And my answer is yes.
Exactly the way that you caveated it.
Yes, women will have access to ground combat roles, combat rows, given the standards remain high.
And we'll have a review to ensure the standards have not been eroded in any one of these cases.
That'll be part of one of the first things we do at the Pentagon is reviewing that in a gender-neutral way, the standards, ensuring readiness and meritocracy is front and center.
But absolutely, it would be the privilege of a lifetime to, if confirmed, to be the Secretary of Defense for all men and women in uniform.
Let me ask you a question.
So do you think it's a good idea to have women on the front lines?
You're a former vet.
You're Air Force.
You were Airman of the Year out of all the soldiers in Air Force the year you got it.
Do you think women should be in the front line?
Okay.
And since we haven't been in actual fighting war, we haven't invaded.
We haven't done anything in how many, 20, 20 years.
I think there is Afghanistan.
What?
I mean, come on.
I'm talking about combat full combat.
I'm talking about Iraq and invading.
That was like when we were watching the tanks and the Hummers going in.
I'm not a fan.
Listen, I'm a fan of women joining and if they could play key roles in like comms or like they could assist in the combat, but ground troops running in on the ground, boots on the ground and war, I'm not a fan.
Why not?
Because what if they do have to get to a situation where it is hand-to-hand combat with another man?
What are the odds you think the percentage of that guy winning that hand-to-hand combat?
Because at the end of the day, he just nailed it.
There's standards, Pat.
You have to pass on all different standards.
Every soldier has to have the same qualifications.
Because let's be honest, if we're talking about all war breaks out and it's her against another guy one-on-one, he's going to win 95% of the time.
Look, I'm just being honest.
So no, I'm not for boots on the ground fighting, but any other supporting roles, you know what I mean?
Like drones or all that stuff.
If she's lethal in that sense, that's fine.
But on the ground, I'm not a fan.
It's pretty simple to me.
Men are not women.
Women are not men.
So therefore, we are not equal.
We are equal under the eyes of the law, but we are not equal in stature.
We are not equal in size.
We are not equal in strength.
We are not equal in speed.
If we were, go let the women of the WNBA play with the NBA guys.
All right.
Go let men and women compete the UFC.
Let me know when Ronda Rousey shows up against Connor McGregor how she does.
Good luck, ladies.
So, in the military, sure, women can be in the military, but not in the roles fighting against men.
You know, I had dinner.
You've never seen G.I. Jane with Demi Moore.
She's never seen her.
You know, I've had personal interactions with Demi Moore.
She is gorgeous.
Hello.
I would whoop.
We'll be 10 different.
Listen, maybe, maybe one of the best movies to highlight Demi Moore's greatness and her God-given gifts was the movie called Indecent Proposal.
Of course, what is the guy's name, Robert Bretford?
I've never read a freaking movie.
Forget about Harrison.
That was what Harrison gave you a million dollars.
That's when Sade took off because that's Sade.
How was the movie?
That's Sade's song is in the movie.
Yeah, Indecent Proposal.
Ordinary Love.
Ordinary Love is.
No.
The way she looked in that movie, she invades my bedroom.
I surrender.
Tom, you and your horizontal mambo, number five.
It's always clip it.
But I mean, she was gorgeous right here.
Ain't nobody intimidated by Demi Moore other than maybe if you're scared to get a girl's number.
But, you know, I had dinner with a girl who serves in the IDF.
Do you know in Israel that every single civilian has to serve two years in the military?
I think for men, it's two.
For women, it's one.
And I said to the girl, I said, well, why is it just one?
And for what, well, she's telling me, well, we all different than the men, the men of the fighters.
I was in the Air Force.
I didn't fly the plane.
I sat in the back.
I did logistics.
She's telling me all this stuff.
She's in his mouth.
She sounds like she was in the movie Rat Tattooing.
Yes, that too.
My French accent is, I was, maybe she was a little French.
So it makes sense.
She was hors d'oeuvres.
The point is this.
She's saying that men and women are not the same, that she doesn't want to be in combat.
None of the women that she knows wants to be in combat.
They have different roles.
Yeah.
So why is that different here to men?
I love the fact that he's having a conversation.
And I love the fact that he didn't back down and get scared.
He says, if you meet the standards, great, like what you said, great.
But Tom, I got a question for you.
And specifically, I'm coming to you with this one here.
I want you to watch this clip by Senator Gary Peters, Democrat Michigan.
I don't know who he is, but by the way, I actually think it's a very good question he's asking.
Because for me, I'm trying to hear questions.
Like, you know how it's kind of like, oh, there's nothing on my side that the guy's going to be.
When you're choosing a candidate, you ought to be wanting them to be asking anybody tough questions, right?
No matter who it is.
This is a very fair question to ask Rob if he can play this clip.
And Tom, I got a question for you.
Go for it.
In a large organization.
And I'm sorry, but I don't see that in your background.
There are a lot of other things you can do very well.
You're a capable person, but I'm not, I do not, you have not convinced me that you're able to take on this tremendous responsibility with a complex organization and having little or no significant management experience.
Senator, I'm grateful to be hired by one of the most successful CEOs in American history.
Should I be confirmed?
Is that Roger Ailstre?
What happened?
No, no, Rob.
This isn't a clip.
He's talking about the CEOs.
No, no, no.
You can pause it right there.
This isn't a clip.
But the guy asks a question and he says, Pete, you have not represented more than 100 employees max in your career.
And 100 employees, it's not employees.
I think it's troops in the military that you had.
So you don't have how do you go from 100, right?
And Rob, if you want to listen to it yourself first and then see if this is the one, how do you go from 100 to all of a sudden now leading something like this that's this massive?
So here's the question.
Do you think which of the two matters most?
A Trump who's never been in the military, he's never served in the military, but he's the commander-in-chief.
That phrase commander-in-chief is a military phrase.
Yes.
President, maybe it's a political phrase, but commander-in-chief is a military phrase.
What's more important to you, a person who's never served to be the commander-in-chief, this person's never served, but they've ran a big organization, very successful in business, very successful in entertainment, and now they're going to come and run the country, which he's done now twice, or somebody who has served, but no bigger than 100 to now get the responsibility of nearly a trillion dollar budget and hundreds of thousands of people that he has to manage.
Which one of those two are you more comfortable with and which one of them are you not comfortable with?
Maybe you're comfortable with both of them.
So I am more comfortable with, I am very comfortable with Trump as commander-in-chief because he demonstrates that he's very strategic.
He's very decisive and strategic and decisive, which Jimmy Carter wasn't.
And that hurt Jimmy Carter because he was not strategic.
He was not decisive, even though he was a decorated, very smart, very smart submarine commander, nuclear submarine program.
So he was in a very complex, but Trump is decisive.
He's a negotiator.
He's run a large organization.
And isn't it interesting understanding the pitfalls of the large organization?
He creates Doge and puts guys in charge of it to go attack the bad part of large organizations.
So I am very comfortable in Trump and his role on the two angles.
I'm very comfortable about his strategic side.
I think things are happening around the world like yesterday, the ceasefire, because people fear his decisive and strategic side.
And he's run a large organization.
I think Pete understands the outcome of the Department of Defense as being part of it.
But I think it is a fair question.
Pete, I think, is going to have to rely on other cabinet members, you know, Secretary of Commerce and people that have run large organizations.
And I think that's the purpose of the cabinet and the purpose of his relationship with his boss.
And if you don't think Doge is also going to be looking at bad spending at the Department of Defense, you're not paying attention.
But I think it's a valid point to be asking, are you ready to run this large organization?
I'm more comfortable with Pete there because of who his boss is going to be and because of the people that will be around him, specifically Doge.
Yeah, I think what you're asking is a very important question.
You're basically saying, are you more comfortable with a CEO, businessman, entrepreneur, founder taking over the role of commander in chief of the military?
Or are you more comfortable with a former military, someone who's never run a company, ascending to a role where he's now the CEO of the military?
I'm more comfortable with the first one because leadership is transferable.
How often do you see a CEO of a certain company, Uber, then he goes, becomes the CEO of Starbucks?
He doesn't know anything about coffee.
He was driving cars, but he understands leadership.
He understands basically how a company is run.
He understands all the different elements of their, what he's talking about with Pete Hegseth.
And I actually think it's a fair question and I'm quite biased.
I'm rooting for Pete, like the guy, rooting for the guy.
Everybody should be.
But he's never run a company.
He's never been a CEO.
He's never been the top of the food chain.
When he says, yeah, I had the opportunity to work for somebody, my mind went to, he worked for Roger Ailes.
No, he's talking about Donald Trump.
So does Pete Hegseth have the knowledge?
Does he have the skill set?
Does he have all the skills to pay the bills?
Yes.
But does he have the authority, the leadership?
That's what's in question right now.
So we're going to find out.
I want to put in a question, bro.
20 years combat veteran has medals to prove it.
And my thing is this, with him and with Trump, I want both of these people to be America first.
Pete Hegseth is America first.
Donald Trump is America first.
They're not DEI.
They're not woke bullshit.
They're not trans in the military.
Listen, at the end of the day, guys, we want killers to be in the military.
I'm sorry to be so freaking blunt.
And we want killers.
Everybody else, all these terrorists, Adam, all Hamas, all these China, they have killers.
They have people that are ready to fight.
And that's what we need.
And Pete is a G. His predecessor, Lloyd Austin, did you guys know this?
Kind of like a derelict of duty.
He had surgery.
He had prostate cancer.
I'm happy he's okay.
He had prostate cancer, underwent surgery.
So from December to like January, a couple of dates, he didn't report it.
He basically went MIA, Tom, which is, it's not illegal, but you're breaking protocol.
You can't just disappear and then all of a sudden be like, oh, yeah, by the way, I was having surgery.
Okay.
So if you want to talk about professionalism and being stepping up to the job, I think Pete has it.
And it's not like he's just standing in there by himself.
He's going to be surrounded about other people that know the job.
They're going to fill him in.
I'm completely happy with him and that his boss being Trump.
So I'm going to give you a little pushback.
Go ahead, push.
Because on the surface, I agree with you.
Yeah, I want him to be America first.
I want him to love America.
I want them to have the skills to pay the bills.
We're in a complete agreement there.
But I think where PBD was asking, and I'll give a weird analogy, who's the guy that you just had the podcast two days ago?
Basketball player.
Scotty Pippa.
Okay, cool.
How many former great professional athletes, NBA players, for this example, have gone on?
I'm talking about the GOATs, have gone on to become awesome coaches in the NBA.
Not many.
Okay, or awesome GMs or even owners.
I mean, Michael Jordan, that's one of one.
So I think what you're getting at is just because you're a good player, just because you can put the ball in the bucket or in the military, just because you're good at it, doesn't make you the guy that can run a company.
This is, I think, what you're asking.
Yes or no?
For sure.
Yeah.
So to me, it's Tom.
You were going to say something about this.
No, I like what...
Vinny's commentary.
What would...
Do you agree with Vinny?
I agree with Vinny's commentary up to a point.
He is going to be surrounded by great people.
He will be recognized by, you know, I think, you know, the five, the five, I can't even say the word.
You know, Army, Air Force, all the other departments.
The five departments in the Department of Defense.
I think he's going to be represented by the men and women serving there and highly respected because of his combat experience.
But actually, that's what you want in the commander-in-chief.
You want all of them to respect the commander-in-chief to know that you're not going to be sent into foolish battle and he's going to be strategic about the way he deploys you.
But I agree with what you say up to a point, but I think it's very valid what they're bringing up.
But I think if I was just looking back at the past Secretary of Defense, you had people that lacked any military experience whatsoever.
You had people that were bureaucrats and had never run large companies.
And I think what we're seeing here is the bright lights of inspection that the Democrats are choosing to use for this confirmation season that have not been equally applied in other confirmation seasons.
And I want to ask PBD a question because you were in the military.
You were in the Army.
First, what was it?
What was your division you were in?
Johnny First Sarah Born.
Okay, so I don't think any of us have questioning Pete Hexick's loyalty, love for America.
I think if there is a question is, are you ready for this job?
Right?
What do you think, Pat?
Is he ready for this responsibility?
He's never been a CEO.
Yeah.
So I'm doing exactly what Tom's doing.
So Rob, if you can go up and look at previous Secretary of Defense, right now it's a guy named Lloyd Austin.
Yeah.
Okay.
He served.
Yeah, he was.
And four-star general.
He was a four-star general.
So think about that.
A four-star general, right?
So then you had David Norquist, okay?
Who himself was a 34 United States Deputy Secretary of Defense and Emblem National Defense.
And then what was his background on what he did?
Was he a four-star general?
Was he what did he do before, previous to that?
Department of Defense, acting Secretary of Defense.
I don't know what his background is.
If you want to look it up, Tom.
David Norquist, okay.
And then you have Chris Miller, right?
And then you have Mark Esper.
Okay.
Mark Esper under Trump.
Right.
General Mattis.
You have Shadow.
Well, you go through this and you kind of see a couple things.
You see moral authority and you see somebody who has had high level of managerial leadership opportunities and examples.
By the way, nowadays, to be a general is you're essentially a little bit more politician than you were 50 years ago.
It's not what a general used to be years ago.
So I don't know.
I think it is a valid question to be asking.
On the executive side, I thought it was a very good question to ask.
And you know what's the great thing about that?
He gets to go prove himself to the market.
Good.
And say, I'm actually going to be a good executive.
Great.
Let's see what he does.
But the reality of it is, if there's anything he's going to be reading up on right now, it's not going to be history of the military.
It's going to be more about leadership and executive.
Like, you know, he needs to go read Five Temptations of an Executive by Petrick Lancioni.
He needs to go read a lot of Drucker.
He needs to go read a lot of Lincoln on leadership.
He needs to go read a lot of books on managerial.
By the way, this one's very interesting.
Rob, if you want to play this one here, it's fairly easy.
It's fairly short, to the point, and you'll see where he's going with this.
Go ahead, Rob.
Okay.
Without objection, it will be entered.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Pete, I'm actually going to ask you questions because I want to hear your answer.
How many genders are there?
Tough one.
Boom.
Senator, there are two genders.
I know that well.
I'm a Sheehi, so come on board.
I'm a Sheehi.
His last name is Sheikh.
What is the diameter of the rifle round fired out of an M4A1 rifle?
5.5 sets of 5.56.
Yeah.
How many push-ups can you do?
47.
I did five sets of 47 this morning.
What do you think our most important strategic base is in the Pacific?
In the Pacific, Guam is pretty strategically significant.
Boom.
How many rounds of 5.56 can you fit into the magazine of an M4 rifle?
30.
30.
Depends on the magazine, but standard issue is 30.
Go, Pat.
Come on.
Everyone knows that.
I could be the second.
And what size round is the M9 Beretta standard issue sidearm for the military fire?
A 9mm, Senator.
Yeah.
Who was buried in Grant's tomb?
What kind of batteries do you put in your night vision goggle?
Lithium.
Duracell.
So right there, you're representing qualifications.
That's great.
Benny, by the way, shout out to you.
You knew all the answers.
I don't know if you cheated or no, I didn't cheat, but this is the stuff you learned in the military.
He's the airman of the year.
This is a guy that's a gun to anywhere to shoot.
I can shoot.
Have you ever seen him shoot?
Very good shot.
I mean, we're good.
No, no, no, no.
I'm not sure.
But I'm a trained.
I know what I'm doing.
This guy forgets his gun in half the meetings.
I go, I'm hitting your guy.
What are you talking about?
I'm a killer.
Anyway, but at the end of the day, the Secretary of Defense, what's his job?
What's his job?
He advises the president on military policy, oversees the entire armed forces, that Tom said, and ensures civilian control of the military and manages defense.
If you think about it, veteran experience, leadership.
Okay, he was an officer, the veteran Ford, Foreign Wars leader.
He understands operations.
He knows what he's saying.
And here's my question.
The Department of Defense, are you guys happy with the state of the Department of Defense right now, the way that it is right now?
Okay, zero.
This is going to be a breath of fresh air, and I can't wait to see it.
And by the way, Pat, this is a job.
You can get fired.
Donald Trump could easily, if you're not doing well, you're out.
Guess what?
It's one of the questions on vtnews.ai.
Oh, is it?
If the people that get the executive jobs, how many of them will not have their job by the end of the 100 days?
Oh, he loves live zero.
One to two, three to four.
You have to go there and before we move on, do you have anything to do with that?
Thousands of have already participated, guys.
Go to vtnews.ai.
You'll see the first hundred days.
Go participate.
If you think you're good at making predictions, go start with these first four 14 predictions on vtnews.ai.
Go ahead.
By the way, before we move on, do you have the clip from the senator from Oklahoma, Senator Mark Wayne Mullen, where he's talking about the drinking because they were pressing him on drinking?
This is a big deal.
And Tim Kane.
Tim Kane's.
Tim Kane, no lips.
Okay, so if you find that, I'll basically say this.
He goes, so you drink alcohol, right?
He's like, yeah, I've had a drink or two.
Have you ever showed up to work drunk?
He's like, look, what are you doing right now?
Like, I've had a drink or two.
Here it is.
Watch this.
Well, this is it.
The hypocrisy.
This is hilarious.
Secretary of Defense is because I Googled it and I Googled it and went through a lot of different sites.
And really, it's hard to see.
But in general, the U.S. Secretary of Defense position is filled by a civilian.
That's it.
Is this the alcohol part?
If you have served in the U.S. Army forces, basically back up to the senator for Virginia starts bringing up the fact that what if you showed up drunk to your job?
Here it is.
How many senators have showed up drunk to vote at night?
Tim King.
By the room service.
Do you believe you guys asked him to step down and resign from their job?
And don't tell me you haven't seen it because I know you have.
And then how many senators do you know have got a divorce for cheating on their wives?
Did you ask them to step down?
No.
But it's for show.
You guys make sure you make a big show and point out the hypocrisy because the man's made a mistake.
And you want to sit there and say that he's not qualified?
Give me a joke.
It's so ridiculous that you guys hold yourself at this higher standard and you forget you got a big plank in your eye.
We've all made mistakes.
I've made mistakes.
And Jennifer, thank you for loving him through that mistake.
Wow.
Because the only reason why I'm here and not in prison is because my wife loved me too.
Wow.
Wow.
Senator Senator Mark Wayne Mullen, buddy.
By the way, shout out to you.
Calling out the hypocrisy from Congress, grilling him on his personal life.
And shout out to Tim Kennedy.
Not how qualified he is.
Tim Kane's hair.
Did you see Tim Kane's hair?
It's falling apart.
Not on how qualified he is.
Now does he deserve this job?
What does your personal life look like?
And he asked him, How many of you mothersuckers have shown up drunk to work?
Yeah.
Because if that's the answer, you would all lose a job.
I just want you to look at Tim Kaine as the, like, who was he ran with Hillary.
No, no, I know, but who was, what's her name, vice president?
Tim Walz?
That's the two, Tim Walz back in the day.
By the way, he combs his hair with the same balloon that Bernie Sanders combs his hair with.
That's the same balloon.
You're making combs.
It's a mistake that he made.
He said you're going personal attacks.
I'm not personal.
No, it's a balloon here.
You're looking at the job.
Go ahead.
The point is, this guy, Mark Wayne Mullen, made a great point.
He did.
That if you guys are all judged on drinking, give me a joke.
Give me a joke.
You give me a joke.
You're supposed to be the comedian.
This has been said a couple times.
He sounds Middle Eastern.
What do you think?
Give me a joke.
What is this?
My friend, my friend.
Give me a joke.
They are much more careful than ever.
And all of these folks know that they're on TV.
They're being covered on all the major networks.
But previously, when it was just CNET and not all committees were there, there were multiple times where people would say, you're badgering the witness about something that if we were all tested, we don't have enough people to come in here and have a committee.
That's true.
And they're saying the same thing, right?
Yeah, good for him for doing this.
I agree.
Shout out to Mark Wayne Moore.
Yeah, I like that.
I like what he's saying right there.
Okay, let's go to the next story.
Bill Burr.
Folks.
Do you have this clip, Rob?
Eviscerates effing idiot internet trolls who say the LA wildfires were mismanaged.
Okay.
He is on Woodshow.
Would Jimmy Kimmel?
Okay, I'm glad he has his name tag in case we forget it.
So, and go ahead, Rob.
Liberal clip with Bill Burr.
Liberal.
Yeah.
Hey, Terry, good to see you.
I heard you had to evacuate your home.
Yes, yes.
Like most people, I had to.
I got lucky.
You know, the winds moved, but, you know, the fire was coming and all that stuff.
So I feel lucky.
Are you guys back?
And I think everybody did a great job.
Great job.
I like the internet.
Right, I know.
Oh, my God.
All of these fire experts.
Why didn't you just fly a helicopter into the ocean?
And then just, I don't know, because it was 100-not wins.
You want to do that?
You want to do that at night, you lunatic?
How are you?
This was definitely mismanaged.
That's a big word we're hearing now.
Mismanaged.
Like some idiot on the internet knows how to manage the worst fire in LA, sitting there in his underwear.
You know what?
Looking at the footage on the internet, I have determined that this here was mismanaged.
Vinny.
Well, first of all, this is from a guy that openly says he doesn't read, and you can obviously see why.
Like, first of all, beyond ridiculous, does anybody out there, you guys, our audience, anybody believe that they did a great job or what they're doing?
This dude is completely out of touch.
Okay.
He also, there's another clip, Robbie.
I'll just say it.
He criticized CNN on the same on the same episode that the healthcare industry, the United Healthcare CEO's assassination, and he supported the accused Luigi Magioni.
He goes, free Luigi because he's comparing him to insurance practices.
Oh, yeah, that's who he is.
But, okay, so they did a great job.
Let's go over the facts, Bill.
1,200 structures destroyed.
12,000.
I'm sorry.
25 lives lost.
40,000 acres burned and they're still burning.
And there's more fires being set as we speak.
I saw one last night.
They got another guy for starting another fire.
And that's a great job.
I mean, how much more would have to have been destroyed for you to say it was a failure?
Okay.
And your house didn't burn down, Bill.
He's sitting.
He's excited.
Yeah, my house did it.
And that's why you're going to start criticizing and talking shit.
And nobody is blaming the firefighters.
Okay.
They're heroes.
Okay.
They're out here risking their lives with inadequate resources.
The governor's full of shit.
Everybody knows he's full of shit.
No matter how much he tries to fact check and be his thing, we just fact-checked him right here.
But that's not the point.
The issue is years, years of poor decisions, mismanagement, and the neglect that set the stage for disaster.
And let's go back to who Bill Burr really is.
During the pandemic, he criticized those.
I don't know if you have, Rob, do you have those where he criticized anyone who opposed masks and vaccines?
This guy in 2021, he criticized anybody refusing and he said, it's so effing dumb.
This, I don't trust it.
You're all full of shit and you don't trust it.
Highlighting everybody's reasoning.
This is who Bill Burr is.
And then in 2020 on Rogan, he defended wearing masks.
When Rogan questioned the necessity, he responded, I'm not going to sit here with no medical degree, listening to you all with no medical degrees, acting like we know what's better than the CDC.
Okay, this guy's probably quadruple vax and has taken every vaccine.
And then in 2021, he criticized DeSantis for banning mask mandates in the state, referring to such politicians as effing pieces of, you know what.
And then I tried to realize it.
How does somebody who's, to me, one of the top 10 comedians of all time, where's this shift?
Where does this, you believe the internet and to say that it was a great job, then I realized, think about the household.
You guys remember his wife, Nia Renee Hill?
She was at a UFC match.
She got great seats because of probably Dana White and the Joe Rogan relationship.
She's sitting behind the president of the United States, who's very close with Donald Trump, and she's flipping the bird.
Look at Bill Burr's face and look at her, flipping the bird.
And then in my head, Tom, I'm like, what would make somebody have this much hate?
Emerson College.
She went to Emerson.
What kind of school is Emerson?
It's a very liberal college.
Oh, okay.
So it's one of those.
Okay.
And then back in 2018, she got upset for being mistaking the internet that he's talking about for mistaking her for Regina King.
And she called it a racial stereotyping.
She blamed white media creators for not being able to tell black people apart.
But here's the kicker.
You're married to a white guy.
Okay.
It's like the Don Lemon thing.
They always preach that white people are evil and that they're the biggest problems, but you're all married to white people.
So was Don Lemon.
Donnie Lemon is married to a white guy.
A white man.
But white people are the problem.
Don Lemon's gay.
Yeah.
But it just goes to show you.
And he's good at it.
Yeah.
It just goes to show you how out of touch somebody like Bill Burr is.
And I don't care what people say about his comedy.
He's brilliant.
But to say some dumb shit like that, I not only disagree with it.
I hope like whoever's in his ear, and I think we know who it is, you have to get out of that woke mind virus shit because it's not working.
Well, Vinny, I'm, you know, with everything, there's nuance.
Some things you say that are right, some things you say that are wrong.
Let me just address the biggest incorrect statement you said.
Are you ready for it?
What?
You came out there and you said the following.
Bill Burr, one of the top 10 comedians of all time, I almost lost my mind.
You don't think he's in the top 10?
I don't think this guy's in the top 100.
Really?
Is he a good comedian?
Has he had a good career?
Stop it.
No, he's in the top 10.
Okay.
Stop it.
You don't.
Let's let the audience.
Okay.
Can we make a bet, though, really fast?
Top 10 all time?
Hold on.
Hold on.
Let's make a bet.
You're kidding me.
We do this bet.
If our audience goes, what?
Would you say 75% or higher?
The best top 10.
If he's in the top 10, $100.
I'm not going to bet this just because...
Oh, I'm just saying, let's do the bet.
He's in the top 10.
Sometimes our audience will say that there's a 98% chance we didn't land on the moon.
He's a comedian of all time.
Bill Burr, in my opinion, is nowhere near the top 10.
He ain't Chappelle.
He ain't Chris Rock.
He ain't Jerry Seinfeld.
He ain't close.
He's up there.
However, we do know that he's married to a liberal black woman who's flipping the bird to Donald Trump.
Okay, all good.
But by the way, let's figure out if, you know, who's going to have the deciding vote?
You were about to make a quick hundred dollars.
I don't need the money.
I just want to make the statement ballot.
Let it get out.
Yeah, Bill Burr ain't that dude.
He ain't that dude.
I'll give him a shout out for being a white comedian who hasn't been canceled this year.
Tell me about California what he's doing.
But what I will say is, great, since when are we listening to a comedian's opinion on anything with this fire?
Who cares?
But speaking of celebrities whose houses are burnt down, Mel Gibson, James Woods, Paris Hilton, Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Miles Teller, Anthony Hopkins.
They're going to get a say here.
Let's let them have a say.
You know, also going to have a say in this?
The tens of thousands of people whose houses have burned down and the hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions of people, whose lives are going to be completely uprooted.
They're going to have a say and they're going to have a vote in the upcoming election, whether Gavin Newsom, whether Karen Bass, whether any of these people should retain their positions.
My speculation is if they're not drinking the water that was just burnt down and having weird stuff in their water, these people are going to be looking for new jobs.
So, I think it's really easy as a comedian to just get invited on a show and go on a riff.
It's very hard to, and that's an opinion, and you can just spout off all you want.
It's very hard to face facts and go on a riff like that.
And so, he's throwing his opinion out there.
He's dropping the profanity in there.
Oh, would you fly a helicopter and you do that?
And so, I just put very little in it.
And he's been given a stage by liberal publicist Jimmy Kimmel that I can't even call him, in my opinion, a talk show host or a comedian in his own right because he's become a political pundit and a PR mouthpiece for all that he believes in and has become really difficult to watch.
Not my opinion, the opinion of many peers, including those that are signing his paycheck inside of a large office building.
And so, I just put very little stock in this.
And, you know, I will say this: I'll go, I will agree with Adam.
Write that down.
Agree with Adam.
When you go down the list, the Pantheon, the Hall of Fame, and you go Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Robin Williams, Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld, Dave Chappelle, and others, Freddie Prince, I think, was a genius and gone too soon, you know, and the spaceman, the man in the mirror, right?
Think of it.
Andy Kaufman.
Andy Kaufman.
I'm up to 11, and this guy's not even there.
And I'm not going to be.
And Tom's not even funny.
I'm not a connoisseur of comedy, right?
I just think, you know, Bill just needs to save it.
You know, there's he's not looking.
He's not looking at the facts.
Tom, he's great at you guys.
But you know what?
I'll tell you what, I'll defend.
I'll defend his right to say what he said, but then I'll defend my right to just say what I just said and go analyze.
If his house burnt down, I guarantee you'd be singing a different tune.
Correct.
Now, when I say, come on, Tom, let's let the boss have a say here before you get a pow pow.
We don't need that.
You think Bill Burr's a top 10 comedian?
Do you think what he said was right?
Give your speculation.
This is going to sound weird, guys.
I listened to, if I tell you, top 10 comedians I've listened to the most, Bill Burr is my top five of listening to.
But I'm not, like, I've listened to him.
But you haven't listened to many.
I found out Lenny Bruce is Rogan's favorite comedian.
I've never listened to Lenny.
The sickest gift you've given to Lenny.
Yeah, but I'm in the 1950s.
Yeah, I know.
But what I'm saying to you is, I'm not in this world to know.
You ask me different sports that I follow.
I could tell you.
You ask me every clip of every time Bill Burr was on Conan O'Brien.
How many times have I watched each one of the 15 clips?
It's 100 plus times.
Like Hillary Connolly, you know, she dressed like a real estate agent.
You look at her.
It's kind of glad.
You know, he came out and when it won, you know, we thought this was such a big thing.
You know, the hockey thing when we won.
This is like, you know, with the Gibson home run.
Like the stuff he does is he's very good at it.
Am I sincere sports player?
It's like saying when he rich Chapman does a Philadelphia.
Dude, I watched that thing a hundred times.
I hope your mother like the stuff that he does.
Like this guy.
However, I'm not having that debate.
That's not my priority.
And I'm a comedian, Adam, so I'm a different listener.
Let me just make my point that let's go move up because honestly, we got a few stories I want to get into.
This is not that important.
I love that he knows the playbook to go out there and say something that nobody else is saying and everybody else reacts and he gets 100 million views.
Good for him.
Okay.
Now, all the other stuff with California, to say that the other people can't say anything, the helicopter.
Why you go fly the helicopter?
What are you talking about?
That's the job of the guy that if crisis happens, he's supposed to go out there and save people's lives.
Don't take the damn job.
What do you mean you go fly the helicopter?
No, the other people that don't do it, they don't want that job.
That's the point.
I don't want that job.
I don't want to be that person.
The other person's taking that job.
So, no, I fully disagree on what he's talking about.
There are the people that are in it that are being directly impacted, who have the highest moral authority of given feedback of what happened.
When you think about the state of California, you had a reservoir called the Santa Ines Reservoir, 117 million gallons of water in it that's been empty since February of last year due to a hole on the cover because of bird poop they were worried about that they couldn't fix that quickly.
That Michael Schlebenberger that's being on Tucker Carlson is saying we asked other people that are running other reservoirs saying if the reservoir is empty for a week or two, we panic.
We fill it up ASAP.
And you mean to tell me as a governor in the state of California that has access to 1,300 reservoirs, that's how many reservoirs California has.
Don't you think as a governor of a state that you know the biggest crisis that happens in your state is either earthquakes or fires generally more fired than earthquakes?
Don't you think you would have a chart on the wall to be looking at how your reservoirs are doing, specifically in Palisades?
Your celebrity Hollywood actors that invite you to dinners are the ones that are going to be directly impacted by this.
And you have a reservoir that's been empty for almost a year and you're not watching this?
You don't need a MBA or a bachelor's or a master's in water and fire to understand that.
That's a dumb move.
That's dumb.
And that's called horrible leadership by the man running that state.
This is why so many people are reaching out to me right now about getting behind somebody for California for a governor and wanting to find ways to get this guy to resign or do a recall.
Yesterday, we looked at the lieutenant general of the state of California.
So if he resigns, his same exact person is going to get in there.
Lieutenant General is this lady called Linda Konalakis.
So resigning is actually not the solution.
It's recalling and getting somebody else in there and getting people that are willing to go out there and give a message in California that are able to sell and evangelize and others getting behind it.
There's going to be a lot of stuff happening right now in California, folks.
Stay tuned.
You're going to see some major things taking place in California of people pushing for a recall.
This was a travesty.
This was tragic.
And no, you don't need education to look at these things and do a little bit of research and say, none of this makes any sense.
It just doesn't.
It comes down to leadership.
So, but anyways, will I still listen to his comedy?
100%.
He's funny as hell.
Old clips of this.
Okay, TikTok.
Tom, I'm coming to you with this one.
TikTok responds to rumors China wants to ask Musk to buy the platform.
Pure fiction.
Rob, is that a video clip that we have or is that just a story?
Because it says yellow.
I have an old video clip, but this is Elon Musk being asked about TikTok and the potential band and his.
I'd love to see it.
Yeah, go for it.
I can't say I have a strong opinion on TikTok.
So you have an opinion on whether it should be banned or not?
You know, I'm generally against banning things.
So I'd probably not be in favor.
I mean, it would help Twitter, I suppose, if TikTok was banned, because then people would spend more time on Twitter and less time on TikTok.
But even though that would be that, even if it would have helped Twitter, I would be generally against banning of-very honest answer.
Okay.
Very honest answer on what he's saying there.
But let me read this story to you guys, folks, on what's going on here.
Because TikTok dismissed rumors, reports by Bloomberg that Chinese officials were exploring having Elon Musk acquire the U.S. operations to prevent a ban under protecting Americans from a foreign adversary-controlled application app.
TikTok stated Fox Business, we can't be expected to comment on pure fiction, is what he said.
Okay, then there's another one coming up here from Forbes talking about the fact and also Reuters, TikTok preparing for U.S. Sunday shutdown.
Sources all tell Reuters, TikTok plans to shut it up, shut its app up in U.S. for users on Sunday when a federal ban on the social media app could come into effect unless the Supreme Court moves to block it.
The outcome of the shutdown would be different from the mandated by the law.
The law would mandate a ban only on new TikTok downloads on Apple and Google Apple stores, while existing users could continue to use it for some time under TikTok's plan.
People attempting to open the app will see a pop-up message directing them to a website with information about the ban.
The sources said requesting anonymity is the matter is not public.
The company also plans to give users an option to download all their data so that they can take a record for their personal information.
They said privately held ByteDance is about 60% owned by institutional investors such as BlackRock, General, Atlantic.
And while its founders and employees own 20%, it has more than 7,000 employees in the U.S., Tom.
Well, you just covered it there.
And so inside all of that you just read, absolutely correct.
So is TikTok going off the air on the 19th?
No.
Is the 19th an important deadline?
Yes.
That means on the 19th, no new users will be able to download it for the first time because it'll be suppressed from the app stores.
So it'll be out of the app stores for Google and for iOS, Apple, on starting on the 19th, unless there's an intervention, which there's not going to be right now because the Supreme Court says, no, we're not going to mess with that.
So as of right now, they come down.
What'd that mean?
If you have TikTok, you could keep using it for some time.
What is that?
Well, that's this interim period there where they have to sort out ownership of U.S. assets.
However, 24 hours later, I believe you're going to see a stroke of the pen.
And one of the 100 executive orders from Donald Trump is just going to say something very simple.
He can't repeal the law that was heading in front of the Supreme Court in the executive order, but you know what he could do?
He could basically sign an executive order that says, hey, wait a second.
Let's take a little more time to look at this or let's do this.
Or he could sign an executive order saying, I'm asking for a moratorium on the law while the ownership is sorted out.
And they'll say, well, wait a minute.
That's what the deadline of January 19th was.
We were giving them time to sort it out and they didn't do it.
So I think that's what you're going to see.
I think Trump's going to intervene, executive order.
But I believe, as I predicted, that ultimately, now we got to be careful here, the U.S. assets will go to Musk.
I believe Musk is going to put together the deal to pick up TikTok in the United States.
Why?
Because then if I'm Musk, this is what I would do.
I would say on ad sales, I would move the ad rates and Ford Motor Company comes up and says, hey, we want to advertise our small EVs and some other things on TikTok to people.
Great.
70% of your ad buy can be TikTok, but we'd like 25% of the ad buy to be Twitter, X.
Oh, yeah.
And the rates have just gone up.
Yeah.
If you have another social media that's similar that you'd like to go spend money there, do it.
But my rates just went up.
And I think that's normal capitalist response because that would help X and that would help that.
But here's the part to remember.
Nobody is talking about the gorilla in the room, which is the algorithm.
And does the data leave the U.S. and end up on servers that are inspected and otherwise controlled or accessed by the CCP?
Great.
That is the question that everyone's asking, saying, okay, what if Elon Musk gets the U.S. assets?
What about the algorithm that they're using?
And does he get that?
So we can make sure that we know what's going on.
And what about all the data?
Are we going to close any back doors where a CCP, ByteDance, can get their hands on the data for long-term surveillance, long-term database of U.S. customers, or their own ad redirecting?
So don't know.
What do you think when you say all this?
With specific to TikTok, I mean, look, a part of me thinks I hope the ban happens on Sunday.
And let me explain to you why.
Not for the reasons you think.
If it happens on Sunday, here's what it means strategically.
How many people will be flipping out and who will be flipping out if TikTok is banned on Sunday?
Think about age category and demo.
Who will be pissed on Sunday?
Gen Z. What age?
Gen Z. 15 to 29.
How addicted are they to TikTok?
Ridiculous.
How important is TikTok to them?
How a big part of their lives is TikTok?
Huge.
I would argue that their lives have been dramatically altered.
Give me sex.
Give me sex, gender, specifically, male or female.
Girls, I would say 65% than male.
Okay, so check this out.
So imagine 19th, who's the president?
Donald Trump.
20th, who's the president?
Donald Trump.
So in the history books, if Joe Biden wants to take credit, the fact that Hamas is releasing the hostages and saying, oh, because of me, they're afraid of me.
Okay.
So guess what?
You're the one that shut down TikTok, and then Trump will be the one that opens up TikTok.
Imagine that younger generation.
They're going to sit there and be like, dude, listen, this guy at least allows that.
So in a strategic standpoint, I think it helps on the Trump side.
Just like the same way, you know, Elon said, you know, Twitter, TikTok, it helps Twitter, right?
So Biden is over here talking about the fact that hostages is because of him.
And then they came back and said, now it's not really because of him.
Trump's the one that's asking him to stop and all this other stuff.
I think that's that part of it.
The other part is I think TikTok's going to be around.
For the people that are worried about TikTok, they have nothing to worry about.
I would like it not to have anything to do with Bike, not to have anything to do with China.
Zero.
I want nothing to do with them.
I want somebody here to own, and I would like somebody to own it that is not a monopoly.
Because if Zuck, and this is the, behind closed doors, if you think about how Elon is making this argument to Trump, here's how Elon's making the argument to Trump to allow Elon to own TikTok.
You ready?
What does Zuck own?
Facebook meta.
And what did he buy?
Instagram.
Okay.
And what?
Is Instagram more comparable to TikTok or Twitter?
Instagram is more like TikTok.
TikTok.
And is Facebook more like Twitter or TikTok?
Facebook is closer to TikTok.
Close to Twitter.
To X, yeah.
Okay.
So guess what?
So he's like, dude, he owns Facebook and he owns Instagram.
Well, listen, if I own X, you really want to protect the long term?
Let me also own TikTok.
It's a good argument.
It's actually a good argument for Trump to be like, yeah, well, Zuck owns those two.
So it's either break all of them apart and a person can only own one of them to have a monopoly law get in place.
Or if you're going to allow him to own both, you may as well allow Elon to own TikTok.
I think somebody else should own TikTok, if you ask me.
I would like to have other people own TikTok and I would like to have somebody else own Instagram, not have both of them be under Zuck.
Just my opinion.
Here, Mr. Beast made a video on X and he was trying to say he wants to get a couple of billionaires together to purchase it, which would be freaking.
I saw that.
Yeah, I saw that.
And I'd like competition.
I'd like competition to see who wants to buy it.
What I would not like to see is Elon Musk buy TikTok.
If you haven't noticed this, you know, oligarchy of technocracy and these technocrats where, what, a handful of people just are going to run our country, the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world, the Elon Musk of the world.
I'd like to avoid that.
If there's a third person that can come in that could buy TikTok, all right, I'm willing to see that conversation.
So, just what is it going to be the Elon Musk versus Jeff Bezos versus Mark Zuckerberg next 40 years?
I'd like to avoid that.
Maybe there's a different person to come here, but you said that you'd like to see TikTok get shut down Sunday.
I would like to do that.
There's not a lot of things that I'm not sort of moderate about.
I'm pretty reasonable, moderate person.
Maybe I'll do this.
Maybe I'll do this.
On TikTok, I'm more in the camp of absolutist.
I haven't heard any compelling, good reasons that we should keep TikTok in this country.
There's a little bit of reasons.
I haven't heard much other than we believe in free speech.
Yeah, in America, we believe in free speech.
This is a Chinese-owned company.
Nobody's objecting to that.
How many social media companies that are owned by American companies are allowed in China?
None.
Zero.
TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat.
None of it.
None of it.
So why are we even talking about banning TikTok?
Why are we even talking about it?
You know, remember when the TikTok CEO went and testified in front of Congress that he's a Singaporean, I don't even know about where China?
What are we talking about?
China?
Come on, buddy.
Come on, buddy.
So when they have, like, think about the most famous congressional hearings of all time.
When there's smoke, there's fire.
Watergate.
Yeah, it turned out that Nixon knew what he was doing.
The 9-11 hearings turns out there was something going on there.
The Iran-Contra affair.
We know this building.
We know some stuff that's going on there.
The college protests.
When the university presidents don't, oh, there's anti-Semitism where?
I don't see it.
What are we talking about here?
So when the Facebook hearings, when Mark Zuckerberg had to testify, there's valid reasons for why they're having these congressional hearings.
Why we're talking about banning TikTok is because it should be banned.
Right.
As long as it's not linked to China, I think we can keep it here.
But it is going to be linked to China.
If it's not, I'm okay.
If it is, I have a very big problem.
And if I'm Trump's advisor, I am using these next four years with leverage to say, if you want ByteDance to own TikTok and be here, you have to let Zuck, Twitter, YouTube, everybody enter into China.
They're never going to do that.
But then guess why are we doing it?
Exactly.
And if there's anybody that can negotiate to get that done, it's there.
You go.
Art of the deal.
What do you think is the biggest concern when it comes to TikTok?
Is it the data?
Is it the national security?
Is it the data privacy?
Is it the structural city?
Shaping of the young people's mindset is number one more than anything else.
The algorithm.
For you to destroy the minds of the youth is the way you destroy the future of a country.
And that's the number one.
It's not even close.
So beyond national security, it's shaping and influencing public opinion.
Rotting the minds of the kids.
I'd like to algorithm to do scrolling.
I'd like to get to the next point.
The point is it should be banned.
Yeah.
Okay.
Next story here that we want to go to is let's go to this one here.
GOP tax leaders, you a small business could pay more tax than small businesses do in China if Trump cuts expire.
Small business, at the same time, that story flips with small business optimism surge to a six-year high based on Trump policy.
So Rob, if you want to play that clip, is that the clip that explains what's going on here with the small businesses?
Yes, regarding the Trump tax cuts and why they need to be made.
Okay, go for it.
Go ahead.
Americans are demanding we restore prosperity and build upon the success of President Trump's economic policies that gave the American people the best economy in my lifetime.
However, that effort is at risk if we do not make the 2017 tax cuts permanent.
If Congress fails to act, the average family of four will end up paying the equivalent of nine weeks of groceries in higher taxes.
After four years of sticker shock at the grocery store, that's the last thing families need.
Who was that lady speaking?
Okay, so now, this guy who's talking about the taxes.
Okay.
So let me read this to you.
House Republicans, Jason Smith, talking about the 2017 tax cut.
20 small business owners will be hit with a 43.4% top tax rate, more than 20 points higher than what business pays in communist China.
And then they continue to explain the fact that according to reports from Ernst ⁇ Young, 25.9 million small businesses in the U.S. currently utilize a deduction, which provides tax relief for qualified business expenses.
Tom, thoughts on the story?
This is why small business people were at the polls.
This is exactly what they feared.
Under Kamala Harris, we would have had higher taxes than in communist China.
So under a quasi-Marxist that we almost elected, this is what was sitting in the balance, America.
This was hanging in the balance.
She was going to let this expire.
That was the plan.
And now they're pointing out that, hey, Trump, thank goodness you're here because we need you to extend the cuts that you had had before.
Not just cuts, the tax policy that was growth-oriented, sensible, and in my opinion, very fair tax policy.
And they're pointing out they're ringing the bell right now.
And what they're ringing the bell about, and God bless Jason Smith from Missouri, you know, Republican from Missouri, and Jody Arrington, Republican from Texas, they're ringing the bell.
And what they're saying is, hey, man, in the middle of the inauguration, in the middle of getting all these people confirmed, in the middle of all the stuff going on, don't forget, my constituents, we have to stand for the small business owners that voted on November 4th.
And we have to make these tax cuts permanent because they voted for it.
And it's going to help the businesses, help the economy, help what's going on.
Do you hear what he said?
He was very clear.
The qualified business expenses, being able to deduct expenses as a business, it jumps up.
And it is equivalent to nine weeks of groceries.
That's how big of a tax cut.
And Kamala Harris and the Dems are going to say, we didn't raise taxes.
Oh, those were Trumps and they just expired.
No, their expiration was your increase.
It was your premeditated increase.
That's what you wanted.
And thank goodness, the small business optimism is up.
And you want to know why it's up?
Because they are optimistic about the economic dynamic that's going to be put in front of them.
And what is that?
Hey, the tax cuts you've been operating under through COVID you operated under, before Trump, you know, Trump's first administration operated under, and all of this, they're going to be safe and you're going to be able to continue and grow and expand your business even after this time of inflation, even with interest rates not back down.
This is a very, very big deal.
Can you see, Vinny?
Oh, I didn't raise your taxes.
I just let the thing expire.
That's political spin.
That's like Newsom speak.
How would you feel if you're a small business guy?
I'd be furious.
After I voted for it and they did.
After your angry wife convinced you to vote for Kamala, and then this is what happens to the business.
And you got to walk into the kitchen, say, hey, honey, look.
I'd be over.
It would be you.
I'd start drinking again.
I'd start drinking again.
You'd be the angry husband.
You're damn right.
And then she'd be the, oh, my guy won.
And she'd be the angry.
I'd be furious.
Well, the good news is small business owners are happy about the fact that Trump's getting in there for the policies, which means optimism is higher.
And I think that's a good thing.
Let's go to the next story.
Michelle Obama to skip Trump inauguration.
CNN story.
So Michelle Obama, first lady of Barack Obama, wasn't at Jimmy Carter's funeral when him and Trump were speaking, if you remember, not him, Michelle.
When Obama, when Obama Barack and Trump were speaking, Michelle wasn't sitting there.
And now we're hearing about the fact that Michelle Obama is also not going to be at the inauguration.
And there's a lot of different theories.
Why is she not coming?
Michelle Obama will not attend it.
Inauguration, breaking with the tradition of former first ladies participating in the ceremony.
Her office stated former President Barack Obama is confirmed to attend the 68 inaugural ceremonies.
Former first lady, Michelle Obama, will not be attending inauguration without providing further explanation.
Michelle Obama has previously expressed animosity towards Trump, accusing him of endangering her family through his rhetoric, reflecting on attending Trump's 2017 inauguration.
She said in a 2023 podcast, there were tears.
There was that emotion.
But then to sit on that stage and watch the opposite of what we represented on display, there was no diversity.
There was no color on that stage.
There was no reflection of the broader sense of America on that stage.
Vinny, I'll come to you first.
What do you think is going on here with Michelle Obama not attending?
Let's give serious commentary.
What do you think?
I'm being dead.
Well, first and foremost, your husband was the president of the United States for eight years.
And again, we're the most racist.
This is the worst country ever.
I just, I think, I think personally, it's something deeper.
Let's not forget.
Well, first of all, she doesn't show up to the funeral.
This has nothing to do with Trump.
This is the funeral of a past president.
You have to go unless, God forbid, there's something wrong with you.
She was on vacation in Hawaii, okay?
On a vacation.
And this to me, it feels like, and she's not coming to this one.
This feels like an episode of House of Cards where Frank Underwood's wife wants to leave him for crazy.
It kind of makes sense in this sense.
She wants to leave him, but they're all acting as if it's something else.
She was visiting her sick mother and all that stuff.
But let's not forget, Michelle has been open about her tough marriage with Barack.
And she even said that there was a decade where she couldn't stand him.
Okay.
She couldn't stand him.
And that's marriage.
You guys get the picture.
But I think this is something.
I think this might be something deeper.
You could play the whole, I hate Trump and I don't want to be there.
I feel this is my opinion.
And I've heard rumors about this online too, that there might be something deeper.
They might not be happy with each other.
She said she couldn't stand them for 10 years.
Maybe she can't stand him right now.
And maybe this might be the end, which I think that's where I'm at.
I think this could be deeper, Tom.
Tom, what do you think?
Well, no jokes.
I'm being that serious.
No, no, I'm saying for me.
I'm not going to make any comments here.
It would be very easy to do so, but I'm going to look at it this way.
The world is watching.
And I actually get emotional when I think about this.
The world is watching our transfer of power.
The world is watching.
And there's a time to be orderly and to demonstrate our leadership and our strength as a country.
And I'll be honest with you.
This is disappointing to see that the outgoing first lady over the last couple months, not outgoing, she was the prior first lady.
To see her not attend, it's like unless, you know, Kate, Williams' wife in the UK, she had cancer treatments, but they wanted to keep it down.
So she didn't attend things.
Unless Michelle is sick and they're just leaving it quiet, then I think that, you know, she should be attending.
And I have to say this.
Say it.
Trump did not attend Biden's inauguration.
Thank you.
And so I have to look at it and say, hey, come on.
No matter how bad the campaign, no matter how bad the attacks, we need to stand on that stage together and show the unified force of the United States of freaking America.
And I think you should be there for that moment.
You can stay, even in the pit of angst and disgust that is the political election cycle, you can take two hours, even in the cold, and stand there in front of the rest of the world and say, we may fight with ourselves, but you don't want to fight with us.
Very good point.
Adam.
Look, I thought it was such a great moment when Trump and Obama were sitting next to each other, joking around, having a conversation at Jimmy Carter's funeral.
I thought that was compelling.
I thought it was needed.
I thought it was unifying.
I thought it was synergistic for America.
I think we need stuff like that.
I agree with Tom.
I don't like the fact that President Donald Trump, who lost the election in 2020, didn't show up to Joe Biden's inauguration.
I didn't like that.
I think that Trump is hopefully turning a new page.
He's sort of playing with house money.
I think he's hopefully going to extend an olive branch and be kinder and nicer and be more inviting to people.
Michelle Obama not doing this just shows that she's vindictive and she's emotional and she's playing the race card.
You know, for me, if Barack Obama didn't show up, yo, we got a problem.
We have a story.
If this dude, I mean, if Michelle Obama doesn't show up, okay.
We show that you're petty.
It shows that you're not willing to put America first and you're putting your personal interests first.
Okay.
Michelle, thank you.
By the way, has any couple in America had a worse year than the Obamas?
I don't think so.
Have they?
No.
Because between the scolding, between the looking down, between the talking down to people, you know, between the, if you're black and you don't vote for Kamala, it worked zero.
So Trump's coming in, round two.
So Barack Obama, Michelle Obama.
So a couple things.
A couple of things.
One, remember, Melania didn't attend the invitation that the Bidens gave to go there and Melania didn't go.
Trump went.
I don't know if you remember that.
This was like six weeks ago, five weeks ago.
Remember, there was a picture of Joe Biden and Trump, and they were talking to each other, and Jill was there, but Melania didn't go.
This was what eventually?
This was five weeks ago, guys.
Just type in Joe Biden.
Type in Biden invites Biden invites Trump Melania skips.
To the White House.
Yes.
Oh, yeah.
This was five weeks ago, guys.
When the meeting took place, and Melania chose not to go.
Yeah, you're okay with that.
Melania chose not to go.
Melania expected to skip Wednesday's White House.
This is after he won the election.
I understand.
I'm trying to make my point, and you're giving commentary.
I'm sorry, I'm coming.
I get it.
So Melania Trump expected to skip.
So she skipped, which, by the way, it's fine.
Okay.
So now Michelle wants to skip this.
Totally get it.
Melania just had a book come out.
Jennifer's reading her book and she's loving the book.
Here's Melania talking about her experience with Michelle Obama when they came in.
I've never seen her talk about this stuff.
Okay.
She is now openly talking about some of the stories.
Okay.
Go for it, Rob.
Play this clip.
What is it like when you're moving back in the White House?
What's different this time?
The difference is I know where I will be going.
I know the rooms where we will be living.
I know the process.
The first time was challenging.
We didn't have much of the information.
The information was upheld for us from previous administration.
But this time I have everything.
I have the plans.
I could move in.
I already packed.
I already selected the furniture that needs to go in.
So it's very different transition this time, second time around.
Will you decorate it exactly like it was before or are you making changes?
A little bit of changes, not much.
How have the Bidens been?
Have they been accommodating and are they still living there?
They're still living there and they will be out on January 20.
So what happened is on January 20, the transition team has only five hours to move Biden's out and to move us in.
So everything needs to be planned to the minute.
I will be in the White House and when I need to be in New York, I will be in New York.
When I need to be in Palm Beach, I will be in Palm Beach.
But my first priority is to be a mom, to be a first lady, to be a wife.
And once we are in on January 20, it's you serve the country.
What a night and day difference.
You heard what she said, Pat?
She did.
She can't.
She used a different word.
She said upheld.
They were withheld.
That means when she came in with Barack and Michelle, they withheld information and they basically said to hell with you.
You're on your own to come in.
That's what she's saying.
That's what she's saying.
She's saying the fact that they were not helpful.
And again, listen, drama, like what you said, a little bit of what Michelle is doing and, hey, I'm not going to be there.
I think it's going to be totally fine that they're not going to be there.
The reality of it is what?
Trump won.
They're in there.
Melania gets to go back in and do whatever she wants to do with the way the White House is going to look.
Day one, history books are going to favor Trumps.
That's what's going to happen.
And that above anything else, I can see why it's tough for Michelle to be there fully.
I can't see what's going to be tough for her to be there.
Vinny, what are your thoughts?
I have one question.
I want your honest opinion.
In regard to Trump not going to the inauguration when Biden won.
And I'm being dead serious.
If you believe, Pat, and you knew, and you had proof in your heart of hearts that they cheated, the Biden administration cheated, the deep state cheated, all the voting, all the regulators, it's a fact.
There's no joking.
FBI was at Twitter.
You know all that and it's a fact, guys.
It's not BS.
Would you, just because it's procedure, would you, Tom, you showing up saying I'm cool with it?
That's number one.
I want that question.
If you guys can answer that, I wouldn't have gone.
That's me personally.
If they cheated, I knew they cheated.
And number two, at the funeral, Adam, you're saying he was sitting next to Barack and it was fun and his cordial is bringing back America.
When he walked in front of them, Barack Obama tried destroying him.
Hillary Clinton tried destroying him.
The majority of the people in that room tried to literally kill him.
Okay?
Put him in jail for the rest of his life, make him broke.
And a lot of people would say that Butler shooting and all that, all that, that's all deep state shit.
How can you in your right mind say that that's a good thing for us?
And I want to know what do you guys think about if you knew that they cheated?
I'll give you a real world example that comes out of multiple biographies.
Go ahead.
Richard Nixon said, we knew and we had evidence that the Kennedy crime family, through the liquor associations, stole West Virginia.
West Virginia was won by Richard Nixon.
We knew that they had topped up in Illinois through Daly's crime machine in Chicago.
And we knew it was going to be close, but we figured Kennedy's probably going to win it in Illinois.
I did not think it.
Richard Nixon has talked about all this and the biographies of people that work with Richard Nixon talk about it.
Kennedy stole the election in 1960 with his father's finger on all kinds of buttons.
And you know what Richard Nixon said?
I did not think that a full-blown attack was good for the country.
And he would be elected in 1968.
I think that even if we're talking about transfer of power, I think for two hours, you demonstrate the leadership of the country that you wanted to lead to the rest of it.
And by the way, I cannot imagine what it would have felt like to have the passion to serve that I clearly see President Trump has, to have, to go through how he had to defeat the media.
He had to defeat the RNC.
Of all the opponents he defeated, he didn't just defeat Hillary Clinton on that November morning when he won.
He defeated so much more and the establishment.
And then four years later, to feel like I can't believe the empire struck back.
I can't believe what that would, I just can't imagine what that would have felt like.
But for two hours on the nation's capital, you can transfer power.
As painful and as difficult as could be.
That's my opinion.
And Richard Nixon said, for the good of the country, I'm not going to push this.
So we have a real world example.
I'm interested in seeing this one thing.
What is Melania's objective going to be in this second administration?
Because, you know, what is the role of the first lady, right?
They have a cause, right?
They have a cause.
So just let's go down the causes that I even recall in my lifetime.
I'm president.
I was born and Reagan was the president.
Nancy Reagan, her cause was just say no, the war on drugs.
How'd that work out?
Not so good.
Drugs war.
Michelle Obama, her whole thing was let's move.
Let's fight childhood obesity and let's eat healthier.
You guys are having fatter, fatter, more obese kids than ever, America.
We said that they just outlawed red dye number two, the food in America.
Joe Biden's cause was education.
And we can all basically argue that it's been indoctrinated.
Dr. Joe Biden, all right?
Sorry, put a doctor on her name.
Melania, in a ironic twist, you remember what her objective was and her cause was?
Be best.
So cyberbullying.
If there's anybody that knows a thing or two about cyberbullying, Donald Trump.
So it's going to be very interesting to see what her another, what her next objective will be.
She's no longer raising Baron.
He was a kid when she was there.
The guy's 18 years old, crushing it, NYU.
She no longer has to support Trump in that matter.
So I'd like to see what she does.
I don't want to know what Pat, because I know you want to move on, but what do you think?
And I get it, what he's talking about, about the institution.
But if they're trying to kill you and they're trying to destroy you and they cheated, would you, you personally, Pat, I know who you are.
I know exactly who you are.
You're going to show up and just because you're supposed to show up knowing that they cheated, that's giving in to their actions.
That's me.
I want to know if you like.
So I'll tell you, we're in Hawaii.
It's March of 09.
It's me, Jen, my dad, and we're there.
And I know what happened, what the company I was a part of did to me.
And it was unbelievable what happened.
And everything was documented, everything that happened.
And they eventually had to apologize for it when I flew out to Atlanta.
And I sent them with 20 people.
But after they apologized, I wanted to be the CEO of that company and I wanted to eventually run that company.
And I felt I would have done a good job to do it.
It was important to me to do so.
And we're in Hawaii.
It's me and another guy named Jeff.
Jeff will remember this vividly.
They asked me to go to Hawaii.
I went.
I did not want to go to Hawaii.
But I went and the guy comes and he asked me to speak.
And I said, Scott, respectfully, you don't want me to speak.
He says, what do you mean?
I said, I'm telling you.
I'm telling you as a favor to you.
You're the president of the company.
You do not want me to speak.
I'm not going to speak.
I'm here, but I'm not going to speak.
So don't ask me to speak because it's not going to be something you're going to like.
No, what are you talking about?
You guys said, I'm telling you, I'm not speaking.
So me and Jeff went, told them, and then boom.
And the people that were there and know the story, it's probably 25 people that know this story.
They know exactly what happened.
I showed up and we did our thing.
And then six months later, we started PHP.
And then when they sued us and they got people to be pinned against me.
They pinned them against me by stuff that they said.
So there was the lawyers in a room and they're sitting there with everybody else and everybody is throwing me under the bus, right?
The people that didn't come with us.
One of our guys, his name was Mohammed.
Love this guy.
He was like, Pat, I'm all you.
A Muslim guy who I can't give you his last name.
I'm not going to give his last name because I don't want to expose him.
But he comes and he said, I hate Patrick.
He's this, he's that.
He goes in there.
He records the entire thing.
And he says, Patrick, I was in the room for three hours.
All these people that you helped, this guy said this, this guy said that, this guy said this.
I have the entire recording here for you to listen to.
Wow.
I said, Mohammed, let me start off by saying to you, I appreciate the loyalty.
I broke the disc.
I trashed it.
I said, I'm moving on.
I'm not even looking back.
Guys, when I move on.
It's over.
No, no, I move on.
When I move on, I move on.
And never listen to it.
Never.
Of the people that were in that room with the lawyers, more than half of them came back to our company.
Okay.
Think about it.
The people that helped them sue, more than half of them came back to the company and we moved on.
Having said that, that's like 100th of a percent of what this guy went through on the national stage.
This is not social.
This is not any of that stuff.
Having said that, remember, one area I'm very consistent when I express myself about the president.
And I said this on Pierce the other day.
He's in the best flow state I've ever seen him.
His level of consciousness right now, it's the highest it's ever been, in my opinion, from what I've seen.
I don't know the man.
We've only spent probably a few hours together, not a lot.
So, and that's here, Mar-Lago, a couple other interactions that we've had.
And in 2020, you know, business plan.
In my business plan, page two for my own self, I said, you are battle tested.
But just like the video games, there are levels to this game.
The next one will be a big one.
If you make it through the next level, you will exponentially grow.
Few things you will 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, bidder and title 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.
That's Mark Twain.
Be self-awareness.
Be like the waterwell.
And I've said this before.
Focus on signal instead of noise, right?
I think 2020, the noise got a hold of Trump, period.
And this time Iran, he is the noise.
And he's signal.
He was focused on getting the job done.
A lot of people, like I talked to some guy the other day, he says, oh my God, how does it feel?
You were one of the top 10 people that helped him get elected with all this stuff.
I said, what we did is nothing compared to what he had.
99.9% of him winning is him.
Of course, God and all the stuff that happened with the shooting.
But for a man to be able to go through hell like he did the last 18 months, I don't know if in the history of America anybody's ever had to go through that before.
And that is why my level of respect for him being able to handle the pain, the noise, all of that is so high.
And he prevailed and he prevailed.
And you can see that on Melania's face.
You can see that on his face.
You can see that both Melania and Trump went to the funeral of Jimmy Carter.
She was willing to hug Mike Pence's wife and she never once got up to the point that even the other guy got up, the liberal guy that climate change guy, Al Gore, got up.
Mike Pence got up and he even talked to, but notice where she sat.
She sat to the left away from everybody.
Typically, a man sits in the aisle.
If you ever sit in a, I never sit in the middle and Jen sits in the aisle.
I sit in the aisle.
And part of it may be because she didn't want to sit next to Brock.
It's just a male-female understanding to a sexual thing.
But no, listen, they prevailed.
History books are going to favor these guys.
And some of the best books and movies and documentaries we ever watch is going to be about this guy.
Stay tuned.
Future looks bright.
Okay.
Let's finish up with a couple other stories here and let's wrap up.
Okay, so we got the stories with, do we want to go Hamas?
Do we want to go Eagles fan?
Do we want to go Alpha Mel?
Do we want to go Brad Pitt?
Do we want to go ceasefire real quick?
What time is it, Rob?
19.
Adam.
Can we do two stories?
Okay, so let me go through the Hamas real quick.
So Gaza ceasefire deal reached, and then we're going to do Brad Pitt and wrap up any.
So Gaza ceasefire deal reached between Israel-Hamas truce during Sunday.
Rob, it looks like you got a video.
Is that the one of Biden?
If you do, prepare it.
I'm going to read this real quick.
A phased ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas will begin on Sunday, according to U.S. and Qatari officials, ending 15 months of war that killed over 46,000 Palestinians and displaced most of Gaza's 2.3 million residents.
The six-weeks truce includes Israel's gradual military withdrawal, the release of 33 Israeli hostages, and in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
U.S. President Joe Biden stated this deal will halt the fighting in Gaza, surge much-needed humanitarian assistance and Palestinian civilians and reunite the hostages with their families for more than 15 months.
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul Raham al-Atani announced the agreement in Doha negotiated by Egypt, Qatar, and U.S. support with pacts.
The pact follows an Israeli offensive launched after Hamas's October 7th attack, Adam.
Okay, so don't look now.
As people are starting to get optimistic and be excited about this peace deal, breaking news, ceasefire deal in limbo as Hamas threatens to basically renegon the deal.
So anyone that's ever heard me say you can't negotiate with terrorists, this is what the state of Israel is doing.
My message to the Palestinians and the Palestinian people out there while they're trying to do this deal, and I'll just break down the deal real quick.
You got to give the people of Palestine something to live for.
Because right now, all they have is something to die for.
You know, when I had the argument with our discussion with Bassim Yousuf, I said, you have to shift the focus from GDT to GDP.
There's countries in the Middle East that are thriving.
Look at what's going on in the UAE.
Look at what's going on in Saudi with MBS.
Look what's going on in Qatar.
Look what's going on in Kuwait.
There's no terrorism.
There's economic prosperity.
There's peace.
There's nothing like that.
In certain parts of the world, Palestinians, in Lebanon right now, God bless what's going on there.
Syria, it's a mess.
You have to give these people a greater cause than just killing other people and being a destroyer.
There's builders and there's destroyers and there's creators and there's people who just want to tear it all down.
Right now, their sole objective is just tearing down Israel.
They're not talking about building up Gaza.
They don't build up.
They build down.
That's why they've taken billions of dollars.
They didn't build infrastructure.
They didn't build parks.
They didn't build hospitals.
They didn't build nursery schools.
They didn't build any of that.
They built tunnels.
So if you want to break down the deal, if it even gets to phase three, there's three phases of the deal.
Phase one, they're going to have a six weeks of ceasefire, which in my perspective, I don't even think that's going to last.
Good luck telling terrorists not to shoot missiles into civilian zones.
Good luck.
We see what's going on with that.
And then they're going to exchange hostages for prisoners.
So it's just hostages, innocent people, for people in prison.
So if they get to phase two, which is a permanent end to the war, if they get to phase three, which is the remains of hostages, you know what they're going to get?
Think about this for a second.
If they do these three things, six weeks, ceasefire, ending of the war, remains, do you know where they're going to end up?
Exactly where they were October 6th of 2023.
What the hell was the purpose of this war?
Your city's been ruined.
You've lost tens of thousands of people.
You're going to get back to where you were October 6th.
Nothing's happened.
You've done nothing.
You've accomplished nothing.
And they talk about, all right, we're going to have this prisoner exchange.
What's the value of life between an Israeli and the Palestinians?
This isn't my opinion.
Look at the template.
In 2011, there was a hostage exchange for one Israeli soldier.
One.
Gilhad Gilad Shalit.
Do you know how many prisoners they swapped for this one?
One?
Take a guess.
One.
For one, one for one Israeli prisoner.
One Israeli hostage.
How many Palestinian prisoners did they swap?
50.
50.
Okay.
What do you think, Tom?
Well, do you know the answer?
No, say the answer.
No, but I remembered it being like 30, 50.
I don't remember the exact number.
I remember it's not.
All I know is you said you're going to be quick.
And I'm sitting here waiting for you.
Just take a guess.
1,000.
You're absolutely right.
For 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, you get one Israeli life.
So they're dictating what the demands are.
Do I think this ceasefire is going to work?
You don't think it's going to work.
I don't think it's going to work.
Not even under Trump.
Under Trump, we're going to see what happens.
I'm saying this deal right now.
I don't think this is going to be a problem.
This is the Qatari prime minister.
Look who he's given credit to.
Go for it.
We just talked about him right now.
Go for it.
And captives in order to establish a ceasefire, a permanent ceasefire.
In addition to the delivery of intense relief aid into our province in Kaza Strip.
At the outset, I would like to extend appreciation to our partners in Egypt, the United States, namely the U.S.-elect envoy, Mr. Steve Watkoff, and the Middle East and Northeast coordinator and Mr. Brettaker for their extensive effort that have ended in a nervous block.
Did he say Trump?
Rob, did he say Trump?
I didn't see Trump in there.
Oh, okay.
He said president-elect.
Do you see that?
He said president-elect.
So he's talking about President Trump.
And then, by the way, now play the clip of Biden taking credit for this if you could.
I'm sure.
So watch this one here, folks.
I'm confident.
Thank you.
Folks, credit for this, Mr. President.
You or Trump?
Is that a joke?
Is that a joke?
Oh, yeah.
Thank you.
Sure, yes.
As if Trump had nothing to do with this.
Yeah, so this is the part that's just kind of funny when you're going through this and taking credit.
By the way, you know what this reminds me of?
One president, Jimmy Carter.
Yeah.
But in that moment, it was different.
It happened right before President Reagan became president, and President Reagan kind of gave a little bit of credit to Carter.
In this case, he's taking credit saying it's because of us that they did this.
And it doesn't seem like it's even happening anyways.
But let's go to the last story here.
Benny, I'm really wondering if the story you're about to say is true or not.
But if it is true, this may be the funniest story of the year about Brad Pitt.
Go for it.
So a 50-year-old French woman, her name is just Anne, was deceived by a scammer impersonating Brad Pitt, leading to her divorce from her husband, and she lost approximately $850,000.
The scam began in February 2023 when someone posing as Brad Pitt's mother contacted Ann via social media and she said that her son really needed someone like Ann.
Okay, this was followed by a message from the scammer pretending to be Brad Pitt.
The impersonator used AI-generated images and videos to convince Ann of his identity, even lying a story about needing funds for kidney cancer treatment.
Okay, look how happy he is.
I mean, can we just share Rob?
Show this one about Brad Jenny.
Where's the one where he has a sign that says, and I love you.
So believing she is in a romantic relationship with the actor, she divorces her husband, transfers all this money to the scammer.
And this continued to 2024, mid-2024, when she, guess how she realized she was duped?
Oh, when he didn't show up?
No, no, ready for this?
She saw reports of Brad Pitt's real-life relationship with Ines de Ramon.
So this girl's like on TMZ and she's like, who the hell is that?
Do we have a picture of this woman?
No, no, trust me.
You don't want to see her.
I want to see if you don't have her.
But look at this.
Look at this one.
I love you so much, my wife.
You're joking.
I'm not joking.
Guys, this dumb bro gets everything she deserves.
But you ready for this?
I agree.
The emotional and financial toll led.
I mean, this isn't funny.
She was hospitalized for severe depression.
And she filed a complaint, an investigation.
But, dude, like, you realize, okay.
And she divorced her husband.
Could you imagine where the husband is right now?
He's like, are you kidding?
I mean, but look at the photos.
And I wish we had the videos of show me what this woman's.
But look at Rob.
There's the montage.
Guys, go to the montage, Rob.
Look at all, like, guys.
Look at the surgery.
Look at the surgery one.
Go to the bottom right.
Go to the bottom right.
Look.
Oh, my God.
Look at the surgery.
Just a like who's taking a photo in there.
And the odds are there's some Indian guy out there that scammed that's bragging to his friends, like Raj, Brunette Pitt.
Brunette Pitt.
Almost a million dollars.
That is this is, I had to do one million rupees.
I had to fact check.
It's 100% real.
And then they had to take a story offline because people were going after her and trying to find out who she is.
But you cannot make this choice.
You know what?
This scammer better hope that her brother or a cousin is not like a veteran with PTSD and a short fuse.
But this is France.
I mean, they're in France, bro.
But what a.
By the way, her husband, the one she left her, he's 20 years her senior.
Or she's 20 years younger than him.
And she's gone.
How do you get duped?
Is that he's the guy that's not?
Is that her up?
According to the Telegraph, that is the woman believed to be Anne.
Get out of here.
According to the Telegraph.
Look at him post-surgery.
Look at him.
You know, guys, I mean, you cannot.
This is like the scammer must have been like, are you so shocked right now?
Unbelievable.
I mean, it's been 20 years.
20 years, guys, since that poor Nigerian general who needed our help to get $500 so he could get out, which was like the scam of 2002.
Vinny 500 bucks.
You remember that guy?
If you could just help me with 500 bucks, I will split my kingdom with you.
It was a Nigerian general that was in prison.
Trust me, just tell them you're Leonardo DiCaprio.
It'll work.
It'll work.
Don't start to McGonah.
Oh, my God.
I watched a movie recently called Bookkeeper.
I don't know if you've seen it or not, Bookkeeper with Jason Statum, Jason Statum.
And it's a story about somebody that gets, this exactly happens to them, an internet scammer like, hey, wire us money, whatever, Bitcoin, stuff like that.
And they do.
And more than $2 million an older lady gives, and the movie starts from there.
And this guy goes back to find out exactly who did it.
And there's an office that's sitting there doing this to people from, I don't know where it was based out of, but it's a worth watch.
Everybody should watch this movie to just get an idea what's happening with this show.
I got to wrap up.
With the famous quote from P.T. Barnum?
What is it?
There's a sucker born every minute.
There we go.
There you go.
Well, guys, if you get a DM from somebody saying that Brad Pitt, it's fake.
Please tell your wives.
Okay.
Tell your wives.
Tell your wives and say, babe, if somebody tries to tell you to leave me for $5 million and it's Brad Pitt, Brad Pitt is doing totally fine.
Do not fall for that.
Okay.
Do not fall for that.
Anyways, look, for the news, the Neustradamus, Nustradamis.
Can you say three times?
Say Nustramasamisamisamisamis, Nustradamis, Nustamus.
Nustradamis.
Go to VTNews.ai.
Make your predictions.
Thousands have already done it.
Go do yours.
Go to vtnews.ai.
And after you vote, you can't change your vote, by the way.
Once you do it, you can't change it.
Leaders bulletin.
You will see the first leaders bulletin on January 20th.
Put a reminder on your phone.
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And tomorrow, the great Scotty Pippins podcast goes out.
And oh my God, I think the NBA is going to react after some of the stuff that he said.
